Given the paucity of liner notes on the two BlindRay CDs, "Combo Level" and "Separate Checks," I took a few moments to put down what I know and recall about the product and process, before it leaves all our brains forever. Some tracks were recorded for an earlier, never-quite-realized album as early as 1993. Later, some of these tunes were salvaged and made it onto the first completed album, released in 1997. The recording of what was to become "Separate Checks" began very slowly in the summer of 1998, and concluded with a few additional tracks in April 2000. In cases where I wrote the lyrics to a song, I have sometimes given a bit of interpretation, but if I didn't write the words, I don't presume to guess. For the really old songs, even if I did write the words, I've mostly forgotten what inspired them.
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Songs from Combo Level (1997)
Plastic Shoes - This could be considered one of our first "hits," and dates from the mid-80s. It means nothing in particular, but it was fun to sing non-rhyming lyrics over that funky riff. We played it live all the way up to our last gig in 2002. I just remember trying to get odd words like "steel ball bearing" and "Episcopalean" into the song. The first tracks were recorded in 1993. This is the only time I ever doubled vocals.
Calgary Girl - Inspired by a casual conversation with a couple of Canadians in Jamaica who were having trouble catching a return flight due to some constipated snit Castro was in. I was also thinking of that odd population of American expats who hang around the Caribbean with no obvious purpose or means of support, a combination of pity and envy, perhaps. Martha Jamison added backing vocals that I liked so much I pumped it up to duet level in the mix. This one made it onto that first EP tape back in 93. Hunter Perrin is all over the tune on acoustic guitar.
Checkout Time - A very, very early one, a 13-bar blues. (Really. Count 'em.) We did it live so many times that it evolved in different directions, and sometimes included an extended dramatic monolog from a wounded traveling salesman. (The tune borrows heavily from a Squeeze song from the early 80s). I still sometimes play it today, with just guitar and bass.
Million Times - This song was written by Caldwell for "Combo Level." He always claimed it was derivative, and maybe so, but it was fun to play. My contribution was the short guitar solo with the palm-mute, and the backing vocals.
Montessori - The earliest Caldwell song that stayed in the repertoire. We played it even back when we were an acoustic trio, before 1985. I used to get compliments on that guitar fall, the 13th-11th-9th, but I was embarrassed to say it came from a practice book called "How to Play Blues Guitar". This one also stayed with us till the end. The inspiration, I think, was the daycare-adjustment problems experienced by a friend's son.
Nameless - A true collaboration. Enigmatic Caldwell lyrics, Bruce and Dennis music, my melody. I was never very happy with my vocals, because the pitch is WAY too high, especially after the modulation. But it's such a romping song. Bruce and a friend worked up the charts for the stringed instruments, and then utilized St. John's High School orchestra students. The strings are probably mixed too loud.
Safesex - I wrote this song in 1986 right after we got our new drummer, Andy, who took to it right away. It has some strange and oblique chords played way up on the neck and a droning open A. It was inspired by a poster from the early days of AIDS Awareness, which showed a cleancut young man in a white T-shirt that read "Mr. Safe Sex". The chorus leans a bit too heavily on a Byrds song. (Funny, to me at least, is the fact that I found an old acoustic tape of me in the EARLY 70s which is essentially the same song, sans lyrics, played in a morose acoustic style.)
Twist - My favorite from Combo Level, and it broke my heart that the band could never nail it live. I wrote the first draft in the Newark airport after missing a flight (it was either create or drink), and then married that to a happy riff I'd been fooling with. I really, REALLY wanted this song to mean something. It's about how tiny accidental direction changes have enormous consequences. As I recount in the "Story of BlindRay" section, the song suffered a disaster, forcing us to re-record almost every track from scratch after losing the master. But I have been grateful ever since for that particular accident, which ironed out all the creases and made the song unified.
Songs from Separate Checks (2000)
Wasn't Me - Written by Dennis Eby, then fleshed out by Bruce Jamison. Caldwell Fletcher rewrote one verse. Andy Mears plays drums. This one was completed early, I believe second in the sequence, in the late summer or early fall of 1998, and is one of only two songs that have just the original six members of the band. My contribution was the high wiggly guitar and buzzy power chords. It's a cool medium-tempo rocker, and fun to play.
Bones of St. Peregrine - This one started as an instrumental for two acoustic guitars written by Bruce in 1998. Original working title "Let the wind turn your butt around". He and I actually played this one as a duet for the Woodland Heights Home Tour, sitting in the front yard of an elegant renovation. Somebody's first attempt at lyrics fell flat, so I took a shot at it, and arrived at the "Bones of St. Peregrine," a fragment from an imagined New Orleans story. Rather than follow Bruce's melody, I made another one that bounced off and around the rapid notes of the high acoustic guitar. There were several attempts to record drums, but the first one to nail it was the Russian jazz drummer and bandleader Sasha Lukashen, who was in the studio recording a demo. I only sing on this one -- Our old friend Scott Lemond plays sax, and Bruce plays all other instruments except keyboards. More than a year later we added the harmonies from Colleen Haley (whom we met when she was recording a "praise" album at Burning House Studios). People are always asking, who was St. Peregrine? Google it.
Wish - I wrote this little country-rock number during my "deliberately naive" period. It was first recorded in the summer of 98. The idea was to build a story out of minimal information and simple strummed chords. Bruce added a resonating electric guitar part that works well, and Lisa McCaffety created a simple violin part that follows the guitar. The drums were re-recorded at least four times by three different drummers, but in the end we used one of Bruce's takes. The specific inspiration was an Alabama blizzard, which seemed like a good setting for a mysterious journey and unrequited love.
Name Dropper - The first one we recorded for "Separate Checks" in what we thought would be a 6 to 8-week process. It's a Caldwell original that we used to play onstage back in the 80s. I play the fuzzed-out, thick chords, plus a strange little acoustic solo-ette at the very end. You can hear my son Edwin, then 8 years old, shout "name dropper baby" during the last chorus.
Take Your Time - This was the first song written using the following method: Bruce writes and records an instrumental song, then gives me a demo so I can drive around playing it in the car till I come up with words and melody. (Any Other Name was also done that way). Dennis wants me to add that was also the first song in a pattern of many to follow where he worked up a keyboard part on the upper end in spite of the six guitar parts that already took up every available sonic range.We first put down tracks in the fall of 98. The "I would to heaven I were so much clay" is an obscure reference for English majors. Once again, I had a guitar part written but didn't end up playing it. Bill Kalish, formerly of the Young Caucasians, plays drums. Scott did a sax solo that still gives me chills. The female trio ("The Vices" - Bruce's idea) were added much later.
Bump in the Road - The origin of this strange little number was a page of scribbled lyrics written by Caldwell about 1985, but never developed. Bruce and Dennis sat down and wrote music for it in late 1999, and recorded it soon thereafter. Dennis is very prominent on the song -- his dissonant and snaky organ floats around and through it and gives it a disturbing aura, as do the unexpected 6-beat pauses. I contributed a short guitar break that is supposed to be reminiscent of an Italian western. It uses one of my favorite techniques -- playing through a crybaby pedal set right at the "sweet spot" between OOO and WAHH, and a lot of reverb.
Nancy, as I Live and Breathe - The last song written for "Separate Checks", just barely under the wire, and the most quickly recorded, in March 2000. I couldn't be happier with it. Colleen worked out a lovely vocal part. For a change, I play most of the guitars. I played the short solo on an ancient Gretsch hollow body electric, which has a sound like no other instrument in the world. (People who know me may note several biographical elements -- Yes, I did have a friend named Nancy, and I knew someone with a blue Opal Manta, and there was an incident with frozen champagne -- but the song is entirely imaginary. The described encounter is supposed to be occurring in an internet chat room, but nobody ever gets that.)
Situps by the Pool - My favorite from "Separate Checks", recorded in the fall of 99. We managed to create and maintain that "light" sound and rapid-heartbeat motion with some success. We mixed the song, weren't pleased with the result, then went back and re-recorded a steadier drum, and then pulled off the bass-guitar track and added a tuba (which Bruce had purchased on eBay). I think the results are wonderful. The guitar is capo'd up the neck to give it a soft tenor sound, and I played the solo twice, note for note, through two different guitars, which gives a fun effect. The final touch was the "Bluejay Way" organ, which snakes around on its own rhythm, not following the beat of the song. For me, this is the central moment on the record.
Not Expected - Another undeveloped song from the early Caldwell repertoire. Bruce rediscovered it on an old demo tape, and worked it up one sleepless night. Caldwell liked what he heard, so they recorded it in the summer of 99. I had very little to do with it, other than playing a guitar part. The results are neat, and evoke a "strolling" motion.
Any Other Name - Another Bruce-instrumental/Henry-lyrics song, recorded in the fall of 99. In this case, Bruce had written a chorus ("by any other name I would still love you") and a melody. I used the chorus, with modifications, but hung my own melody on it. Another "naive" song, inspired by the sight of a very shy girl flirting with a guy through a chain-link fence.
Rats - Bruce said he wrote this one during Sunday school, and I believe him. We recorded it in early 2000. It's a send-up of a speed metal rocker. Bruce himself sings this one through a microphone plugged into a tiny Danelectro distortion box, which we recorded twice and then merged the tracks to make it more unsettling. To record the drums, we laid the kick drum on the floor while Bruce played it with mallet (playing a kick drum that fast is just too hard), then we set up Andy without a kick drum and had him record the toms, snare and cymbals. I played one of the guitar parts (the high one, of course) and a dissonant solo, while Dennis muttered apocalyptically ("disease and misfortune") through the Danelectro. I think the whole thing is a riot.
Grow on You - A cowboy lament in waltz time, straight from the heart. One guitar, one bass, drums, two voices, and an antique spinet with a mic suspended inside. I am marvelously happy with this one. It's an example of "first-pass" lyrics, exactly as mailed in by the muse. When Colleen kicks in with her harmony in the chorus, the song suddenly makes sense, to me anyway.
