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Jon
Wahl:
vocals, guitars, saxophones, Hammond organ
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IRON NAILS RUN IN by Jon Wahl & the Amadans This here is Jon Wahl and the Amadans' second official release--a sort of musical diary of noise, fanfares, grooves and waltzes; of iconoclastic finger-pointing and tongue-lashing delivered with guffaws, tears and croons. And a story wrapped up with a polite and sincere "thank you". Here's the how and why of it: in 2002 I tried following up the 2001 debut "Sour Suite" with a concept album of sarcastic and just simple love-induced waltzes. Nobody would have it--only obscurity and humbleness. Two of these waltzes were Would Somebody Please Pull the Plug and I Don't Believe in the Pop World --lyrical barbs at dinosaur rock 'n rollers and the general state of our popular culture and its dead-like money-addicted generations. Being a born iconoclast (and revolutionary blooded), I self-funded a little CD single with these two tunes and passed eight hundred of them out to stoked Rolling Stones fans at L.A.'s extravagant (Clear Channel owned) Wiltern Theater in November of 2002, when the Rolling Stones performed their local 'small gig'. The songs were faux-titled as Hats Off and Sweet Cecilia , respectively. The cover art was an enticing photo of a sexy little gal in cowgirl attire--the bait, if you will. Rolling Stones' roadies even gleefully took copies. The first line to Hats Off is "Would somebody please pull the plug on the Rolling Stones, and tell Mick and Keith that it's over?" It just seemed like the perfect jab. On the back of the CD was a website ( www.jonwahl.com ) which led one to a manifesto-sort-of rant about the capitalist paradigm and creative obtuseness of the Rolling Stones dynasty and the laissez-faire unfairness of the Clear Channel empire. Well, aside from the scathing emails I received from Stones' fans, the Elephant didn't even feel the flea bite. And revolution costs money--with no funds a revolutionary gets muzzles pretty easy--I promptly went broke. March 2003: frustration and impatience inspired me to gather up a couple paychecks and take a new band into McHugh's Distillery for a new Amadans' album. After a few good days the money ran out and the recording stopped. Through my relative poverty and desperation RUDEK RECORDS was formed and picked up the bill and the album was completed in November of 2003. Hence Iron Nails Run In . The songs? Sunrise Moon Dies and Would Somebody Please Pull the Plug were written in bed early in the morning--spontaneous offspring that a writer winds up with when sleeping next to his guitar every night. Fanfare for the Idiots was originally an introduction to a big band arrangement for a tune of mine called 2001 Blues . The chord changes in Threnody for St. Cecilia were a challenge I gave myself one night to write a complex and beautiful segue from E minor to E major . Iron Nails Run In was originally a dismal instrumental I'd written years prior called Saxophone Rigor Mortis : a song about a sax playing buddy of mine slipping slowly and deeply into suicidal substance abuse. Currently, with lyrics, it's goat a much broader meaning. The Day It Rained Pigeon Shit was originally written for an off-shoot garage band of mine ten years prior called The Cougars and it's been recorded many times since (including with Claw Hammer). The song's arrangement on this record is my final gem and I can now set this one on the shelf and move on. I Don't Believe in the Pop World , Would Somebody Please Pull the Plug and Threnody for Saint Cecilia are a trilogy and kind of the conceptual apex of the record. In addition, they're in that waltzy three-quarter time, which dominates half this record--a remedy for my trying to wring out any common 4/4 rock tendencies that may be with me from years past. I firmly believe that a cover song should be re-written and performed as an homage--I chose Sinister Exaggerator by the Residents because they taught me in my formative years how to dismantle beauty in a beautiful way. I chose Liebestraum --Spike Jones' version of Franz Liszt's classic--because I was nurtured on that music and it won't leave my head. In my version here I'd like to think that we've taken a musical steamboat up some crazed Amazon tributary and will probably never return--like Fitzcarraldo. I imagine and hope the lyrics on the whole CD speak for themselves: snotty, romantic, desperate and blindly hopeful. The Amadans on this recording are Bob Lee on drums and Steve Reed on bass, Richie Hass (of Saccharine Trust and Zoogz Rift fame) on vibraphone and xylophone, classic session player Mark Segal on percussion galore and Heather Lockie's beautiful voice on Threnody for Saint Cecilia . The Tapered Pals (led by self-proclaimed "patron of the farts" Mooncrack) are featured here as well--a five-piece group of weirdo horn players who vowed never to leave the basement. I wagered two cases of Two Buck Chuck wine and several boxes of brand new sax reeds to get them into the studio with me. Mooncrack & Co. acquiesced. Half the laughs and weirdness and romanticism of this record would've been impossible without the astuteness of Mike McHugh who seems to know exactly how much red wine to toss down my belly before tossing a live microphone in front of me. And lastly: what is an amadan ? It's the old Irish Gaelic word for idiot, fool, imbecile, mooncalf, nincompoop, ninny, blockhead, dope, dummy, nitwit, numbskull, pinhead, birdbrain and scatterbrain. Why The Amadans ? Because there's only up from there. This record is dedicated to all future revolutionaries. --Jon Wahl, February, 2004 |
For up-to-date information on Jon Wahl's gigs and new releases, visit: www.myspace.com/TheAmadans
