Running Smooth

Dave Thomas on DrumsI 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

Cornbread Wednesday

Mood Swingers About Town

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.

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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

Cornbread Wednesday

The Woodman Arriveth

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!

Woody at Amherst Brewing Company

photography by Kassandraa Tamanini

Nativology Part 2: Fall Away

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.

Mat Hutt at Wetlands

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

 

Native Band Photo 1994

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

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.

And Then There Were Six

It is not known exactly in what order the epochal events occurred in the fall of that fateful year — 1993 — but this much is known…

Native played a show with God Street Wine at:

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Attending that show were two people called John Fitzwater and Paul Ducharme. They liked Native enough to venture forth to one of our gigs at Ruby’s, on the Upper East Side. They got to know the band quickly. And, just as quickly, they ascertained that we were in the market for a keyboardist.

They knew John Epstein.

The Pranksterish John Epstein joined Native on a date lost to the mists of miserly time. There are no tapes of rehearsals or demo recordings of any sort in the Native Vault from the period of his joining or early involvement. We were preparing to produce our first record when he joined and all attention was focused on that and gigging.

So, the tapes we will present over the next few Cornbread Wednesdays are Ruff Mixes. That’s how Mat labeled the tapes he brought back from the studio after a session.

Native was flying high now. We had a keyboardist extraordinaire. Paul would go on to became our manager. Fitz eventually became our soundman. We had a van. All that was left was to —

Go

(Native Alert! We will be making an announcement next Tuesday about an upcoming release that you will definitely want to get!!!!)Cornbread Wednesday

Nativology: A lost classic – Heavy Hearted

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.

Karl's Bear LogoWe 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.

Cornbread Wednesday

The Jazzie Hippie

Mike Jaimes

As January and February of 1993 rolled by, Native was avoiding the winter cold down in the always humid environs of The Radon Room, located conveniently four stories underground. Here, in our secret lair far beneath the unsuspecting tourists of Little Italy, we jammed heavily and constantly. We had written, demoed, and redemoed nearly all the songs that would appear on our first album.

During that time, Mike Jaimes made a tape at home as he tried out an old standard, and two songs which would become staples of our shows for the rest of our touring years. Here is that tape, motor noise and all.

Trouble In Mind is a wonderful 1924 blues tune written by jazx pianist Richard M. Jones. There are many famous versions of it by everyone from Dinah Washington, to Sister Rosetta Tharp, to Eddy Arnold all the way to Hot Tuna and Jerry Garcia. The latter two undoubtedly influenced Mike’s version, although he may have heard the tape of Janis Joplin and Jorma Kaukonen doing the song whilst Jorma’s wife hammered away on a typewriter in the background. This is my favorite version of them all.

Next, Mike worked up an original tune called The Jazzie Hippie. Native would give it an epic arrangement, and it served us well over the years. From day one, it was a real crowd-pleaser, and it was a handy opener if there had been no sound-check. It gave the soundman a chance to dial in the instrument levels, and wait to get the vocals later. Native finally got around to doing a proper recording of it on the And Then What album. If you compare that version you’ll hear that this early demo is missing the uptempo middle jam. That’s because Mike wrote it later. Mike was great at writing middle jams.

The next tune is the very first recording of what would become Mike’s most famous song — Down To The River. I think you could say it’s his signature tune. It’s the rare Native tape, indeed, that does not include it. Interestingly, Mike had not yet worked out the incredible finger-picked intro to the song, but he had a good idea about the stop-start pauses at the finale.

Trouble In Mind likely served as a jumping off point for what Mike would write — it even has the line, “Going down to the river. But Mike took it and made it indelibly his own. For me, these are the best kind of rare tapes, where you get to hear the process of genius using that genius to create works of genius. Did I mention genius? That was Mike Jaimes — The Jazzie Hippie.Cornbread Wednesday

Cover Versions

Mat and Matt

Photo by Mike Lyons

Cornbread WednesdayEvery band does cover versions, i.e. songs they didn’t write.

An effective cover version is a song that not only compliments the sound of the band, but also imparts something trenchant about the band itself. A good cover song is one where the audience not only hears something familiar, but also learns something about the band – what its’ stylistic leanings are, and the aesthetic it will employ when creating new masterworks of its own.

As Native moved into the year 1993, composing new masterworks was the main item on the agenda. January saw a furious amount of activity to this end. New songs written this month would comprise 90% of our first album. Only Interested Third Party and The Sea from our pre-Woody days would make the cut.

At one amazing rehearsal on February 3, Native recorded all the new music we’d written since Woody joined — Carried Away, Go, Fall Away, Tell Me The Truth, Down To The River, and Island were added to our set lists and would remain staples of our shows for quite a long while.

It was an exhilarating time — we were really exploring our sound and what we were capable of achieving. We were growing by leaps and bounds, not only as a performing unit, but as writers and arrangers.

Today, however, we are focusing on three songs we chose to cover at that session. Because, they speak as loudly about us as our original songs do, in fact, maybe moreso.

(Two slight caveats: 1) The following tracks were recorded straight to cassette, so the mixes are what they are, including a china-cymbal that is way too loud. Not much I can do about it. 2) These are rehearsals, we were very much in the learning stage on these tunes – so, you will hear a bit of sloppiness, i.e. occasional bum notes, and a somewhat fluid approach to time-keeping.)

Now, without further ado — on to Native, the cover band!

Mat remains a big Bob Marley fan to this day, and his choice of Caution was an inspired one, as it’s not one of the more well-known Marley songs which allowed us to really put our stamp on it, and have the coolness factor of doing Bob Marley.

Mike brought in a wonderful Taj Mahal song, Corinna. His vocals would become more assured as time went on, but at this point getting Mike’s voice on tape represented a challenge to soundman extraordinaire Rob Smith. Simply put, Rob had to raise the level of Mike’s singing to a point where it was on the verge of feedback. Mike’s vocal, therefore, is a little low in the mix. But, it’s worth it to hear the first version of a song we would continue to play throughout the rest of our performing years.

And then there’s a cover picked by the whole band — Santana’s Hope You’re Feeling Better. Stylistically, a throwback to our hard-rocking Anthony Balsley period, but hey — it’s Santana! And, it’s badass!

Who doesn’t like badass? Nobody!