"cabbage white, oh my cabbage white of love / floating by on the daydream skyline / butterfly, oh my butterfly of love / ease my mind, play your silent wind chimes..."
The intoxicating drunken dance of "Cabbage White" by Ever-Lovin' Jug Band, the DIY duo of Minnie Heart and Bill Howard, feels at once porch blues homey as it does David Lynchian sideways, the stuff of 1930's surreal singers in old timey radiator heaters. AND therein, for me, lies the allure. Minnie and Bill foster such a heady psychedelic stew of rustic folk, hillbilly punk, cowboy honky tonk, 40's alley jazz (and more) that feeds both the darker and lighter sides of one's psyche all based on our preconceived notions, life experiences, so called stature in life. There has been times in my life when I recorded a diddy or two with the express purpose of using things in my kitchen and just my trusty vintage Guild. I thought about this while admiring "Cabbage White" and I also thought of the cultural aspects of this sound, the ridiculousness of art and why art is so exquisitely important, pretense and all. The existential yin and yang of art balancing on a caustic kazoo melody. Yes, I am weird.
LINER NOTES (bracketed):
[“We made the song up at our friend’s musicians’ writing residency, where you stay in a trailer in his backyard, write songs for a few days, then record them in his toolshed before you go,” the duo says. “One morning, while playing guitar in the garden, we just started singing about all the cabbage whites, butterflies and chipmunks living in the plants. When it came time to record, we combined T.Rex-flavored production with ‘Instant Karma’ drumming, refining the lyrics to suit the cosmic undertones. The whole song is acoustic, except for an electric 12-string rhythm guitar. The crazy sounds between verses are singing, saxophone, reverb and forward-backward tape delay.” -Ever-Lovin' Jug Band]
[Ever-Lovin’ Jug Band answers the question what would a one-gallon jug bass sound like in ‘50s rock-n-roll, psychedelic, garage, jazz, and wall-of-sound songs on its forthcoming album "Move That Thing," out July 19 via Jalopy Records. Everything on the album was written, arranged, played, sung, recorded, and produced by just the two members of the Ever-Lovin’ Jug Band, a duo made up of Minnie Heart and Bill Howard. In addition to a jug on every track, sounds include baritone sax, heavy percussion, drum sets, soaring string sections, tape delay, wild textures, sonic vistas, and backwards effects. All but two of the songs feature dual lead vocals, where both Howard and Heart sing in unison, to create a double-tracked vocal effect, combining their voices into one, on top of loads of backup vocals, giving it a warm, thick sound. In addition to their own recordings made via vintage tape machines, band member Howard has engineered recording for Mashed Potato Records (including Esther Rose and Jackson & The Janks) while Heart designed the record jackets, logos, and posters.]
At a long gone OC festival there was a similar sound and, for the life of me, I cannot recall the name of the band (maybe they had a tangential connection to The Growlers, if I remember correctly) and you could reference artists like Captain Beefheart or Red Krayola (but not in a strong direct way) but mostly you might think of all manner of Saturday nights in the rural areas of North Georgia.
At a long gone OC festival there was a similar sound and, for the life of me, I cannot recall the name of the band (maybe they had a tangential connection to The Growlers, if I remember correctly) and you could reference artists like Captain Beefheart or Red Krayola (but not in a strong direct way) but mostly you might think of all manner of Saturday nights in the rural areas of North Georgia.
-Robb Donker Curtius
THE FACTS AS WE KNOW THEM
https://www.facebook.com/everlovinjugband
https://everlovinjugband.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/everlovinjugband/
Ever-Lovin’ Jug Band answers the question what would a one-gallon jug bass sound like in ‘50s rock-n-roll, psychedelic, garage, jazz, and wall-of-sound songs on its forthcoming album ‘Move That Thing,’ out July 19 via Jalopy Records. Everything on the album was written, arranged, played, sung, recorded, and produced by just the two members of the Ever-Lovin’ Jug Band, a duo made up of Minnie Heart and Bill Howard. In addition to a jug on every track, sounds include baritone sax, heavy percussion, drum sets, soaring string sections, tape delay, wild textures, sonic vistas, and backwards effects. All but two of the songs feature dual lead vocals, where both Howard and Heart sing in unison, to create a double-tracked vocal effect, combining their voices into one, on top of loads of backup vocals, giving it a warm, thick sound. In addition to their own recordings made via vintage tape machines, band member Howard has engineered recording for Mashed Potato Records (including Esther Rose and Jackson & The Janks) while Heart designed the record jackets, logos, and posters.
The album was all recorded to tape on a TASCAM MS-16 and M520 mixing console, using a variety of vintage microphones and outboard gear. They mixed the album live in real-time through the mixing board rather than on a computer, so each mix is a performance in itself. Their Ampex 351 is not only the next machine off the line from the one they used for Mashed Potato Records, but the previous owner of those two machines used them in sound experiments to help develop the THX cinema sound system for Lucasfilms’ Return of the Jedi. While the record sounds far out, most of the songs are still acoustic with only a few electric guitars peppered throughout.
On “Enter The Fish Man,” the left and right channels each hold 3 violins, a cello, an acoustic guitar, four or five vocals, and two jugs; two drum sets and percussion are up the middle, and all the vocal samples and tape effects wash back and forth to hold it all together. Of the single, the band says, “Enter The Fish Man (the song) started out as a weird made-up-on-the-spot song on one of Bill's one-sided phone call cassettes, which were kind of like Agent Cooper's ‘Diane’ tapes, where he'd talk about day-to-day events, make up songs and other nonsense.”
Having completed ‘Move That Thing’ now they are hard at work making a visual presentation of the entire record, working on twelve music videos, one for every song from the album, inspired by the sci-fi, film noir, b-films, kung-fu, boring documentaries, outsider/art films, '70s schlock, crappy vintage TV shows, old music videos, etc., they had spent endless hours watching and studying while stuck at home during the cold pandemic winters.
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