In light of my graduating college I thought it was high time for a post. It’s been a while.
On Sept. 1, I will be partying down with Canard, Icon Mine, Apocalypse Now! and possibly an early, early Spoons reunion between Chris, Pat and myself. To celebrate…twisted lo-fi jams over 20 years old.
Finally, after much bullshit talk and procrastination, I give you ‘American Buckle’ in all of its……glory? I apologize for taking so long with this, as this stuff has only been heard by a few. I doubt Johnny Ether has heard this since it was created over a period between 1989-1991. I had Tommy Hamilton mix this stuff before he moved to Virginia. I can’t remember when that was but I think it was in the mid to late 90’s.
This project has been discussed many times over the years since the band imploded(thanks to me a dumbass) and originally was intended for posthumous cd release. None of that came to fruition, so we’ve just put everything here. There are multiple versions of some songs, some filler, some ludicrous stuff and some very sad, downbeat stuff. The Singing Spoons hope that you will enjoy their labors on what would have been a fine album and a worthy follow up to ‘Resin Cabin’.
The Sessions
The recording sessions for ‘American Buckle’ began almost immediately after ‘Resin Cabin’ was completed. The Spoons were prolific to a fault which meant that we weren’t too good at editing ourselves. All of it was recorded by Tomy Hamilton over about two or three marathon tracking sessions and multiple overdub sessions at Georgia Street. We laughed, we drank, we smoked and we unfortunately passed out on Tommy’s bed a few times. Tommy was a patient man and always gracious toward our antics. Georgia Street Studio was located right between Duval and Bronough streets in Tallahassee. It was a run down house where Tommy lived as well as at various times Wayne Gleasman(owner of Manufacture Sound), Chris Gleasman(bassist in Gruel), Barry Stock(of Grecian Formula/Bone Ranger), Tom Lewis (engineer and member of Grecian Formula/Bone Ranger), Lee Folmar(Insect Fear), Bruce Hamilton (drummer in Gruel). This place was the breeding ground for most of the stuff coming out of Tallahassee that was influential to us at the time. Tallahassee’s scene was thriving back then…Gruel, Grecian Formula, Insect Fear, Human Scarecrow, DVC and others. Our sessions became somewhat mythically self important to us and we started operating in our bubble. There was a lot of emotional stuff going on with the young men of the Singing Spoons and our music reflected the dual personality of alcohol saturated good times and alcohol saturated psychosis and depression. Those were the two worlds I operated in at least!
Our recording sessions never featured heated arguments about artistic direction. we really collaborated well and the material shows that. John H. had really stepped it up and was contributing a lot to the song writing and was pretty much the band’s arranger. On ‘Resin Cabin’ I had a lot of songs left over from the intensive writing of college, but by the time of these sessions, I was writing more with the band’s input in mind and we would collaborate a lot. It was a fun time and we really enjoyed playing. The guitar playing during these times took on a life of its own. Josh and Chris developed a sound that Kelly Shane described as “massive”. He described the band as lurching forward as one big chord as Josh’s slabs of distorto-neil young in the cheesgrater guitar sound meshed perfectly with Chris’ Bob Mould is in your ceiling Marshall high end crunch. As for me I did my usual primitive flailing and John held it together with tuneful and supple bass playing. ‘American Buckle’ saw some experimentation as John and Josh played some horns. The ARP String Ensemble was used on a few songs to cool effect and Chris played slide guitar (!?!?) on at least two songs! One with a beer can of course!
This was a pivotal time in our lives, as within a year or two some of us would form new bands, leave town, get married etc. At the time, this was the most important thing to all of us. At some point the bubble ruptured….
Here are some thoughts on the sessions from John H. when I first approached him about doing this back in ‘04!Â
John
“The house was green, and the beer was cold. The original artwork for the
Resin Cabin album cover was framed in Wayne Gleisman’s (the president,
founder, and chief-executive officer of our record label, Manufacture Sound
Output Company) bedroom. We had each assembled badass guitar-amp combos,
Josh with his Les Paul/Fender Twin, Chris with the Gibson SG/Marshall stack
(a very temperamental wall-of sound), and me, with my Gibson RD Artist
bass/Crate-Peavey combo amp (okay, so the Crate-Peavey combo won’t get me
into the indie rock hall of fame, but it was loud and bright as hell). It
was evident from first listenings of the tracks that the sound of ‘American
Buckle’ was going to be fatter and heavier than anything we accomplished on
‘Resin Cabin’. In short, everything seemed in order. Tommy Hamilton was as
easy to work with as any producer a bad could ever hope for. He basically
sat and grinned, seemed to like everything, and when the tracks were played
back, he had instantly transformed them into thunder. The recording sessions
went very smoothly. For a notoriously sloppy band, we set down a surprising
majority of the songs as tight first tracks. Mike was singing better than
ever, staying on key in every song and as always, emptying his tank of every
molecule of emotion on every track. There was little to be weary of, except
perhaps, the overwhelming feeling that this was the last meaningful thing
the band would ever accomplish. While I have no intentions of divulging the
morass of intra-band personal issues that led to this apocalyptic mood, the
sense of doom proved justified. A few months later, after a brief (really
brief, like one week) attempt at keeping the band going as a trio, we were
done. Mike and Chris moved on to form Ultraboy and continue to juice up the
Tallahassee scene for a couple of years (Mike is actually still quite active
in the scene), while for Josh and myself, this proved to be our Tallahassee
indie rock swan song. None of us, I think, really held profound or at least
long-lived regrets about the Spoons’ demise. Although ‘American Buckle’
contains much of the best work we ever created, I also think that we were
devastatingly close to becoming a rather formulaic songwriting machine. Most
of the best songs on American Buckle were the older ones; the later tunes
felt stilted and comparatively uninspired. It was almost as if (if I may be
so bold) we were transitioning from the frenetic-inspired mode of the
Replacements Let it Be/Tim era to the slightly lost,
doing-it-for-the-sake-of-doing-it mode of Paul Westerberg’s early solo
career. All this said, I am ecstatic that the Buckle is finally being
released. What’s amazing to me is how fresh the tunes sound, well over a
decade after they were recorded. I am not claiming that we were somehow
magically ahead of our times or anything - these songs still resonate of
early 90s indie power-chord heart-rock (?) - but I do think that there are
lots of folks out there who’ll find these songs catchy, intense, heartfelt,
and worthy of multiple listenings. I certainly hope I’m right. I know “Loofa”
still kicks my ass. ”
I appreciate John’s honesty. When he first wrote this a few years ago, I suggested he was being too harsh, but now I think he was right. We prided ourselves on being prolific, but occasionally this meant a dip in quality. Looking back, maybe it ended for a reason when it did. I know that sounds cliche’, but it had run its course and we were pretty exhausted as I remember. I would also like to say that we did attempt to continue without Josh, but I wasn’t into it very much as I was more into personal destruction at the time.
Other Spoons! Contribute your memories if you’ve still got ‘em!
SOUND
A few of these were from the first sessions with Tommy and were done pretty much for free. He used a reel labeled “shitty work tape” for about 4 songs. “Colorado”, “Business trip”,”Backrub” and “Buzz”. All of these were taken from a rough mix cassette because the original reel had disintegrated when I had Tommy mix these. So the sound on these is rougher than the others but are included here because the songs are good, except for “buzz” which was totally lost(see below).
“Colorado” is the original version and not the one on the ‘buzz’ single. It is superior I believe to that one, but for some reason this one wasn’t used.
“Buzz” has been lost and this was the original version as well and possibly better than the single version. (FOUND!!!!!! 12/13/06 see below)
SONGS
Dress of the Dream Girl (version 2)
I Had to tell You (Roky Erikson/13th Floor Elevators cover)
Always Fuss (mike duets with the lovely Jen Kermeen)
Buzz (original version) -added 12/13/06
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Here’s the cassette cover art to CHEDR by the SPoons and the bizarre insert that was folded up in the cassette. There are not too many photos of the Chedr era Spoons. Here’s a picture of us playing in the old Vinyl Fever in 1987. I remember we did a cover tune of “Sunday Morning” by the Velvet Underground and Chris and John Barlow spat fake blood. Fun times.
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The Singing Spoons 1988 release, “Chedr” has its own page. If any of the other SPoons would like to comment , please do so with your thrilling tales!I will try to get some photos, setlists and other stuff from this period up asap.
Here’s another rather raw, but rocking live cut by the Singing Spoons. “Chest Rabbit/With a Kiss” is from a board tape recorded 1/20/90 at Planet 10. Planet 10 was a great hole in the wall rock club on South Macomb across from the Civic Center that was run by Larry and Mike. Those guys booked us in there a lot and we always had a great time. It was a good place to try out new stuff and we did some strange things on stage. It is now a parking lot. All I remember from that night was that there was a brawl involving some people up the street and that my friend Pat was attacked by a bicycle. Not sure if this can be confirmed.
If you look to the left of this page you will see a link to another page called “Jacket City“. This was an acoustic cassette the Singing Spoons released in 1989. All the necessary and unnecessary photos and songs are available there on the Jacket City page. Please drink responsibly.
Here we have 2 songs from Singing Spoons from a 1991 performance at Club 506. That place was fun to play but it always had plumbing issues. Anyway, this is probably one of our last shows and was dutifully recorded onto 8 track by Tommy Hamilton. Per John Hintz’s request I have included a rather cathartic version of “Hold Me Down” originally on the ‘Resin Cabin’ lp and from the same gig ” You’re Broken” which would have been on ‘American Buckle’ had we stayed together. All I remeber from the show was that we were bummed before we play and happy afterward. The power of rock! On another note, John Barlow found a few vintage photos and forwarded them to me. This photo of Chris is from a pre-gig booze session at Planet 10 in my Olds Custom Cruiser Wagon. The other one of me is most likely from Planet 10 in 1987 or ‘88. I don’t remember who took this photo of us, but it was snapped on the roof top of “the window” on Gaines Street in Tallahassee in 1990. Finally, here is an old Singing Spoons flyer John Hintz and I made for a show at the Grand Finale. I was alaways made fun of due to my ridiculous flyers made with ball point pen!
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Just so you know I am trying to get some Spoons up here asap. This shot is from a roadtrip to Orlando to play a gig at a shitty club. We had a lot of fun on these jaunts. Everybody in the band seems to be doing well. We’ve got two Phd’s, a lawyer and a fat dude. Chances of a reunion are slim to none so stop asking Mr. Weiss! anyway the photo is most likely from 1990. |
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Here’s some disturbing music(?) by two early incarnations of the Singing Spoons. Most people remember us as a loud Crazy Horse/Husker Du type of band, but before that we were far more into noise and abstract stuff. This happened because none of us were very accomplished as musicians at all and partially because of hormones and high school insanity. First up is a cut from the second line-up of the Spoons which features me, Chris Gissendanner and Pat Barousse. The song “Vindicate My Scalp” is from our tape ‘Dyslexic Community’. This dates back to 1985. The lo-fi quality is due to being recorded on a radio shack mixer and cassette deck. Hi hat, Zither, Suitcase organ. In light of Pat’s recent birthday, I thought I would post one of his classics! Second up is a song by the Spoons after Pat had left to play with Insect Fear and before John Hintz joined the band. It was recorded in my bedroom at my parent’s house in 1986. I can only imagine what my parents thought when they heard the lilting strains of “Take the Bus You Hag” wafting down the staircase. This was recorded on a 4 track and features a trombone, a laughing idiot teenager and a cymbal playing monkey toy. Up for number 3 is an outtake from the ill fated 1993 Ultraboy opus ‘Jelvis’. This was a 10″ mini album that featured psycho jams and some great songs poorly recorded and even more poorly mastered. It is the first stuff ever recorded by me on 8 track. “Mr. Mosrite” never made it but I kind of like its weird wackiness as a sort of messed up surf song. Recorded in our practice space near FAMU on the shittiest of mixers. Kelly Shane, Chris Gissendanner and me. |
Contact: canard (at) canardmusic.com
