TRACKLIST
- MICHAELS DREAM
- DOWN THE BLOCK
- BLACK DIAMOND BOYS
- WELCOME JAKE
- THE EVOLUTION SONG
- KEEP ON TRYIN’
- ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?
- LITTLE MARTHA
- RIPPLIN’ WATERS
- SO FAR GONE
- TAX JAM
- HERE WITHOUT YOU
- SAKE
- BLOCKS OF THE ANCIENT TEMPLE
Fly off the handle – write-up
Welcome to Fly Off The Handle, my informal attempt to create an album of music for my own fun!!! (Don’t laugh). If you are taking the time to read this you know me very well, well enough to know that this whole thing was done for my own self indulgent enjoyment and will probably be heard by only a handful of people. While you listen to it, please try to keep a few things in mind: This was done in my living room at strange hours without anywhere near enough time or talent to get it even close to right. It was usually worked on in twenty or thirty minute sessions, with an occasional whole night (one morning after, there was a thing with a Bat, but that’s another story). Many vocals and acoustic guitar parts were done with one try as quiet time for a microphone and tape deck are very rare in a house with three young boys, (especially these wonderful three.) Some parts were done, literally, with children on my lap. Others, while being done with headphones, have screwups caused by taps on the shoulder in someone’s attempt to interrupt quietly, or other difficulties caused by trying to do this sort of thing in the middle of domestic chaos! The point is, if it was close – I kept it, as weeks could pass until another attempt could be made (and the first song still would not be done). It’s scary, this is six years of effort and besides work and my family it is my top priority time wise! Where does the time go?
If you can, try and pay attention to the words and the ideas, not the performance! Believe me, if you cringe at the out of tune instruments and wrong notes, I do as well, but much worse. This overall thing is considered a “demo” which is how real, professional musicians prepare their music initially. First they do something like this informally at home with equipment similar to mine, and then bring the band into a studio full time for many weeks (or months) with engineers and producers and do it right. I read an article recently about a band that spent 8 hours a day for five days, working on a seven word 5 second lyric! Anyway, please try and forgive and ignore the errors, and try to look at the overall deal. (A drink or two early in the listening may make the whole thing sound a little better, but I’ll leave it up to you.)
I am proud of what’s here, and, although very amateur, it is an “album”. In keeping with such things then, it deserves a dedication, and I dedicate it with all my love to my wife Taf, who is the source of my inspiration, my lifemate, my best friend, in my opinion an absolutely amazing human being, and the one who often, late at night, looks up from bed, turns to me and gently (but firmly) says “Chris, put down the guitar, and get into bed”!! .
A few words about each song:
Michael’s Dream
The first one completed and my favorite. Based on an actual thing that went on with Michael and I. All the sounds were created by a guitar and the synthesizer. The chord progressions came one night after studying a chord book during an all day tax seminar. I may not have learned about tax law, but I got a song. Somehow the day was more productive than I could have hoped!!! The vocal on this song is literally the first time I sang in my life. Sounds like it right?
Down the Block
Started as a fictitious song about a fictitious girl one of the boys would grow up with and fall in love with that lived “down the block”, until she moved away. It was about what went on as they grew up. The words never worked out to my liking so I kept the rough instrumental and ended it there (so far). The basic melody showed up during a rainy weekend Taf and I spent alone in Montauk one May. My brother Geoff’s enthusiastic encouragement after hearing this song the first time on a “beer run” from a family day at his pool gave me the motivation to really pursue all this and consider myself a “musician”.
Black Diamond Boys
Written after a ski season. For the uninitiated, ski slopes are labeled with green circles (beginner), blue squares (intermediate), and black diamonds (advanced). A lot of very good skiers steer clear of the diamonds!! The song is a celebration of the times we had that winter and a tribute to the accomplishments of the boys, who as young children became black diamond boys. Six year old Justin blew my mind at his outright mastery of such slopes and four year old Mike could actually go down them. I was a Diamond Dad. The song was conceived and completed before Jake was, and thus the “two”. I wasn’t to know as I wrote, but now see, that the ultimate little banzai black diamond was to come!!! Regulator Johnson at the end of the song is a treacherous black diamond slope in Snowbird Utah I skied with Canyon Runner Drew Cohen the next winter, a month before Jake was born, so I added it. I remember playing a rough instrumental version of this song for my sister Steph and my brother in law Sam when the three of us went to a movie together and all of their encouragement!! Sam and I swore we heard other instruments in the ringing of the twelve string.
Welcome Jake
What else was there to say in the spring of 1991 but welcome! This whole song came during a run one warm morning six weeks after the man among men was born! I got home, wrote it down and that was it, and life has never been the same since he “found us”! (This one is Taf’s favorite of the bunch).
The Evolution Song
This song truly did evolve and thus the name. The very first pieces started in 1973 within days after my grandmother (Grandma Gillen) bought me my first guitar. Over the next twenty years I added to it a little at a time until it finally ended up like this. (By the way, I got my second guitar the same day as my first when my father came home and saw the first one. “What’s this all about” he wanted to know? “I’m going to learn to play” I responded. “You should have told me” he said and disappeared into the attic, returning to present me with an ancient Gibson F-hole jazz guitar he had purchased used when he was 17 as he intended to learn to play. He turned his creative talent elsewhere. As far as I can tell, the Gibson was made in the early 1920’s and is a classic. It sits in a stand immediately behind my desk at work and I play it there every day. I remember playing an incomplete version of this song to Justin in his walker a lot as an eighteen month old. I remember how he amazed me as he watched both hands (like a tennis match) were involved in the guitar. Most little kids think the right hand is the whole thing since it makes the sound. It was after playing this song for my mom on the deck in my backyard one day I saw the lights go on in her reaction like I could actually play the guitar!!!
Keep On Tryin’
A Poco song and the first of four cover songs in a row. When the boys were little we’d sing this in the car together so I decided to get the music and do it. This song shows the only real limitation in the equipment I have been using – the main recording deck has only four tracks. This song (like all Poco songs) is written for many voices singing in harmony. But the limitation only allowed me two vocals on this song. I think in about two years computer technology will solve this problem for me.
Are You Happy Now?
This song was played for me (among many others) by my friend David Smith during a week long stay in a cabin in northwest Maine. By the time the week was over I had figured out the chords and came home to record it. As with all cover songs I’ve included, I think this one is ingenious and recommend you listen to the original versions to hear them done justice by professional musicians!!!
Little Martha
This one was a real challenge!! As the story goes, musical legend Duane Allman spent a month alone in a cabin in the woods with his guitar and he wrote this song (probably among others). It was always one of my favorite instrumental tunes, but I knew he wrote it with the guitar in open tuning so I never even thought of trying to learn it (also because it’s hard to play). Open tuning is when you change the tuning of the strings from their standard tuning to something else (sort of like suddenly rearranging the sounds you get from the keys on a piano which no one does with the piano but bored guitarists do it). Anything to do with the Allman Brothers Band is special to my brother in law David and I. We spend many occaisions listening to Allman music together. Anyway, one day I suddenly figured out the first part of this song in standard tuning. Over the next two weeks, I didn’t rest until I actually got the whole thing figured out and written down. Then it took about six months of driving my family nuts, playing nothing else until I got it down well enough to give it a shot. Duane Allman was unbelievable.
Ripplin’ Waters
This song was originally done by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and they included wonderful sounds of rushing streams in it which I intended to do on my final version by recording my bath running in! Usually I do a song twice from scratch so I can get some experience working out the parts and the mechanics of recording them. The first version is much rougher and incomplete. But this one only got done the first time, and I’m not really satisfied with it. But, in the spirit of the project, I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of the time to do it again. Megan Drury was about to end her time living with us and the song that follows had been begun and I knew I needed Meg to finish it. The vocal was done down in my wine cellar late one night both for privacy and as an experiment with acoustics. I took some poetic license and changed the name Jennifer to Jakeasaur. (Oh little Jakeasaur, I’d give a penny for, what you’ve got on your mind….)
So Far Gone
This is the one I am most proud of. I’d made up the first few lines in the car one night and put them on the shelf for future use. A year later, I had decided to write a song from someone else’s point of view and realized I should build on those lyrics I already had. I started thinking about people I knew and wrote it in sympathy for an older person I know, without actually telling him. I played for him once, but I don’t think he caught it. This was one song where I did manage to do three vocals because it’s so simple. The beauty of the song is the world class voice of Megan Drury. She finished her vocals just two days before leaving us after living with us for eight months. Isn’t her voice amazing! Thanks Meg!!
Tax Jam
This whole thing was done on one rare night off during tax season.
Here Without You
This song was written early in 1965 by Gene Clark of the Byrds and recorded by the Byrds. Gene wrote some of the most beautiful and interesting songs I’ve ever heard. He passed away in the early 90’s just as I had discovered his wonderful songs and albums. In early 1994 I found an advertisement for an old folio of Byrds music someone had found. I sent away for it and the music for this song was included. I immediately learned it and here it is. The Byrds version which has four part harmony vocals by Clark, Roger McGuinn, David Crosby, and Chris Hillman is one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.
Sake
Another one night, one shot thing. A stay at home Saturday night when I could just stay up and play, my favorite. I named it Sake which was what I was enjoying while I did it, but when I played it for Michael in the car before I mixed it, he suggested I call it Blocks of the Ancient Temple, so,
Blocks of the Ancient Temple
Right after Sake, I realized I was actually close to a finished album length. I had written a poem on a balcony at Mohonk in the summer of 1994 the day before visiting Justin at camp while Taf napped. When Michael suggested the name above, I remembered and pulled out the poem and added a final verse. I’ve always admired how the Moody Blues began and ended albums with spoken poems and decided this would end my first “album”. I did the vocal with a strep throat. The string is vibrated by my 12-string Rickenbacker and the other sounds are all synthesizer. “Talons grip throats” was inspired by my recent stints on the coach with big eyed Jake watching wildlife predator specials!
And the title? I’d been thinking about a name for this thing (as if it deserves a name) , which is probably the only thing more ridiculous than having spent six years doing it. And who has energy left for that? Then, recently we were eating dinner with our neighbor John Schlitz who at one point said, “And you know, Chris has been known to fly off the handle…….”.
So that’s it! As I write this, my father, brother in law Jon, and I (with help from the whole family) are building a real recording studio in my house. Beginning in January I’ll have new, more efficiently designed surroundings in which to work (play?). Anyway, what goes around comes around. I remember visiting my dad in his art studio in our house when I came home from being out, on my way to bed. Hopefully the boys will do this as they get older. Taf’s worried I’ll live in there, but I’m not sure why, I’d rather be with her than anywhere, but there’s just not a lot of time for anything at this point in life!! Have patience Taf, the best is yet to come, and so far we’ve been very lucky!!!!!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY,
I LOVE YOU!!!!!
December 19, 1994