Andras Jones
“Religious ’99”
Before The Show
with Brian Schey & Colin Mahoney at z,gwon’th Studios in Lawrence, KS
Andras Jones – Bass, Guitar & Vocals
Brad Hoopes – Keys
Colin Mahoney – Drums
April 19th & Flashback Barbecue
Recorded live at Traditions Fair Trade
in Olympia, Washington on May 10, 1998
as part of The Accidental Music Festival
with Dan Bern & Chris Chandler
Religious
with Brian Schey at z,gwon’th in Lawrence, KS
Andras Jones – Vocals
Brian Schey – Guitar, Drums & Vocals
Brad Hoopes – Organ
Tom Johnson – Bass, Piano, Rhodes & Trombone
The Webpage of Dorian Gray
(www.dorian-gray.com)
Recorded and performed by Andras Jones
on a TASCAM 8-track cassette recorder
All songs written by Andras Jones
except “Religious” which was written by Andras Jones & Brian Schey
From Andras Jones:
Millenial fever around the time of Y2K probably accounted for the title of this e.p. I find it interesting that, even though I was unaware of the Crowleyan depiction of the devil at the time, I chose a picture for the cover that bares a striking resemblance to this most un-loved archetype. Which I must admit, adds to my enjoyment of these recording in retrospect.
At this point, my touring was continuous and solo. Based out of Olympia, living with Heidi in a tiny blue house on Tullis, I’d book and join tours with friends like Bob Wiseman, Chris Chandler, Dan Bern, Veda Hille & others. I’d also do some all by myself. Vancouver, Bellingham, Olympia, Portland, Eugene, San Francisco, Arcata, Davis, Sacramento, Chico, San Luis Obispo, LA & San Diego. This was my regular route. Hit it three, maybe four times a year. Once or twice a year I’d head east, cutting through the middle of the country; Vegas, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Lawrence, KC, Columbia, St. Louis then shoot to Philadelphia and play my way north to Boston and surrounding cities, visiting family and friends in the area. Sometimes Heidi would fly out and join me but mostly not. I’d head back along the northern part of the country through Buffalo (sometimes hitting Toronto) then Ann Arbor, Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, then a long drive to Missoula and I was basically home. I tried to do this for about six weeks in the fall and six weeks in the spring. Of course, booking and coordinating these tours took most of the year.
I was writing lots of songs but I wasn’t recording much.
Previous drummer, Colin Mahoney, had moved to Lawrence, Kansas with his wife Lisa, who he met in Kansas City on one of our tours. She moved to Olympia and lived in the house with the band for a while and when that ended they settled in Lawrence. We always loved that town. The band did pretty well there and it reminded me of Olympia back when I still liked Olympia. Small. Collegiate. Good music scene. Nice co-op. Vocal Native American population. And William Burroughs.
Brian Schey moved out with them and, continuing the culture of creativity we’d started in Oly, they partnered in a studio they called z,gwon’th. It was a nice place. Colin had a knack for using his debt in a way I could never understand, but he always had nice things, and he always managed to get bigger and better gigs to cover whatever he owed. Maybe that was just a function of the 90’s or maybe it was part of his particular genius. Whatever it was, I respected the hell out of it.
I haven’t written much about Colin but he may have been the most interesting member of our band. On the surface, he looked like a Beach Boy (not one of the cool ones) and talked like a Republican (which he wasn’t). At Dartmouth, with John Nason & Deb Pasternak, he was a philosophy major, and his playing was anything but conservative. Like Keith Moon, his style of play dominated the band’s sound. Unlike Moon, Colin wasn’t a basher. He was more likely to simmer and boil than explode. I loved him most for his ability to play tight and quiet when it was called for, and because he really knew how to sync with me. He said he’d play to my right leg which meant he’d watch my right leg for cues and together we’d take The Previous all over the place without ever getting lost. What Colin was doing in a band like The Previous was always something of a mystery but he fit and he knew it and we knew it and, oh yeah, he was the best drummer most of us had ever played with.
I recorded “Before The Show” and “Religious” at z,gwon’th with Colin and Brian and Brad Hoopes, another Dartmouth boy who did one tour with The Previous after Marshall left the band. “Before The Show” was written about my old buddy Dan Bern in the style of my not-as-old buddy Jeff Stern’s band El Serioso and produced like Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen”. I love playing bass so that was a blast and, in general, this unassuming little track paints a nice picture of where the Previous might have gone sonically had we continued. I probably asked Colin to try and “not fill up the groove so much” so this is his version of playing simple but, even with this directive, you can hear him doing clever little stick work that would have been fun to explore. Maybe we will one day.
The next two songs “April 19th” & “Flashback Barbecue” were recorded live at an epic show I produced in Olympia at Traditions Fair Trade with Chris Chandler & Dan Bern when Dan was dating and touring with Martha Wainwright. These songs will form the foundation of my next big recording project, “A Curmudgeon For All Seasons”. I like these versions better than the ones that wound up on the record but I’ll get into that later.
“Religious” was a lot of fun to work on with Brian Schey who wrote the music and brought in the ultra-talented Tom Johnson to play trombone and a bunch of other instruments on the track. Some may be offended but it made us laugh. I have since learned that some of my religious references in the song are contradictory to the point of inaccuracy. If I were to play this song live now I would probably introduce it as a Jew’s view of Christianity.
“The Webpage of Dorian-Gray” was one of my favorite songs for a long time. This was the beginning of the internet and I think I was pretty spot-on in terms of connecting Oscar Wilde’s modern myth to the even more modern reality of the isolating and illusory aspects of the web we were building together. I recorded the song on my little 8-track Tascam in the Tullis house and originally released it as an MP3 (on a floppy disc at shows). One of my computer nerd buddies told me it was “the format of the future”. It’s nice to be an artistic visionary. Nicer to get paid for it, but it does offer some comfort to look back and know that even if you weren’t effective at getting it out there, you were still onto something. Makes one wonder if maybe, one still is.
’98 was the year I created Radio8Ball.
Listen HERE.