Brightest Young Things

You don’t have to convince me that Portland’s Kill Rock Stars label should embrace local do goods The Shaky Hands, as they have with their new long player “Let It Die.” But that is only because the ol’ home of The Replacements, Soul Asylum and The Jayhawks – Twin Tone Records - is long since shuttered. (Shades of The Mat's "Let It Be" in their promo photo.) It doesn’t take much for my love of good old fashioned barfly rock and roll to be ignited and damn if this doesn’t hit all the right spots and send that flame flickering about playfully taunting me to stay up all night and kick back six, seven, eleventeen beers…

It is loose and careening yet terribly tight and in an era of icy seriousness it is downright refreshing to hear the foursome bash and pop just for the pure joy of it. In advance of the boys wedging into the middle of the bill Sunday night at DC9 between the excellent Pomegranates and Headlights, we put everyone to work dissecting the inner beauty of their punch and hug you compositions.

(If you don’t go out to stare at the shimmering soft hair that lightly covers Sarah Silverman’s body, I think you know where to be.)

Here goes:

"Caught In A Storm" by Jake Morris
This was the first song I actually got to write my own part for. Most of the songs were, at least, mostly hashed out by the time I joined the band. Still my favorite to play live, the first time we played it it went on for 20 minutes or so. Man we was CAUGHT IN A STORM! Ha! Any chance I get to tap my signature cowbell is always a plus for me. Live, this song keeps getting more raucous.

"Love Curse" by Mayhaw Hoons
It's funny how you can start writing your parts for a song with a specific idea in mind and by the time you are done you find that your way off course. Right before we began to play "Love Curse" I was super into the simple and awesome bass playing from CCR's Stu Cook. I wanted to come up with something simple and driving. My faux CCR bass line didn't turn out anything like how I wanted. "Allison's" Year of the Cat bass line came a little closer.

"Don't Fail Me Now" by Nicholas Delffs
This one was finished very late at night. I remember driving around different places looking for tacks to put on the piano. Everything was closed. I ended up taking some posters down from the wall in the studio, still there wasn't that many tacks to use. So I was forced to come up with a very simple melody. That is all I remember doing for the song. The rest of the night/morning was spent in a foggy delirium watching Jay(the engineer) fiddle around with different effects making everything sound really spaced out and dreamy.

"Already Gone" by Jeff Lehman
So it opens with a two chord harmony part that was originally supposed to be accompaniment to a vocal intro. To me it sounds like a distance tugboat at sea or perhaps a conch shell tooting across the mountains. Some have said it sounds like a baritone sax, but it's bowed guitar. On previous albums various sources have thought this sound was created by sampled strings and slowed them down with tape in some fancy roundabout way, but really it's rather simple. In this song I also got to use my Dad's first guitar from the 60's which is some knock-off brand 12-string. I like this song, great vocal takes. Jake's backup vocal in the end is awesome and happy. I like thinking jokingly about someone who's really drunk and wasted singing, "I'm already gone!"

Sunday at DC9
Doors at 8:30 and the sheeew at niner
18+ and 8 smackers

Rock on.