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The Ramshacklers hit the road.
A FEW WORMS...em...WORDS...from Steve
Nacogdoches is a long ways away, a dreamplace of my imagination.
Nacogdoches is yellow, hot and hums dustily!
My friend Tim lives here.
Ten years ago or was it more?
a familiar Stranger bid me play on his
record.
There is an implied intimacy and trust with the sharing of music, as
lovers share dreams.
Tunes and songs in this infancy begin growing,
and nurtured in the musicians hand, they can become sturdy musical
trees.
I listened to Tim's searing soulful voice, crying about a land of his
imagination.
For several months the tracks zoomed back and forth between us by post.
Fiddles, strings, whistles, bodhrans and mandolins flew.
We recorded as if the vast Atlantic ocean and continents were the
figments of our fertile imagination.
We are at it again, ten years later.
Much has changed on both sides of the Atlantic and Tim and I are
still sharing music,
and again the Atlantic and the continents are figments of our fertile
imagination.
This time, these pieces have come together
like the fragments of a broken dream reassembling itself whole again.
This time it is not only Tim and I, for gathered here are more
Dreamers.
-- Steve Wickham
THE SONGS
WILLIE McCOOL
First song on the CD, first song we recorded. I was interested in writing a group of songs about the Space Shuttle Columbia, which exploded and fell over Nacogdoches. For a good while, we were the center of the world’s attention., for all the wrong reasons. The whole thing was surreal: the lines of shiny black cars snaking into town from the north and south, the jets endlessly circling overhead, the satellite trucks lining the brick streets downtown.
Everybody had a story to tell. Pieces fell in our backyards, through our roofs, into the lake where my dad was fishing. Many will probably never be found.
I took a reel that Steve had written during the Book of Lightning recording, called “Notting Hill Reel,†and incorporated it. This song was inspired by a quote from space shuttle pilot William Cameron "Willie" McCool: “From our orbital vantage point, we observe an earth without borders, full of peace, beauty and magnificence, and we pray that humanity as a whole can imagine a borderless world as we see it and strive to live as one in peace.â€
STARS FALL OVER INDIAN COUNTRY
The second in a trilogy of songs about the Columbia disaster. This one, like fate, connects the heroes of the flight with a strange land that I call home. It’s a land that belonged to the Indians. Through the land, we are all connected. Dust to dust. All that separates us is time.
I brought Tom “Strong Buffalo†LaBlanc in on this one, with a cry recognizable by all humankind. This is a cry of sadness but also one of strength and nobility. Hopefully, like the song itself.
SO WHAT
A spaghetti western, starring everyone’s favorite member of the Dakota Nation, Strong Buffalo. Like a voice from the burning bush, Buffalo stops us in our tracks, tells it like it is. “You want it all….right?†No sir, Mr. Buffalo, I’ve changed my mind. Strong Buffalo is in the business of changing minds. Even more, he’s in the business of changing hearts. He is a teacher. Let this song be a lesson to you.
LOUISIANA 2005
The music is by Joe. The words come from a piece of writing I did for an art exhibit at the local university. It was never meant to be a lyric, never wanted to be a song. Maybe that's why it works so well.
Dedicated to the people of my second home, New Orleans. When you can't find the words within you, sometimes it is best to look to the words of others. The vocal is a true first take. And, might I add, one of my all-time favorites.
AMAZING GRACE
Dave Sharp is one of the most overlooked guitarists of his generation. This track puts him front and center.
Actually, it puts him on the tube, riding into Manchester station. I had spoken with him via cell phone just days before recording this track and Dave was on his way into London for a gig. I could clearly hear the clickety-clack of the wheels along the track and used it for inspiration. Dave plays a Gretsch ProJet through a Marshall blues breaker and I play everything else. Except for the station agent. He unknowingly played himself…(and isn’t that how we all do it?)
SPACE SHUTTLE DEBRIS
A space gospel song. Slyly patterned after Dylan’s Knocking On Heaven’s Door. An examination of mortality, a questioning of life and non-life. I think only someone who is from East Texas, who was here during the days after the Columbia disaster, could have written this. The third in the trilogy.
DANCE FOR YOUR PORRIDGE
Joe, Steve and me are all on this one. It was almost titled "The Second Coming Of What's His Name." Before that, it was "This Ain't Teardrop Texas," because the computer we were working on had some weird kind of glitch and kept trying to name it "Teardrop Texas." It was a grand experiment, created from scratch, out of a single loop. What it became surprised everyone, I think. Maybe the purest piece of music on the CD. This wasn't written; it was discovered.
TOM'S APPLE PIE/CHA-YA
Strong Buffalo sent me the spoken word track and I created a song around it. A beautiful testament to the love he has for his children; his youngest daughter, in particular. As different as we might be in some ways, Buffalo and I could automatically relate to each other through being fathers. I connected with this track on an emotional level. Later, I took a snippet of a song he'd sent me, a piece he called "Cha-Ya," and added it to the end. He sounds as if he just about to burst into song toward the end of "So What." When he does, at the end of this one, it resonates beautifully.
CAOINEADH
This was composed by Steve Wickham. A stunningly moving piece. Steve recorded this in a Spanish motel room, while on tour with The Waterboys, and sent it straight to me. I loved it right away. I think Steve didn't quite know what to make of it, when he heard it back. Joe certainly performed some of his trickery on it. In the end, as Steve put it best, it was what it was. He told us to run with it.
At the beginning of this project, when only Steve had signed on, I told him I was interested in writing songs backwards. Taking pieces that he gave me and building around them. Although we never truly abandoned that idea, this remains one of the purest examples of what I was originally intending to do.
THERE IS NO GOD GREATER
This was an entirely different song, called "To Never Come Down." I never got a good grasp on it, though, so I stripped it down and started over. After slaving over the original idea for two or three weeks, I wrote the new text in about twenty minutes. That's the way it goes.
Any song that name drops Flannery O'Connor, Albert Camus and Jesse James has my interest to begin with. This one is an allegory, a train ride of the spirit, a continuation of the journey begun at the end of "Space Shuttle Debris." It brings the two strands of the CD together. Looks death in the face and doesn't blink. You can't do that in real life. That's why people write songs.
GOING BACK TO NEW ORLEANS
Puts Strong Buffalo, Doc Bekken and me in the middle of a sultry New Orleans evening, playing our hearts out to an unconcerned audience. Buffalo considers New Orleans to be a spiritual home, same as me. Another way we connect. I like the way we sing around each other on this until, finally, at the end, we seem to be finishing each other's thoughts. That's the way music works, when it really works right. That's the way this CD project worked.
We're all dropped off out here in this strange land, and we spend our lives trying to make our way home. If we don't give up, we find it. You know the old saying, "you can't go home again?" I'm not sure there's any truth at all there. More likely, as far as I can tell, you can't not go home.
There were a bunch of great ideas, half-formed songs, and even complete tracks that could have made it on to this project. Those include, but are not limited to the following:
MORE OF ME (IN THE MONITOR)
PHANTOM BOOGIE
LONNIE DONEGAN
SLEEP ON IT
AGELESS MOTHER
THE MOON MAKES HERSELF KNOWN THROUGH A WINDOW ON THE STARBOARD SIDE
BUFFALO IN AFRICA
CONSUMMATION OF GRIEF
THE STORY YOU WRITE
One or more will likely make an appearance in the not-so-distant future. That is, if we can quit writing new songs.
More Later.
DANCE FOR YOUR PORRIDGE
featuring Saoirse Wadding-Hayes
Wow it's me.I'm famous!Cool video :-)
Saoirse
LOUISIANA 2005
Make It Right NOLA
SO WHAT
STARS FALL OVER INDIAN COUNTRY
Original footage by John & Susan Freer
CAOINEADH
GOING BACK TO NEW ORLEANS
WILLIE McCOOL
"From our orbital vantage point, we observe an Earth without borders,
full of peace, beauty and magnificence, and we pray that humanity
as a whole can imagine a borderless world as we see it,
and strive to live as one in peace."
- Willie McCool, January 29th, 2003
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