THE EVASION BAND

On Sunday, Max played Dylan some James Rabbit songs and he seemed genuinely interested and excited. Marveling at the number of albums in folder after folder, he asked what we did with the albums when we were done with them:
"I hand it out to the people I'd been avoiding while I'd been doing the album"
This was especially true in the last years of high school and the first years of college, where James Rabbit would be my ticket out of having to do anything with anybody. Instead of hanging out with the gang at the coffee hut, I'd write songs about murderers and terrorists and bring a stack of CDs to school on Monday. But in the last few years it has blossomed into a full-blown obsession. This summer for example, you probably went to the beach in a swimsuit or got drunk with your friends in your sister's attic or drove a car to a Dam or Levy or played acoustic guitar for a room full of open mic nighters. This summer I sat in my backroom and did overdubs. It wasn't even an option to hang out with anybody. And things are at the point where I don't have anybody to get the albums out to. Now, don't get me wrong, there's no lack of people to talk to or spend time with; its just that now, as my life has metamorphosized, James Rabbit has become a secret.

I try to avoid talking to James Rabbit with people in day-to-day conversation because it seems like a topic that could un-endear me to someone really quickly. Its like certain people with politics or baseball, they could go on about it forever and never know that you weren't interested or notice that you have started to hate them. If you ever see the Artillery documentary, if Sterling ever finishes it, which he won't, so you won't, there's tapes and tapes full of him interviewing me and me talking about one million aspects of the band, from how I judge the 'session musicians' to the cover art, to the infinity reasons I have for not playing shows. If someone asks me a question about James Rabbit I just kind of picture it as an interview - and that during that interview I have to get the most mileage out of my answers, because this may be the only press I get. I get really into it and would probably end up sitting down with them and making them listen to five or six of my albums - in less of a 'here's my masterpiece' way and more like 'this is what I did in high school in lieu of girlfriends' kind of way- and so it doesn't happen. Not even my housemates know of the band or have heard it.

But for some reason, I go about my life expecting people to just KNOW. Like they just know about Columbus discovering America or how McDonalds is bad for you, its common knowledge. I'm delusional in the lamest way. At my most pathetic times I think of myself as someone like Lee Hazelwood or Harry Belafonte or David Bowie or someone whose released a zillion albums and is just kind of resting on their laurels, showing up at premieres and galas, and wondering why my housemates don't compliment me on "Vertigo Agogo" or "Sad Sad Coral Sea" more often. This would be okay if I hadn't actually recorded a zillion albums, if I was just playing a practical joke on people, at least mentally. But in my mind, I'm a sixty year old former superstar of the 60s, living off of the royalties of songs like "Pythagoras Love Triangle" and "The Ressurection of Al Capone", maybe releasing an album every once in a while so I can go promote it on Oprah. These things that I think, they are not real. And while the music that we make is not terrible, and certainly good, it is nowhere near the lofty things I think of us, no pulitzer prizes, no Genius awards.

These last six months have been chock full of musical doubts, and so it continues. In July or August, when I had Continental waving the white 'I'm done' flag, and passing out the first singles, I mailed a (very) few off to only close friends and got the most devestating reactions, which I dasn't try and remember. I became furious at my brother and at myself and at everything - we had set off on the most disasterous crusade ever, to ressurect college-failures-ourselves as the Love Drums Cavalry but came back only with sagging flags and unbloodied swords. You know that already though, and its up to us, in the less glorious moments of our history, to at least document this attempt and fucking release the album. So when the babe finally emerges from its too-long stay in the maternity ward of St. Martin hospital, we'll pass out flat, donut-like cigars to everybody. Its a boy.

And I have no idea when we'll practice. James Rabbit, by the way, has never had a band practice, we have 1-2 person rehearsals-for-recording that go like 'okay, its G, A minor, C' 'how do you want me to play it?' 'play it anyway but the way you just now played it... and we're rolling!'. And if more than one instrument is being played at a time, its either an accident or its just to test out some theory like "will this cowbell work with this tamborine part?' And I don't know when we'll get a guitarist, though I suppose that would probably come with practicing. I don't know if we'll ever be a band. I live and work in this Santa Cruz town and may be about to sign a lease that may trap me here until September and I don't want to practice songs that I don't care about any more.

Its important to note that I don't care about these songs after I release them out into the world. Or release them out into my backyard or wherever I abandon them to, I'm like a sea turtle or a seahorse or some sort of sea animal that spends a little bit of time with their young and then moves on to more pregnancies. And yes, its tragic that most of them get swallowed up by the food chain or die of broken hearts or obsolecence, but maybe one or two will survive to adulthood, and if even one or two get through, then the process of procreation is a success and the James Rabbit name will live on. Unfortunately, it will live on in the form of a young sea creature, who nobody takes seriously, except for Greenpeace. And seriously, fuck those hippies.

- Tyler Martin

Oh, Brick Wall - There's Last Fall

Went to Fresno over the thanksgiving holiday and Conner and I recorded the rhythm tracks for four of the songs set to appear on Cavalier, "Off The Radar", "Don't Sleep", "Dancing On Air", and "Last Night All The Love Got Out". We did significant work on "Dancing On Air" (or should I say Spring Breakdown part two!) and got most of the musical backing done on "Off The Radar". Max and Dylan (from Penguin League/Antarctica Takes It) came over today and recorded some percussion and singing for a few of the songs.

Antarctica Takes It, a band that I play trumpet and keyboard in, played two shows on Saturday Night. We played one at Tokyo Gardens and it was very refreshing. Previously all of my experiences with Fresno shows have been a kind of sink-or-swim kind of thing, where we'd just be thrown up onto a makeshift stage with one microphone and have to make do with what we had. The leader of the band Rademacher, whose name was Mike, lent us microphones and amplifiers and did sound for us. Grayson said the sound was bad, but we compensated very well, "its like a cake that bakes itself... or a tourist that crawls INTO your room". We then played a party full of basement and kids and huddled in a corner and I trumpeted my way into a new century, "Trumpet Century Alpha".

We also didn't finish mixing Continental.

Baby, how can you be sleeping when you know that I'm awake?

Today I got Richard And Linda Thompson's Pour Down Like Silver and Randy Newman's 12 Songs. Richard and Linda Thompson's album has some nice, depressing songs and a few really cool guitar parts, but their voices are not very strong and the melodies don't really carry the material very well. As the first song went into the chorus I was filled with a feeling of dread that they would not be able to 'seal the deal' so to speak. The chorus, which is a pretty good chorus, just slumped over and died as it stood, (or rather, lumped over in its easy chair). The addition of some weak-ass accordion didn't help at all. I don't mind accordions, I just mind it when they are weak-ass. For me a lot of songs have to have that "OH FUCK!" moment, or else they are just words and chords. And this is kind of how it went with these two. Maybe I can musically describe it later when I learn about music.

But Randy Newman's 12 Songs is the SHIT. Kind of. He's so damn clever and such a good lyricist, sometimes though the music muddles the intent of the words, but most of the time its nicely complimentary. Some of the lyrics are like 'I'm hiding in the bushes and watching you' or 'You were dead on the beach and I had sex with you' and others are like 'You're chinese so its okay to have a chinese wife' and 'isn't it funny that people down south like the south even though bad stuff happens down there?' but they all come together in some wonderful ironic-but-not-smug R&B tapestry that I wouldn't mind napping under. It is also short. Which is maybe one of the reasons why I like it so much. After listening to the Richard and Linda Thompson album, the album proper containing two songs over seven minutes long, and the bonus tracks extending the length to about seventy minutes, 12 Songs 29 minutes 46 seconds is mercifully -sweet lord, this seems like only ten minutes- compared to Richard and Linda Thompson who seem like they must be professors, the way they bore me.

She's Science Fiction

So I'm planning on returning home for one week in December, during which time hopefully we can record our next album Cavalier. We will have about nine days, which might be enough, if we only do ten to twelve songs we'll only need like three morning/noons for rhythm tracking and can spend the rest of the time doing overdubs. I'm cutting the tracklist down from the nineteen songs I had planned, and am getting rid of the really boring and useless ones and adding a few more killer songs. Maybe we'll set a day aside for piano recording and try and get a good piano sound this time.

One of the things I've been trying to concentrate on recently is having songs be VOCALS and DRUMS and other things. Not like a band like Weezer where the guitars are in the front of the mix and the vocals and drums are there also, but something like Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" where the whole song is VOCALS and DRUMS and some weird dolphin like keyboard sound and then as the song progresses the vocals get more layered and magnificent and the drums get more layered and apocalyptic and maybe a slight string part is added at the 3/4 mark of the song. Anyway, I'd like Cavalier to be a tribute to that kind of songcraft. Obviously we're going to be playing instruments, but we've got to make the rhythm and the voice the focus. The guitar is important as an icon, but that's all it can be for me. I wield it like I wield an Airsoft gun; with kidding purpose.

On the Fresno end, things are going well I'm told, Conner is mixing Continental mk. 3 and Max is adding parts as I remember/email them.

Rum Killed My Baby At The Boardwalk

So Continental is going to be finished and 'officially' released in a few weeks now and I'm trying to think of what exactly I should do with it. I can't send it out to any press places because the press doesn't care about your individual accomplishments, it only cares if people can buy it. We don't have a label, nor the means to make even fifty copies of an album, even if such interest existed. So I'm thinking that I'll send it off to labels and such in the hopes that it gets 'picked up' and we all of a sudden become a band that matters. I'll have to quit the job that is the best job I will ever have and find a guitarist and hit the road and get stressed out and sleep on couches and in garages and it will be the high point of my life.

Really what I want, though, is to be set up with a situation that my flaws can't possibly wreck. All the guitarists that I've either alienated or weren't good enough, all of the drum hours and keyboard riffs that could have been but I blamed other people for, I want these to all go away and for things to go perfectly forever.

This last weekend my friend wanted me to record a song for a movie that he was doing. I haven't brought any instruments up to Santa Cruz, so I went to his house equipped only with a little kids chime thing. The process of doing the song was very thrilling because I had to use things like handclaps and broken bongos to create a song, and the success that I found with limited resources made me very excited and made me believe that I can definitely do this for a living. When we were doing the album Corsair, when I wanted to use only instruments that weren't instruments (though ended up using a lot of bass and drums), it was a rush to think 'what else does this need?' and then run around the house, pick up a shovel and some pots and pans, and get back to work. So when James Rabbit does another album (the next album we are going to do is called Cavalier), I have planned for it to be more like that. Hopefully when we do it, we will have some sort of funds backing us and some sort of inkling towards how to go about making an album, so this next time it doesn't take months of us lying around wanting to be dead rather than rehearse rhythm tracks or overdub keyboards.

-JR2K5

Me, Joe Walsh, and the Sea

Right on West Cliff Drive, (ocean view and all of that) all the houses cost at least seven digits of dollars, and the people that live there watch Wheel of Fortune at night on plasma screens. A block away, they watch Star Trek and action movies on big televisions that you have to pay for a month at a time. They never have parties because they don't want their stuff to get wrecked. About three blocks away from that, on Delaware Avenue, people sit in their front rooms in comfortable and bad looking chairs and talk to their friends on the phone. There was another house on Delaware Avenue where I watched a married couple build a fence: the woman sat there and handed the husband nails.