Kevin Hunter made a songcircle assignment that was brilliant. Find an old newspaper or magazine, open blindly to a page, point a finger blindly to an item on that page. If your finger hits an article, the article title is the song title, if an ad, the ad headline is the song title. Then write the song.

The magazine was the New Yorker, the section was Talk of the town, and the heading was “Dogs Behaving Badly” about NYC poopscooping laws. Wrote the song without an editor (that voice in your head that says: “that sucks, that’s cool”). Later I gleaned that it was about a gunslinger that surrenders his weapons.

Dogs Behaving Badly
©2006 Chuck Lee Bramlet

Don’t want to be this anymore
Like a 68 Camaro
Or serape and sombrero
Don’t know about the dogs of war
Cause a 44 magnum
At the end of day is just a gun

Cause I took this fall
And I aint getting up today
Let the dogs behaving badly
Play

Don’t want to be this anymore
Chop wood carry water
For one more abandoned daughter
Once had a key that fit this door
Once you’ve busted it down
You don’t need it no more

Cause I took this fall
And I aint getting up today
Let the dogs behaving badly
Play

Don’t want to be this anymore
When the mockingbird mocks you
And the dumbest can outfox you
I don’t know who was keeping score
Once you forfeit the game
You don’t need it no more

Cause I took this fall
And I aint getting up today
Let the dogs behaving badly
Play

Next: Recording Dogs

These guys did NOT play on the record

We did a “clean”  version in a different key, and without the riff early on, but it wasn’t sticking. Rich found me a nasty-ass guitar tone for the Les Paul Jr. and that changed everything. He again discouraged me from the overdub monster, keeping it basically power trio + backgrounds (the awesome Ms. Leslie King). After everything I orchestrated a full brass ensemble for the last verse, but Rich buried it deep in the mix. I don’t think he really believed in it, but you can hear the ghost of it if you really listen. Kudos to Rich for the great Bill Wymany swooping bass lines. This one should be fun to play live one day.

This was an anomale, I rarely write from a title, seems a little nashvillian, but I overheard someone use it in a sales pitch once. I loved the absurdity of someone taking someone else out for a “testdrive’. I first played it out at a chuck/ladytown/orphantrain gig, and Sarah and Aram spontaneously joined in on backgrounds.

I wanted the bridge to be a “sad happy ending”, a silver cloud with a dark lining, because I am just that kind of cynical bastard. let’s settle down with a white picket fence in the biggest distopia on the planet.

Put Me to the Test • 2008 Chuck Lee Bramlet

People talk shit
They don’t know where to go
Ain’t gonna quit
Just cause you tell me no

You know it just aint right
It aint right to put me down
I’m not like the rest
Baby put me to the test

Life is a bitch
If you lay down boy you’re dead
This aint a pitch
You best not let it go to your head

You know it just aint right
The way you make me beg for you
I’m not like the rest
Baby put me to the test

You’re a fine one to talk
with your bitter calloused ways
We’re gonna take that walk
Happy ever after
In the poison LA haze

Nobody knows
The way I feel for you
In or outta your clothes
It’s almost too good to be true

You know it just aint right
The way you put me on my knees
I’m not like the rest
Baby put me to the test

Driving south from Monterey back home to LA, right before heading up into the grapevine, Cowschwitz. The stench is ungodly. The pens seem to stretch for miles. the waste from these animals pollutes the air, the water supply, ecoli gets into the food chain, vegetable and animal. the cows are packed in, fed an unnatural diet for their species, a strange mixture of corn, hormones chemical additives and meat from the fallen and sickly of their own kind. They are destined to die a cruel death after a cruel life, and why? To feed fat American’s insatiable desire for crap food, to dull their minds, make them more sullen and aggressive and yet more compliant to a manipulative corporatocracy, and shorten their own lives. Consider resolving to eat a little less meat today, your system will thank you, and you will be contributing a little less to THE ABOVE.

Aram Arslanian, producer

I was lucky enough to work with Aram Arslanian producing on this track. Aram and his wife Sarah had a house in Sunland at the time. Aram has an awesome solo project ongoing called Orphan Train and Sarah has a band called Ladytown, and I was playing some live gigs with both.

Aram had me lay down the guitar track, and it all went down so relaxed we used take 2 or so. Aram put a conga down as a click, which surprisingly worked.

Later we brought in Joel Martin with his Les Paul and a stereo amp setup, again, Magic Joel, one or two takes tops, and he’s done and packing up while I listen back, stunned.

When Aram sent me the original mixes I was happy with everything but the lead vocal, which I was able to redo with Rich after Aram moved north.

Serendipitously, Sarah and Aram and son Sam moved to Portland, later settling in Vancouver WA, across the river. Aram now plays with one of my old friends James Low.  Small universe.

I wanted a really strong finger-picking song. I really like the way a lot of traditional old english folk tunes are structured lyrically, with all the verses the same, but with a changing lead line, so that “singalongs” become easy.

I wrote this song about Portland, OR, a dark rainy northwest town built on the confluence of two rivers, the Willamette (NS) and the Columbia (EW). I lived there in the 90’s, started lifelong friendships, and if I could make a decent living there, I would be there now. The city has a subterranean moodiness and a beautiful melancholy that sunny LA deprives me of. I also had some romantic experiences that have changed me forever. I seem to have written many songs about this place, and the people I knew there.

THIS RIVER         2006 Chuck Lee Bramlet

River winds all through this town
and it loves you just like me
and it loves you just like me
but never sees the day
never sees the day

Rushes out into the sea
and it loves you just like me
and it loves you just like me
but never sees the day
never sees the day

River hides it’s secrets well
and it loves you just like me
and it loves you just like me
but never sees the day
never sees the day

Nobody knows your heart like me
No One knows you in the dark like me

Oh the wind and oh the rain
and it loves you just like me
and it loves you just like me
but never sees the day
never sees the day

Next: Recording This River, working with Aram

Act Naturally

Ringo sings Buck O! (see Feb 3 blog entry on Buck) Just like a drummer that can play in the back end of the pocket but never actually slow down, Ringo can sing flat but somehow make it work. His personality comes through. George channels Carl Perkins, and this is his best playing on the album. Note on the digital remaster; I swear I can hear foot stomping in the bridge rhythm guitar track “I can play the part so well”. Beautiful cover.

It’s Only Love

The boys always did this schmaltzy take on “latin” rhythms, Besame Mucho, Mr Moonlight, etc. and here John does his usual wink and nod toward that form, extending the joke with fake tongue rolls, bizarre rhyme scheme, etc. Yet something real comes through in his voice and slays me. George adds a weird tremolo hook, under 2 minutes and out.

You Like Me Too Much

George song. A little bit weak sauce, the lyric hook itself is awkward, but that’s its charm. What the lyric describes is subtly horrific. I will be a bastard, but if you dare leave me, I will catch you and put you back in the nest. I can, cause I’m a damn Beatle. The solo break is a piano-guitar trade off old timey chromatic ascend-descend thing that I hate from the sixties. It spells “good times” in a way I find depressing.

Tell Me What You See

Kind of a throwaway by John and Paul. Lyrically starting down that slightly gurujy path of spiritual-sounding nonsense. Things go blandly along until the bridge, then they open up with beautiful three part harmony, then they kill, gorgeous. Like crawling in the desert for days, stopping for the best cool water ever, then crawling on.

I’ve Just Seen a Face

Paul’s. Catchy, hooky, uptempo. Beautiful little simple acoustic parts dovetail together, and the words describe innocent new love and euphoric rush. What’s not to like? And if it’s too happy for you, it’s only 2 minutes.

Yesterday

Way too much has been written about this song. One of Paul’s great strengths, and paradoxically, great weaknesses is his uncanny ability to write, play and sing things that sound like they should be hooky and eternal, but don’t stand up to much scrutiny. This song has a pleading, yearning quality that hits me over the head and boxes my ears, not pleasant. Yet if I could write a song half this good, I would be ecstatic. And probably rich. Paul’s input to George Martin on recording the string quartet (close-miked, with bowing noises intact, and less vibrato than traditionally used at the EMI sessions) has had a huge impact on recording classical ensembles.

Dizzy Miss Lizzy

John closes with a barnburner cover, like on the first record with Twist and Shout. He rips his voice out, like the last set on a Saturday night. George plays the same clunky bendy riff all the way through, and it gets irritating. I’m not buying this one. I think this was the last of the Beatle cover songs, and it shows. Hamburg days are truly over.

Next: Back to the album.

Rich suggested we just start with acoustic and vocal, but laid down a brutal tom drum ride for the verse. It really changed the way I played it, and the basic sounded meaner than catshit. Singing over the top of that required that the vocal be more raw and direct. When things were sturdy, we laid an electric tuned down the same way over parts, giving things a bit of chime. Rich played his Jazz bass Chris Hillman style, with a pick, putting in cool swoops in the right places.

I took the basic home and added a string quartet on the bridge section to the end using Miroslav Philharmonik. I track string quartet one instrument, one pass at a time, Double Bass, Cello, Viola and Violin. It sounds more real that way. I wanted the Stones “Lady Jane” effect, where the primitive vocal is juxtaposed against more refined and delicate instrumentation.

I brought the submix to Rich, and he loved it, suggesting we add bells, which added a real Psychedelic Furs quality. He also put some tympani down. This turned out to be a very unique track, one of my favorites. There are twists and turns, and one doesn’t know what’s coming next.

Next: Back to the Beatles for a moment.