Taco Tapes comes to you as it came to us -- uninhibited, present in the now. Common music industry practice can bog an album down for years in a mire of edits, overdubs, recording sessions. Some of these songs are decades old, but they were recorded less than a month ago.
A team of individuals at the height of their powers arranged, sang, played, mixed and mastered these in a stream of consciousness style, a single take shot. You are hearing fresh-folk, spirited covers, and tuned up & turned on traditional, as if you were in the room.
The setting, for reference: a small idyllic home on a sprawling property in a northwest corner of the pacific northwest. Between a deep creek, ‘neath towering firs. Evening brings the smell of changing tides. Some days the sun peeks out below the escarpment of low hanging clouds. For a minute the majestic olympic mountains reflect in the still waters of Hood Canal.
The Folks:
Jeremy James Meyer --a musician and a carpenter, our resident tool-belt-troubadour, the Corvallis kid.
Ben Walden -- a wizard of melody, master of all things stringed, the original Moscow-mule, the crowd pleaser, clutch session player.
Also -
Joe Hein -- a recent transplant to one of the nearby islands, capable of psychedelic transport through music, helming the pump organ here.
Alan Jones -- Producer. Providing socially distanced mixing sessions down a steep dirt road, album intro and outro, and a safe studio with a view for critiquing, and mixing, what is essentially a field recording. Mastering engineer with porcelain ears, extracting the spirit of the sound from these recordings without losing the room, the mistakes, or the humanity in them.
Woodshedders, all, songwriters of the highest order. Bearers of the folk tradition.
During the pandemic of 2020 they find themselves holed up, and do what they know how.
I started getting strange texts:
“Do you have an accordion?”,“Need more drone”, “We have an album.”
The Songs:
Sail Away Ladies: A traditional. Perhaps the best known version is the earliest known recorded one: Uncle Bunt Stephens’ version on Harry Smith’s Anthology Of American Folk Music. Another of our favorite uncles, Uncle Dave Macon recorded an even wilder version of the fiddle tune one year later and it’s tenure as a traditional was sealed. Don’t try to make too much sense of it, the lyrics change throughout history, and were probably lost in translation, and transit, from the Scottish Highlands to the Appalachian Mountains.
Cold and Frosty Morning: A traditional. Often found as “Cold, Frosty Morning”, and often associated with a late 1700s war in Scotland. Purists tend to ignore that this is also the tune, and has in its title the lyrics from a song every child knows; “here we go round the mulberry bush”. Serious dirge? Rollicking fun? Dark past? Childhood game? You decide.
Melinda: Deep, deep down in disc three of Tom Petty’s Live Anthology is he and Benmont Tench’s only released recording of the Tom Petty song “Melinda”. Tench executes a piano solo that obliterates reality as the people of UNO Lakefront Arena New Orleans knew it when they walked in that August night in 2003. Petty stretches the ballad of zeal for over 8 minutes. Benmont Tench was unavailable to recreate the piano solo, but Ben Walden brings a mesmerizing mandolin to this.
Whisky For Breakfast: A version of “Whiskey Before Breakfast”, sans lyrics, still drinking whiskey. The usual suspects show up when you begin to research this song, “Ireland”, “Scotland”, but in reality it’s most likely a 50s Acadian fiddle tune (of course developed from other tunes, stretching back as far as music). Famed American guitar player Norman Blake named his fifth album Whiskey Before Breakfast, but didn’t include the song on the album. Whisky, indeed.
Wishful Thinking: A cover of an Owen Cook song. Jeremy James Meyer and Owen Cook lived and busked together on the streets of New Orleans. Cook wrote this love (?) song during a trying time, but all times seem to be good for Owen Cook to write songs. Jeremy does it justice here, and we’re all excited for Owen to hear it.
Penny Down The Drain: a Rosalind Bay / Ben Walden co-write, everyone who hears it loves it. The album single.
Blue Tooth Skip: a Ben Walden new-traditional. This guy is a genius.
Black Widow: A cover of a Michelle Shocked song, from her second album Short Sharp Shocked in 1988. There are so many characters in this song, including the instruments. You can literally feel Ben Walden’s pump organ intensifying as the song goes on.
The Fool: Jeremy James Meyer is a Jerry Jeff Walker style songwriter, capable of filling songs with the human condition. A drinking song can be a love song, too.
The Blackest Crow: a traditional tear-jerker rendered here by Jeremy James Meyer as the nine minute album closer. Recorded history stretches back to Tommy Jarrell’s teaching and recording of the song. Carl Sandburg helped preserve the song (under an alternate title The Lover’s Lament) by including it in his The American Songbag Collection. The most popular modern versions are by Tim O’Brien and Bruce Molsky. This song could be as old as the American Civil War and was popularized in the Appalachian mountains as a fiddle and banjo tune.
With great precaution masked mixing sessions began immediately at the mastering studio down the road. The seasoned artists all courteously and kindly checking in with one another at every suggestion or stopping point. Acoustic engineer Alan Jones of Laminal Audio provided a gentle touch, preserving the cinema verite of it all. The finished product was run through ½” tape, giving it back the warmth of the hearth it was recorded next to. In keeping with the theme AST Records received the recordings and immediately handed them over for production. Sometimes the season changes. Sometimes it changes you. Rarely, you get your own chance to herald the change.
Taco Tapes “Penny Down The Drain” arrives on December 21st. Auspiciously, at winter solstice. Taco Tapes is out in full on the first full moon of the new year, and will be available on limited edition cassette from American Standard Time Records.
