It’s around 1:30 PM, the first day of a four-day recording session outside of Athens, Georgia. The beers, whiskey and joints have already come out… well the joints have actually been going since before I woke up this morning, and cables are being patched SLOWLY. The guitar player has brought along his 18-year-old son, Jake, who is a total sweetheart and just sits around watching us work while noodling on his guitar. The way he idolizes his dad is adorable.
Our fearless leader comes out to the kitchen from doing a scratch guitar and vocal take and says to nobody in particular “Know what that song’s about…? Sex!”
“I don’t need to hear this… “ I say, jokingly walking towards the door
“Yeah… “he continues “‘When I dive down deep’ is the line”
“Stop! I said. “We’ve got youths in the room”
“I’VE HAYYYD SEX!” Says Jake a little too loudly, a little too quickly, with an extremely earnest face, and we all bust out laughing. I can see that he’s embarrassed and I feel bad, but it’s too funny not to enjoy the moment.
We are recording in an old Baptist church that has been converted into an events center. Attached to the main room is a long library with hundreds of books categorized by subject. Upon further inspection, I realize that the subjects are all subcategories of religious books. So travel is “Travel + Jesus”, Literature is “Literature + Jesus”, etc.
My favorite find is a book called How to Stay Christian in College, which I pass around the room to everybody’s amusement. On the back, it says “Warning: College can be hazardous to your spiritual health!”
The church is on a beautiful property complete with a big farmhouse, cabins, and fishing camp setups. It’s a great spot to run around, and I get all excited to check out the trails. But along the way, I discover that some very large yellow and black spiders are taking over the property. Every 20 meters or so I run through a wall of spider webs built between the trees. Once I see the gigantic owners of these webs I start frantically clawing at my hair and clothes convinced that they must be crawling all over me. I return covered in grey webbing and small bugs that have been trapped and killed and delivered to my hair.
For four days I see no other women. The accents are thick and I have to try hard not to become imitative by accident. At night the guys smoke a lot of weed, cook steaks and play ragtime guitar on the humid farmhouse porch. “These songs just sound like the south”, one guys says, I have to agree.
One night Jake’s dad cooks up an amazing rice, chicken, and sausage dish he calls Chicken Bog. He says it’s from the outer banks of the Carolinas. “Jake’s about 70% Chicken Bog” he says. “That’s all I fed him growing up”.
“Every bhaaaate’s better than the last!” Says Jake in a slow drawl, smiling with joy.
Jake is my hero!
Kind of busy so skimmed this. Not sure what either of you mean by “Christian”. I’m a football fan, today I will worship Christian McCaffrey but will leave the game early to worship and take communion with Christisfor Kid Andersen who recently performed The 3 Kings.
Rachel Baiman— in whatever phased of sexed or spirited she as an adult chooses appears eve of Tuesday Oct 10 under an oak tree at Johnson park — I was praying about making a flyer RACHEL GETTING JOHNSON having just revisited the Anne Hathaway movie — with a giant oak perpendicular to her splay — with Roberta Lea i don’t know might take offense. Rachel is the first person to play Earthwise after previously playing nearby The Guild a $35m musical stately kubla khan pleasure dome decree —citizen Kane allusion— twice actually plus young Dubliners likewise in November— whereas there are 10 at least who did the opposite: molly tuttle, galactic, mother hips, Aj lee, Ozomatli, Charlie hunter etc.