i’ve been listening to jason heath and the greedy soul’s the vain hope of horse since about march, and much like the bombadil record there’s a heck of alot more going on then initially meets the ears. musically its a very nice piece of americana fare w/ nels cline and wayne kramer helping out on a few tracks, but lyrically is where the record really shines. its a pretty politically charged record, but you wouldnt know it if you really didnt listen to what heath was laying down cause the music tempers his lyrics with a less serious tone.

anyway, when i asked if jason would be interested in participating in the “tell me something…” deal i really didnt know what to expect, in fact i dont know what to expect from any of em when they happen to grace my inbox. but i was particularly interested in seeing what he would come up with, and he doesnt disappoint….

here’s a couple upcoming dates not including the flyer of the show above
9/11 – the cat club (sunset strip music fest) 9pm
9/26 – the roxy (scott ford benefit) 8pm
9/30 – air-conditioned supper club (venice) 10pm

far rockaway off the vain hope of horse

here’s jason…..

Let me tell ya something…
I live in Los Angeles, CA, just minutes from a place known affectionately as “Skid Row.” A few times a week I take a group of developmentally disabled men and women down to place called The Midnight Mission. There, we commence to roll hundreds of forks into napkins for the afternoon lunch service, where, depending on the time of the month, (you see some folks get the general relief checks and can eat at home for a few days before the dough runs out) we will serve lunch to a few hundred hungry individuals, sometimes as many as 1,000, three times a day…365 days a year.

I don’t mention this to pat myself on the back, nor am I campaigning for sainthood. You see, both of these groups of people have something in common: they’re both being cut out of the American dream one budget slash at a time. You see, in the richest nation on earth we only seem to find the will to bailout the bloated, greedy, myopic corporations. But, when it comes time to lend a hand to the truly needy, well… it’s every man/woman/child for themselves. We’d better not help too much; “Why, that’d be un-American” or even worse: “SOCIALIST”!

When I hear the debate over nationalized healthcare – “Too many Bureaucracies” or “We won’t have as many choices,” I’d like to offer those folks a chance to visit a place where there aren’t any options for most. Yes, some are suffering from drug addiction, alcoholism and other maladies our society deems undesirable. Before we brand them “deserving of their fate”… why don’t we ask ourselves why we’re so tolerant of the “disease of conceit” and GREED? I think probably because those traits have, sadly, become the defining characteristics of our nation. We have the will to build bombs to drop indiscriminately in the name of freedom. We sentimentally morn the possibility of the loss of FORD or GM. But the life of a mentally ill woman on the streets of downtown L.A.? – “Well, that’s really not our problem.”

I say it is our problem. A Systemic Problem! Until we can muster the will to understand that behind every hungry, sick face in this nation, this world, there abides a friend, a sister, a brother, a father, or a mother. The very people that populate all our lives. How can we even begin to talk about “freeing the populations of other nations” if we’re exporting our brand of callous “tough love” consumerism to the rest of the world? Maybe they’re better off without it.

The developmentally disabled guys and gals I mentioned earlier – the ones who donate their time to help out down on skid row, are facing the third “cutback” to their funding this year. When will the corporate welfare state end? How long do we just watch helplessly? More and more people suffer whilst we debate the evils of liberalism, too many bureaucracies, and the “trend toward socialism”. That doesn’t mean shit to a hungry, sick child! Shame on us if we don’t find our way out of this “Town Without Pity.”*

Sincerely
Jason Heath

*see “The Vain Hope Of Horse” by Jason Heath & The Greedy Souls

photo by melissa madison fuller

i have been sitting on this “tell me something” for about a month now. as the title alludes to, it features bryan rahija of the durham, nc band, bombadil, and their most excellent record, tarpits and canyonlands. the first time i listened to said record, i fell in supreme like with it, but in all honesty i didnt really listen to it, it was more like background noise. it worked in perfect harmony with whatever it is was i was doing at the time, probably having a few drinks, but it sounded wonderful in a non-committal, at arms length kinda way. when i finally did get to sit down with it and give it my undivided attention, i realized i had the record all wrong. hiding beneath the mostly acoustic raucous good time i was hearing, was something of a sad clown syndrome. it reminded me of a friend i once had that whenever i would see him, he had nothing but the most sunny of attitudes, but below his shiny exterior was a powder keg of emotions just waiting to go off. of course, at the time, i didnt know there were these two sides, much like tarpits and canyonlands. my friend didnt make it to his 25th birthday. its not a downer of a record, at all, but its slightly schizophrenic which with repeated listens may make itself more apparent. maybe im reading way too much into it, and should take it as initially did? now that this other side to it is out there, i cannot not hear it and pay attention. regardless, of how i take it, me thinks tarpits and canyonlands will definitely be near the top of my top ten this year. highly recommended!

tarpits and canyonlands is out now on ramseur records

riyl: avett bros, elephant 6 pop stuff, the felice bros, the everybodyfields

the rest is bryan from bombadil

though we only spent 20 days in the studio with this record, it really took us about four years to make. demo after demo, show after show, long conversations in the van, all culminated into this third disc of ours.

I like the idea that the album is collection of fables, with just as many characters lurking around in the musical arrangements as there are in words. some of the musical characters are polite, quietly waiting their turn to chime in, while others are aggressive, violently shoving aside competing notes and vying for dominance. hopefully these guys complement the words, which talk about marriage and death and birthdays and sure, good old fashioned romance.

all told, it’s the closest we’ve come to sounding like ourselves.

honeymoon
many ways to die

i wish, truly, that i had time for interviews, and in depth reviews, but as i have complained about in the past, i just dont have the time. so, i got to thinking. what kind of feature could i come up with that would that would take zero effort on my part, but absolutely inconvenience the artist? after a few beers, and some internal brainstorming, i decided that i would ask perspective artists to tell me about something. whether it be about their record, tales from the road, a sad tale about the puppy they didn’t get when they were 6, or whatever their little hearts desire. thus far, surprisingly, i’m 2 for 2.

without much further ado, here is the first installment of a feature i have yet to pin down a name for. right now i’m thinking “tell me about it,” or “tell me something.” anyway, john gleason of roadside graves was kind enough to take time out of his day to participate whilst crisscrossing our great land on a tour that finds them playing in new orleans tomorrow, 8.6 at the blue nile. they are playing in baton rouge this evening, but check their site for upcoming dates.

you can buy my son’s home via autumtone or itunes or wherever you feel like spending your cash

work itself out
ruby

here’s john…..

In Jackson, Mississippi pissing away the day with onion noodle soup and Dave Eggers’ new book, Zeitoun. Jeremy is in the hallway talking to his sister, who just had a baby this morning. Band members are scattered around: at the pool, watching Ghostbusters, doing laundry in the bathtub, looking up Steve Brule videos on YouTube. It’s a strange feeling, a wide circle of emotions up and down as the entire day is spent getting to a destination and gearing up for a single task. Everything you eat, how you sleep, what you happen to pass on the road- it all leads to one show. A day spent in preparation for roughly forty five minutes of music. Jesus, and if the show sucks, well you get drunk, sleep it off, and do it all over again the next day.

My Son’s Home is our new record. The reviews have been friendly so far, but it’s funny how most reviewers make a point to honestly declare that they either didn’t want to like the record or find themselves perplexed or shocked by the fact that they do. It makes sense. I am content to be in a band that has to settle and warm in people’s interests. I’m happy to have the few and the passionate, and hope that anyone who does listen to the record takes comfort in the lyrics or music. We are an ugly bunch, but sincere in what we do. We are proud of the record and appreciate Autumn Tone for allowing us to release it as the beast that it is.
I figured since this was such an open assignment, to write about the record, I’d stick to a few songs:

FAR AND WIDE: Basically a welcoming song. We tend to play it first and it opens the new record. It’s an invitation to hell or heaven depending on which way you’re leaning. The first verse was intended to sound like the ingredients to a witches’ brew, “Take the dirt from a hollow tree…” but instead of a cauldron I pictured the Earth caving into itself, dying and starting over. Most of the songs on My Son’s Home are basically trying to get across one big fucking theme- that we are responsible for everything we do, no one else. “Apples don’t fall with snakes inside”. And it’s catchy.

FATHER SAT ME DOWN: Well, it’s about my father of course, about the relationships that he had with other women after his divorce. It’s hard to watch your father change from a towering personality to a humbled and unfulfilled adult who has a lot more in common with you than you’d like to admit. We lived together for years like two roommates keeping close watch on each other. He died a few weeks after the record came out and I had always assumed he was disinterested in the music we made, but I found a folder in his boxes that carefully documented every review, show, or article that had mentioned Roadside Graves. We heard last week that this song was featured in an NPR show about infidelity. Kudos.

TO THE SEA: I was fascinated with those stories a year ago or so that involved people either jumping or accidently falling off a cruise ship. It’s creepy. I spent a few nights on a cruise ship to Nova Scotia and the ocean at night is a beautiful and haunting experience. The character in the song has simply jumped ship, and committed suicide and the husband/lover (Bill) finds the note. It’s one of two songs on the record (the other being ‘Wooden Walls’) that I hope present suicide in a justified way. Not that I would ever recommend suicide, but there has to be some understanding to what brings a person to such an extreme. When I was younger suicide was evil and anyone who attempted it or succeeded seemed to me to be weak and taking the easy way out. But of course it’s not that simple. These songs are merely an attempt to understand how someone might feel when the thought crosses their mind, “The world is too big for me”. I get a similar feeling when I step out of Penn Station in New York.

GOD TOUCHED ME: This song started as a joke. I saw a bumper sticker in a parking lot that said, “God touched me” and I turned to my wife and joked , “God touched me and I didn’t like it”. Maybe it’s not funny, depends on your personality and where you live. I grew up in a Catholic school and feel entitled to poke fun of it now and then, at least as compensation for the hours I spent cleaning the convent. Religion scares the shit out of me, watch “Jesus Camp” and you’ll see. It’s more terrifying to me than a Rob Zombie movie. I wrote the lyrics on a balcony at Harvey’s Casino, hence the poker playing line, and in Lake Tahoe, hence the water imagery. And I was reading ‘Falconer’ by John Cheever, hence the falcon! We are responsible for our family and environment, God is not going to help.

DIRTY WORK: Most of our songs get the band treatment. A song can and will be completely reworked once the band members bring their own influence and ideas. Dirty Work is what it is. It’s a sparse song musically, titled after the Larry Brown book of the same name. The song follows a boy as he goes to his father’s funeral and a family wedding and throughout has sense enough to pay attention to the people around him and the simple advice that life is dirty work but you have to do it anyway. I began to write the song while suffering through a party at an Elk’s Lodge. I stared at the old man serving beer and wine and wondered if he was miserable or not. I like the idea of the boy being old enough to understand but young enough to have to sit at the goddamn children’s table drinking his Shirley Temple (same as a Roy Roger). It’s kinda how I feel most of the time, yet now I can get a stiff drink. Life is dirty, take pleasure in simple things. That’s how the songs ends- with pleasure.

Thank you for taking the time to read, and for Captain’s Dead to offer the space.
My Son’s Home is available now and we are currently on tour for the rest of August.
-John Gleason