Indy, Indie

My good friend Elijah spent last summer in Northern California trying to dig up whatever work he could find. Craigslist is a good place to start when you're a damn good drummer, guitarist, bassist (in my band), mandolin player and songwriter, so he spent his first weeks checking posts on a daily basis.

One day he came across a post by a man named Bret looking for someone to help arrange and record a song he'd been working on. Bret was not a musician and had never written a song in his life, but with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull coming out he'd been touched by the muse. An Indiana Jones die hard, Bret had memorized all the lines from the first three films and counted himself among the members of a variety of Indie fan groups.

He had the song all worked out in his head. Every harmony, background vocal, lyric, and rhythm change was clear in his mind, he just didn't know how to put it all together.

In stepped Elijah. Unaware of how absorbed he would become in this project Elijah agreed to arrange and record the song for a small fee. They decided that the best approach was to have Bret call on the phone and leave a message on Elijah's answering machine in which he sang his musical ideas for the song. After being cut off by the machine six or seven times because of the length of his messages Bret had finally communicated to Elijah every detail of the song.

Elijah set to work and spent all waking hours for three weeks working on the tune. He recorded all the vocal parts, the bass lines, percussion and guitar solo one track at a time on Protools through an Mbox. Bret was thrilled with the result and doubled his payment to Elijah in appreciation of his work.

Those one hundred dollars were the only income Elijah earned that month. He's still never met Bret in person.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO "OH INDIANA JONES" BY BRET MOSELY AND ELIJAH TUCKER

Bret made a video once the song was done. Here it is on Youtube. Some of the comments by Youtube users about the video are unappreciative at best. As for me...looks like a nice bike ride.

(I posted the mp3 version of the song separate from the video because the sound quality in the video is low. I think the cameraperson had positioned a stereo playing the song near the camera while they were filming to capture the audio.)

All in a Week

It's springtime in NYC and you can't walk or ride a block without coming across someone making music. These days I've been hearing all kinds of different sounds around town, both above and below ground. As soon as I duck down into the subway I walk the length of the platform listening for anyone with an instrument, then once I'm on the train I'll take out my notebook and write out notes for my own new song ideas. Here are five recordings I made over the week at different places around New York City.

1) I'll Take Your Time
My friend Greg Peters was in town last week. He's on my record playing slide guitar on "Around My Thoughts" and "Blue River" and had flown out from San Diego to kick it and play a show with me in Brooklyn. One night we went over to Drew's apartment in Brooklyn and got to jamming over this riff I've been messing with lately. It's part of a new song I'm working on and I was lucky to capture this improvised session on my recorder. I'm playing the riff on acoustic guitar, Greg's playing slide and Drew's on the other acoustic guitar.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO OUR SESSION IN WILLIAMSBURG

2) Gebron Soul loving you down
One day I was passing through Union Square on my way to catch the L back to Brooklyn when I spotted Gebron Soul playing on the steps facing 14th Ave. He was dressed all in black with dark shades and a top hat pulled down low on his forehead. He wasn't busking, just playing his music for anyone who wanted to listen. We got to chatting and he played this tune as an ambulance sped by heading east.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO GEBRON SOUL IN UNION SQUARE

3) Chen Cong plays Fiacco
The next day Ramona and I got off of the E train at 53rd and Lexington and came across Chen Cong playing violin by the tracks. He had a small cart next to him with a tape player attached to a speaker pumping out a piano accompaniment. He played this piece, "Allegro" by Arthur Fiacco, to a crowd that had converged from both ends of the platform to listen. 53rd and Lexington has been a reliable place to hear eclectic music since I started carrying my recorder. This is the same station where I heard Juba playing the hammer dulcimer back in November '07.
CLICK HEAR TO LISTEN TO CHEN CONG PLAY FIACCO

4) Ramon Ayala?
I don't remember where I was going, all I know is that it was the middle of the day and the train was heading uptown. Before getting on the train I saw these two guys walking determinedly with their instruments down the platform as the train arrived. I followed them into the subway car at the end of the train and found a seat where I could hear them clearly. They stood in the open space by the doors with their guitar and accordian and launched into this Ramon Ayala sounding corridos tune. When they finished they took off their ten gallon hats and we dropped in our dollar bills.
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS CORRIDOS TUNE

5) Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile Afrocussion Style
To top off one of the greatest weeks of public music encounters in my life, here's a recording of a group called Afrocussion playing a samba version of Santana's Europa (Earth's Cry Heaven's Smile). They were playing on the platform at 23rd St. and I was waiting for a train to take me down to Rockwood Music Hall where I was meeting some friends. When I got on the train I forgot to turn the recorder off as we sat in the station for a few moments. I like how the music fades as the doors close and re-emerges when the doors open again with the delayed departure.
CLICK HERE TO HEAR AFROCUSSION PLAY SANTANA