Podcasting is tricky business. I’m glad to bring you 4 songs from bands we know. However, to keep myself entertained, the podcast boundary just keeps getting pushed.
Full episode
From the studio this week, we give you four songs and artists.
When our friend Laura refused to wear her Chin’s Mojo T shirt, that caught my attention. As she explained her reason… that our band is a cult, well, I had to sit down and hear her perspective. She said, “The skull used in your band’s history and merchandise is a dead thing. You shouldn’t worship a dead thing or pretend it has magic powers.” I explained that the skull was real, but the rest was kind of a joke. She was unswayed.
I found her argument fascinating. A cult? That made us sound pretty naughty, and the worst thing our band ever did was get kicked out of Hawaiian Falls.
I asked Laura to visit our recording studio and put her thoughts out in public. You’ll hear her opinion at the end of this week’s podcast. She backed off the “cult” complaint somewhat, but still insists that the skull is bad for our public image… that it can be connected to the skeleton saint known as La Santa Muerte. This image is also used by criminals praying to La Santa Muerte to protect them from law enforcement.
I disagree. I feel like Chin is a cool icon, and maybe he did help us at that Battle Of The Bands, years ago. Maybe Chin had help. But it doesn’t have to be evil, does it? Take a listen to her thoughts at the end of the Episode 6 podcast, and make up your own mind.
It’s our fifth episode! There are some genuine gems this week.
Full episode
Our Guest this week is my friend and soccer spokesman, Mike Donnell. I didn’t warn Mike that he’d need to bring a joke, just to throw him off the track, and he blanked out. Cute. on the positive side, Mike is a hard charging midfielder for his soccer team, which he named after my band. Check out the Chin’s Mojo soccer team here. They won their first game tonight when his son, Cory, headed a ball in during the last 2 seconds. This was the opposing team’s first loss. Let’s get Mojo!
From the studio this week, we give you four songs and artists.
Whaaaat! It’s our fourth episode! Even I am surprised at the variety this week. Great songs, across a broad spectrum.
Our Guest this week is the always bubbly Noey Rosalez. She leads a band called “Noey & The Nastys“. They performed this past weekend at O’Rileys, supporting my band. Noey is a sweetheart; she drove across Dallas to read the rules without even knowing about the podcast. We’ll hear more from Noey in future episodes.
From the studio this week, we give you four songs and artists.
Song # 1 = Ian Lawler and his song “Lullaby Suite 1&2”. Taken from his album, “Future Nostalgia“. Also found on Scott’s compilation CD.
Song # 2 = Dwight Williams, “Functions (Make The World Go ‘Round)”
Song # 3 = Imperfekt, “Time To Alight” Band web site
Song # 4 = Adonis “AC” Coleman “My Baby Mama Suck (Radio Edit)” here are the lyrics
Each of these songs is available for download at ChinPodcastMusic
Talkover music is The Kingy Song (non-published instrumental version), by Chin’s Mojo
Here’s Episode 2 of the ChinPodcast, from our humble, yet stouthearted and somewhat macho studio.
Full episode
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Our Guest this week is the ever sunshiny Kathy Long, of Eclipse. I’ve known Kathy for several years. She’s the niece of Chin’s bass player. She has a ferocious, just-perfect rock and roll voice and a gentle heart. She supplied her own droll joke for this week’s podcast.
From the studio this week, we give you four songs and artists.
I had to do a lot of soul searching to identify exactly what this podcast aspires to achieve. I determined that it is about music that we’ve come into contact with through:
Direct contact at our studio
Direct contact at live shows
Direct contact online (shared forums, interests)
Cross pollination (friends of our friends)
… and that it is truly the story of our band’s STUDIO. People in our studio and people that have made an impact on our bandmember’s activity. These are bands that we know personally and like. The production qualities must be up to par, but the genre can be a little more broad.
There will be podcasts that do not include any music from Chin’s Mojo. But, for purposes of telling the STORY, it is the music that has come across our desk at the studio. It will not be a show about nothing and everything. It is the story of the studio, the band that lives there, the people we like, and the music that is being made by those people.
Tonight’s podcast is Episode One. Here it is! Be prepared to meet 4 interesting songs.
Everyone knows Pat Sullivan as the rock legend, guitar hero in Chin’s Mojo. And it’s true that he is an amazing guitarist. You might like to hear him play using his guitar with a symphonic or brass instrument, and he does this occasionally at Chin shows. He uses a Roland GR33 MIDI controller, attached to his guitar. In fact, we used this device in the opening riffs of our song “Betrayal” on the CD, “The Mighty Chin’s Mojo”.
Here’s a little profile of the effect, Pat playing guitar, and the song “Betrayal”. Lucky day for Pat’s fans. Enjoy.
It’s always a joy to see singer/songwriter Bill Martin in our studio. His depth of experience, talent, ambition and heart serve his music well. On top of THAT, he’s so nice to work with. Bill brings in original songs and they’re not the typical project. He spends weeks layering little parts and listening and thinking. His lyrics are always developed into clear and heartfelt narrative. He thoughtfully crafts ideas and they become solid songs. Sometimes they’re 3 minutes long, sometimes 10. But each offers song dips and turns and beautiful detail. He impresses everyone that meets him with a guitar in his hands. Whatever is creative and genuine and meticulous about Bill, I can’t get enough of it.
In this video entry; Bill discusses his new CD, “Still in an Anxious World”. He also introduces the first track on the CD “I Don’t Know Much About Love”. You can check out his web site on Reverbnation, and hear 2 more songs from his CD there. Drop him an email and get one for yourself. Bill’s performance schedule is also available on his web site.
You can watch him introduce the song and download his song “I Don’t Know Much About Love” exclusively on this blog entry (below). Here’s Bill:
Here are some notes from Bill:
There are so many great memories and stories to draw from! And that’s just in the studio! Not to mention the stories of the songs before they even reached your studio!
The whole “Misinterpreted” series, the “percussion orchestra” and the “weirdified” counterpoint vocals in “To the Sides of the Pit,” there’s so much to choose from!
“Fish out of Water” is really old and originated on an Ovation acoustic/electric with the Small Stone phase shifter right before Jimmy Carter became President. And that’s so long ago, I couldn’t even explain it now. The version we recorded together of course is the definitive version.
I’m playing at Potbelly Sandwich Works, Old Town, Monday and Tuesday lunches,Potbelly Sandwich Works, Knox/Henderson, Wednesday through Friday. Catfish Cove in Sunnyvale every other Friday evening from 6 to 9. I’m at Neuhaus Cafe at Preston/Royal Shopping Center every last Saturday evening of the month through April so far, 6:30 to 9:00.
I am also giving guitar lessons and find this not only extremely rewarding and fulfilling, but downright inspirational!
I grew up in Colorado and music has been in my life as long as I can remember. Even before The Beatles came out I was listening to music and Dad had music around us from the very beginning. I write and play because it’s who I am but it wasn’t always that way.
Here is a band that has been in our studio, and that Chin’s Mojo likes to perform with live. They’re fun, they play a variety of musical styles and they really know how to entertain a crowd. Please meet Merry and The Mood Swings. The two folks I know best from this band (Mary Hestand and Mary Guthrie) visited our studio to introduce themselves. I asked them to share my favorite Mood Swing song, “Chickenheaded Thing”, which you will hear in its entirety.
Merry and the Mood swings are also veterans of our studio’s 24 Hour Music Race. I’ll publish that song later this week. They were the last band to record that night and so friendly in the studio – that I asked them to join me and my family for pizza after the session. It certainly surprised my family when I arrived with a band! But we had a great time.
Right now, let’s meet Mary and Mary. Here is their introductory video with a little band history and the Chickenhead itself.
-Tom
Some notes from the band:
Merry and the Mood Swings formed in 2005 when a group of middle aged women decided to get together and play music. Three of the original band members had been in another band called Frump that was made up of all moms. Diane Harris recruited her friend Mary Guthrie to play guitar and Mary Hestand asked her daughter’s drum teacher if he knew any women about our age who played drums. He told us about Martha Germann, we invited her to come to a rehearsal… and the rest is history. We played our first gig at the Granada Theater for Jerry Haynes`s (Mr. Peppermint`s) 79th Birthday Party. Our second or third gig was at the Cutting Room in New York City during Mamapalooza, a festival of female bands and performers. Since then we have been featured on the Texas Country Reporter TV show and we have played their festival in Waxahachie for the last 3 years. We like to play festivals and events and have played the Deep Ellum Festival and the Dallas YMCA’s Turkey Trot for several years running. We released our first CD in 2010 and one of our songs, Pick Up Your Socks, was in contention for a Grammy for Best New Song. This year we finally let a guy in the band. He’s a great bass player and we hope he can put up with the high estrogen levels. We hope to be rocking out together when we are in our 60s and 70s.
Mary Hestand has been in 5 bands – a country and western band called Cowboy Noir based in New York City, an all-mom band called Frump, a rock band made up of mostly middle aged women called Merry and the Mood Swings, a jazz band at First Unitarian Church of Dallas, and a band called Room101, which is really Mary and her husband Alan Tubbs writing and recording songs in their bedroom recording studio. Mary H has lived in the Dallas area for most of her life except for 10 years when she moved to New York City to go to graduate school in directing for theater at Columbia University. She stayed in New York and worked with an experimental theater company called the Wooster Group, whose members included Willem Dafoe and Spalding Gray. She also made a short film called He Was Once (see youtube) with movie auteur Todd Haynes (Velvet Goldmine, Far from Heaven, Mildred Pierce) that was in the Sundance Film Festival and a lot of other festivals. With her friends, Mary created a theater piece called Magical Thinking that they performed at the Edinburgh Theater Festival in Scotland. In 1992, Mary moved back to Dallas with her husband Alan and their daughter. She now has 3 children, of whom she is very proud.
Mary Guthrie first played guitar in public for school and church functions in Danville, Illinois, when she was in high school, and one time raised eyebrows by playing “Light My Fire” during Sunday church service. Now living in Dallas, she joined Merry and the Mood Swings in 2005, writing rock, pop, blues and “the inexplicable,” playing electric rhythm guitar (a ruby-red PRS-SE) and singing backup and occasional lead. For a year or so Mary also played bass for a cover band called RePlay (“All Hits! No Misses!”). Although she usually writes pop and rock and blues, she also writes singer-songwriter-style originals and occasionally performs as a solo/duo at local open mics and occasional venues. She is an active member of the Dallas Songwriters Association, has served on their board twice, and has always had a love affair with writing and words. Adding music just brings it all to a higher creative pitch – developing a new song is like slowly unwrapping a really cool present – what will it be?! What will it be?! And then getting to perform it for others is a real treat – unlike anything else. Sure beats sitting at my desk at work.
About the song, “Was Anything Real?”: This song was probably the most unusual one our band has worked on to date because of the way it came together. Tom put out the invitation to be in the 24-Hour Music Race. You want details? Okay: Here is a blog post Mary G wrote not long after the Race:
24 Hour Music Race (originally posted to our blog)
Holy smokes.
Imagine writing a brand-new song AND recording it with a band in a studio —in one day. Oh– and the line “Was anything real?” HAD to be in it, as did a fortune cookie message pulled out of a bag: “When the flowers bloom so will great joy in your life.”
Thus was the 24 Hour Music Race, organized by Tom Jordan of Garland Recording Studio (and lead songwriter, singer and rhythm guitarist for band Chin’s Mojo). It wasn’t a competition; it was just a way to get the creative juices flowing in the music community.
It started on a Friday evening at 6. Tom gave me the two lyric lines that had to be in the new song. Met with vocalist Mary Hestand at 7, and for two hours we pounded out lyrics. No time to get deep or brilliant — all extraneous efforts were stripped away. After two hours Mary H had to stop – it had been a hard work week; we decided picking it up in the morning would be best. Before she left she sang a melody into my laptop computer (Audacity program) and we said goodnight; I worked til 11 on lyric sheets, chords, and a shift in chord progression for the bridge.
Next morning at 9 a.m. I zoomed to Mary’s house. We still had to get the skeleton of the song to Martha, the drummer, and our bass player Carol. After another hour of tinkering and singing into Audacity, we emailed the skeleton. All that afternoon the inbox was punctuated with questions and scratch-outs, and slowly the song developed. The first chance we’d have to play it together was at the recording session scheduled for 6 p.m.
At 5 pm we gathered at my house and drove to Tom’s studio in Garland. It is a small space, but plenty of Pro Tools and good speakers (and a great Gretsch drum kit that was borrowed) made it as big as was needed. Tom was amazing — worked very fast, and was a breeze to work with. He also was able to make a few quick suggestions that made our song better.
Since we had prepared as best as we could, and because we designed the song to be easy to sing and to play — no time for fancy tricks! — we actually recorded it in just over an hour, with 45 minutes left to do some mixing work. Way cool.
Did I mention Tom did this all for free? We really enjoyed meeting him and his wife Bethany and their girls, and are looking forward to hearing the other teams’ renditions on Saturday, March 19 at O’Riley’s on Forest Lane in Dallas. Each team had different fortune cookie messages, but we all had “Was anything real?”
Wonder what they did with it?
I highly recommend doing something like this –it really knocked the barnacles off the songwriting process.
About the song: Chickenheaded Thing was written by Alan Tubbs and Mary Hestand. Alan wrote the lyrics about an alien abduction by 9-foot tall chicken-headed creatures with tentacles for wings. He also put together a song `bed` made up of guitar and drum loops, a bass line that he played in a Cakewalk synth called Z3TA and an organ solo played on a Dimension Pro synth. He gave all this to Mary and asked her to sing the lyrics over the sound bed. After a couple of weeks of practicing in the car, the vocal was recorded in Alan and Mary`s bedroom recording studio. Once that version of the song was done, Mary brought the song to the Mood Swings and asked them to learn it. Mary Guthrie and Diane figured out the guitar line, Carol Moxley came up with a new bass line and Martha hammered out the drums. Diane added a flute solo and then once we recorded the song, Alan mixed it for us. He brought Dickey Johnson, one of our guitar gurus, in to add a second guitar line for the final mix. (Of course even as I write this, Alan is in the bedroom tinkering with the mix yet again. I swear I just asked him to put the wave files on a disk for me! The fun just never ends!)
Our next gig will be the annual Deep Ellum Arts Fest the first weekend in April.
We’ve had some good attention paid to the band; we’ve been on Channel 8; all over Texas on the Texas Country Reporter show; covered by D magazine, Advocate magazine, Dallas Morning News etc. It’s fun!
Here is a band that has been in our recording studio. Chin’s Mojo has shared a stage with them: Imperfekt.
I met this band in February, 2011. Raul responded to an event that was hosted at our studio called, “The 24 hour music race.” Basically, I host this event, allowing local musicians to write and record a song in 24 hours. I set up the guideline criteria, studio engineer, mix and master out the resulting songs.
Our studio has hosted several open door events like this. It allows us to meet many songwriters in Dallas and have fun with a lot of cool musicians and bands. You might enjoy reading about our studio events: The 24 hour music race One Day Meetup (working on the link)
One of the event guidelines is mandatory lyric inclusion: Each participating team is assigned (2) lyrics that must appear in the song. Raul’s first assigned lyric was “Was Anything Real”? (I selected that from the movie The Truman Show) and his other was, “You will soon be honored by someone you respect”, which he drew from a fortune cookie. Raul’s band went home, wrote a song in 24 hours and recorded the song, “The King’s Legacy” at our studio.
I was thrilled with his song. Each year when we have the 24 hour Music Race, I meet some great people and discover some amazing music. Raul’s band, “Imperfekt” was a perfect example of this. I was pleasantly surprised at the song’s feel. In my opinion, it had an eclectic, funky acoustic vibe that I haven’t heard anywhere else. Best of all, Raul’s vocals are haunting and full of passion. He doesn’t have the classic golden throat voice you’ll hear in hundreds of rock bands. It’s a bit dry, soulful, and I like it a lot.
I am pleased to facilitate this introduction to Imperfekt. I’ll let Raul and Daniel introduce themselves on the video. We’ll also hear some comments in their own words, and a couple of MP3 songs you can download from the band. Let me know what you think of them, leave a comment!
Thanks,
-Tom
———————————-
From Raul….
‘The Devil’s Call’ is about someone who contemplates suicide and in the end, does it…It was pretty much entirely written by the lead guitarist, Zachary Henderson. A long, long time ago, he was at a very low point in his life and he actually experienced the first part of the song, staring at his rifle in the corner, contemplating it. Of course, and thankfully, he didn’t do it…He wrote this song recalling all of those emotions and you can tell by the powerful imagery it’s not something that came from thin air. That said, the song is not Satanic in any way. We’ve received a lot of hesitation and questions on the song asking how can we as Christians justify such a composition. The best way I can put this is in this quote I found online:
“Though demons may try to tempt us to kill ourselves, as Christians we have power over the devil and he cannot push us to do this if we sincerely call on the name of the Lord”
So therein lies the point. Nowhere in the song, does he call upon the Lord to help him…he is only listening to the devil’s call and as such that is the end result. It’s worth noting, that in the end he repeats he’s sorry for it all, indicating he fully regrets the decision in his final seconds. Also, there’s not a solid reason as to why he did it, which there never is. Basically, we’re saying he didn’t have to do it, it was a very poor decision and it was Satan that led him to it. Contrasting that image, we recently wrote another song dealing with suicide, called “My Sweet Angel” however this one, he calls upon God, and he ends up saving him. So that’s the message, I realize it’s very subtle, and many may not get it at first…but once asked, I believe this explanation will at least soften anyone’s objection to it. Essentially, it’s no different than when a preacher/minister/priest presents this idea in a sermon…all we’ve done is elaborately portray it, we mean no offense by it
We recorded this song as part of a project with musicdfw.com forum. The Forum is an online community specifically for Dallas/Fort Worth Musicians, started by a talented guitarist, named Scott Whigham, fed up with Craigslist being the only way to communicate with many musicians online and quite inefficiently. Last year he took it one step further by organizing a collaborative CD that was a showcase of many of the musicians on the site. Those that wanted to participate paid a small fee and were able to record a song to be included in the CD. As part of the project, two individuals on the forum volunteered their home studio to record the tracks or the CD. We recorded with Nick Ryan in Frisco and he was great and really seemed to care about even the small details of the song. Tom Jordan masterfully mastered all the tracks for the project including our track and we were extremely happy with the end product.
The intro and the outro are our favorite parts, the way the intro builds with subtle nuances from Daniel’s high hats that are abruptly interrupted by the powerful toms and the whole thing seemingly crashes into the verse only held upright by George’s bass as it all collects itself back together. Later, the song as a whole keeps gradually growing in intensity until the big finish where it climaxes with painful howls that lead into a regretful plea that seems to be a struggle to let out. What we love about this track is the constant fluidity of the song. If you inspect it with a fine tuned comb, you will notice subtle fluctuations in the tempo. That’s because though we at first attempted many times to record with a click track, the song refused to cooperate. It needed to be allowed to breath and move on its own accord and though at times, this causes the track to seem as it’s about to fall apart, it doesn’t and just sort of works, I honestly wouldn’t change a thing.
‘The King’s Legacy’ tells a story. It starts out in the middle of prophetic dream of a tyrannical king, a warning as it were for the way he treats his people. The chorus speaks of a bright light which signifies he is waking and realizes it was in fact simply a dream. He goes about his day changing nothing, just being the bastard he is until the prophecy comes into fruition. The chorus repeats, but this time the bright light means something else. He sees his old friend spreading his (the king’s) ashes into the ocean and realizes what happened.
We recorded this song as part of another project, this time with Tom Jordan’s 24 Hour Music Race. This was a challenging undertaking. Essentially, after the teams or bands petitioned for a spot to participate and were chosen, each team/band was given two lyrical lines, of which they were to form a song in 24 hours from, and return to the studio at that point to record the song in 2 hours, including some fast and furious mixing done by Tom. The first line was: “Was anything real?” which every team had to use…for the second, each team pulled a fortune cookie from a bag. The one we got was: “You will soon be honored by someone you respect.” This was a great experience and we are extremely proud of the song we created.
My favorite part is without a doubt, Zack’s guitar solo…it’s simply amazing. He got it in one try, which Tom coined him ‘One Take Henderson’ for. He wanted to attempt to do it again, but we all emphatically denied him the right. The acoustic rhythm is done in such a way to give the image of someone riding a horse through town, which the King does midway through the song. We hadn’t met Daniel or George at the time, so a friend of ours, Andrew provided the Drumming, which was solid and on point. Now when we play it live, it is of course different with Daniel and George putting their own style into it, and we absolutely love their contributions and interpretations of the song.
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