Andras Jones
“A Curmudgeon For All Seasons”
Another X-Mas Song
Frankenstein Valentine
April 19th
Flashback Barbeque
The Firecracker Kid
Three Day Weekend
Hold Your Nose & Vote
Thwak!
All songs written by Andras Jones
Produced and Engineered by Colin Mahoney & Brian Schey
at z,gwon’th studios in Lawrence, KS
Andras Jones – Vocals & Guitar
Brian Schey – Bass Guitar
Tom Johnson – Hammond Organ & Rhodes Piano
Colin Mahoney – Drums
with
Jeff Jackson – Pedal steel guitar on “Frankenstein Valentine” & “April 19th”
Clay Goldstein – Harmonica on “April 19th”
Mike McFarland – Fender Rhodes on “Firecracker Kid”
From Andras:
There are a lot of good things about this record. The songs. The musicians. The cover. The concept. But I hate it. Sounds like shit to me. Sorry Colin and Brian but that’s the truth. Like “The Hard Feelings”, it falls way short of my ambition, especially based upon the clarity suggested by the z,gwon’th tracks from “Religious ‘99”. I’m not blaming them entirely but when you negotiate a producer credit you own the end product.
Here are some good things about “A Curmudgeon For All Seasons”.
– “Democracy Now!” used “Hold Your Nose and Vote” as part of their presidential election coverage in the elections of 2000 and 2004. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. As we Jews say at Passover, “dayenu”, which means, it would have been enough.
– The Boston Globe reviewed the album and called me “wonderfully pretentious”, creating the possibility for me that my pretentiousness could actually be wonderful. It’s the nicest thing anybody ever said about me in Boston, and that’s where my mom lives.
– I got to work with Rickie Lee Jones, and her fledgling indie label, Great Big Island, in the post-production and release of “Curmudgeon”. I think by the end of the process they all hated me and the record, but if all this record got me was the chance to sing Beatles songs with Rickie Lee Jones, while helping her build a goat hutch in the coastal woods of Olympia, Washington in spring, it was worth it. Dayenu.
– It was cool that Lach, the godfather of anti-folk, gave me the dubious honor of comparing me to Phil Ochs for the press kit. I believe the quote was, “Phil Ochs is back and this time he can rock”.
And then there was the tour…
I began the Curmudgeon For All Seasons ANTI-Holiday tour on August 30th, 2001 in Northampton, Massachusetts at a coffee shop called Fire and Rain. I was in Toronto on September 11th, doing a mini Canadian tour with Bob Kemmis when the thing happened. We played in Windsor that night with the towers falling down over and over on a big screen TV. Chicken wings and beer on the table like always, but different. I had about 25 shows ahead of me, starting in Cleveland, heading through the America’s heartland from Canton, Ohio to Murfreesboro, Tennessee and, Boy, was I scared, especially after the border guards treated me like a terrorist and only relaxed after they found a marijuana pipe I’d stowed in the seat of the car, because I was just a white stoner crossing the border and not “an enemy of the homeland”. Heidi said I should come home and, just like when the uprisings broke out and I stayed in the studio in downtown LA, I made the stupid and artistically correct choice to continue on what felt like the thinnest of American ice. I recorded a bunch of these shows and what’s interesting is the only place anyone gave me any shit was in Philadelphia (not recorded) where the audience (including my host) shouted “Love it or Leave it” at me.
During this tour I finished writing the songs for what I intended to be my next solo record, tentatively titled “All You Get”. I recorded the demos in Lawrence in early October, near the end of the tour, before I headed to New York where I would record an auspicious and synchronistic show at CB’s Gallery.
Tony Kaye (the movie director) showed up dressed like Osama Bin Laden. He got onstage after my set and tried to do a performance art piece onstage that went only slightly better than my performance of “Done” at the CSW rock concert in ’85. I LOVED it! A perfect way to end the heroically ironic tour I’d been training for all my life.
As much as I hate this record, I hope you can tell, I love it too.