Kevin Salem

[kevinsalem]

Citizen Cope, live to 2-track

[kevinsalem]

Aster Aweke - You/Sweet

  when i first met aster aweke in 1997, i asked her how famous she was in her ethiopian homeland. i wanted her to put it in terms i could understand, to give me an analogue from american pop culture. "madonna? maybe michael jackson?," she said. she told me that, to have dinner in a restaurant back home, she would have to have the whole place locked down and even then, people would end up lining the block surrounding the eatery. aster was famous for the music made in her native language. though she had tried an album of songs sung in english just a few years prior, the result was mostly considered unremarkable.

aster was introduced to me by tarka's father, denny cordell, and his business partner, kate hyman (later to become my partner/baby mama). as i mentioned in the lovely new york post, denny had offered me a publishing deal. denny and kate asked me to try writing some english songs with aster. showing up at kate's loft with a mini casio keyboard, she would hit the autochord/cheesy rhythm button and against this monochromatic mess of root-third-fifth-foxtrot, and sing a melody in linear fashion; no note value, just straight quarter notes with no inflection, no rests. it was more amusing and endearing than worrisome, and i made some cassette recordings of her doing this (which i would KILL to be able to find now) and retreated to park slope to try and unravel and re-weave these long threads of melody. aster would come around from time to time until we had five or so songs to cut. 

aster is a brilliant woman who lived, at the time, in pasadena with her extended family. while her grasp of english was okay for most parts of life, in terms of understanding colloquialism and the meter of american speech, it was difficult. but having grown up idolizing aretha franklin and the beatles, her ability to interpret melody and craft her broken english into what can only be described as soul music was kind of breathtaking.

when we spoke about ethiopia, there was a wistfulness in aster's voice. she was so famous as an artist that she had, against her will, become a political figure. it was a nuisance and a heartache that made it impossible to travel there without being incognito and the disconnection that came with this misunderstanding created a longing in her. sweet came about as a result of this conversation. 

in 1998, when we recorded and wrote, i was working almost every day at dessau recording  in way lower manhattan. it was one of the first studios i tracked in when i moved to new york and, over the years, i had become--- and still am--- quite friendly with brian kelly, the owner. my own band at the time, rich mercurio on drums, scott yoder on bass and rob arthur on keys, were frequently in the room with me there, and we made a ton of recordings just for the love of recording. it was a time when we were all weaning ourselves off 2" tape and learning to deal with the tools that we take for granted now. as flawed as the demo is, there is no denying the over-the-top passion in aster's vocal. i remember thinking--- in fact on both of these tracks--- that it was almost pointless to take an instrumental section after aster's singing and do what one is supposed to do with it, namely, take over for the voice. hence the shy playing and even more timid mix of the twangy guitars.

you was an entirely different story. tmf was a newish studio on 12th street, and i was doing more and more work there. we cut a few tracks live with charley drayton on drums, oren bloedow on bass and rob and i, again, on keys and guitar. the song had actually been written years earlier by aster and an unknown (to me) collaborator in london. it was one of four tracks we cut in an afternoon. when it was time for aster to sing, i stood in front of her and conducted her because, as i had said earlier, she just did not have a natural grasp of american music time. you can hear false starts and little gasps in the vocal as she tries to follow my direction, to find the phrasing. even those are musical coming from her. this vocal is constructed like a sermon, full of promise and peaks and lulls until the final payoff in the last verse. i had no tolerance, in 1998, for 'pop' music, hence the length and the demand for patience in the production. again, in this rough mix, the electric guitar shrinks instead of shining, something i would probably not do now.

after these adventures with aster, she went back to doing ethiopian music, and i cut an album with her as guitarist/engineer/mixer. i didn't understand the harmony, the meter, or the language that the producer and the musicians were speaking, nor did i read music, so even the american horn section were beyond the scope of my understanding, except when they asked for the menu book. i recall asking the producer to give me a frame of reference for the guitar, something that would help me give hime what he expected. he answered, simply,'larry carlton.' to this, i could only cock my head like a dog hearing a weird squeal.

[kevinsalem]

Tarka-Lovely New York/Shelter You

september has been a beautiful rush. it hasn't been the upstate fall, the wistful end of summer that is even more bittersweet now, somehow, than it was when i was schoolboy, the adrenalized onslaught of political  mis-, dis- and over-information that lends unnecessary validation to my liberal instincts. it hasn't been the awesome shows at rockwood with rachael yamagata and various other friends... it's been the after-show soirees at one of my favorite old east village bars, 2a, that have reinvigorated me. it'd been many years since i'd been there, but, along with the blue and gold on st. marks (the only bar i've ever been thrown out of) and 7a, it had been the site of many epic nights out.

if new york is the giant haystack, the east village and her bars are, for musicians, where more needles are found by accident than anywhere on earth. on any given night, you might meet charlie rose and russell simmons in one bar, quentin tarantino in another, musicians galore, ex- and future lovers, or the one openly gay kid from your hometown, hick town high school that you thought you'd never see again. though i didn't have an apartment in the east village until 1997, my creative life before then was centered there. once you live in new york as an artist, you are in love. there are very few places on earth more inspired and inspiring, very few places where you're likely to meet as many people with whom you'll share the experience of common creativity, and there is no place--- no place on earth--- that embodies rock and roll as life more than the east village.

the point of this isn't to wax on about new york. you get it. i love new york. a lot. but it's the opening i have found to introduce/remember tarka cordell. tarka's father, denny, was a legendary producer and a &r person, responsible in one form or another for procol harum, bob marley, the cranberries, tom petty and a whole line of other superstars. denny died in 1995. i had met him briefly a few times and, at one point, considered signing a publishing deal with him. i met his son after his death. he was introduced to me as an aspiring artist, an irish expat living in lower manhattan, a trust funded model, musician, scenester, race horse owner, and godson of keith richards. i basically told him that, when he had songs, he was welcome to come upstate and record. it would be a couple years before he took me up on the offer, but he eventually showed up with the song 'shelter you,' inspired (at least in title) by his father's record label, shelter records. we cut the song in the midst of a mild emmitt rhodes and beatles obsession, and i can hear that now, and we cut it as a trio, i think, with tarka's musical sidekick, matt dublin, later of new york's ambulance.

still not the point, though. i told tarka to come back with more songs. and he did. lots of them. the recordings we made were the perfect first album, in that they showed an artist who could not help the compulsion to make music. we cut a dozen songs with a rhythm section in bearsville's studio 'a' just before it closed, and continued on with the tracks in my barn.

the thing about working with the children of famous people is that a lot of them are severely scarred by the combination of their own adoration for their famous parent and what is usually an insensitivity on the part of said parent to the burden of living in the shadow of a publicly adored superstar. inside, tarka was never sure he could live up to the expectations he had placed upon himself to meet the standard he had set based on his father's work. he said as much in occasional drunken conversation. but, for the months that we worked cutting these tracks, tarka and matt ran on pure inspiration. matt's presence was important for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was his fulfillment of his role as half of the classic rock and roll duology: there must be someone who can stand up for everyone that can function as a fuckup. he was mick to tarka's keith, paul to tarka's john, with plenty of soul of his own, but able to add the craft to the art where needed. they churned out tons of great rock and roll in those months, and we captured it all.

now to the point, and back to new york and my love of it. tarka mentioned that he had previously cut a couple songs in los angeles, and could i listen to them. one of those songs, lovely new york, just tore my head off. tarka cordell had written the most adoring homage to the new york that i loved, the new york of needles in haystacks and east village pharmacies, candy stores and bars. every image is evocative and drenched in attitude; 'iggy still lives here'? i mean, come on. we kept a couple of the basic tracks, recut vocals, bass, some guitars and piano, and it's presented here in the form we left it in.

ultimately, tarka, the boy who had everything--- looks, money, talent--- hanged himself in his london flat. his album never came out, though his brother barney is trying to release it. after our sessions, which i felt made a beautiful record, tarka continued searching for something to add to it. i am not one who believes that perfection or commercialism could ever trump the notion of 'record,' meaning a true record of a point in time, as a metric for determining the goodness or greatness of an album. and this song is part of a great album by a beautiful man who, for one reason or another, in the words of neil young, 'tried to do his best, but he could not.' i hope you get to hear it some time...

[kevinsalem]

Citizen Cope-Officer Friendly

https://soundcloud.com/kevinsalem/officer-friendly

twice, maybe three times, in my life, i have heard something and been absolutely certain it would be huge. the first time i heard nirvana, there was no doubt. they were just overpoweringly great on every musical level, and shot an arrow directly into the heart of their culture to boot. the next time was when i heard scarce, a band from providence, rhode island who probably would have been wildly popular but for a series of heartbreaking misfortunes, one of which might have been having me produce their big label debut (more on that in another post). it was a few years before i got that feeling again.

roger cramer, who managed lisa loeb and soul coughing, told me he had an artist, citizen cope, that he wanted me to hear. this artist, he said, had finished a record that was great, but that the label wanted some changes. he played me '$200,000,' and my jaw hit the floor. everything else he played from the record was, likewise, shockingly fresh, though in various states of 'polished,' ranging from beautifully shambolic to simply powerful to dead on the table, killed in the act of trying to make a major label debut. the mission, according to roger, kim buie and marshall altman (cope's a&r team at capitol) was to re-cut $200,000 and somehow coax cope into writing a bridge for another song, southern avenue. it is not unimportant to the story that, at this point in my career, the notion that i would be the one to hire to do the singles for an album with this much hope and corporate money invested in it was... novel. marshall, i think, knew and liked my first record, and roger knew me personally... pretty thin evidence for the hire. in some ways, i was brought on as a secret writer, charged with pulling the bridge out of cope without browbeating him, otherwise spooking him, or even having it be my idea.

cope was a complicated character. he was, in many ways, as complicated as you would expect someone with his talent to be. he was also as simple as you would expect a kid named clarence greenwood from lubbock, texas to be. somewhere between his musical alma mater, basehead, and bill withers was his home turf. the first time we met, after talking on the phone a few times, he came to my place. i remember being shocked by his appearance. i don't know what i expected, but based on his music, i didn't expect to see a guy that looked like he belonged on the cover of gq with perfect hair and respectable clothes. i have no idea who taught cope how to play guitar, but they were unorthodox as fuck. i know a shitload of ways to tune a guitar, but i never saw anything like the fucking trainwreck of a tuning that cope used. i don't even recall the particulars of it, but i do remember that, in that tuning, it was almost impossible to get music from the instrument... except when he played it. he had a touch like an arthritic old blues guy from memphis. the only other 'young' guy i'd ever seen with that kind of feel was, ironically, alex chilton. but this was a really exceptional dude, a great poet, amazing singer, just right for the world in 1997, and a big time pothead. one minute, he'd be grumbling about deserving a better hotel room, making me want to cut off my own head so i didn't have to listen to another fucking word about it.  the next, he'd be grinning on the couch at the back of the control room, showing approval for my work by chanting 'george martin, george martin...,' just warming my heart.

i really liked the first chocolate genius record, black music, so i hired the backing band from those sessions, chris wood on bass, john medeski on keys and abe laboriel, jr on drums. we had one day to cut at least two songs (four, in real life), and a day to overdub. i also brought al kooper in on the second day to play b3. we cut 200,000, southern avenue, and shotguns. cope loved officer friendly, and i was open to cutting it but not particularly enthusiastic about diluting the main mission. my basic philosophy in the studio is that the band have to know the heart of the song before they can track it, lest they end up playing chord changes and a groove--- competence and nothing else. usually, i like to just gather people around the singer and have them listen and play quietly until they really know what the song means. being no ordinary band, i had tape rolling as they learned officer friendly. i remember having dave voigt, who cut the tracks with me, rolling mics hurriedly into place when i heard the first note. this recording is live, direct to 2-track, vocal, mix and all. this is a master songwriter and three stunning musicians, learning a song together. we never looked at the song again because any attempt to make it the pop song we all thought it was intended to be would have been an exercise in defeat, hours of getting our heads stuck up our asses, hours trying to pull them out. at the time, i thought that kim buie and marshall altman would either erase my number from their rolodexes or realize that, in addition to the record they knew they were looking for, i might have stumbled onto the one they didn't know existed.

to their unbelievable credit--- and i really did not believe it--- marshall, kim, roger and cope decided to have me finish the record, tweak the other tracks and mix what we had done. i was in los angeles, preparing to return to new york, when roger called and told me that. i was ecstatic. by the time i landed at jfk, like eight hours later, cope had been dropped by capitol, owing, i think, to his general disagreeability and cantankerousness when it came to the label, and the already bloated budget. we went on to do a little more work together as he drifted between deals, but fell out of touch. cope has been through a couple labels and has a great career, though not as explosive as i think it would have been had that first record been finished and released in 1997, when we made it. thank god for car commercials, though.

[kevinsalem]

Nikki Sudden-Happy Birthday

maybe 8 years ago, one of my favorite songwriters, nikki sudden, ended up at my house around christmas time. i can't remember how that happened, but i feel like it had something to do with a mercury rev connection. i had met him very briefly once or twice before. anyhow, he stayed for a few days. very polite guy. good drinker, lotsa cologne, always wore a suit to dinner. one night, he told me he had finally written the song that was going to make him rich. i took him out to the studio, didn't have to coax him too hard. he and i played guitar, he sang, i played bass, piano and my daughter's plastic toy trumpet. my dear friend tarka cordell was there also, so we all sang a little. 

nikki was a funny guy. for whatever reputation he had, he was pretty tender, not at all the undergrounder he was perceived as. i saw him once at cbgb's. the place was nearly empty, god knows why. someone shouted for a swell maps song and nikki replied,'the swell maps are dead, baby. like me.' when he's eating christmas pudding at your table, all that kind of cool is a million miles away. in fact, the last time i saw him play live was opening for mercury rev at irving plaza. they were at the height of their superpowers, around the time of deserters songs. he looked like a little boy on stage, playing solo. but he won. the audience heeled. rough as his presentation was, there was no way to hide his ability to write from his heart. tarka and nikki are both gone, sadly. this is probably the only place you'll hear this. i think it's fascinating to get insight into what a brilliant writer like nikki thought a wildly commercial song sounded like. enjoy...

[kevinsalem]

Barry Reynolds-Sunday Best

i was always a huge marianne faithfull fan. the night before i moved from boston to new york, i saw her at the paradise, duo with barry reynolds. to be a marianne fan, you have to be a barry reynolds fan. besides writing and playing some of the coolest guitar ever on broken english, he did amazing shit with grace jones and half the rest of the island records roster. 

in '95, i was on the road non-stop, touring soma city, and rarely had a couple days off in new york. on one of my stops home, a mutual friend told me i had a dinner engagement at acme in the east village. i had no idea who my 'date' was to be. when i showed up, i found marianne waiting for me. slightly intimidated at first, i cleared my head of the mars bar image and settled in to a lovely evening. eventually, we talked about me writing a song with her. her idea of co-writing: "dahling... you will sit in the living room and write me a song. i will roast a chicken or something, and occasionally stroll through the room." me: "don't you want to write with me." she: "dahling... that IS me writing. don't you know i'm a muse?"

a couple years later, like '98 or '99, i met barry and we started having afternoon jams at my hovel in brooklyn. barry is a deadly serious talent with one of the sharpest senses of humor on the planet. he arrived at my apartment with the blonde cutaway guild i had seen him playing at the paradise in 1990. he is a player's player who picked up the guitar so he could write. if he's making a sound, he's writing. there is no noodling, yet no reverence for music or anything else. this was the first song we wrote, definitely with marianne in mind, though at that point, barry and marianne's relationship was in a complicated state. there is a common dynamic in bands between songwriting guitarists and singers, whether it's a garage band from bumfuck, pennsylvania, the rolling stones or marianne faithfull. i never played it for marianne, and i doubt barry did, but i cut a version with jenni muldaur a few years later. nothing will top this vocal by barry, though. or the perfectly timed nypd siren in the second verse.

last year, i did some music for my friend Edie Meidav's novel, Lola, California (conveniently, just out in paperback and reviewed here) and included this as a giveaway.