Under Covers: "Sundress" by Buffalo Tom

I've gone through four distinct musical stages in my life along with an uncountable number of what I like to refer to as musical enlightenments. I'll get further into the stages details on future posts, I don't really need to drag this one out too long. As the youngest of three children I was often left at the mercy of an older sister's musical tastes to which she had no problem levying onto me during baby sitting sessions and drives to the mall. I must admit though I now have an appreciation and very fond memories for Disney musicals, new wave and 1980's top-40 radio. She was also responsible for my first concert experience; Duran Duran during their 1983-84 Seven and the Ragged Tiger Tour. Our parents thought she was just a bit too young to go unchaperoned so they opted to attend and to drag along an 11 or 12 year old Dave Roe. I still have the concert program. My musical tastes were also heavily influenced, in a non-direct way, by my older brother who has been totally deaf since he was an infant. Let me explain, it was my brother that brought home early hip hop records by groups like Run DMC, Kurtis Blow, and L.L. Cool J for their beats. He could feel them through our stereo speakers and through headphones. I vividly remember trying to fall asleep at night with Whodini's "Five Minutes of Funk" blaring out of a pair of cheap headphones attached to my brother's head. Those records would always be laying around for me to pick up and play when he wasn't home thus directing me towards the hip-hop stage of my life. Hip-hop in it's original, pure form, raw and untainted by money and sex fascinated me. All of it, the music, the dress, and the artwork. Thanks to my iPod I still listen to the early stuff when a feeling of nostalgia beckons me. I just recently finished reading "Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation" by Jeff Chang. I highly recommend it to those who are interested in the subject.

A couple of years later as my brother and I were both getting into drawing and into art in general he began bringing home Iron Maiden and Kiss albums. Of course not for the music itself but for the imagery, we would spend hours trying to copy the album covers. I on the other hand would be baited by the album artwork and ultimately fished in by the music. Long hair, leather jackets, chains and guitars followed me around through the last year of middle school and into most of my high school years. For most of that time there was no other music for me except metal. I denounced pop, hip-hop, country, and anything else that didn't come with a snarl and high-speed guitar licks. Megadeth, Anthrax, and Metallica were my gods and I was their humble servant. This is also when I started to play guitar and began having dreams of playing in a band.

By the end of high school I stopped succumbing to the delusions of peer pressure and started developing my own ideologies towards life and how I chose to lead it but more so, I began to expand my musical horizons. I fell in love with Roy Acuff, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams and Loretta Lynn, music my father played around the house all of the time when we were youngsters but I selfishly cast aside as a teenager. Jazz caught me by surprise in a big way. I'm now on a mission to learn to play Thelonious Monk's "Round About Midnight" even though I can only peck around at a piano and jazz theory constantly stupefies me. The biggest thing for me now is my insatiable appetite for new and different music. Not just "new" music, but new music to me. 3Hive and eMusic help fill my bowl with off-the-radar indie tunes and great suggestions and of course iTunes allows me to catch up on music that I've ignorantly overlooked in the past.

I went through a period of time where I would pick up a new cd based on how interesting or cool I thought the cover art was. This introduced me to who I now regard as my favorite band Buffalo Tom. I'm almost ashamed to say that I was oblivious to Buffalo Tom up until I discovered the band by fishing their forth album "Big Red Letter Day" out of a $5.99 bargain bin back in 1995. By this time they had already released their fifth album "Sleepy Eyed". From the opening of the very first track "Sodajerk", I became a fan. I have yet to be punched in the gut as hard by another rock trio, and to this day they remain the only band that I would plan a vacation around seeing. To me it is impossible for front man Bill Janovitz, along with bassist Chris Colbourn, to write a bad song. They are my Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it's as simple as that.

I know it was quite the set up but this leads me to my "Under Covers" project. When I'm in a creative slump with my own music I tend to reach back and play around with the music that drove me to write in the first place. Inspired by Bill Janovitz's "The Life and Times of Bill Janovitz - Part Time Man of Rock" - Cover of the Week blog, I wanted to make the "Under Covers" project a place where I could pay homage to my musical heroes as well as keep inspired and in practice. I don't know how often I'll post to this section of the blog, I certainly couldn't do it on a weekly basis, but I hope to do it at least monthly.

Buffalo Tom's "Sleepy Eyed" was released in 1995 and I promptly picked it up along with their first three albums after falling in love with "Big Red Letter Day". "Sleepy Eyed" is full of in-your-face three chord rockers mixed in with a few sublime ballads to make a wonderfully listenable album. I feel nearly drained each time after listening the album through and it feels like the band gives every ounce of energy they have playing each song. "Sundress", the album's eleventh track, epitomizes the feel that the band was going for at the time, stripped down with a live sound but also comes across really well acoustically. I've played my version of it for years, usually to myself but on occasion will unleash it while everyone is putting on the drink. This basic recording was done last night on an M-Audio Microtrack in my walk-in closet at my apartment in south Georgia and then transferred to my Mac to add a little reverb and percussion. I thought I had all of the necessary components with me to record properly while I'm working out of town over the next year or so but alas, important cords are missing. So what's a guy to do? Improvise. I tell ya, a closet full of clothes makes a perfect isolation booth.

SUNDRESS

O Rock 'N Roll, Where Art Thou?

I've been playing some sort musical instrument since the age of 12 or 13 when I played violin in middle school. At age 15 the next door neighbor brought over his new blood red Fender Stratocaster knock-off that his parents bought for him from Sears and showed me how to play the opening riff to Iron Maiden's Wasted Years and I was hooked. At that time I was firmly entrenched into the heavy-metal stage of my life, musically speaking, and seeing how easy it was to fumble around until I found the right notes facinated me to no end. Later that year I would talk my parents into buying me a shiny black Dean from the Sears mail-order catalog for Christmas.
Twenty-two years, a few guitars, and a couple of hack bands later I sometimes find myself feeling dour while wondering why I'm not as active in my one time passion as I used to be. Careers and relationships have taken over for the pseudo rock 'n roll lifestyle that I once craved and I now fight for those precious few moments when I can sit down, guitar in hand and stare glassy-eyed at the pen and blank piece of paper laying on the table in front of me. Inspiration is harder to come by too, my muse now has my ring on her finger (UPDATE: This is no longer the case.) and the things that used to get my creative juices flowing, anger, jealousy, heart break, are no longer there (UPDATE: Nope, all of that is back.) How do my musical heroes do it? I know they all have families now and some of them have other careers too but I still hear music coming from them, good music.

These days I would be perfectly content with a little garage band. We could practice a couple of nights a week at the house and play a gig at the local pub every once in a while. That would suit me just fine. But a career with many nights spent away from home hampers my efforts to form one right now but who knows, maybe soon. With the internet and my Mac I can at least get the full band experience without having a real band. So at least I can still dream. So what do I do now? All I know to do is to keep playing, take advantage of those rare occasions that a melody or lyric escapes from the old melon, and to rock on.

Below is another old song I laid down and dirty late one night 4 or 5 years ago. It's just me and the guitar and me on backing vocals. It's a really basic recording, the timing is off and so is my voice. It sounds like I was singing a bit out of my range. Who I was into at the time escapes me right now but I do remember that I was living in Memphis in an old house with a single upstairs room, literally, you walk up a flight of stairs and you're in the only room up there. I had my futon, my computer on an old drafting table, and my guitars. Good times.

THE MEAN STREETS

Numero Uno - The Test Page

So alright, here it is, a blog. Now what? I dunno. What am I going to do with this? I'm still trying to figure it out. I think mainly I just wanted a place to post songs, whether they be finished, partial, lyrics, ideas and works in progress. Just to see them out someplace other than a piece of paper or as a Word document. This kind of gives them a bit of life then I can see if I want to progress with them. I guess I'm also hoping that first friends and family and then eventually complete strangers will take some interest and leave a little feedback.

Of course I'll also use this blog as a sounding board to rant, vent, ponder, reminicse, pontificate and to sometimes just post "Balls" in big bold letters.

I'm still trying to figure out all of the nuances involved with blogging and posting links to music so the first few posts will be trial and error. Anyway here's the first post and a link to an older song that I wrote under the Some Herd Antics moniker.

CLIMB