Back to the Mountainside

Panning for Gold

I wrote this poem during a day hike last summer. I was surprised to come across it again today, while searching through some lyrics on my computer. After reading the poem for the first time in over a year, I was immediately taken back to that balmy summer. Scott was leaving for Brazil, Alex and I didn’t talk much anymore, and nothing was really going the way I had intended. I couldn’t find a job, and every musical endeavor I took on ended in futility. The only effective means that I had found for organizing my thoughts was through poetry. During this time I was reading a great deal of works by Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Carver, and found that their writing compelled me to step outside of the habitual ways of perceiving my surroundings. I felt a sense of release in understanding that everything in this world can be examined from a number of insights. I also came to recognize that wisdom cannot be created. Only life and its incessant diversity can bring you any insight. It is my opinion, and the creative focus of this poem, that we often seek understanding and truth in the wrong places. Wisdom is not knowing; it is perceiving.

Enumerated pathways
weave wicker veins,
stringing together love and hatred,
binding the days into one great vessel.
An empty chest to be filled
with that which is rarely acquired.
Bits and pieces glint,
fool’s gold illusions of veracity
pushing us just close enough
to realize we’ve been
panning in the wrong river.

Chris Algeo

Chris’s mom makes wonderful dinners.

She really does.  They were one of the highlights of the sessions for Life Without Consequence - the studio was set up in her house, after all, and every night she made us a lovely home-cooked meal, always hot and fresh. The record took seven days in total - one song per day, plus one for fixes, punches, and general auditory madness.  It was an absolute blast to record; it felt more like hanging out with friends than it did actual work.  After a failed initial session which involved two low-quality mics and a Technics DAT (Digital Audio Tape) machine from 1994 which ended in the group seriously considering its validity as musicians, we took a moment, collected our gear, and tried again - this time armed with a small digital studio.  Chris’s Marshall stack/Gibson Les Paul combo sounded classic and gave me fantastic sounds to work with (as a matter of fact, the majority of the guitar is unaffected and unedited.)  The whole thing came together very cohesively, and we had remarkably few problems throughout the process… anyone who’s tried audio recording knows what I’m talking about.  Personal favorites - the bridge of Jump This Fence was a blast to play, as was Hands.  Denver has a cool folk vibe that I’m fond of.  Overall, both me and Chris are proud of it, and we think it’s a good starting place for years of indie fun to come.  We hope you agree, and we’d love for you to come on the journey with us.

alex

Bad Art

I started to write this a while ago, in November I think.  It never really went anywhere, but even unfinished thoughts often have merit.  I don’t want to reread it lest I feel the need to change things or delete ideas.

It’s at this time of year, with the falling of the leaves and the quiet coming of the first snow, that I like to observe the expressionless faces of the people of this too-perfect cow town.  Like bad art, or like overcooked coffee that for some reason unknown carries the somber taste of old wood, or like the stones of the river that no longer appear to be full of life and stories but instead show only the worn out acceptance of the season’s change, they go about their frigid lives worrying about the decay of their youthful summer and the coming of the long season of colorless coats and cold fingers and the kind of  chill that cuts your cheeks and causes your speech to slur.  Yes, I am one of them too, no better and certainly no worse, walking down damp streets with my hands in my pockets and my gaze cast towards my stony feet, thinking only of ways to leave my decaying body and throw my mind skyward and take my soul back to that windy beach down south, miles away from anything at all.

Now we sit in a cafe that’s so hip it’s unbearable, banging away at black keys as we hide from love and death and sleep and the freezing reality that’s just a thin pane of glass away.  Why is it that all we ever want is that which we can never have, to be alone when we’re together and to be together when we’re alone, to lie in the sun when the sky is throwing ice at us and to run through the snow when the tilt of this rock dictates that we’ll be so hot our blood will boil?  We have expressed our rage at old art to the point that the only thing we’re capable of doing is hurling paint at a wall.

Conditions are worsening and speech is becoming frantic as we reproduce endlessly, throwing our offspring at each other in wars that mean nothing, in the name of no man and no ideal.  I cannot help but smile in the presence of my brothers as we descend this mountainside of our youth, in the middle of our rightful coming of age, mournfully unaware that the city that lies below harbors little more than thieves and ghosts, but we are cheerful nonetheless, because we are young and know nothing more than our mother’s blinding love and the sweet tastes of food grown from pure earth.

I am from…

I am from the place where sugar houses line clean streets, where the way to get around was a big wheel trike, but never past the mailbox. I am from the place where aspen trees and cottonwoods and poplars are the tallest things around, except for the distant mountains that seemed as unreachable as the sun. I am from the place where parents fought behind closed doors as bluejays fly into picture windows. I am from the place where boys play games with their fathers as mothers sneak cigarettes in the garage. I am from the place where kids grow up quietly, never never telling their parents until it’s too late. I am from the place where the first snow never fails to come around halloween but never fails to take us by surprise. I am from the place where all evils are hidden from the young only so the young can grow up to understand that they were never evil to begin with.

a bit of unrelated prose

the new ep - “Life Without Consequence”

The new EP, Life Without Consequence is done and all of us are so excited. When we initially set out to record, everything that could possibly go wrong certainly did. The DAT stunk, the click bled, the bass clipped, and we knew this was going to be a real challenge. Once we settled into the routine of weekly sessions, everything came together unbelievably well. We recorded and premixed one song every session, and completed mixing and recording in a matter of weeks. Vocal punches were done in a day, and mastering is now complete. Everything sounds great, and we’re looking forward to doing some shows very soon.

I hope you enjoy the new EP as much as we did playing it!  That’s it for now.  I’ll be sure to keep everyone updated in regards to shows and news.