Don't Mean a Thing (3.6 Mb)
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The next installment of the Archives brings us to Holler, the mythical, lost Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir CD. People ask us how they can get a copy or if we'll ever reprint it. We don't sell it because we don't consider it a proper AMGC recording. It was project done by the producers, not so much the musicians. Nonetheless, it actually played a part in the formation of what is now the AMGC.
All I can give are my subjective memories and perspectives. The large gaps in the picture will have to be filled in by other people at another time. Ideally, Judd or Pete should write this entry. Hopefully they will give their perspectives in a future installment.
It went something like this. James writes programs for computers. I briefly played in a couple of his bands and I used to hang out at his house and jam in his basement studio. One day in 1999, he tells me about this project he wanted me to play on. He had these recordings of Judd, Pete (Balkwill), and Darcy Whiteside, a banjo player from Edmonton, jamming in his studio. James wanted to bring in a bunch of musicians to fill it out, so he could mix it and release it on his record label as some mysterious field recording. He told me he wanted to market it like The Blair Witch Project; these mysterious musical tapes were found and reconstructed. Who knows what crazy people played this strange, rural music? (Insert theremin here.)
Other people he wanted to do overdubs included Vlad, whom Judd played with in Great Uncle Bull at the time, Johnathan Lewis, viola player from the Plaid Tongue Devils, and Christine Cook, saw player/cusser from Great Uncle Bull.
I said, "Sure, James. Give me a CD of what you've got." He did. The recordings of the initial beds were bare bones and rough.
So I went to the studio on a cold winter night to ad some guitar. I think I might have been the first to lay overdubs. I can't remember. I didn't really know the songs and I wasn't sure what to ad. So I asked James and his co-hort/engineer Ravi for direction. They told me to play whatever I wanted and they would edit it later. They hit the record button and left the studio to smoke big, fat joints. I was on my own. I don't really remember being particularly happy with anything I played. I wasn't at my best, but I contributed. That was the last I heard of it for two or three years.
In the meantime, our other bands broke up and the AMGC formed less than a week before opening for Lester Quitzau at the beginning of 2001. Incidentally, Pete filled me in that it was his idea to recreate the band from the Holler sessions when the prospect of the Quitzau gig was put before Judd and Pete. This came out when a fan at the Ottawa Folk Festival asked us about Holler. This is how the somewhat disparate projects were tied together.
In 2002, James and Ravi finished The Backporch Blair Witch project. Since the AMGC had been gigging for a year, they asked Judd if they could put our name on it. We were ambivalent. Pragmatically, we figured it might be reasonably close enough to the band's sound and we could use it as a demo to send to festivals and such. Apart from one song, we never played anything from those sessions.
So it was released with our name on the cover and, in keeping with the Blair Witch marketing plan, no song titles. The label that pressed it went out of business within a year of its release. We never sold it our gigs. I have no clue how many people heard it, though I have a vague memory of a DJ at CJSR in Edmonton giving us shit for the lack of song titles.
I still don't have a copy of Holler. I have another vague memory of listening to the final mix with the band. You've probably noticed how vague-ness plays a part in this project. Nobody was thrilled about it, from what I recall. We weren't embarrassed, but it really didn't represent what the AMGC was actually doing, nor were we enthused about the animal sounds added to the songs to drive home the rural feel. Oh, well. For my part, I couldn't remember what songs I played on or what I did in the studio. It was difficult to be emotionally attached to something when there was only a very brief period of involvement.
Having said that, a few people have told members of the band, on separate occasions, in different places, under varying circumstances, that they really enjoy the CD and they found it to be unique and a very authentic rendering of roots music. "Don't Mean a Thing" is, in my opinion, the most successful of the mixes. There's some cool interplay going on, despite the sound effects and awkward edits.
What's the moral of the story? A producer makes the call about what goes where in the song. The engineer executes it. Often, the producer will have very different ideas than those of the musicians. Holler was an art project for the producers. In that respect, it's kind of cool. This is the way most studio recordings are made nowadays, granted there is a bit more rehearsal put in.
Really, Holler is a deconstructed jam session. Various musicians added their parts at different times, separated in time and space from the primary source of the recording. A producer and engineer were the arbiters on what stayed and what got cut. Considering that the AMGC took a live-in-the-studio approach to St. Hubert and Fighting and Onions, one can see how Holler is the opposite to the band's approach.
Bob K., September 12, 2007
Archives Back Issues!
Fighting and Onions Pre-production Demos, "Preaching Blues". Click here.
Judd interviewed and perfoming on London's Resonance FM. Click here.
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