December Roses (Blue)

Posted by davenative on January 8, 2013

“December Roses” is a song that went through a long gestation period before the final version was reached, and even then it waited over ten years to reach the public with the release of the simply fabulous December Roses mini-LP two weeks ago.

Originally intended to be part of a quite long and ambitious medley, the song now exists as a quite concise three-minute exercise in everything Native does well, whilst also treading very new ground.

I remember very well the occasion of recording the original demo of the song, shortly after finalizing the Exhale On Spring Street album. In a fit of nostalgia, Mike Jaimes & I had set up the old analog tape machines we had lying around, one at his house & the other at Marmfington Farm Studio. This enabled Mike to work at home & allowed me to do follow-up work at the Farm. The plan didn’t last long however, as the device at Mike’s place broke immediately after our first endeavor with this set-up. That singular piece was the December Roses demo.

In that first attempt, my ambitious structure for the song ran close to eight minutes long, and incorporated a short section entitled Thunderstruck. (The demo is still in our vault, and I intend to put it out in a future Nativology post.)

The band thought the whole thing a bit, shall we say, lugubrious and not unjustifiably so. It featured a long verse section before getting to what was for all intents and purposes two back-to-back choruses – plus the aforementioned secondary song in the place of what normally would have been a bridge of no more than eight bars.

The first thing cut was the verse, which admittedly was very autobiographical on my part. The next section that got axed was the lyric to Thunderstruck which was quite good, but had the sad distinction of sharing a title with a famous AC/DC song. So long, Thunderstruck!

What was left was the two choruses, the first of which became the verse, while the now-wordless chords to Thunderstruck remained as a bridge.

This is what we recorded in 2001.

Now, jump-cut to 2004, wherein Mike & I have revived the project. Not much was done to the track with the exception of adding some background voices (myself & guest star Lizzie Loves). At the mixing stage, engineer extraordinaire Craig Randall and I noticed that there was a very good acoustic version of the song laying there under the electric version. In a fit of genius, we made a mix of the under-mix. That became what we now have —

December Roses (Blue)

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

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

New Native EP – December Roses

Posted by davenative on November 20, 2012

Native will be releasing an EP next month, with a title that befits the season — December Roses.

Drawn from the same sessions that begat Native’s And Then What album, December Roses showcases the band’s strong songcraft and production capabilities.

Recorded over a spanse of years, beginning in late 2000 and continuing up until the tragic death of lead guitarist Mike Jaimes in 2006, December Roses reveals a band at the height of its powers.

The release date will be announced soon, but know this —

Native will be sending you roses this December.

Nativology: A lost classic – Heavy Hearted

Posted by davenative on October 24, 2012

Native’s May 1993 demo-recording foray at Todd Turkisher’s studio on 18th Street in Manhattan produced two tracks we’ve shared in week’s past. And, now here’s a third.

Heavy Hearted should probably have been a single. It had everything — great Mat Hutt lyrics, an arresting melody, the harmonies of Mat & John Wood, the gorgeous chiming guitars… and speaking of guitars, Mike Jaimes laid down a pithy little solo worthy of the axe-wielding gods on Mount Olympus.

We were all growing so fast that by the time the song was mixed on June 13, we had already moved on. New songs in the offing, an album in the planning stages, gigs galore, a new Bear logo by our artist-in-residence Karl Ottersberg… and poor, wonderful Heavy Hearted was cast adrift, never to be the staple of our live show it should have been, orphaned before its time, never to be what it now sounds like, the great, lost, first Native single.

Part of the problem might have been the length. At nine minutes plus, it was going to require a severe editing job. That was the opposite direction from we were going, with long explorative jams being the order of the day.

But, today it sounds to me like one of our greatest achievements.

Someday, I reserve the right to release the full-length version of it, with a second solo, as it was intended. But, for now, weighing in at six minutes; floating like a butterfly; stinging like the hippiest of bees — here’s one of Native’s greatest songs — Heavy Hearted.

The Year Of The Cat

Posted by davenative on October 10, 2012

I first saw Catherine Russell in a small West Village club singing Meters songs in 1989. I was gaga over The Meters and instantly in love with her voice and commanding stage presence. I managed to talk her into joining a motley crew I had assembled at The Radon Room Studio on Mott Street for some sessions. We wrote some tunes and it sounded great, at least to my ears.

For Catherine, it was a bit of a trial dealing with the motley-ness of the crew and though she like everyone a lot she moved on with her career, and I went on to form other still-motley crews. But Catherine and I remained good friends afterward, and she was gracious enough to score me tickets to Grateful Dead shows which I did not have the money for. We had lots of fun.

Eventually, Native (still a motley bunch) was formed and Catherine started appearing with us every now and then. The recording you are about to hear is from a cassette recorded early in the evening of March 6, 1993. Later that evening, Native played Nightingale Bar and Catherine joined us to play it for the peoples.

I Don’t Care No More

Looking back, if I’d known that Catherine was singing with the likes of Paul Simon, Steely Dan, Al Green, etc., if I’d known her father was Louis Armstrong’s arranger—well, I probably would have been too scared to ever invite her down to a sub-level studio beneath Little Italy to play with such a motley crew.

Cat is on tour now, check out her webpage www.catherinerussell.net and give her a shout. She’s one of the greats, and we were damned lucky, and honored to have her join us on so many wonderful occasions.