Unfinished Business, Let's Do An Opera!

Unfinished Business

We finished last weeks song, went with a solo btw, and right away we went back creating a new song. It will be the final song in a 5 song set about one relationship. And I have to admit writing this has been really amazing. I have never done something so interconnected over this length of a composition.

It's almost Rock/Opera-ish, but not so deliberate as that genre usually is. The whole thing for this piece came about as we went. I didn't sit down and say "let's do an opera!" 

I was brainstorming about what to do with the first song. And I had this vision of high school type love song and putting this singer in that situation. 

What did he think? How would he act? Were they together? Would they break-up? and a hundred other questions...

And from that I started to create a personality, for the lyrics, a voice and a point of view and eventually a world for these songs to exist in. Then as I did the second and third, the songs just built off of each other. And this relationship became such a center piece that I had to see through.

One song explains the relationship, one is about the break-up, one is about a trip to Las Vegas he takes to think, one is a revelation that he has when he is there, 

So at the fifth and final one will be the resolution. Where our characters end on a "hopeful-desperate" emotion. The most exciting thing will be to add in the female character's voice. We will be bringing in a guest-vocalist for that. Honestly if we were to add in more songs than the 5, I would probably have her come in earlier in the story, there is so much good story there, getting her perspective, but that's up to the future who knows?

So I want to retain that desperation of the blues but have this be a more positive piece still? I think that's how I want this to go but it's all in development which means re-writes can happen at any second.

Jaime and Abe just finished the drums and keys and today I'll probably be working on bass, and then my vocals for the next few days. 

Then after I get all this done, I'm celebrating by seeing The Force Awakens. 

So no spoilers...

till next time

-rene

ps. as always if you want to talk you can reach me on this blog, facebook and twitter

To Solo Or Not?

Back in the studio today, finishing up the mix of a song. Nightly. A solid groover that I could just vibe with all day. I mean this song really is on a new plane of grooving.

Really happy about it. Just need to work out the bridge and have several options, and as you can tell from the title of the post, one of them is maybe a solo...

 

I have a hate/love relationship with solos. Fun to play, but unless the melody is both substantially connected to the song and inventive fluid then I get lost.

 

One of the biggest tenants of early Hacienda was no long solos. We had a less is more approach to everything that carries on today. Lately we haven't putting room for solos in the songs because they were moving so well with out them, but on this new one, it feels like there is room. So why not?

We will run through a few things. See what happens!

Next week we are starting on the last song for our EP with
Larry G(ee). And it's gonna be great.

This whole project with his is definitely different than our normal music (different but connected like long lost family) and that has been infinitely helpful for me as a writer to work with Larry and explore this new territory.

I'm a little bit foggy cause we spent all day yesterday working on our calendar for next year - so glamorous.  Anyway, word of some SXSW activity is coming in, so if you guys are around I'll be filling in details about it as it comes.

Till next week

much love

-rené


ps. as always if you want to talk you can reach me on this blog, facebook and twitter

Thanksgiving Ramble

I've never cared too much for Thanksgiving, always liked Halloween better, but this year I have a lot to be thankful for. Things I know are beyond me that through whatever mysterious universal forces are at play have been given to me. Things I never thought possible. Things I can hold.

Love. Happiness. Purpose.

I've made new friends, new music, new writings. Seen life take shape in front of me. It's beautiful. 

When I started writing, I was fourteen, filled with varying levels of anger, isolation, pride, and love. That kid couldn't see far enough into the future to know what the next month was going to be like much less to be able to see this; where I am now. Where it has taken me.

Especially when things were at their worst. But a few years ago I decided to try and take my life into my own hands. To take charge of my own happiness and the fruit from that small, innocuous seed has finally started to appear. However small. However fragile. But I can see it now.

This week is the first week I've spent everyday in the studio just ripping through ideas. Finished some ideas for Red this week, working on a new Idyll Green song, and a new one for Larry.

Also started a new draft of a novel I've been working on. Something I've put away for a while because it's a little terrifying. Music I know. Music I have confidence. But novel writing is naked and new and beautiful and self-defeating and horrifying and divine. I'm very excited about it cause I have a possible lead on publishing it, if I can buckle down my editing...

So for now, I'm just gonna ride this wave for a while, wherever it takes me. Writing more of my travel story for next week.

until then

- rene

as always if you want to talk you can reach me on this blog, and @hacienda_tx on twitter. much love.

Red Marathon and Test

After a straight week of studio writing I'm feeling buzzed. Red Rosamond came from LA to grace our humble Saxet Sounds with her talent and we couldn't have had a better time. She fit in so well to our strangeness.

It's one of the biggest things we look for when we decide who to work with. Not only do they have to have talent, which she does her voice is so special, but they have to have the right attitude.

For exploring new ideas.

For jumping out of comfort zone at full speed.

For giving back and forth.

For trusting in the music.

The five of us cranked out 5 Funky/Soul/Spy grooves in as many days. I can't wait to share that with you guys. 

Really proud.

The three of us will be spending some time polishing those up.

Doing a test run of our new project... but more on that next week... and writing a new Idyll Green song. The story just came to me today while I was sitting on the couch listening to drum takes.

A seed of an idea but something I can work with. 

Till next week. 

-rene

p.s. like and follow me here for more news. or ask me a question on twitter @hacienda_tx

Thoughts From 39,000

Last month I got a emotionally heavy. Getting those feelings off my mind is good though. I need that every now and again. Like a sad song, these thoughts can build inside of me and need to be processed out even when I'm in a good mood.

And life has been good for me. Though for you guys it might look slow, I don't know if I've ever been this productive before. 

Right now I'm on a flight back home from LA. Cramped up in the middle seat between a sleeping wife, she's is the best part of this, and a large guy who never learned how to share or not invade personal space. Best not to look towards the aisle... Then there's the window. The sky. The miles of desert between Texas and California.

After exploring the city; traveling without working is one of bigger life goals; meeting new people, amazingly talented people my brothers and I are so excited to be working with; the beach; the freak-show; a really great recording studio; it's been unbelievable.

So I'm in the air. Going over it in my mind. Holding on to it. Listening to the engine. 

Dreaming...

---

Of days when we traveled in a used conversion van. Four captains chairs. Little beige mini-blinds on the windows. Rope lights everywhere.

I was 21 and hungry for everything.

We'd loaded up with the four musicians, suitcases, and gear, cutting up IH-35.

"What's comin' up?"

It was getting hard to stay sitting for so long. "Could use a stretch," I added.

I was eager to get to Ohio, Dan and his studio; but after switching my weight back and forth for the last four hours as I switched between each leg falling asleep, and I needed out.

We were only a jump northeast of Dallas into Arkansas at a small convenience store; I stepped out of the van for the first time since we left San Antonio. And already in a different world. Hope.

It wasn't exactly what I imagined leaving Texas would look like, but it was a start.

New horizon. New trees. New air bursting in my lungs pushing me to the edge between life and dream for a nobody from nowhere. I had spent years as an invisible. Wanting. Waiting. Sometimes my childhood felt like a slow fall to death. Knowing the world was busting with life happening everywhere else. And I only had to find it. But I was stuck.

---

"Would you like anything?" The hostess whispered over the belly of my sleeping neighbor.

She was in her late 40's, well dressed with a floral scarf around her neck like this was a jet off a Mad Men ad.

"Diet Coke," I said automatically. It's my junk. My vice.

"More crackers," Rachel said softly to me, still with her eyes closed.

"And more crackers," I passed down the message.

The hostess slashed a couple tick marks on her paper then moved across the aisle.

Rachel shifted her head gently against my shoulder.

Maybe because it was our first trip, or maybe because it was so strange, but I remember this rest stop well.  Better than the hundreds since that I couldn't tell you a thing about.

---

"Hmm," the lady behind the counter looked me over as the bell rang over the gas station door. 

I nodded politely. 

"You look exotic," she said without pause or hesitation. Somewhere between surprise and apathy. 

I didn't know how to answer her with anything other than a smile and another polite nod. A real Texan.

The lady kept an eye on me from behind the counter, as an orange and black calico bounced out from around her feet, rounding the lotto ticket display, cutting thru my legs, and down a small row of protein bars to the back of the store..

I followed heading towards the refrigerators.

"Where you from?... You look different."

"San Antonio," I answered checking back over my shoulder with a quick look at her. She was still staring at me. 

I could feel her examining everything about me, detached and scientific. I felt naked. I felt embarrassed.

I tried to keep focused. Sprite. Coke. Mountain Dew. But that feeling of her eyes just burned the back of my neck.

My heart jumped when I felt a light touch brush against my leg, but it was just the cat. Pushing it's face into my jeans. Wrapping its tail around the other leg.

"She don't like nobody around here," the cashier yelled at me.

The cat sat down to watch me too. It's eyes frozen on my face.

I could hear the lady shuffling behind the counter, "She must think your different."

"Maybe she's a Texan too," I laughed but I don't think she found any humor in it.

The women's stare turned from cold to angry, "wouldn't surprise me."

She rang me up quietly.

Coke. Trail mix. Money.

The cat ran back behind the counter as someone else came in.

She held the change above my hand, "born in Texas?"

"Yeah," I had my palm open. Waiting.

Her eyes looked me over back and forth, "nah, you look too exotic." She said finally dropping the coins.


---

"Here you are Sir," the softness in the hostess' voice pulls me out of Arkansas and into the air. She's holding the drink out to me and searching her tray for Rachel's crackers.

"Hey, coffee too," my sleeping neighbor butts in. His voice cutting low against her ear as she reaches over to hand us the bag.

The hostess flinches for a second then holding back her anger, she softly says, "A hello first," and she does it so gently, and with a sweet laugh too, the man doesn't even notice the poison behind it. 

He mumbles something between a grunt and a hello.

She's calm but her eyes were ready to kill, "and welcome back Sir. Would you like me to get you something?"

The man smiles unashamedly, "Yeah... coffee."

The hostess flashes a brilliantly white smile and flips around towards the back of train. 

My neighbor is back into his fully laid back and slumped position. A real throaty wind sound is gurgling in his mouth right now as I'm typing this.

Thankfully we will be landing soon. And I'll have another week before I take off to New Orleans to start a tour. Cutting north up to New York, looping back west through Canada, south along the mid-west and ending back in Arkansas.

It feels like I've been here before so many times. But each time I leave I have no idea what to expect. No idea what'll be at the end of this flight. Or waiting for me in Arkansas. New air. New people. New horizons.

-rene

I Need a Book

I need a book

A place to catch all the fears
I've been growing, when
those little tears and fissures
scratching through my heart
finally let everythin'
fall

I need a book 

Between its leather hold, 

inked in the hidden cells of pulp,
well fit words quilt
together the furious drip-
fall from old
to young  

I need a book
A river rhapsody, a bloodstream
tenderly cut in the valley mind,
the blackest dream with blackest
water, reflecting now
the world lined
in a book

-rene

Big Red, Histroy The Way We Want It

big red history the way we want it

"How'd she feel about you doing that?"

"She knew what I was about... Hell that's the thing about border towns man, everyone knows you before they meet you besides... it was party... but that's not even... I mean the next day... the next day got crazy."

Our table's crammed with food and wrappers, mostly burgers and the five of us lounging back in chairs bolted to the floor. Good days. My brothers, my cousin, and Dan. All family. We'd already finished half our second record in three days.

Of course we were prepared, and that didn't hurt. We had our songs arranged and rehearsed before we ever got to Akron. After Abe gave the arrangements a once over, we'd track the music as a group, following Jaime's drum lead through each take, mostly two or three passes, then overdubs, vocals, and the whole song done in an afternoon. One song, soon to be one half of the two title tracks, Big Red, had us struggling and ready for a lunch break: An Everly's style rocker called Everything She Needs.

And while Dante's on a story about his party days in Laredo, I'm now taking down a basket of Cajun fries.

I checked out around the time the food came; I've heard this one before, plus I can't stop thinking of the problem with this song.

It started in the morning.

A big, beautiful golden bear of an alarm clock named Bella came ringing her collar into the den. I was hiding under a pile of blankets and pillows, when she managed to sniff my face out from all of it. I tried to ignore her and get back to a dream:

Back in Texas, warm sunlight, a lake like heaven, where I'm kissing her or the sky itself, and everything is weightless, lifting, the sun, the water, the two of us. The music of her voice clear as the lake and the day itself.

but it's Bella and her big drooping lips, and the cold Ohio morning pulling me back. I guess the alarm was set just for me because Bella didn't bother to wake anyone else up...

Bella's next hunt was for a cloth toy behind the couch and she took it over to the sliding glass door looking out to the backyard.

The slate-grey sky brushed at the horizon with strands of soft red, the light was fighting to get out. It was another cold day. I got a chill that ran deep under my skin. I think the sun rises differently in Ohio, or I see it that way. And though this is where I wanted to be, I was still dreaming about home.

I rolled over to my suitcase, stuffed in a corner of the room marked by the pile of clothes spilling onto the carpet, hunted down my jacket, I needed it even inside the house, stepped over my brothers and snuck out of the den with Bella in lead.

Dan's house was held in a perfect unbroken suspension of morning. Guitars on nearly every wall waiting to be plucked, waiting to break from their stillness. Guitars are never good at resting.

Bella went off to the kitchen in search of her breakfast and left me in the empty room.

I can't tell you how crazy it is to be so close to an amazing studio and having to wait for everyone else to wake up in order to get to work. If it was up to me, I'd have run yesterday's session all through the night, and we'd already be into another song. It helps to keep my head in one state.

And now that I was up and alone in the house, I had a feeling calling me over to the tracking room, that's where I've got to be. I turned on the lights. Walking quietly past the Hammond organ, past the drums. My hands and mind wanted to shake off the cold and distance with a little music and looked through a rack of guitars like I was in a music store.

I found a '64 Texan still in it's bed case ready for me. Dan and his engineer Bob had so much cool gear you wouldn't believe it. Large barely begins to describe it... and the Paul McCartney '64 Texan was only one tiny, amazing part.

I closed my eyes. The smell of the guitar, the wood, so pristine, almost transported straight out of the sixties. For a brief moment I remember my dream, it hadn't been that long but almost completely slipped my mind already. And a song I had written a while back came into my mind...

My girls got everything she needs,

big cars, house, his money and tv's,

he tries to buy her all life's big luxuries/

My girls got everything she needs

so her love just won't come to me

I tried my best, but Love's no security/

My girl’s as lonely as can be
but she ain’t got the heart to be free
She’s in his house

I wonder if she thinkin' about me...

"Is that what we're doing next?"

"Hey," Dan caught me by surprise, "morning..." a slight pulse of embarrassment ran through my veins as I put the Texan back in its case.

He was carrying his daughter and a cup of coffee, still in full family mode, they weren't even dressed for the day. She threw her head down against his shoulder to hide her face, "This one sounds good... when the dudes are ready, we'll hit it."

"You tell me man, I'm ready to go."

She pointed down at the guitar and whispered to Dan.

"Rene, Why don't you play us another..."

---

The table's laughing... I hit the bottom of the fry basket as Dante finishes his story...

The sounds of the restaurant digesting, the mouths, the talking, the eating, and I leave the table for a refill.

Whenever I hit a songwriting problem, I like to get out into the public, back into the world, and let my mind ramble... something like this.

Everyone else, and the real problems of life are so much more important than a song, but a song can be all the difference when you have a problem... It can lift you up, or throw you deeper... Any song at the right moment. How tragic it would be to hear the wrong one? Or do we only get what we need?

I know it's strange to think so much, but my mind has to do these flips, I can't turn it off, and it won't stop,

I make music for other people, maybe even these people, I wonder how many of them even listen to rock n' roll? How many have sat down with headphones, to a full album? How many hear what the writer is telling them?

The line for the coke machine is four deep, and I wished I had noticed that before I got here. That's one danger of a busy mind, always missing the obvious. But I've got a good way to pass the time, a game I invented when I was in high school: trying to guess what music strangers listen to.

There's a young couple, 30's, at a high table. He's in jeans, work boots and a trucker hat. Hands cut and dirty. Textbook blue collar. Her hair's stripped blond and black, skirt tight, not a lot of make up but she didn't forget her blood red lipstick. I would have'em as Springsteen fans but they've been ignoring the classic rock playing. They're straight modern country, Rascal Flatts, Miranda Lambert.

The guy in front of me at the coke machine, in his 40's, dress shirt and fuzzy vest, bald, well off and been rocking out to every thing from the eighties. I don't know why but he's putting off a Phil Collins vibe.

A curly headed kid, taps his foot against the metal legs of his chair, red chucks, and his unlaced strings flapping out of time.

He hits the heel so hard one shoe falls to the floor. He's a real mid-west rocker, even if he doesn't know it yet. A future Uncle Doug.

And that's when I hear it for the first time. Chuck Berry's Almost Grown starts playing overhead. And it comes to me.

---

The tape machine rolls back. It starts with drum clicks, Take 7 begins to play.

Dan flipped knobs like a mad man, several strings of jumper cables around his neck, his chair squeaked, as he swung around the mixing room.

His mind had been in another zone for the last half-hour of vocal takes. Quickly he moved his empty mug off the console and adjusted more knobs.

"It's just not sitting right," Dan said to no one in particular.

"Damn..." I wanted to say it, but I kept it back. It kills me when he we hit problems like this. I need more details, specifics: is it too much, not enough, too sharp, flat, what does he mean? But he's so focused I don't want to disturb Dan's process.

Finally his chair spun around towards us. "The vocals are good," he said while checking his phone, "I like it... I just don't know if it needs something else, or not, or what... but we're not there yet."

I can't help but take these things personally. Not because I think I'm great, but because I want what's best for the band. I want to nail my vocals. I want a definitive yes. I think I'd even take a definitive no, more than just a "not there yet."

The microphone hung in the tracking room like it had just beaten me, not eager to go through that again. "Should I go for it again?" I asked half not wanting an answer.

Jaime and Abe were sitting behind me, "meh," seems they weren't into that idea either.

Dan scratched his beard and finished up a text, "let's get lunch. I think I know a spot. You dudes want burgers?"

His idea got a much better response.

---

The table's quiet again.

"I think I know what we need to do," I said to Dante putting down my soda. "It's all about the rhythm, it's just off to me. Maybe the guitar, maybe if it had some more substance ya know? Just put some movement in it. Listen to what he's doing here." I pointed to the speaker, but Dante's looking away, the other side of the table, restaurant, maybe nowhere.

"Maybe," Dante's lips barely move, "I don't know." And the song finishes.

"We ready to hit it again?"

---

It didn't long for the guitar to find its place, and after a few takes, the song found a whole new position.

Bella ran through the playback room. Her tail hit against the legs of everyone on the couch as she got chased away by Dan's daughter.

Were listened to the playback, the speakers are loud enough for the sound to push into your chest. I can tell Dan's really into it. Like he's been hit by a jolt of adrenaline and every movement is sharp and inspired.

"This is sounding a lot better. This," I said getting closer to the center of the sound, where the stereo speaker's direction meet together in a beautiful sweet spot above Dan's chair, "is where we need to be. I can feel this."

Dan nodded his head, but he's lost in some thought far away.

The track reached to me, to some deep place of understanding and I haven't said it yet, but I start to get a feeling to cut all the vocals completely.

This song needs to be an instrumental.

Abe's standing next to me, studying quietly, his face is serious and I can't help but wonder if he's knowing it too.

Feeling the movement.

The song's better this way. And I'm over the pain of my failed vocal take, cause the song's feeling right. It's everything fifties. Chuck Berry, Everly's, sugar, burgers and car hops. And the taste of Big Red comes into my mind. The atomic red soda of my hometown. The fuel of my youth. And being a kid running at my grandparent's ranch, and summer, and the lake, and a lot of beautiful things, and I don't think my words could cover that. It's all a big landscape. A wordless vision.

I want to be in those moments. That dream. The sun. The lake. Home. Family. Me. And the curly haired kid I saw at the soda fountain. From his Ohio. And my Texas. Tastes that make a memory. The nostalgia. It's not always real. It's never as perfect. Colored in half-truth. Sweetening away any contradictions. But that's what all this was, Rock and Roll... History the way we want to remember it.

-rené

Manifest Focus, I Dont Throw Lightning

I've spent a good amount of time (year and a half maybe?) at home songwriting/recording our next project. And if that sounds like a long time... it is... especially for us. This is actually the longest time we've had to work on writing music since we started the band. After the release of our first record, we've been running non-stop touring, writing, recording, touring, and so on. We wrote the next two albums each with about three months prep, and under one week to record everything. ONE WEEK EACH. *

Usually tracking two songs a day, for four days, and two more to do all the vocals. Usually leaving the studio straight to the stage to perform the tracks before they were even mixed. That is incredibly fast. It's 1964 fast. 

When you have a great producer and engineer, like we did, and a tight band, great things happen with a little time. Most of our songs were recorded in one, maybe two takes. A very exciting and creatively volatile atmosphere. There's a lot to be said for this sort of pressure cooker creativity: plenty of spontaneous bursts of ideas but overall it's not a lot of time to dig in and create.

While we were in the studio for a song that eventually became Don't Turn Out The Lights, our producer Dan Auerbach was unhappy with the working chorus. We played the demo. He made some notes on the groove. Did a practice run then went back to Dan to get his thoughts.


Dan leaned back in his chair, and with a sigh and a look of tiredness worn like a comfortable shirt, Dan announced he was going to take a coffee break,  'I want a great chorus by the time I get back.'  He is a man of few words, but he means every word.

Dan has always pushed our band. I don't know how he works with other artists, but for us he always asks for more than I thought we could do. Can you do it all live? With Vocals? Can you sing it better? Write it better? Play it better? And I'm grateful. His drive has taught me a lot about myself and what I'm capable of, so when he asked me to write a better chorus and walked out of the studio without a single word of direction, I knew he was testing me, and I knew I could succeed.

I sat down on the floor of the studio live room armed with an 60's flat-top Gibson and a legal pad, and started running through the song's chords. Repeating them. Listening to the notes. Playing variations on tempos and octaves, listening for a melody hidden inside. Feeling the clock and trying not to worry, I focused on the music. Strumming. The vibrations. Visualizing the notes, the waves bouncing against themselves in the air. Strumming. The subtleties, the patterns.


Then the melody came in focus like a distant image on the horizon. Closer and clearer. Walking to me. In no hurry. Just traveling at its own pace.


I leaned in closer to hear. Pressed my jaw into the shoulder of the wood and felt the chords ringing through my head. I shut my eyes. Closer the details formed. The shape, the feel, the words...

It was about ten minutes when Dan came back with a half emptied mug and sat back in his chair. He was perked up. Everything was done. I gave him the legal pad to read along as I sat on the couch playing the newly written idea to everyone.


Halfway through my performance, Dan put done his mug, whispered to the engineer and when I was done, he clapped loudly and we were ready to get back to work, "Yeah Son, that's right!"


That chorus was born out of a time crunch. I needed a chorus at that moment. And with focus, it manifested, it came to me. So I hope I don't sound like I'm complaining when I talk about now and the amount of time we are taking. I want to try working a record with a different feel and pace. I wanted to know what we could do with a little more. 

A little more time to write. More time to practice. More time to do takes, and mix, and sing. And it all adds up to a lot more time in the long run but that was the plan.

We could've easily retread the same musical territory we've run before. Could've put out another album like Shakedown, our last, but that's not what we're about. Since then I've learned a lot about writing and playing where I feel we can improve technically, but I've also changed emotionally. But most importantly I want to be a man in the present, not history.


This has been a crazy year for me and the band. Our family has grown and shrank. On the industry side, we've had so many highs and lows, from the top of the world to the lowest slugged out tracks of the gutter, that it makes my head spin just thinking about it.


All of that gets filtered into newer and newer songs. It was almost too much to keep up with, leaving me with used notebooks, forgotten computer files and recordings, filled with songs, ideas, and fragments at every level of completion.

Those albums are past. Artifacts. Preserved moments of time. A memory, and I'm not yet at a place to be nostalgic for our own work. I like to build off of the past, not recreate it.

Anyways I've been enjoying my own bed. My own city. My own life. And on my own time. These precious things pass by quickly, but they are the riches of life. So I have no guilt about seizing the chance to wake up to the sounds of my neighbors riding their lawnmowers, my son babbling, or my wife heading to work; not highway truck stop engine revving, hotel cleaners, lobby check-out calls, or a tour manager nervous about the next gig.


I love walking Boerne streets, looking at the changes in my city. Business come and go while I'm gone. I recently came back to find one of my favorite restaurants gone forever... oh well. I love being home for the longer days of summer staying up watching movies, reading books, and playing a violin concert in the afternoon to myself. I like becoming a better person and musician, not just a more popular band. I love writing and writing and throwing it all away and starting again. I love working a song and trying it with just a shade of difference. And those things can't be done while touring.

So day after day I drive a short road between my house and our studio, lock up with my brothers, and think of words/melodies, approach/delivery, style/substance, all in an attempt to move our band forward.


As I'm writing this to you, I'm a few feet from our speakers, listening to songs come together in the final stages (We've been mixing all day which means generally balancing the track. This is close to composition/color/balance in photography) and I've got this feeling... somewhere between anticipation, nerves and ecstatic craziness.

Anticipation because I've been bouncing these ideas in my head for a so long and this'll be the first time I get to hear a result in full. The culmination of hard work. A birth. Finding out if the songs were as good as they were conceived to be. That brings me to Nervousness: working so long on an idea puts the creator so close to it, they are never able to see the faults. But creation isn't easy. It comes with a lot of hurt. I'm not too worried though, I've got much more of the Ecstatic Craziness burning in me and I'm really digging what I hear: the best test for a song. This last feeling comes directly from my state of trying to do something I haven't done before. Challenging myself to go further, the way Dan always has; Challenging myself to dig deeper into myself, be more vulnerable than I've ever let myself; but mostly because I feel like we are pulling it off.


These songs will be of home. Of love. Of this moment. Of loss and change and growth. My reality. The life that grows outside my window. I'm happy to be out of the past, and more than willing to take as much time as I need to get there.

I don't throw lighting

I make no thunder

no way to transcend bone

No ambitious dagger

poison truth, no
shimmering hell for home

Devils play for bigger
game, starry seas

tomorrow and her works

Leaving me stolen strings
breath of body and
all good places of earth

-rené





*photo source: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nB0-1IjSlxY/maxresdefault.jpg 

Some Great Unconscious Radio Station Of Lost Melodies

There's a strange magic that appears in the treks of rolling endless highway; driving tunnels of expansive skies; following roadway lines like a meditative drone. Some beautiful delirium where deep seeded thoughts uproot in the mind with new-surfacing enchantment after hour 22. 

I've seen New Mexican desert sunrise, and it's worth a trip on it's own, I've seen the quick sprint of night racing up and down the hills of Kentucky while constellation's burst out like fireworks firing off the horizon. I've seen endless waves of both shores crashing on cool nights against the borders of our country, and in between all the countless miles, the miracle truck stops, the gas stations, and food joints supplying our journeys.

No musician starts out to be a truck driver, but it should be a subheading in the description. I am a musician, traveler, hauler of goods, loader and un-loader. That along with merch-slinger, salesman, entrepreneur, and insomniac just about describes what I do. 

Come to think of it there should be a way for people to understand what the life of musician is like when they start on this path so I will try: To put it straight, if you want anything else but music from being a musician than don't ever start. If you want fame, love, or money try another line of work.

Back to the small tasks and fevered inspirations.

"...Rene..." her voice is distant like a TV on in the next hotel room. I'm lying in the dark and one of the stiffest mattresses available. If you didn't think recreating the feeling of sleeping on a rock was possible on a bed, than you are not staying in the right over-night motels. "...Rene..."

I groan and roll face down on the pillow. It's not that I don't hear her, or don't want to answer, I'm just too tired to do anything but stare out the slit of light coming in from the wall sized window. Another great feature of motels is a giant window that opens to the parking lot. The curtain wouldn't close all the way and the yellow light from the parking lot is humming in, with a constant sizzle of electricity buzzing like cicadas. My eye is stuck on this light and its ethereal song, and I don't know why, or what I'm waiting for but I feel like it's in there, an answer to a dream, or a prayer... Maybe I was just trying to ignore the wheeze of a passed out drunk guitar player with a heavy snore... It was a very long night.

We'd played until one in the morning, loaded out by two, and drove an hour and a half out to the hotel. After food and TV it was nearly five when I finally stretched out on the bed, but sleep wasn't coming. I'm not good at turning off my brain like that. My heart still pumping energy to every corner of my body. I could hear the sounds of drums in my ears, or maybe it's the whoosh of blood? Da dum, da dum, da dum, da da dum. 

I stayed up reading until every word is blurred together in exhaustion. I was re-reading the same passage for the fifth and sixth times. My legs sore from being wrapped up in the van, my body sore from the loading gear, my throat sore from singing, and I finally pass out with an exhaustive grin on my face hidden under an open book, cause I'm still tingling inside with the roar of music and the hum of tires.

"Lobby Call in 15 ya hear?" With a slam of her fist on the door, her voice trails away down the hall presumably to check the band out of our rooms. I groan seeing that the clock reads seven a.m. I probably got all of half an hour of sleep. I might be able to sleep in the van if it's not too bumpy... I kid myself. My roommate's in the shower and the humidity only helps to bring out the smell of mold breeding into the carpet.

On Tuesday, April 29, 2014 7:55 PM, smokinreno <smokinreno@yahoo.com> wrote:

There's some strange magic that appears in the midnight rambles, the treks of rolling endless highway. Driving down tunnels of dark starless skies, following the yellow line like a endless meditative video-game drone.

Some beautiful delirium, where deep seeded thoughts unroot in the mind surfacing in terrifying enlightenment, emerges after hour 22. 

I've seen the New Mexican desert sunrise, and it's worth a trip on it's own, I've seen the quick sprint of night racing up and down the hills of Kentucky while constellation's burst out like fireworks firing off being the horizon. 

I manage to drag myself to the lobby alone, late, but not so bad that anyone would really notice. We're still waiting for the tour manager to pull the van around to the lobby.

Everyone's cloaked in sunglasses, a few are taking some breakfast from the lobby buffet. I've got my bag at my feet and I'm humming. Was it a song from last night? Was it from the other bands? We pile in, throwing my suitcase in the back on top of a pile of carefully Tetris-like piled gear, and find a seat on the middle bench.

The seat's cold, the window's cold, my body folds into a familiar spot as I close my eyes. Still humming this mysterious melody on repeat... It's playing on a horn, or is it an organ? It's dreamy and evasive. I can't put my finger near it much less hold it yet. If I try to think about it, the melody disappears, but if I try to sleep it comes back into the back of my mind. Spinning around like a looped vinyl unable to move forward in the song.

Two hours fly by, the cities go too, and I wake up from a daze of staring out the window. I have no idea where we are but we are moving east. I roll out a snap in my neck. The radio is quietly talking the news to the front seat drivers. And the melody is still playing. Is it from the radio? A record I know? With heavy eyes I watch the trees streak by my window. One by one. House and field. Cows. Car after car. Over and over. There's something about repetitiveness that zones the brain out. Takes away from what is physically happening, and morphs monotony into a beautifully complete idea. Putting the brain on auto, let's the subconscious and all its imaginative ferocity come out to play.

It's my turn put more gas in the tank, and I'm huddled at the side of the van with my jacket collar high to block the wind. I hear the sloshing chug of gas as it pours into our empty tank like a pulsing snare, and the song in my head starts playing along. It's been hours and I haven't placed the tune yet. I'm starting to feel like it's an original conjuring of the sub-conscience singing out to me. Slowly words start to mold themselves, beats become syllables, words become phrases, and verses, and by the time I'm working on a chorus we are pulling into a back alley of a club for today's load in.

It'll be another several hours till I'm back at a hotel room, writing down the ideas that have been playing to me all day. At one side it feels unfair to say I wrote this, as much as I found this. I heard this, playing to me off some great unconscious radio station of lost melodies.  My mind slipped open, a crack emerged, and in came a song. I don't recommend exhaustion as a method for inspiration, but it is one way to get my mind to a quiet spot. Quiet enough where I am not thinking about creating, but only creating. Allowing myself to take in rather than push out. This is merely scenic driving through the frontier of creativity. Those empty highway roads waiting to be explored. Waiting to be found. Waiting for an ear to speak themselves into, for a mind willing to listen among the clutter of life surrounding us.

your hands like flowers 

talk in subtle ways

I'd love to be the hours

and fields where they play

-rene



Warped Wax, Where Did It Go

My love of listening, my growing appreciation of sound composition, started in San Antonio but flourished in Boerne. For that I am grateful to this city, my home. This story is the beginning of finding my home.

 

I don't think it would come as a surprise for me to say, Boerne is not in a cutting-edge city like New York, Chicago, L.A., London, The list goes on... I'm not taking about the people in the city but the lifestyle of the city itself. Boerne's pride is history, tradition, and nostalgia. A time machine, rose-glassed look at the best parts of our past.

You might think it is not the place for someone who wants to be forward-thinking artist. Who wants to be a rejectionist. Who wants to jump off cliffs of creativity without a care to where to land. And while I was younger, in high school, eager to begin my life, I thought like that. But like a lot of my adolescent beliefs I was wrong.

It was on one of these adolescent days, with nothing to do but walk and dream of far distant Americas and the adventures I was sure to have, that I entered into an antique store.

 

I'd been coming to main street for years with my parents, both avid antique lovers, probably one reason why we moved here, but I never paid attention to what was inside.


Usually I waited, moaned, rolled eyes and was difficult. That day I was on my own, shopping for me, and uniquely interested in finding something. Music. But not the music available at Best Buy or Target. Also it's worth a note to say, I was too young to shop online, no credit card, and too young to drive to Austin or any trendier record shops. I was looking for music I hadn't heard before. Tired of the radio, feeling rebellious, I was lured by the charm of rock'n'roll and finding it the cheapest way I could.

To my great teenage delight I found a crate of vinyl hidden under a table, containing a strange array of music I'd never heard or seen before.

These were not perfect by any means, nor collector pieces. They were dirty: covers torn, stained, and ripped, records scratched and dusty. Some in the completely wrong sleeves. Lots of oddballs, Ping-Pong percussion* anyone?

"What do you want for these?" I asked not trying to sound too interested.

The old man at the counter scrunched his nose so much it lifted the glasses an inch as he examined the crate I was pointing at with my sneaker.

 

"What do you want them for?" He laughed to himself, a joke I still hear shopping today: "Do you even know what those are?"

He went on to explain how they were his son's records: mostly from the early seventies, he'd left them at home when he went to college, never picked them up, and they'd sat under this very table for a year or two. He took $10, all I had in my wallet - goodbye lunch tomorrow, for the whole crate.

It took me a while to figure out how to put my father's system together. We had used it when I was younger, but since we moved a few years earlier, the turntable, stereo, and speakers were boxed and stored in different places. Cables and plugs had to be hunted.

Next came a thorough cleaning of every disk, as well as a total examination of every record cover and sleeve.  I was most attracted to The Who and The Beach Boys, a few country records, and a best of Dion and the Belmont's which proved to be phenomenal.

 

I'd like to pause from this story to mention:


This boy and his new found treasure trove worked very hard to get his vinyl sounding great. I'm not one to romanticize the pops and cracks, lack of high and low end, or the eerie warble of warped wax. Those artifacts which some find charming actually bug me because although a part of the experience they are not part of the music. I also do not enjoy people who talk during movies at the theater. But there's an atmosphere and quality in vinyl that's only now being matched. A liveliness, a magic, bred into the medium, which is why it is my favorite format for listening.

  
Early downloads, napster, mp3, CD's, tape cassettes, even the first iPods paled in comparison. And once I heard the difference, it was undeniably better. I couldn't go back. There was a universe of warm, inviting comfort in vinyl. I also didn't care much for the artwork, not that the artwork wasn't beautiful, I was just interested more in the songs within, and soon found out that a quality record inside a torn or distressed sleeve would go for considerably cheaper than any new music.

 

Back to my story.

Finally I had the records cleaned and began listening one by one. Unknowingly I'd planted the seeds of my future, and the toe path of that journey came was in this sleepy city.

 

Boerne, gave me the music education I couldn't get in bigger cities. It was affordable though the selection was erratic, sometimes strange, but always unique. So much great music waiting to be found, and it was all hidden away down the street in dusty bins and slopped shelves, piled on floors and underneath porcelain figurines.

 

Now that I've traveled, now that I've seen shopping center after shopping center with the same stores and restaurants offering the same experiences without any regional individuality, I can appreciate my home so much more.

Small towns and their oddball beauty can only be felt once in a specific time and a specific place. It's precious. I love it. I was lucky enough to be open to new surroundings, even if they were hidden in old packages.

 

 

Where did it go?

My fury of noise                    
       

pitched pain

subtle lulls
 

Tear and tempo                       
       
once so sure

in blood, an bone
 

Crying they found me             
              

when low, very low

life had pushed

I'd looked back                        

only once
but where did it go?

 -rene



*image source: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-dsGis1BnHkzN8SCuf-sY_0xDB5Q-WL_-hhKUHkzCk5u1rTl-mDB5tKXccFrgiClBpMBgsK1hrJ-e8tVJ5h5c0H_y0Y4s10dBo_7_Zg2gic-iK8MUi1lJDYy_nlAuoMeGttpOPMwGIB8/s1600/sagle_ping_pong.jpg