No, not Jon Stewart, but John Stewart (although I have tracks by both in my library). This is the Kingston Trio John Stewart, who recently passed away, causing many people, including my wife, who used to date Jon, to freak out a little bit before they realized that they didn't know who this Stewart was, which made me a little sadder still. Meanwhile my dad, who's one of the bigger K3 fans I've ever known, somehow missed hearing about Stewart's passing when it happened and ended up hearing about it from me a year or so later.Sometimes I have these grand ambitions to do something not ambitious, and I fail it. This was such a track, although my initial parameters for simplicity-- two unfussy guitars, super-unfussy MIDI bass, and little if any variation on the drum pattern-- survived to the end product. A strange confluence of circumstances, however, turned this into some sort of Arcade Fire-esque epic. The main one was the big family Fleetwood Mac-style vocal session that became cool enough to be featured (although it was actually pretty easy to do), but another thing is that the drum patterns which had been selected as sort of skittery and almost ambient in theory actually turned out to sound almost propulsive in practice, especially when paired with the way I accidentally played Eden's decidedly non-epic nylon-string uke-guitar with a lot more slow-building intensity than I'd intended.
Overall I like it a great deal, though, mostly because my girls really came through on those harmonies; Stewart is kind of a key Broome family artist, so it was fitting in a way. It should be possible to hear me getting choked up and teary-eyed on one of my vocal tracks. I had a moment; I think I'd earned it, and if you haven't heard any real emotion on any recordings yet today, now you have. And tomorrow, just me and a banjo or something... promise.
Personnel:
Rex Broome ~ Everything but:
Miranda Broome ~ Backing vocals
Genevieve Broome ~ Backing vocals
Eden Hain ~ Backing vocals
Gen dated the Daily Show host?
ReplyDelete