There is nobody like Brian Dewan, and no experience quite like seeing him perform.
My first Dewan gig was way back in 1993, when he opened for They Might Be Giants at The Chance in Poughkeepsie. Three jock douchebags up front were itching to start a mosh pit - this is back when people would even slam-dance to the breaks between songs - but then this dude in a shirt and tie comes out and plays a bunch of undanceably baroque zither tunes (not that anyone there, including me, knew what a zither was) that were equal parts grisly and hilarious. The jocks had to wait until TMBG for their big dance moment - it was a predictably sad and short display, because for the love of fuck they were trying to mosh to They Might Be Giants.
Anyway, Brian’s set blew me away and I thirsted to own his Bar/None release, Brian Dewan Tells The Story, the way an Iron Chef thirsts to know the Secret Ingredient. We didn’t have Amazon.com back then - it took me four years to find that record. And by the time I did, boy were my legs tired! har har
Brian Dewan Tells The Story (to be re-released on vinyl next year by Eschatone, by the way) is both a lean-forward and lean-back record - it’s equally rewarding if you give it your full attention, or if you just have it on in the apartment while you fart around. The electric zither sounds like an amplified harpsichord, or a guitar with 70 strings. Brian designed and built the instrument himself (read the New York Law Journal to learn about how his schematics got heisted by the Blue Man Group - provided you like reading about people having shitty things done to them by blue people), and it is singularly beautiful to hear. I’ve been lucky enough to work with Brian on several of my own recordings, and whenever he busts out the zither I know my album is about to get really cool.
I could go into Brian’s A/V work, like his funny and terrifying filmstrips... or his crazy experiments with homemade electronic instruments... or the album covers he designed for Neutral Milk Hotel, They Might Be Giants and David Byrne... but you’ll want to discover all that shit for yourself after you see Brian play, just like I did. And when will you see him play? Why, tomorrow night, upstairs at The Living Room! It’s the release party for his newest and awesomest record, Words Of Wisdom. And he will be bringing it.
My acoustic set with Joe Abba and Rob Jost follows Brian’s. The Living Room’s upstairs lounge even has a grand piano, which I like to think they brought in just for me. So if you’ve ever fantasized about seeing me play a piano naked, come on down - it will be exactly as you imagined, except I’ll have clothes on.
[cue collective sigh of relief]
The Living Room is at 154 Ludlow St. in NYC. The show starts at 9 sharp with Brian’s set. Come by and experience joy!
Speaking of which, there are three new songs up in my MySpace player. I’m open to requests for next week if you got ’em (just send through MySpace).
In case you didn't notice, yesterday I swapped three fresh tracks into my MySpace player. Two of those are songs from Physics, a 'rock opera' I wrote to hit Albany in the ass on my way out. (I like to pretend the folks up there were so burned by my scathing condemnation that they refuse to speak of me to this day, but in reality they've just forgotten I was ever there!)
When I listen to old recordings of mine, I'm never unhappy with the songs or the arrangements, but the performances and recording quality drive me nuts. It was the mid-90's and we recorded onto ADATs, which just sound shitty. And I couldn't afford to hire musicians who would play what was in my head, so I ended up programming all the backing tracks and then praying that there might be enough reverb in the world to make them sound like real instruments.
Also, I was just figuring out how to sing. Occasionally that did lend the vocals a certain charm, but mostly not. "Pipes" are among the many Rock Tools with which I was not blessed, and I had to figure out how to wrangle a listenable performance out of the lungs, throat and nasal passages I was dealt. That took a while.
I've often dreamed of revisiting my old albums with 1. a budget for proper recording and good musicians, and 2. perspective. Physics is on that docket but way down. I have actually started this process, but not with a record of mine.
Eleven years ago, I drove my car into the front of Amy Willey's house (I just nicked the house, really, no damage but a black smudge on the aluminum siding and a scratch on my bumper), busted out my then-new Korg Trinity keyboard, and got to work recording a six-song demo.
Willey and I had played together in the Albany folk group Structure; besides being by far the nicest band in town, we also had two very fine singer-songwriter-guitarists in Willey and Prescott Gaylord. The band broke up amicably in 1995 (Structure couldn't do things any way but amicably). By the winter of '97, Willey had a repertoire of new and old songs she wanted to commit for posterity, and I had new recording gear, so I took the drive to Troy.
That weekend, we cut acoustic guitar and vocals using a primitive digital multitracking system built directly into my keyboard. For 1997 technology, it was awesome, and Willey sang and played great. But you are not gonna get a recording for the ages using only a Korg Trinity and a Shure Beta Green microphone. Unable to add all the instruments or achieve the sound I wanted on the tracks, I got frustrated and put Willey's demos on the back burner. While I sat on the recordings for ten years, Willey moved to New Hampshire to run a day camp for underprivileged kids (yes, I realize that makes me look like an even bigger dick).
One of the first things I did when I got Pro-Tools at home was transfer all my old recordings into the computer, including the Willey demos. But it wasn't until I started recording Failing Upwards, when I found myself collaborating with musicians I had considered way out of my league (and after working with them, I still do), that it dawned on me: I might be able to finally give Willey the awesome recording she deserves. I called upon two former members of Structure, Prescott and bassist Chris Cairo, to jump back on the horse for Willey. They were both down for the cause. All we needed was a kick-ass drummer - so I brought aboard Jerry Marotta, who played with the Indigo Girls (Willey's favorite group evah) and Suzanne Vega (including 99.9 F, one of my all-time top five albums and my original sonic blueprint for the Willey tracks).
I drove up to Woodstock, where Jerry tracked the drums in an afternoon and then painstakingly added so many layers of awesome tribal percussion that Willey sounds like she's being backed by some kind of mystical, musical Zulu army. The whole project was transformed, now sitting atop a wonderfully-played, well-recorded foundation.
Chris Cairo hasn't played bass in some time - he's been busy curing diseases as a biochemist (what is it about these Structure people being so goddamn cool?!) - so he's requested that his contribution be limited to backing vocals. I guess I could be cranky about it, except the dude's curing diseases. So Tony Levin tracked the bass parts last weekend. Yeah, ya heard me!
Tony broke out the Funk Fingers on one track, and his electric upright on another. The basslines are incredible. I mean, they sound like Tony Levin. Mindblowing. Combined with those fantastic drums, you have... well... Peter Gabriel's rhythm section of 20 years. But really, Willey and her great songs deserve no less.
On April 12, I head to the Catskills with LB, where we'll spend the weekend drinking Moxie Colas with Brian Dewan as Brian and I add all manner of folk instruments to both the Willey tracks and Failing Upwards. Zither, accordion, autoharp, harpsichord, tin whistle, celestephone, Wurlitzer piano, organs of various shapes and sizes, Mellotron... I'm trying to get some singing saw on the tracks as well.
What's the moral of this story? I'm going to finish the stuff that deserves to be finished if it takes me ten fucking years, and it's going to be awesome.
In other news, I am thrilled to announce (if a couple lines at the bottom of a blog post could be considered an 'announcement') that standup bassist Rob Jost will be joining Joe Abba and me this coming Sunday and next Tuesday at The Delancey and The Living Room, respectively. I saw Rob perform with Crescent and Frost a year or two ago, and later with Chris Brown and Kate Fenner, and was blown away by both his playing and how much fun he seemed to be having doin it. I'm really psyched to play with Joe again, and having Rob aboard is the icing on that motherlovin rock cake of rock.
That was not a typo, by the way. A rock cake of rock is a rock cake of rock... every time.
I should probably point out that we are working up two sets of material, so both shows will be completely different. I hope to see you at both, and then some!
Just a quick answer to Jed's question about the brass player showing up in my photos. It's my friend and monster trumpet player Tim Sayer! Actually, it doesn't do justice to simply call Tim a monster player. He's more than that. Tim's a great musician to have working with you on every level.
Tim's lent himself to some research I've been doing. Basically, I'm trying to determine the right sorts of venues to be playing and the kind of arrangements suited to my music. He's joined me on stage alone, or with Ben and El (my favorite bass and violin players).
As we get closer to the release for Soft Verges and dates begin to sure up, I'll be listing shows. I'll also begin to describe a bit about what I'm doing with the band, the places we're playing and why.
Here's another photo of Tim and I, and a link or two which might be interesting.
Tim is currently out on tour with the The Levellers, but I hope to have him out again with me when he's got the time.
Thorsten:
If it was KISS - Ace, Peter, Paul and Gene - then fuck yeah. But since this is gonna basically be '80s Kiss (note the lowercase) faking it with makeup, I don't think it's worth 70 cents (and I'm talkin American cents, not eurocents).
CART
