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| Autumn Snow In Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania |
As the leaves turn color in Pennsylvania, we've been speaking with our friends and compadres from around the globe. We like to share what keeps them motivated, what makes them tick, what nostalgia is triggered by the changing season. Music, food, films, yoga positions, home remedies; all of the great condiments of life.
For our fifth fall '11 installment, we caught up with producer-engineer-musician, and sound-collector extraordinaire, Nick Krill of the Spinto Band. He has also recorded and engineered a large part of the new Lewis & Clarke record, who have contributed their autumnal musings as well.
Nick Krill / The Spinto Band:
For me, a lot of autumn is about preparation for winter. The weather starts getting colder…days shorter...trees barer...and all these things get me started preparing for the winter months. I think a lot of these preparations have to do with comfort…it gets cold…people spend more time indoors…people spend time inside coats, and inside sweaters. I guess people go in. For me all that going in is trying to move towards things that are comfortable. It is interesting that people are talking about nostalgia with autumn…it seems like comfort is a key part in all those nostalgic wistful memories. Anyhow, this preparation for winter and making sure I get comfortable seems to be the key to all my favorite things about autumn.Blankets.
Last week it started getting cold and I pulled all my blankets out of storage. Our house is an old one...and hard to heat. For the most part we just keep the heat to the point where the pipes won’t burst and get by with sweaters and space heaters. But for me…the most important thing is my blankets. I have ten blankets on my bed right now…they stack up about five or six inches total. There are so many that there is a real weight to them…when I am in bed I have this thing pushing down on me…and pushing down around the sides of me...kind of like the weight of the blankets shrink-wrap me in the bed. This to me is the perfect autumn comfort.
Chilly-Bo-Dilly.
This is a word I say when I feel cold. I made it up about a year or two ago…and now I know it is autumn when I start saying “Chilly-Bo-Dilly” more frequently. I love this word, so it is exciting
when autumn rolls around and I have more excuses to say it. You should try saying it…it is fun. I like to put a string of them together sometimes like this, “Chilly-Bo-Dilly-Oh-Chilly-Bo-
Penguin Café Orchestra.
This is a new addition to my autumn as I was just introduced to them about a month ago. I’m listening to their second album a lot right now. A lot of the songs have a nice repetitive musical line that strings throughout them. The repetition kind of can be hypnotic…and comfortable…. it kind of lulls you into listening…good for autumn if you ask me.
The smell of fireplaces.
This is the time of year when people start putting fires in their fireplaces. The smell of a fire in a fireplace is one of my favorite smells. Case closed.
Soup.
As I said before…we keep our house on the cold side, so any excuse to turn on a source of heat is exciting. I love putting a giant pot on the stove...filling it with whatever I can find in the refrigerator and cooking a soup real slow. I just stand around the stove and listen to the radio. I throw ingredients in one at a time…with long spaces in between…this give me more of an excuse to hover around the stove.
Lou Rogai / Lewis & Clarke:
I appreciate all seasons and the subtle change that occurs as one coalesces into the next. This can be seen and felt in many ways. If you love music, it can be a rich sense-memory and soundtrack for these experiences.
Delaware Water Gap is a beautiful place to be in the fall, the hills are ablaze with color, and the drop in humidity gives the atmosphere a crystal-clear quality.
But enough about the weather, here are some songs that remind me of fall. Of course to be listened to while doing fall-type things and enjoying nature, wherever you may be.
This is a track from his Inventions album. Reverb mornings of autumn days dripping echoes of reds and oranges. This LP was played in our house on Saturdays when I was a kid. Now I play it on Saturdays, as well as other days in other seasons.
I purchased the Leaves Turn Inside You album a decade ago on Sept 14th 2001. I remember that date because it was in Philadelphia three days after 9/11 and the vibe was tense. Mecca Normal opened the show. It was Unwound's last tour and the last album they made together. It was an important and significant album that fall (for obvious reasons) and many others to come, as leaves turn inside all of us.
Van does Dylan as Jagger. You can't beat this unique kaleidoscopic arrangement. It's all mood, romance, sun flare, and falling leaves.
From the Systems / Layers album. It was October and I had this on my headphones on tour in Amsterdam. We had just heard the sad news of Elliot Smith's passing and the moment burned an impression into my memory. A couple of years later I would have the great pleasure & privilege of collaborating and touring with Eve Miller (cello). This is my favorite piece of contemporary music, hands-down. Rachel's were pure.
The 'Burgers' album is one of Jorma & Jack's finest, in my opinion. In the fall of my senior year of high school, I had an after-school job helping a friend renovate an old farm house in a beautiful area now plagued by natural gas drilling. We'd crank this album (it was one of like 5 cds we had on the job) and burn on into the gorgeous twilight of the highlands.
The opening few measures, though not incredibly harmonically complex, are orchestrated in a way that they sound more intense. The first time I heard it I thought it was the most beautiful string harmonizations I have ever heard. The almost free introduction gives way to the arpeggiated cello figure with some haunting string harmony again on top of it in the violins. It is an exquisite piece of music and one of the most accessible pieces of classical quartet writing I have ever heard.
One of my favorite jazz pianists and has been since I first heard him in the early 2000's. When I was first listening to this dude play the most striking thing initially was his technical facility. He was playing tons of shit with both hands and incorporating all sorts of styles of music including an almost classical counterpoint type of thing ( see his version of 'Martha My Dear'). However , this is one of my favorite standard tunes that doesn't get played as often as it should. This is a pretty straight version and all the technical bravado is out the door and the song and melody are served throughout with understated rhythmic support. Tasteful stuff by dudes that can shred like your favorite shirtless hair metal guitarist. The overall feeling of the tune, the minor motif etc. is very autumnal, it's catchy as well.
Bach - Partita 3 Loure (For Violin in E major)
I can't really describe why it relates to autumn but it is the most incredibly beautiful piece of music I think I have ever heard that was written for one instrument. Bach seems superhuman to me. The sadness of these piece seems to present a sort of autumnal feeling to me. Not to be all depressing but the fall seems to be the end of a life cycle.
The first time I heard it was in a car in the fall and it is one of my favorite records ever. Almost every time I listen to it I hear something new in the recording, a tiny counter melody I never noticed, a shaker here and there. Each instrument was recorded the way I would want to record it. It's almost a perfect record. Of course the Beatles are the easy choice but they thought of everything. It is an immense work of popular music.
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| O'Hara Piano |
