Mr. Jones & The Previous
“Porch Music”
Rip It Away
Don’t Feed the Animals
What’s Wrong With the Mirror
Nothing’s Real ‘Til It Bites You
Listen With Your Heart
I Think They Want Me
Hold Your Breath
Message For The Moon
Three Cheers For The Band
My Baby Left Me For A Spider
Stick Around
All songs written by Andras Jones
Produced with R. Walt Vincent & Earl Mankey
Andras Jones – Vocal & Guitar
Clay Goldstein – Harmonica & Jaw Harp
R. Walt Vincent – Bass
Deb Pasternak – Vocals
John Nason – Guitar
Colin Mahoney – Drums
with…
Lili Haydn – Violin on “What’s Wrong With The Mirror”
Dan Clark – Vocals on “Three Cheers For The Band”
Steve Isaacs – Vocals on “Three Cheers For The Band”
Jesse Richardson – Vocals on “Three Cheers For The Band”
From Andras Jones:
I haven’t listened to this record in a long time. It’s pretty good. We were only the second band I knew to put out our own CD, which was kind of impressive at the time.
I got the money to make it from Steve Shainberg after I played the lead role in “The Prom” for free. I was honored to do it, which is probably why he gave me three grand at the end of shooting to “make your fucking record and stop whining about it” as he put it.
We brought in a real producer, Earle Mankey, who everyone told us had produced Concrete Blonde, but we knew him from his work with The Beach Boys, and Sparks and the Runaways. He loved our band, and I’m told he shed a tear when I played “Listen With Your Heart”.
If only Marshall Thompson were on this record, it would be the most perfect line-up of the band, but even without him, it’s a serious crew of cats.
We’ve got Clay Goldstein back on the harp but this time he’s not working in the more obvious medium of “blues” for his instrument. Now it’s a serious rock band and I don’t know if there’s a better example of rock harmonica than what he delivers here. Not just the solos. I love his rhythm playing on these tracks.
The other huge influence on this record is Walt Vincent. Before he reclaimed his R.and started producing artists like Liz Phair, Pete Yorn & Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Long ago, Walt moved into the house on the cover of the CD (7565 Curson) the place where The Boon was born and died. Walt was playing with a new crew of talented young folk who moved in after we moved out, and I met him because I heard music coming out of my old place one day when I was walking by so I decided to introduce myself as a previous tenant. That was a good move.
When Walt joined the band it got much more musically serious. Which I liked and, I think, Clay thought was a little pretentious. Walt was definitely my co-producer (with Earle) on this record. Which might be why his 5-string fretless bass is allowed to dominate some of the tracks? All I remember is, it was great having Walt there on the drives to Thousand Oaks, turning me on to Jellyfish and totally immersing himself in the vision I was creating. Probably the closest I got to the same kind of aesthetic bond I’d had with Josh, but we were Previous, which meant we were mercenaries. This was my band and Walt was in it, and I think we both liked it that way. We still play together. And that says something.
The other big influence on this record is Deb Pasternak.
I met Deb when she played on the same bill with us at Highland Grounds, around the time Eleni Mandell started working there as the surliest barista you can imagine. It was one of Steve Isaac’s events, back when he called himself Spooky, before he was an MTV VJ. I fell in art-love with Deb’s righteous babeness (pre-Righteous Babe) and she must have fallen for me similarly because, despite the fact that I don’t think we liked each other much, we hung together the way talented young people do. And then I stole her band.
Deb went to college at Dartmouth in New Hampshire. The story was, she’d gone out with Trey from Phish. She also played in a college band (named “Moonrocks”) with John Nason & Colin Mahoney. Colin and John moved out to LA, along with Deb, and found jobs as recording engineers while playing in her band, and when she joined The Previous, so did they. John and Colin would form the foundation of the touring and recording unit that was Mr. Jones & The Previous for the next half a decade.
“Porch Music” features a few other cool drop-ins. The aforementioned Steve Isaacs, and Dan Clarke of the band Duke Daniels joining us in the fucking up of “Three Cheers For The Band”, and then there’s Lili Haydn.
Lili was one of my first real friends in LA. Khrystyne Haje introduced us when I was working as a bus boy at The Hard Rock Cafe. Khrystyne was on “Head Of The Class” and Lili was The New Gidget’s nerdy best friend. Khrystyne told me she wanted to introduce me to Lili because I told her I was “into Lao Tse” while I was clearing burgers off her table.
The day we recorded Lili’s violin part on “What’s Wrong With the Mirror” we captured a perfect synchronicity. That ring at the end of her opening solo is the studio phone going off, in perfect tune and rhythm with the song. Telephones going off will be a theme in my recording sessions going forward and this was the most perfect one.
Walt and Clay and Lili will stay in LA when the band hits the road. Deb will follow her own path as a singer-songwriter, eventually moving back east and covering “Message For The Moon” on her album ELEVEN. But John Nason and Colin Mahoney will fully commit to all things Previous and, for most people who saw us live, that’s who we were.
PARTING IMAGE: The last track, “Stick Around”, was originally recorded as a big Floydian dirge a la “Future’s A Killer” from The Boon Demos but at the last minute one night we decided to simply record it acoustically and live. When I say we, I mean Earle Mankey, after working with us ten hours a day for at least four days in a row in his home studio, started channeling the “Brian Is Back” days of The Beach Boys, miking the whole band acoustically, in a circle, and by God/Goddess we delivered! Everyone really sounds so purely themselves. Deb. Clay. Walt. Even me.
None of us stuck around, but here we are.
I think I like this record.