From The Gut
Daniel Hutchens On His Love Songs For Losers And Bloodkin’s Back Pages
originally published May 16, 2007
Traci Markle
Daniel Hutchens
Daniel Hutchens’ 2006 solo release may be called Love Songs For Losers, but the collection of shadowy ghost songs and unfiltered rock and roll is a safe bet for the most striking collection of songs from Hutchens thus far. The Chase Park Transduction sessions inspired, among others, songs about reincarnation, birth with eventual death and the significance of blood - the hardcore stuff, y'know, no songs about finding your angry inner man-child here.
As for Hutchens’ primary gig in Bloodkin, the indestructible foursome has been digging through the archives for what sounds like one mother of a box set featuring unreleased sessions, demos and live cuts spanning the local band’s entire near-20 year run. Plus, both Bloodkin and Hutchens recently entered the realm of iTunes, where downloaders can now snag copies of hard-to-find earlier releases like Creeperweed as well as 1999’s excellent Out of State Plates. The complete online catalog is up at both www.bloodkin.net and www.danielhutchens.com.
Flagpole recently touched base with Hutchens to discuss the solo album, Bloodkin and more.
- Flagpole
- Describe the recording process ofLove Songs For Losers. It has a very low-key, live-in-the-room feel that sometimes sneaks up on you. Everything isn't totally mapped out before the first chorus or refrain arrives.
- Daniel Hutchens
- I did demos out in Colorado, mostly up in Keystone, where my wife and I spent the winter. In April, 2006, I came back to Athens and did the actual record at Chase Park Transduction with David Barbe producing. He’s become a true collaborator on my music. I've done six records in a row with him now, counting both Bloodkin and solo projects. Aside from producing, he always plays various instruments - drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion, you name it.
- The actual recording process on this record consisted of me sitting down and playing the song first, just recording my vocal and guitar. Then we'd dub everything else on top, including drums, which isn’t an easy thing to do, really. In this case, it just felt right, since we were building the sound around the core of my acoustic guitar and voice. The exceptions to that rule are “Blood From the Rock” and “Rock Back Home.” I know, that’s two songs with “rock” in the titles - forgive me! Anyway, on those two, we just set up in the big main room at Chase Park, the whole band, and let the songs rip kinda Crazy Horse-style.
- Flagpole
- Who are some of the other folks involved with the record - putting it together and playing on it?
- Daniel Hutchens
- Justin Gage, who released the record on his Autumn Tone label, has been a Bloodkin fan for several years, and it was his encouragement that got this whole project rolling. Eric Martinez, who lives in Denver, also plays on most of the record. He engineered the demos, and in general just kicked me in the ass and got me working. So he and Justin really made Love Songs… happen. Eric Carter plays some guitar, David Nickel plays bass on two songs, Paul "Crumpy" Edwards plays bass on one and Barbe plays bass on the others. Todd Nance [of Widespread Panic] and Aaron Phillips [of Barbara Cue] play drums on various songs and John Neff plays pedal steel on one.
- Flagpole
- Did you have any sort of overall character or subject theme in mind to tie the whole thing together, or is it just coincidence that each track seems to lead you into the next?
- Daniel Hutchens
- The album definitely has a kind of theme, or at least mood or feel to it, that basically involves a kind of spiritual struggle also involving romantic love and loss. I guess I’d have to say the theme has to do with clawing your way back up from the bottom after a long, dark period of self-destructive behavior.
- Daniel Hutchens
- In the liner notes, I said, “Losers need music most of all,” and I guess there's a kind of time traveling element to the lyrics, as well. “Underground Cafe 1923” is the most obvious example, presenting the idea of running into a spirit you've known through different lifetimes, or at least you feel that way.
- Flagpole
- It’s not a concept album or song cycle, really, but the separate parts do fit together noticeably well in forming the whole.
- Daniel Hutchens
- But when I actually write, I don't map it out quite so consciously. I tend to just feel it more than think it, at least as much as I can, just get the brain and the ego out of the way to an extent, and then maybe the themes are being molded and colored subconsciously. Hopefully, they just come spilling out when they’re ready. I tend to look at the work afterwards and only then really figure out what it's all about!
- Flagpole
- Other than the thematic elements, what do you think sets these new songs apart from your work with Bloodkin?
- Daniel Hutchens
- I think what separates the solo albums is that they're entirely constructed around the song selection, meaning that the songs are a little more like chapters in a novel. With the Bloodkin records, the songs that wind up on the records tend to be, simply, the ones that the band is playing best at the moment. It's a little bit more about the sound of the whole band. Of course, at the end of the day, Bloodkin records and Daniel Hutchens records probably have more similarities than differences.
- Flagpole
- What’s the current status of the discussed Bloodkin rarities collection? Sounds like a pretty thorough trip through the vaults. Are we to expect it soon?
- Daniel Hutchens
- It’s almost finished, and we hope to release it in some form this winter, but there's no hard date yet. It's a compilation of unreleased material, some home recordings, four-track cassette stuff, pretty low tech, and some of it consists of “pro studio quality” outtakes from our records, or whole studio sessions that didn't wind up getting released for one reason or another. There are tracks we did with John Keane, David Barbe, Johnny Sandlin and several others.
- The working title is Unreleased Bloodkin Recordings 1988–2007, and it's basically a box set. At the moment, it stands to include seven discs, about 130 songs, plus a DVD of concert footage and interviews, a book of liner notes and band history, photos, etc. In a way, I consider it our biggest and most important piece of work, because it’s really a life's work.
WHO: Bloodkin, The Bros. Marler, Part Bear
WHERE: Nuçi's Space
WHEN: Friday, May 18, 9 p.m.
HOW MUCH: $5
You Won’t Forget
Brent Best's Songwriting Provides Continuity From Slobberbone To The Drams
originally published May 16, 2007
The Drams
For more than 10 years, Brent Best (vocals, guitar), Jess Barr (lead guitar) and Tony Harper (drums) incessantly toured the country as the hard-hitting, hard-living alt-country act Slobberbone, garnering a rabid base of fans, a mention in the Stephen King/ Peter Straub novel Black House, and the ultimate compliment from the late novelist Larry Brown, who described them as “probably the best rock and roll band I’ve ever heard.”
Still, all good things must come to an end, and so it was with Slobberbone. Brent Best maps the band’s demise thusly: “Our bass player [Brian Lane] moved to Florida and got married. We’d always said that once anyone left, we wouldn’t call it Slobberbone anymore, we’d just call it quits.”
For about a year and a half, Best toured solo. That ended in 2005, when he found out that he was scheduled to play at South by Southwest, not in a singer-songwriter showcase, but wedged between full live bands. He decided to put one together, roping in Slobberbone’s Barr and Harper, in addition to old friends Keith Killoren (bass, vocals) and Chad Stockslager (keyboards, vocals) of Denton band Budapest One, whose albums Best had produced. The lineup worked and The Drams came into being.
Last summer, The Drams released their debut Jubilee Dive, which they recorded with Best’s old friend Matt Pence of Tex-Mex soundscape band Centro-Matic. “I’ve known Matt for a long time. We used to be in a band together," says Best. "I’d recorded some demos with Matt, and when the time came to record an album, we went into the studio. Matt’s a savant in the studio in terms of engineering. We’ll probably work on our next album with him… it’s a good fit.”
The Drams have received a lot of praise for Jubilee Dive, a solid rock album that soars with three-part vocal harmonies and the addition of keyboards. Best says he doesn’t find The Drams very different from Slobberbone, but “we’ve had hardcore fans who have followed us for years, so the little differences seem magnified. I write the same way. I do have other people singing with me, and with Chad on keyboards, the instrumentation is more filled out. To me, one more person in the band just means it’s extra stinky and that there’s less room in the van.”
As far as writing processes go, Best also says he's stuck with what's worked. “The best tunes end up writing themselves. Sometimes I hear the melody attached to words that I may not understand until I finish writing the song," he says. "I find the best way that songs come to me is in the moments before I fall completely asleep, around 5 a.m. I have to get up and record it or write it down. Sometimes I don’t, then I’ll wake up and not remember anything… Sometimes a phrase comes attached with melody and I don’t know why. At some point, it finishes itself. Patterson [Hood of the Drive-by Truckers] and I have talked about this, and it might sound all flighty and zen, but the way the best songs happen has less to do with sitting down and writing songs and more about being ready to take it when one comes.”
Unlike his buddy Hood, Best “didn’t come from a musical family. I only had a few records when I was a kid. My dad bought me Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings records to play. They meant a lot to me because my dad had bought them for me, but I didn’t realize 'til years later the impact they had on me. I began listening to a lot of hard rock, the Replacements and Hüsker Dü, and that’s really where I found my place in terms of wanting to pick up a guitar and play the loud, feedback-y distorted post-punk punk stuff. Later on, the music I played was a reflection of the punk stuff I liked and the country I grew up on, as well the bluegrass my parents listened to.”
In between tours, Best is working on recording and producing bands from Denton and elsewhere. The Drams will be on hiatus this coming fall - drummer Tony Harper’s wife is expecting a baby in September. Best says the band will probably begin work on a new record soon.
Best’s newest release is a song for a compilation CD out earlier this month featuring several other artists, including Vic Chesnutt, Alejandro Escovedo and Robert Earl Keen, honoring author Larry Brown, who passed away in 2004. Recently, they gathered in Oxford, MS, to pay tribute to Brown at the Oxford Conference of the Book, playing a show in his memory. In the liner notes of Just One More: A Tribute to Larry Brown, Best recounts Brown as being "one of the biggest single influences on the songs I was writing after finding his work and, most importantly now to me, he became my friend."
WHO: Southern Bitch, The Drams
WHERE: Tasty World
WHEN: Friday, May 18
HOW MUCH: $5
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