Me and Alejandro raise up the antenna and get down to the business of pulling songs out of the air. First, I had to buy a coach for the space. Writing songs is like honking your horn in a tunnel. You pound on the horn. Really lay into it. And then you listen to it reverberate around, see if it does anything for you. Vaporizer aid is optional.
[ Check It Out: Real Animal ]
Diary entry 5/17/07
What can I say? It rained a lot the last couple weeks. We got it in our face and on our hair. We holed up. We ordered out. We gave it up for the songs, for each other. We prayed for our mayor, let the rain wash him clean. We exhausted our nine volt battery supply… Soap and Water is the title. It floated to the top and now it’s stuck.
—CP
[ Check It Out: Soap And Water ]
Dateline: Nashville.
Pissed away the last year doing everything and nothing…
Dan Stuart called it: “the year of living stupidly.”
Sometime’s people ask me questions: Will I make another record? Have you written any new songs? Who killed Al Jackson? My answer is: I don’t know. To be honest, I’m not sure my bitches were feeling it.
“Never let anyone make you feel bad about what you’re doing.” Jim Dickinson told me that years ago.
It turns out I have some dark need to do this. To write songs and make records. John Cassevetes said: “I have a one-track mind. That’s all I’m interested in: love - and the lack of it.” Makes perfect sense.
Lovers lane hasn’t been this unsafe in years. Tammy Faye Bakker and Elvis, and Anna Nicole Smith all find there way into this record.
Particularly on “Would You Love Me”.
The thing is: Elvis didn’t buy his mother any ol’ Cadillac, he bought her a pink Cadillac. Speaking of pimpin’ rides… Most days I can’t remember where I parked my car. That’s when I’m know I’m in the middle of a new record. I wrote most of these songs at like 5 AM. I would come back from Europe and resist adjusting my body clock. Hey, it works for the monks! Behind bars they call it “jailin”. When you adjust your body clock so that you’re up all night and only get up during the day for meals.
Going off your medication has its advantages. The upside to being diagnosed bipolar is that you can get a lot done when you’re raging. Yep, all the good stuff just flows through you. It’s easy. Of course, the all too brief highs are followed by pounding Maverick’s sized waves of fear. Not that I’d know.
Musicians want to make records that flatter them. We want a kind of simulated passion. Maybe we’re all guilty of that somehow. But, I don’t want it. I’m getting to where I feel like I’ve got nothing to lose. And when I’m at the crossroads, I ask myself, WWAD? What would Alex Chilton do? Way back when, Alex opened a Green On Red show in Atlanta. He pulled up in a 74 Buick blowing blue exhaust in the gravel parking lot. He and his rhythm section (Rene’ Coman, Doug Garrison) spilled out of it in a Purple “sess bud” haze. Alex put his amp on stage and pulled a clean shirt out of the back, tuned to his harmonica and click his heals four times. Wham!
Always store your gig clothes in the back of your amp. You’ll always be ready for showtime.
Lx was like an instant hero to me. I’ve found and discarded many hero’s since then, but Alex is still IT. We had a few friends drop by on this record. The core of it is Todd Roper on drums (from Cake) and me on guitar. Stephie has been singing too. And well… lotsa Nashville trash have shown up too. We had the Spinto band in there making noise. All 6 of em.
I’ve learned a few things out here. Like Brad Jones is a tireless bad-ass for example. Never hurts to make time for a BBQ and a friendly game of Roof-ball. (Angelo pictured demonstrates the proper technique) Can’t work all the time.
As soon as you realize that it’s all insane; It all makes sense.
—Mark Twain
[ Check It Out: Soap And Water ]
One minute they’re crawling across the carpet slobbering themselves, the next thing you know they’re singing on a Chuck Prophet record. As soon as you realize that it’s all insane; It all makes sense. Some sessions you remember and some session you don’t. There’s song’s on this record, I don’t remember writing…
This session however, will stay with me.
The thing about kids is that they just SING. Instead of trying to SOUND like they’re singing. They don’t need anything. Don’t need a chart or their own headphone mixes. (Maybe a slice of pizza and few M and M’s is all). They don’t worry about the price of car insurance or avocados, or lose sleep over leaky roof’s. They don’t Jaywalk. Not one of them ever got a ticket for having one headlight, and spent the night in the Martinez jail. They don’t stand in line for a four buck cup of designer coffee. They’ve got it. They’ve got it all. And you can hear it in their voices.
I’m in Nashville working on new record at Alex the Great; it’s a studio out past the industrial park side of town. Not far from the Caribbean chicken joint. Yep, Nashville, all green sunshine and bless-his-heart’s. “Soap and Water” is the working title of the latest opus. Today is the day we over-dub the Vine Street Kids. 25 Christian kids tween the ages of 7 and 10 who sing in local church choir. Miss Andra their choir teacher conducted.
It got off to a rocky start. One little girl was listening to the first song we pumped through big speakers out into the studio, with concerned look, she asked Miss Andra, “When is he going to start singing? He’s just talking.” That’s not talking kid, that’s IT. Another announced right away his “dad has two grammy’s” (Walk Like an Egyptian and Purple Rain). We placed that boy up front close to the mic’s for good luck.
Because it’s Nashville, one of the four parents who came along said, “Oh yes, I was about this age when I did my first session; it was a Porter Wagoner session.”
The minister’s wife who sat next to me in the control room was very impressed. She turned to me and said, “Is that YOU singing?” Oh my, that’s a beautiful song.” And, “I like your hat.”
It started coming together. The kids barnacled on the melody in unison.
Here’s a fun fact: Kids are cloud experts. They know more about clouds than scientists. They study them. The drama, the ephemeral beauty, the mystery. None of it’s lost of kids. Six year olds are about the best shape spotters. Scientists say that’s the peak age for cloud spotting. As we get older life distracts us, we’ve less time for clouds, until the logic runs in reverse… clouds become negatived things: “There’s a cloud on the horizon, oh, I’ve got a cloud hanging over me….”
As soon as you realize that it’s all insane; It all makes sense. Mark Twain said that BTW not me.
PS: I read somewhere Bob Ezrin hired a school choir of children for Pink Floyd or some such. To ensure maximum emoting, he told the kids, “Now, you’re probably wondering why we gathered all here. We hate to tell you this but all your died in a plane crash this morning.” We thought about pulling that out, but thought better. Wouldn’t want people to take it the wrong way. It’s hard out here for a pimp. Just ask Don Imus in the morning.
[ Check It Out: Soap And Water ]
Love Away The Pain (Paying tribute to Rainer at Wavelab Studios).
Rainer’s widow Patti Keating does what she can to keep Rainer’s back catalog in print. She’s dusting off a tribute record from some years back and adding songs. I was honored when she asked me to come out to Tucson to contribute. Tommy Larkins was the contractor for the gig. He gathered Van Christian, Rudy (Rainer’s boy), Chris, Craig Shumaker, Nick and Nick. (Rainer’s long time bass player) for a session at Wavelab Studios. Howe was there in spirit. We saved him an open track.
Now WHO’S Rainer you ask? Let’s go back, shall we?
In 1988, while staying in Tucson, doing the Green On Red song and dance, I stumbled hung-over down the stairs of the Hotel Congress, bee-lining for the Tap Room bar, when I was stopped dead in my tracks by this music spilling out from the next room. This cat was sitting atop a Fender Bassman amp perched on the bar playing and singing with a beer can wrapped around his shoe. Sounding like a one man Chess record. I was in love. It was immediate.
Obscure? You betcha. Maybe it’s because Rainer didn’t trade in all that necessary mingle mingle; none of that puffed up hucksterism the glossy mag’s gobbled up like raw meat. He was the living embodiment of everything we longed to be; Rainer was cool. Stone cool. Too cool for this world it turns out.
I watched and listened in awe that night. Listened as he sang in that high lonesome Bob Dylan doing Robert Johnson circa Blood on the Tracks whine. And just as I’d fallen into a diddly bo trance; a left hook. Rainer pulls a Replacements song from his trick bag. The album Pleased to Meet Me had just come out. Rainer knew what time it was, he’d already worked up “I Can’t Hardly Wait” recognizing it as the soon to be classic that it was. I stood transfixed as he sang Westerbergs’s own ode to the “DT Blues”. “I’ll write you a letter tomorrow/Tonight I can’t hold a pen…”
“fuck…. FUCK!” Fucking perfect. I almost forgot to breath.
From that night on, I always went out of my way to hear Rainer. In a Pizza Parlor out on the east side. (Is that possible? Does anyone remember that gig?). At an outdoor fern bar somewhere. We once even played together in my little room at the Congress neath the swamp cooler fan.
Can I way this? He was impossibly handsome. Like Gregory Peck charismatic. The Atticus Finch of the slide guitar. Chew on that analogy for a while.
Rainer was born in East Germany in 1951. Before there was a wall. At the age of five, something pulled his family west (The Wolf? Sleepy John Estes, Hubert Sumlin? Muddy Waters? I suspect) and they settled on the South Side of Chicago. In the 70’s, Rainer headed for the deserts of Tucson. This is where he met his wife Patti, raised his kids and made music until his untimely death by brain tumor in 1996.
I never thought Rainer would die. After he fell off his bike coming home from work, and they patched him up only to find that inoperable tumor buried in his skull, I always thought he’d somehow just BE THERE like he always was. Until Van Christian, who’s own father had succumbed to cancer back in ‘88 or so, turned to me—all but shook me and said, “Prophet, Rainer’s DYING man… he’s gonna DIE.”
I never really got that close to Rainer per se. On occasion, like when my guitar was in emergency need of repair after some airlines mishap, I went down into the shadowy basement of the Chicago Store and sat there while he patiently repaired it for an hour at his bench. Charged me like 5 bucks or something stupid. We really didn’t talk much. Truth is, I was a little shy around Rainer. Sitting there watching him work with his hands was powerful. A powerful memory today, like that scene in On The Waterfront—Terry and Edie sitting on a park swing, exchanging small words, Edie drops her glove and Brando absently picks it up, slips it onto his own hand, or the memory of my dear sweet mother making me cinnamon toast on a quiet afternoon when I stayed home from school sick.
It’s impossible to capture in words Rainer’s presence. People use words like “mystical” and tired phrases like “he was on a journey” “deeply spiritual” “presence of the divine”. Yes, it’s all true. A man could drown in a sea of non sequiturs—in their own piss, trying to capture Rainer’s thing in words. Yes, his THING. Rainer had THAT THING in every sense. What’s also true is that it’s damn near impossible to make a record on Rainer. A definitive recording doesn’t and won’t ever exist. His spirit wouldn’t be bottled. His spirit refused. It’s like canning sunshine. Show me the guy who can do that and I’ll go down on him.
So we kicked his music around with his old friends and put Van on lead guitar and Rudy on drums and stopped worrying about making sense of the music and just played. Of course it was ragged, but this time it was ragged and right and we even broke bread at some fancy ass bistro they opened a couple blocks away in the old train station. Check out Lilly attempting navigate that texas toast grilled cheese into her belly! A sight! If Rainer could see us now he’d fall off his bike—this time laughing his tits off.
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