Day Five at Allaire.
Today, we are working on a song called the Absentee. It's a hairy little number with a crazy frenetic energy, which is really fun and challenging.
We learned it from an old recording from Kentucky of a couple named Mr. and Mrs. Sams.
Here's a picture of them playing on the porch:
Here's a picture of us playing in the foyer:
On the recording, Mrs. Sams starts out a cappella and it's kind of what you might expect from a scratchy field recording of an old lady singing. About halfway through, Mr. Sams enters with the most frightening guitar backup you've ever heard. Greg says he sounds like a guy who was once pretty good, but is now totally deaf.
The really cool, and unsettling part is that he messes up the timing at his entrance, so for a few seconds the beat is turned around. I think it's one of my favorite musical moments of all time.
OK, enough of this shenanigans, I need to get back to work.
4 comments:
every time you post i want more and more to hear you guys doing the stuff your talking about. when are you coming to maine?
And when are you coming back to Portland? Let me know.
there is a similarly mind-boggling moment on an alva greene recording, that is a duo w/fiddlesticks. the fiddlesticks actually phase one half-beat ahead over the course of two a parts.
I LOVE the guitar. It was, like Fripp on the Roches record, what first drew me to the track.
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