Howdy MARAH fans!
gonna ramble now… Gotta do it, gotta be done… it’s been way too long and I’m super excited to dish out some gossip…
(F.Y.I. i just spent the last six or seven hours typing this update/blog whatever only to accidentally erase it. So now i am back but in a slightly different, darker mood… my initial rage has faded to a spooky silent determination, i am a pecking, zombie chicken at the keyboard, i will get this done…here goes…again….)
Having spent the last couple weeks a recording studio on a sleepy, tree-lined street of Nashville’s “Music Row” we are now back in the swirl of New York City (the city where know one listens!) and are dying to tell someone about our new music, studio life, spaghetti dinners, rebounding spirits bla bla bla… We recorded 10,12,? a bunch of new songs. We made Awesome music. We had an awesome time.
First of all i gotta thank my great friend Al Pappas (Al’s kinda tough to explain, he has operated behind the scenes for our band for quite some time now…in the studio, on the road etc) He’s become a real “big picture” guy for me personally… Come to think of it i don’t think I’ve recorded any music at all in the last 5 or so years where Al wasn’t in the room (or at least in the next room) So on quite a few occasions in the last couple weeks it was he who would reel me/us back in from going too far…over thinking, under playing, He’d call bullshit on ridiculous overdubbing of whooshing sheet metal sounds and let me
know if a song had too many shouty bits! Thanks Al,when you’re right you’re right…
Bale Perfecto!
Without brother Surge around this time I had imagined a lilting beautiful folky record of acoustic guitars, tack pianos, and the stand-up bass. It would be nostalgic and extremely time appropriate considering his absence for such a glorious “real world” obligation like having a baby!! (oh, BTW I’m getting really excited for him & Monica…CONGRATULATIONS! + I’m gonna be an uncle!!) I could call this acoustic affair a MARAH record without a second thought and be granted amnesty straight across the board….And besides an acoustic/stripped down type record has been a long time comin around here, and one i think we’d pull off quite well, kinda like a return to “Let’s Cut The Crap…” How it began.
but when the record light turns red, things can change…actually they always do.
I knew we wanted a “pick-up” drummer for a few (2-3?) songs so upon rolling into Nashville i called up Marah’s old friend Steve Earle, i texted his boy Justin too, i asked some nice folks finishin up a country music session before our session began, i even asked a mysterious white haired ex-Texan by the name of Dennis down a local beer joint (a place called The Idle Hour, Music Row’s finest boozer/song pool) We asked anyone we met if they knew a drummer who could play the devil Rock&Roll music and would do it for considerable less then the going cooperate, country rate of $1,500 a minute and “i can’t be within 300 yards of a lit cigarette”.
someone said “Martin, y’all should call Martin” so we did.
Later that same evening Me and Christine and a guy called Martin sat at the bar smoking and drinking diet Cokes, talking shop… in the background Johnny Pisano played Donnie “PizzaSauce” in pool (like extras out of Donnie Brasco II or recent transplants from the
witness protection program, I’m guessin certain locals were uncomfortable) nice one!ANYWAY…Martin said he came from the D.C. Punk rock music scene but also talked passionately about his love for the music of Buck Owens…
we were curious to be sure.
We left the bar directly and reconvened in a small practice room/office above 16 TON Recording where we were to begin cutting songs the following day. In this room we played two new songs…one called “Bats on the Watertank” and another called “Road To Ruin” Marty played Brushes on a drum case or a shoebox or somethin…we made plans to
meet in the morning have a coffee and give it a go.
the next morning Martin arrived with a really cool set of handmade wooden drums he’d bought down in Alabama a few years before, he set em up and we all made smalltalk.
Now considering that we’d planned to record much of this music without a drummer if that proved necessary, we had rehearsed a pretty complete sound drumless…So….
if Martin would have completely sucked, we were prepared to bullshit our way through a few takes, send him on his way and re-record the tracks again properly once he’d left. Martin did not suck.
Martins not sucking in conjunction with how well rehearsed we were enabled us to make a pretty amazing noise together in fact…
He was free to play in and around the holes of our music, around the chord changes with great style and even with a sense of humor (rare!) kinda like Ringo!
we were blown away…He destroyed those two songs. We asked him if he would like to stick around. He said he liked our songs, liked us, and would do just that. score.
The Next thing we did is a song called “Life is a Problem”
Every summer in the big city (and in my hometown of Conshohocken too) some guy tries to swim across the river…they always make it across (pride, stubbornness, the sheer determination of a boozy dare) They always make it across, but unfailingly die on the way back. I could relate to this idea on many, many levels and wrote a song loosely based on that theory.
The song starts with the banjo strumming, it has bells in it, the acoustic bass is bowed to respond to it’s electric brother, marching band drums play off each other, castanets rattle and an over-drivin piano sounds like a church bell or a subway car…everything is swirling and flashing around until about the 3 minute mark where i sing “life is a problem…you
die on the way home” and the band caves in as the guitars begin to play….
every once in a while you make a song with magic in it, I think this is one of those songs.In fact i know it is….I feel lucky to be part of it. My kinda music. Even Al Pappas smiled at me from across the room later that night as we listened to it playing back louder then an airplane taking off…I borrowed the title from an old, religious country blues record that me and Christine played constantly around the time we were preparing for this recording session…life is a problem…ain’t that the truth… If in a
few months from now when this song is released officially you find that you don’t like it, then good luck to ya, we are no longer boys.
Next we cut “No Man Knows My History” our take on a Sunn Records type rave up…slappy echos and gospel stomping…then a beautiful one called “Moonlight Carousal” (i even stole the first line of Moonlight Carousal’s chorus from an old song of Serge’s i found in the song box in my living room…he probably wrote the line when he was 17 years old and high as hell! don’t tell him, He won’t remember)
We joked around alot about Serge too…often said “what would the Surge do??”…bang his tambourine in my ear, yell some cool sounding shit behind the chorus, play a harmonica on the outro and tell me to go fuck myself and disappear back to the hotel
for 2 days only to turn up later like nothing ever happened…i missed him alot, but then again this wasn’t the first time I’d ever recorded music without him, “Walt Whitman Bridge” was cut while he was away so was “firecracker” if i remember correctly.
Next came “Within the Spirit Saggin” very American….country even! I remember having a real “Nashville” moment during this one….headphones on, me and Christine singin it live together in the “piano room” listening to our new friend Martin play amazingly his first impression of the song as it was going down, Through the glass window we could see Johnny Pie playin his big acoustic bass lookin like some kinda O’brother Where Art Thou, 1930’s Brooklyn cowboy…if we made eye contact we would crack up and the
take would fall apart…when it was finished i could only marvel at how great all these musicians were and how lucky i was to be recording my songs with them at all. Seriously y’all…I’m speechless, thank you.
More songs came and went, “Merrily to Hell In Chains”, “For Nothing” and “Put’Em In The Graveyard” (an UN apologetically 1965 loose as a goose R&R ramble, a protest song that’s positivly anti-people) and on and on and on….
at some point during the last 2 weeks i turned a corner and now there is no going back…a follow-up session is being planned as i write this, a record will come out. I won’t stop now till it’s got a cover and a title and with any luck at all 37 to 42 minutes of the most exciting, American, Underground fine rock & roll art around…Should this record be called something other then MARAH (in which case i will undoubtedly be criticized for sounding too much like MARAH, ugh…….ummmph….gimme a minute….cause me singing and strumming banjos kinda sounds like… ya know) it would be only to allow MARAH to co-exist next to it. Then again perhaps we’ll book ourselves into a studio in Salt Lake City and finish this fucker up there??? I’m guessing, i don’t know! seriously, i don’t….In any case i promise to keep you updated as soon as I do. Cool?… as the other side of the pillow Dave, cool. (BTW! i will try and leak some new music here soon…the “old rules” concerning that no longer need apply)
couple more things!!! (I’m En Fuego)
Donnie “PizzaSauce”: thanks for playin on those couple songs and thanks for cookin’ all that amazing Italian/American food!!
you made it feel like the “kids in philly” days again, i was very proud in front of all those southern boys!
Bruce Springsteen: god knows you know what it feels like to be over-budget while making a record! so for you to let me invite the studio manager down to your gig, only to be pulled up on stage to play “Rosalita” with you made me look..?…i dunno, really fuckin cool! Thanks Boss, you were pretty good too!…
Johnny Pisano: being that you are an absolute demon on that yellow, electric bass you got, it is beyond me how gracefully you stepped up to that giant Stand-Up, Acoustic bass and owned those songs the way you did. You never questioned that decision/direction and i’m so glad. I’ll never forget the two of us standing there cracking up in the control room listening to how very huge and mysterious and perfect it sounded playing back… you rock the world! whadayagot?
Christine Smith: being that i have never co-written a Christmas card let alone a rock & roll song with anyone other then my brother, i put you in a very difficult position but you totally rose up and killed it (and by co-write i don’t mean “hey Christine, what rhymes with orange?”) You are really, really good at the “music thing”, seriously, it’s all about what you throw away and what you keep around huh?…also, thanks for advising me against making this into the Count of Monte Cristo of rock too BTW … if it wasn’t for you dragging me off my kitchen floor i would have never found the guts to write or record a single thing…fingers crossed, could be an awesome record! you deserve it. THANK YOU.
Engineers: Mike and Patrick! thanks for puttin up with us! see ya this fall.
OK, winding down now…we should play some gigs soon huh?
Alright then, Life is Problem, Nashville Skyline, Gather ’round Family Gather ’round, Train ‘a Comin….next stop, around the block.
all aboard.
love
david bielanko
