Rolling Thunder

Posted by davenative on March 5, 2013

In the late winter/early spring of 1995, Native was in the midst of preparing the follow-up to our eponymous first record. Having traveled far & wide to promote that effort, we’d had a whole year to write new material. John Epstein had delivered the excellent Hot Day; Mat Hutt & John (Woody) Wood were coalescing into a formidable songwriting team; I was coming up with my own small contributions; Matt Lyons did not write (but rather chose to lend a big hand on arrangements); and Mike… well, Mike left us gobsmacked and astounded at the sheer genius he could summon when he decided to compose.

I have a distinct memory of thinking that the amount of goodness Mike packed into the two minutes and some odd seconds of today’s featured song had few comparable antecedents. The world in which we operated was the early jam-band scene, where longer is normal, and even longer is even more normal. But, as we finished the first run-through I clearly remember thinking that Mike seemed to have the composition skills of a Jerry Garcia, and the astounding sense of brevity found in that other great California-based tunesmith — Brian Wilson.

The song I compared it to that day was This Whole World, a brilliant two minute plus opus found on The Beach Boys Sunflower. Mike, of course, had not heard that one, and in fact he was not aware that he had packed so much goodness into such a small time frame.

The song was so short that our Sound Wizard, John Fitzwater took a recording Woody had made when he lived on 99th Street at the Hippie Hotel. With a microphone lowered out his window, he’d captured the sound of dogs barking furiously in the courtyard below. Now, those sounds were incorporated into the opening and closing moments, a touch that Mike absolutely loved.

When we played it live, Woody & Mat barked like those courtyard canines, bringing a smile to the listeners, and certifying the wonderfulness of the choice Fitz had made. After all, if most people were looking for a sound effect for a song with the title this one has, they’d have probably reached for a sound-effects record with a thunder track. But, Native was not ‘most people’.

The multi-tracks of this (and all the songs we’ve presented recently) are lost. If anyone ever finds them, let us know. It would be fun to remix them. But, if a remix were possible, the dogs would still be inserted right where they are now.

(Click on the following link to go to our Bandcamp page. This song, like all the selections in our Nativology series, are free to listen to, and download in the file type of your choice.)

Rolling Thunder

If you don’t risk anything, you’re gonna risk it all

Posted by davenative on February 27, 2013

This is Nativology.

Every Wednesday, Cornbread Wednesday, that is, my band, Native posts an unreleased song from our vast underground archives in the Cave of Dave.

I, the just-mentioned Dave, as Archivist, Historian, Rockologist, and all-round Pain in the Ass, do ascribe to scribe some scribbles about said unreleased songs, in the hope that the listener may have some contextual coherency, greater musical understanding, and less of a need to jump out the window.

Music can do that. Especially good music. And, music that is damn good — well, that might actually make you feel like shutting the window, cracking open a tall, frosty one, and telling Ethel to put on that crazy flannel thing with the straps.

Today’s selection hails from the mighty year of 1995, when men were men, and women were getting sick of it.

Mat Hutt is the main songwriter of this piece, and it comes to you today as an unreleased tune for a fine, very understandable reason. But, it’s one we’ve forgotten. Now, armed with the 20/20 hindsight of our 20/20 foresight, we can see that it was more like 20/20 shortsightedness. We rarely played this wonderful song much, and it never really got its’ day in the sunlight; it was left on the shelf like a can of dried tomatoes.

Mat, our chief songsmith, really delved into transcribing and translating our tacit belief that if we put ourselves out there, on the line, performing all the time; if we were perfectly willing to starve in the process & utterly fearless in the face of the vast Dali-esque plane of existence that is an artist’s life (complete with melting watches and Madonnas made of bees), that we would persevere.

To do otherwise, to waste our talent and bend to conventional wisdom, which says: “Get a job, Jerkface. Music is a nice hobby for special people, of which you are not one.”

But, the problem with conventional wisdom is that it is rarely conventional, and never wise.

Mat got it right. Not just for us, but for anyone with talent who dares to throw themselves out there, Candide-like into the sometimes fulfilling, oftentimes uncaring, always-changing Tilt-a-Whirl world a performer faces each night:

If you don’t risk anything, you’re gonna risk it all.

So, I’m going to sing for you

Even If I Fall

A Hot Day in the Studio with John Epstein

Posted by davenative on February 19, 2013

In the wintry months of early 1995, Native was in the midst of an extended song-writing period. Our self-titled first album had been out for a year, and it seemed to the band that, as good as it was, the issues we *did* have with it all centered around the fact that we had little control over the aspects of its production. With that in mind, we set about preparing an album we would produce ourselves. And with our ever-growing prowess at songcraft, it was sure to be a far, far better thing we would do than we had done before.

Native was touring quite a lot during this period, as well as enjoying residencies at two NYC clubs — Wetlands on Mondays, and McGovern’s on Wednesdays. With rehearsals on Tuesdays & Thursdays, and longer treks out to the northeast corridor on weekends, we were in our first prime period. We were starting to headline our own shows more & more, and gigs at larger venues like Tramps (opening for the Dixie Dregs) loomed ahead.

In this hothouse period, the band arrived for a session at Marmfington Studio one frosty Thursday wherein John Epstein unveiled his newest song which, in my not-so-humble opinion, ranks easily as his greatest contribution to Native’s catalogue. Considering the freezing New York City winter outside, we were bowled-over by the warmth of both the out-of-context setting (Florida) and the emotions conveyed (love & respect) John so eloquently infused in every measure.

To this day, I find myself amazed at the completeness it had. Usually, the band would work hard to expand on our songs. Mike, especially, was great at coming up with bridges and musical passages. But none of this was needed for this unexpected delight, which went to the top of our shortlist for the projected album due to start in the spring.

Unforeseen events would make that album an impossibility, so now all that exists of this rare song is this demo, recorded live to DAT by John Fitzwater one very, very cold evening.

Hot Day

The Return of the Nativology: Call My Name

Posted by davenative on February 12, 2013

Nativology Vol. 2 resumes as we harken back to those thrilling days of yesteryear, and explore the songwriting and evolution of Native.

Native toured constantly throughout the nineties. The five core members of the band lived together in a Garment District loft, just steps away from Madison Square Garden. The living environment suited the hothouse atmosphere of creativity that was surging and burgeoning in the nascent psyches of the band.

Everyone was writing tunes and had the luxury of a band at arms’ length to give it a go and see what the darned thing sounded like. Today, we call that Protools, only that software is not programmed to have opinions or tell you that you smell bad.

When John Epstein joined up in late 1993, all attention was given to catching him up on the songs that existed before his entrance, recording an album with two hurriedly-written songs by him, and playing an endless amount of gigs to support the eponymous album.

By the early winter of 1995, all that was done & dusted. It was time for some new tunes.

We already had today’s featured tune on the back-burner, and had done an interesting version of it at Epstein’s old alma mater, the Institute for Audio Research (IAR), in late ’94.

But now, armed with a new Tascam 8-track cassette recorder, we gathered with our live soundman, John Fitzwater, to initiate a series of recordings that would run throughout the Spring of ’95.

This, and the mixes that will follow in the coming weeks, no longer exist in the Native vault in their multi-track form. So, we will be presenting them in all the glory of their original mixes, done by Mr. Fitzwater, with us looking over his shoulder and being really annoying.

Call My Name

Love Will Leave You Mystified!!

Posted by davenative on December 24, 2012

Mystified is a song Native played a lot right before we made the recordings that would become And Then What and December Roses. It quickly became a fan favorite, and a band favorite. It’s rousing, rambunctious, has great sing-a-long harmonies, and it modulates!!! There’s nothing like a good modulation.

When I wrote it, I was writing to myself, trying to pep myself up after a very trying period where my marriage fell apart — so it’s not a diatribe against the fine institution of wedlock — just the words one says to make a friend feel better by downplaying the importance of it. Matrimony does not suck — I want to be on the record about that.

And now I am!!

With the release of December Roses I can finally rest easy, knowing that such a great song is out there, after such a long waiting period.

Why did it take so long to get it out?

Well, the whole history of these recordings is one fraught with delays, disaster, distractions, more delays, and finally — dismay.

We started to make an album in late 2000, convening at our Marmfington Farm Studio located in a top secret location everybody knew about on 26th Street, NYC. Our long-suffering soundman, John Fitzwater helmed the Producers seat and the band proceeded to enthusiastically lay down the many new songs developed since 1998’s Exhale On Spring Street.

Things went great, then things went bad.

Mat moved to California, something we knew was coming, but he and we did not want to break up, and the proof is this stellar set of recordings, surely our best.

When Mat moved away (after an epic gig at Wetlands) the rest of us continued on with completing the record, such was our love of the music.

But, Marmfington Farm was not a fully air-conditioned studio and we made the fateful decision to take a hiatus on recording for what was expected to be a long, and very hot summer.

Indeed, it was. But we scheduled a session with Mike to do his guitar leads. The day we scheduled it was September 11, 2001.

Next week, the story of the amazing journey to finishing the album continues… till then — remember,

Love will leave you —

Mystified

Running Smooth

Posted by davenative on December 18, 2012

I have few recollections of recording our first album. I was ill with walking pneumonia, which meant I was operating on auto-pilot for three long days as I laid down my drum tracks in a studio adjacent to Union Square on 17th Street.

I remember a few scant pieces of it — wondering why our co-producer was wearing spandex (it was 1994, for gosh sake — nobody wore spandex in 1994, except our co-producer. I, wondering why the same guy was hating on my drum style (and why was a guy in spandex with bad taste in drumming co-producing our record?). I can faintly remember a few moments of the last track we did, The Sea, and having an equipment breakdown with the Alesis D4 drum module I used to get tabla sounds. Woody quickly jumped into the fray and played the sounds on a different device, but it was nearly the last straw for me. In my delirium, I drummed along with a click track that played only in my headphones while the rest of the band had only my drums in their cans. Doing my part of the song without the tabla patterns I was used to playing was bad enough but, when the click track broke down mid-way through, I simply soldiered on and ignored it. But, let me tell you — playing music in spite of an out-of-control drum machine in my ear was a nightmare. And no one believed me later, when I complained about it. The engineer told me it couldn’t have happened, “It’s quantized, man!” Nevertheless, they kept that take and it’s what’s on the album.

I was extremely ill for weeks after that, and I never again attended a session. Mat would come home with tapes of the ‘Ruff Mixes’ and they sounded pretty good, although to this day I can’t listen to The Sea without wincing from the memory of that poorly-quantized drum machine, my valiant but unsteady performance, and the ridicule of the engineers.

That terrible experience eventually led to my learning about record production — I was never again going to be at the mercy of technology that I didn’t understand, or engineering staff that were hostile to the very sounds and styles that got us into the studio in the first place. I guess I wouldn’t be a record producer at all, had it not been for all that agony and frustration.

And in grand irony — the D4 module started working again. I still have it!

So, for me, it’s a compromised album, and one I want to revisit. Next year will be the twentieth anniversary of that recording, and I’d like to remix it for that occasion. But, I may not be able to remix my bad memories of pneumonia, spandex, and ‘quantized’ click tracks.

In the weeks after the recording was done, I recuperated and we were back on the road, playing bigger and better shows, and the ordeal of making the record subsided. Times were good again…

We were Running Smooth

Mood Swingers About Town

Posted by davenative on December 11, 2012

Native was rolling by the time we started recording our first album. As evidenced by this Karl Ottersberg-drawn flyer which lists our December 1993 gigs.

The game plan was simple, we can’t tour the world, but we can tour Manhattan. We can get a residency at a New York club, and play other clubs about town. We can make the world come to us. And of course, we can play nearby places in New Jersey and upstate New York.

The first part of the plan was based on a successful run we did at Larry Bloch’s Wetlands. The second leg came to fruition at Ruby’s on the upper East Side. How, or why we ended up there is a story yet untold. But, we played there every Tuesday for a long time, and it’s where we jammed with our first celebrity — Ivan Neville.

Before long, we decamped to another New York venue, McGovern’s. Steve Greenberg’s venerable nightclub became our home away from home for many years.

The above flyer’s inclusion of a date at The Rhinecliff Hotel shows that we were starting to travel a bit further afield than before. For this, and all our galavanting around NYC, we got a van. The Silver Cloud, we called it, and truly. For, it rode the way a cloud floats, and it was silver. For me, this conjures up the image of The Lone Ranger’s horse, a faithful, trusty steed — although, not actually silver-coloured like our faithful, trusty van.

The moral of the story is this: Native had a plan, and a van. We were touring New York and thereabouts. We were recording an album. It was a time of incredible highs, and exhaustive lows. Then, incredibly high again. Perhaps inspired by this, Mat & Woody came up with a dilly of a number which, more than any, evokes the memories of that tumultuous time in our career.

Mood Swing

The Woodman Arriveth

Posted by davenative on December 10, 2012

John Wood, (aka Wood, Woody, Woodman, & Toast, Toastman, Stretchy McTallguy, and… to at least one rabid Asian fan —Goody!) has been Native’s percussionist for a long time — although, truth be told, he never actually, officially joined the band! He just showed up on stage at Nightingale Bar on December 10th, 1992 (and played his ass off!). He then continued to show up for every gig we played from then on. He also became the cornerstone of the infamous Native loft, den mother, and the grease that kept the Native machinery rolling.

So, today marks the twentieth anniversary of that event — not joining Native. And boy are we glad it happened, or didn’t happen, as the case may be. We couldn’t have been who we were without him.

Yay Woody!

photography by Kassandraa Tamanini

Nativology Part 2: Fall Away

Posted by davenative on December 5, 2012

By the time Native rolled into the studio to begin work on its first album, Mat Hutt had become the chief songwriter of the group. From day one he’d been bringing in strong material and he’d collaborated with the rest of the band when they had song-related ideas but now he’d consolidated that position to become the primary channel through which all new songs were directed.

And that, for the most part, is a good thing. A band needs someone to be the ultimate arbiter of what is and isn’t right and proper for the band’s oeuvre — is it Native enough? That’s a very good question to ask.

The reason this is a good thing is that there was a lot of new songs being written (particularly by a certain drummer) that were stylistically all over the map. Mat became the siphon that every song went through for the rest of Native’s most fertile period and he made sure that the focus was not just on the strongest material but on songs that really conveyed the unique traits the band had developed, and would continue to develop.

And, of course, he had to sing them, so in hindsight, well, finding that your latest masterpiece has a lot in common with a Cobb Salad (it’s chopped) is a bit easier to understand.

Having said that, this week’s Nativology offering is pure Mat Hutt.

I remember listening to him playing the song at the breakfast table, and wondering what a Native reggae would sound like. I didn’t have to wait long, nor did anyone el
se. It landed on our first record after only a few public airings and remained in our setlists for years.

Fall Away

Down To The River

Posted by davenative on November 21, 2012

photography by Steve Eichner, scanned from newsprint

Mike Jaimes wrote a song in 1993 that became his signature tune. Nativology Vol. 1 featured his home demo of Down To The River. Now, we present, for your approval, the rough mix of the band recording from January 1994.

Recorded at Interface Studios, NYC. Engineered by Lou Gimenez & Dave Weil.

Down To The River