"Strange Sounds," Indeed...

After we got home from the tour of '89 (see previous posting), we all spent Christmas with our families and didn't speak to one another too much. We were physically and emotionally exhausted, and, I'd say, just plain tired of one another. I personally had no idea what would happen next. For all I knew, we were finished as a band. The $20,000 debt loomed, and I figured that we'd just spend the next year or two applying most of our gig income towards paying it off.

Somewhere around New Year's Day, 1990, I got a call from Ken, who told me that a deal had been arranged by Chuck to give Cooking Vinyl, our label in England, a new acoustic album, in return for debt payoff. This was fantastic news. We had wanted to record as the Death Valley Boys for a while, and this was a tremendous opportunity. On the '89 tour we had attempted to record a live acoustic album at one of our London shows, but it was pretty much a disaster. We were off our stride musically, we tried to pull too many new songs together at the last minute, and it was for me personally, one of the worst nights of my life as a musician. I felt like I was playing my clarinet with mittens. Even worse, the attempted recording sounded horrible, to the extent that our soundman Carl's board tape on cassette was far better than the "professional" one. The suits at Cooking Vinyl were somehow pleased with this sonic catastrophe, and would have released it, but Chuck said no, we'd record a new album instead. We made plans to record in February of 1990, at Gary Holt's studio in Mount Morris NY. We had recorded 'Why Should I Stand Up?' there, we liked the studio, and Gary was an excellent engineer and musician himself.

One of the unusual aspects of this particular album is that the horns were recorded entirely separately from the rest of the tracks. In fact, Joe and I never saw Phil, Jimmy or Ken in the studio even once on this session. Joe worked out the bulk of the horn arrangements on his piano at home, and he and I put them together in the studio. I play clarinet exclusively on this album, and Joe expanded his range of trombone colors by using a different mute on nearly every track. Chuck attended all of these sessions to approve the arrangements and our playing, but mostly he was astonished at the brilliance of Joe's parts, which were elegant and tasteful, and complemented the songs perfectly, without getting in the way of anyone else's tracks. I think that we were able to do this because we understood one another's playing extremely well by then, and had reached a higher level of musicianship from all of the touring. We were scary tight.

We recorded this album in about a month, working on it on nights and weekends, for a sum of (I think) around $2500. (This is probably what other bands would spend on pizza and beer in the same amount of time...) When it was done, I think we all felt a satisfaction that we'd done something truly unique. Scott Regan responded with what is IMHO our finest, most beautiful album cover. If there is a CbJE masterpiece, for me this is it. I would not presume to speak for the other band members, but this, in my opinion, is CbJE's most consistent, coherent and sophisticated album ever. Every track is worthy, contributing mightily to the sum. The recording quality is superb, in spite of the modest means, and we were all in peak form as musicians.

There are many fantastic moments, but I'll mention a few of my favorites: Phil's amazing double-tracked mandolin solo on "Don't Be So Hard on Yourself," his slide guitar on "Colorblind's Night Out," the lush sound on "O Sylvia," the three-minute miracle that is "Two-Headed Girl," and the lazy, loping ease that we have on the title track. The collective timekeeping of Chuck, Ken and Jimmy achieves a transcendental perfection. Joe's horn arrangements glow throughout, and the band's total musicianship is both astonishing and artfully concealed all at once. I'll make further comments on the songs themselves in a future posting.

And how was this masterpiece greeted by our record company? With bafflement, irritation and overall dis-interest. The album was never even released in the USA. Cooking Vinyl pressed up 2500 copies (LP, cassette and CD, in total) and did nothing discernable to promote it. When the first pressing sold out, there was no discussion of doing more. I never read a single review of this album, positive, negative or in between. The bitter irony for us was that we'd delivered a truly wonderful album, instead of the dreadful live thing that they originally wanted to issue. That our record company failed to see the difference in quality made this all the more painful. I always thought that the album would find an audience eventually, but I'd say the odds are pretty long at this point. Still, it's a recording that when I pull it out and play it, I feel pretty damn lucky to have been a part of it.

Can't Tour Europe Without One of These...

Shown above is my work-permit from the 1989 tour. (You can click on it and see an enlarged image) We all had to have one of these in order to perform on these European tours. We did three tours—in the falls of '88, and '89, and then the spring of 1990. They were roughly five, eight and four weeks long, respectively. The first one broke even, more or less, the second tour lost somewhere around $20,000, and the third actually paid us a small sum for our efforts. The permit above is for the 8-week tour where we lost all the money.

One misconception many people have about the music business is that they view record companies as benificent entities that actually care about the content they release and the artists that they hire. They don't. (We were guilty of this misconception ourselves, at least to begin with.) Record companies are essentially banks that lend money to artists with the expectation of cleaning up on their sales and airplay. Even smaller, "idealistic" record labels will ultimately conform to this model, though they may start out otherwise. But at the end of the day, it's the artists that have to cover the debts. They are also usually the last to share in any profits that may accumulate.

On this tour we worked very hard, playing constantly for eight weeks without any breaks to speak of. Most days consisted of at least six to eight hours of travel in the van, then setup at the venue, soundcheck, dinner, gig, hotel, bed. Next day, wake up, repeat. On this tour we played for a thirty-one day stretch without a single day off. For much of the time at least two members of the band were sick with the flu, yet we never cancelled a show, and no-one missed a single performance. Artistically, the band grew tremendously, and our shows were well-reviewed and (mostly) well-attended. At the end of it we all sat down at a meeting with our booking agent, record company, and manager (at the "Bugle House" address shown on the work permit). Here we learned of the enormous debt that the tour had incurred. The meeting was very tense because there had been a number of disasters, miscalculations and generally inept planning from the start. There was plenty of blame to go around and a good part of the meeting was spent arguing over who was at fault. Then everyone in the room turned to the band and basically asked, "Well, how are you going to clear this debt?" At that moment, we had absolutely no idea how to answer the question. Collectively, we felt a great anger that the people least responsible for the failure of the tour were the ones who were in charge of cleaning up the mess. It was one of the most bleak and depressing moments of my life.

Dave's Clipping Archive (I)

Here's a review of a live radio performance that we did on a show called "Bound for Glory" at Cornell University, in Ithaca NY. It broadcast weekly, on Sunday evenings (for all I know, it's still going strong...). We played at least three of these while I was in the band; this was the second, I think. At that time the program was one of the longest-running folk shows in the country, hosted by a fellow named Phil Shapiro, who I suspect was one of those booing Dylan for using an electric guitar back in the sixties. The audience was largely hard-core folkies, who were nice enough folks, but could be a little too sincere at times. They also tended to impute their own political and social priorities on us whether it was appropriate or not. They loved us for our "authenticity" which meant that we were playing acoustically, mainly. The fact that in most other venues we could (and would) play as loud as the Ramones seemed to be of no account to them.

There was no payment for this gig. However, usually the artists would bring merchandise and sell to the audence between sets. The first time we did this show, we neglected to bring anything whatsoever to sell, and were taken aback by the demand for CbJE product. (This illustrates the general entreprenurial cluelessness that dogged us back then...) The next year though, we took lots of T-shirts, tapes, cds and such and did pretty well.

The writer here was certainly enthusiastic (he really overreaches things in a couple places...), although as with most members of the press, he seems to emphasize mostly the peculiarities of the group, not its firm grasp of American styles nor its innovative synthesis of these traditions. We lost track of the number of times that the adjective "quirky" was used to describe us or our music. To his credit, he does acknowldge the band's musicianship, which didn't always happen. (To his discredit, he joins the legion of other journalists who mispelled my name in their articles...)

A clarification: When we played as Colorblind James Experience, we were an electric, amplified, rock 'n roll outfit. A loud one. When we played as Colorblind James and the Death Valley boys, we were an acoustic group, audible within a radius of 20 or 30 feet. I usually only played clarinet on these occasions, and Joe would bring his bag of mutes to expand the coloristic possibilities of his trombone. We played basically the same repertoire, although some songs, such as "Solid! Behind the Times" or "Talk to Me" were not really adaptable to the acoustic format.

Den Bosch, The Netherlands (27 April 1990)

Here is a publicity release from the club called Willem II in a town called Den Bosch. (Readers on this blog who worry about their Dutch getting rusty should enjoy this little entry.) The publicity photo is actually from a couple years before, taken at a photo shoot where John Ebert, our trombonist at that time, was unable to be there. I had grabbed his trombone from our practice space so it would be ready in case he arrived, and so yes, that's me holding a trombone in the photo. I did actually teach myself to play the trombone a few years later, while teaching band in Florida.

This was a most interesting gig on our last tour. One aspect of our particular level of fame, or lack of same, was that from night to night we never knew what to expect from an audience. We could sell out large London clubs on weeknights, playing to an audience of nearly 1,000 fans, as we did on this tour at the Mean Fiddler, or we could face a different situation, such as this night in Den Bosch.

We got there in the late afternoon, set up, did our sound check and then had some dinner. I usually liked to stroll out to see what the house looked like before it was time to go onstage and I did so on this night. All the other band members were in the dressing room, warming up or relaxing. Phil was changing his guitar strings. I came back a short while later, and Chuck said, "So how's it look out there, Dave?" I replied, "There's no-one there." The exchange continued thusly:

CbJ: "There's got to be a few people there! How many?"

Me: "There's no-one there."

CbJ: "So, is it like, less than 50? 30?"

Me: "There's no-one there."

CbJ: "Under 20? C'mon, there's got to be at least ten people here!"

Me: "Chuck, there is a bartender out there and that is all. There is NO-ONE in the audience."

At this point, everyone in the band leaped up to take a look for themselves. By this time, there were a total of two people in the audience, dashing my dream of playing to a completely empty house. In the meantime, the promoter had grabbed the phone and called a few of his best friends and begged them to come hear us. They did. By the time we had to play there were maybe ten or twelve people there. My recollection is that we had a pretty good set and the folks who heard us had a great time. The promoter, who loved our recordings, had booked us on the mistaken assumption that if he loved our music that much, then certainly others in his fair city would too. Not so. We felt badly, as he took a bath on the whole thing. He'd even gone to the trouble to make a fantastic poster, which hangs in my studio to this day.

Snapshot

Here we are in April of 1990, standing in front of what was left of the Berlin Wall (it having been torn down during our exhausting and financially disastrous 1989 tour). Left to right: Colorblind James, David McIntire, Ken Frank, Phillip Marshall, Joe "the Bone" Columbo and James McAvaney.

This blog is a highly personal document of the “Golden Age” of the Colorblind James Experience. ("Golden age" was a quote of Chuck's, at the CD release gig for 'Solid! Behind the Times' in 1992) “Personal,” in the sense that any of the other band members would likely pick different topics or reminiscences than these here. CbJE was a band that existed from about 1980 until Chuck's death in 2001. Mainly based in Rochester NY, it also had a phase in San Francisco prior to my time. Phillip Marshall's blog (see right) has several vivid essays about that period.

At any given time we had a repertoire of well over 200 songs, at least 150 of which were originals, so there was a lot to choose from. The band in its various incarnations made a lot of recordings, on 45s, LPs, cds and radio sessions for the BBC, an attempted live album on the '89 tour. A lot of this recorded activity was never released, or else in an unsatisfactory format. Our acoustic album ("Strange Sounds from the Basement"), one of our finest efforts, was never released in the States. Some very good songs never got recorded. None of them were written down (except for lyrics, which Chuck kept in an enormous black book); all of the arrangements were in our heads only. This had its advantages, but it could also create havoc onstage as we would try to remember a song that we hadn’t played in a couple years.

As a musician he went by “Colorblind James,” but people who knew him called him Chuck. He started writing songs in college, did some folk coffeehouse type gigs and then put together a band in the late ‘70s. The first one was called the Water Street Boys, followed by Colorblind James and the White Caps; they played in Oswego NY, where Chuck was living at that time. The next band was called the Colorblind James Experience; it started somewhere around 1980, and it lasted (with varying lineups) until Chuck died in 2001. They were based in San Francisco for a couple years, then they moved back to Rochester NY in 1985. I joined them in ‘87, after graduating from Nazareth College. At the time, I worked at a record store with their guitarist Phil Marshall, who one afternoon told me that Chuck was thinking about adding a clarinet to the band, and would I be interested in doing trying out? I was.

Rehearsals were twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday), and three hours long, but they often would run a lot longer. We usually played out at least twice a month, sometimes much more. In the summer we would be especially busy doing weddings and folk gigs. We did three tours of Europe in ‘88, ‘89 and ‘90, and played all over the Northeastern US.

The usual practice at a gig was to never use a set list. Chuck would choose a song to start the set, see how it went, and then go from there based on the audience’s reaction to what we did. We had to stay on our toes, often having to invent horn arrangements on the spot, as Chuck would frequently call out a song we hadn’t ever actually rehearsed. This drove our European management nuts, who wanted us to have very scripted, well-planned shows. Such a notion was anathema to Chuck, who sought to achieve a sort of mystical spontaneous alchemy from each show. They also wanted our more popular or at least better-known songs carefully placed into each set we played. This bothered Chuck as well, who assumed that the Europeans would be more than pleased to hear songs that they didn't already know. In Europe we never got to do more than one set at a show, but in the US we’d always play three sets--like a typical bar band, except it was mostly originals.

I left the band in ‘92 to return to composition studies. When I hear the songs now, I’m struck by their originality and the sense of unified purpose that we projected, even when we didn't entirely agree with one another; something that extended beyond friendship, to something rare and altogether remarkable. It was a joy and an honor to have been there.

Welcome to This Blog

I played clarinet and saxophones in the exceptionally fine American musc group called the Colorblind James Experience from the summer of 1987 to May of 1992, a span of nearly five years and a time of intense musical activity for this band. This blog will house some of my memories of the group and I'll also post a lot of relevant photos and clippings that I've archived from that time. So c'mon! Lets go back...