THROWBACK #1 TONIGHT // FIVE STORIES
In a previous version of life, this would have been be the newsletter announcing the Kickstarter to crowdfund the money for my new record Long Day in the Milky Way. We recorded last year on borrowed cash, and made something I’m thrilled with and proud of; now it’s time to settle the debts and rustle up the money to release the album this summer. It’s the way records are made now, and if not particularly elegant, it usually works well enough.
But in all honesty as the time approached, given the circumstances - three months into a global pandemic, now a week into what I hope will be a genuine reckoning with the systems of violence and injustice that run through American life - I felt increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of rallying attention around an all-or-nothing monetary goal. I trust that the support is there, but I couldn't bring myself to call it in. I stewed a while and decided that just now offering feels better than asking. If I can offer something useful, I believe that one way or another, I’ll get this new record funded.
So this month I’m offering these solo shows live on the KD Facebook page spotlighting three of my early albums, filled with old songs people often ask me to play. Donations will go straight towards getting the new record paid off and into the world. Tonight, June 3rd, I’ll play Five Stories in its entirety, hopefully remembering most of the lyrics, and talk a bit about the songs. Next up will be Songs for a Hurricane on June 9, and Strange Conversation on June 16th. After that everything will be looking forward to the August release of Long Day in the Milky Way, an album that both ties together and builds on everything I've made all these years. Later this month I’ll start to talk more about the record, and we'll open up a pre-order site where you can pick up your pre-release signed albums and assorted extras. But for now, a bit of backstory on tonight’s featured record:
FIVE STORIES was recorded over a series of sessions in 2000 & 2001 at Hi-n-Dry in Cambridge, MA, shepherded by Billy Conway. The producer of my first album had brought Billy in to play drums, and while I was about as green as could be, I had enough of a clue to get that Billy was tuned into the frequencies that I wanted to understand. When I was ready to make my next record I called him up and asked him to both play drums and produce it. Bill was characteristically skittish about embracing the title of producer, but he said his version of yes, and proposed working at Hi-n-Dry.
Hi-n-Dry was the loft apartment of the Morphine frontman Mark Sandman, and the clubhouse & rehearsal studio for Morphine and Mark’s other bands. Sandman had died the year before, and Billy and sax player Dana Colley were in a time of reeling and trying to regroup from the sudden loss of both their friend and their band, and part of that was the question of what to do with the loft. This record was one of the first forays into putting the space to use recording albums from outside the extended Morphine family, although over the next six or seven years there would grow to be a long list.
I had met Sandman once or twice, but I had never seen the loft, and I was entranced the moment I walked into that huge brick room. An expansive space on the fifth floor with huge windows on three sides, assorted band detritus posted and stored and strewn everywhere, every instrument you could think of and plenty others you couldn’t identify, and a vibe that made every surface and object glow with mystery and potential. Over the next year or so we spent numberless hours in that space as we chipped away at refining and recording my new batch of songs.
Billy brought in Andrew Mazzone on bass, and I brought Sean Staples on mandolin and assorted things, and I think we tracked most of the record live with three or four of that core group. Billy’s buddy Steve Folsom, who was winding down a long run doing live sound for Melissa Etheridge, signed on to engineer under the notably uncontrolled conditions. The loft at that time had zero isolation of any kind; the players stood in a small circle, sometimes using monitor speakers rather than headphones, and the engineer sat at the small board right in the room. The sonic bleed was inevitable and absolute. I remember Steve tearing his hair out any number of times trying to get reasonably clean sounds, but that bleed is one of the most characteristic elements in the sound of Hi-n-Dry, and I love to hear it even when it's causing trouble.
For overdubs we brought in everyone we could think of and got them to play anything they could find. The band was a blended crew of our two circles of friends. Billy introduced me to various of his associates: Kevin Barry and David Champagne on guitars, Evan Harriman on keys, Dana Colley on baritone sax, Tom Halter on flugelhorn. And I introduced Billy to a bunch of my crew as well: Sean Staples and Jabe Beyer on whatever was handy, Lori McKenna and Jennifer Kimball and Catie Curtis on vocals, Eric Royer on banjo, Tim Kelly and Nolan McKelvey and Dave Rizzuti and Dave Hill on everything from dobro to accordion. Everyone sang, whether they wanted to or not. Paul Q. Kolderie humored us by schlepping up a little extra gear and mixing the record right there in the same room. By the end of it, both Billy and I had acquired many lifelong friends and collaborators, and I had absorbed a priceless freshman survey course in how to go about capturing the elusive magic of people playing music into a bottle.
The internet was not in the room with us, a state of affairs I often miss these days in the studio, when the fruitful moments of tedium and waiting are easily squandered with fruitless scrolling. What we lacked in connectivity we made up in time: from here, it seems like an impossible amount of time, to try different approaches, and listen and ponder and listen again, and consume vast quantities of takeout Pad Thai Country Style at the old scuffed kitchen table in the corner, spinning records on the turntable, telling stories, laughing, listening.
For about the last decade Billy’s been my sister-husband, playing drums with Jeffrey on the road about a third of each year, and he just finally made a record of his own songs, which is as deep and as original as he is, and as good company. I've made a bunch more albums, each its own journey, and I've loved the process of every single one. But none could ever hope to match the making of Five Stories for the sheer revelation of it, the exhilarating climb up the steepest part of the learning curve, the doors opening and lightbulbs going on in my head every day. I keep those sessions in my head like an old hand-drawn map, folded and refolded countless times, and whenever I head into the studio I first smooth it out carefully and study the lay of the land again, try to call up everything I've learned from working alongside people who understood the important stuff: the value of limitations, the power of the moment; what to sweat and what to let go, when to chase and when to ride, how to keep the soul of a song in sight and let everything else take care of itself.
I'm looking forward to playing through these old songs tonight, talking a little about where they came from, and holding them up to the light of 2020 and seeing if they have anything new to say. If you think this show will help you feel more human, or less alone in these exhausting and isolating times, please tune in. I’m not a protest singer but I hope what I can offer will leave you refreshed and ready to keep doing the important work of our time, participating in the struggle for justice and dignity for all people. Also, getting ready to vote like our lives depend on it, because they truly do.
Yours *kd
UPCOMING SHOWS:
JUNE 3 - KD plays FIVE STORIES, 8:00pm ET
JUNE 9 - KD plays SONGS FOR A HURRICANE, 8:00pm ET
JUNE 16 - KD plays STRANGE CONVERSATION, 8:00pm ET
All shows at http://facebook.com/krisdelmhorst (shows will remain archived if you miss it live)
Donations accepted here:
Venmo: @Kris-Delmhorst
Paypal: https://www.paypal.me/krisdelmhorst
Drawing: Andy Friedman Design: Jeffrey Foucault
