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HOW THINGS STARTED
FROM THE JOURNAL OF JOHN MINER Wayne found Joel at the Java Cafe' in Fresno California
about six Anyway...we got together and jammed and it was just magical
WHY
"Why" was Joel's song, lyrics and music, and I'll get
him here to talk
TIME OF YEAR TIME OF YEAR centered around a poem I had written and
without
BRUDENELL
Brudenell is named after the place it was written at...a
small area
DYING DAY This piece was really a blending of a poem and a musical
line
SLEEPING WHALES My great friend and traveling partner Vic, were high
in the Canadian
NORTHERN LIGHT We arrived into Southern Alberta Canada and on the first
day
YOUR HEART ACOUSTIC
This little guitar piece is just the next song played
acoustically
YOUR HEART In complete contrast to Northern Light Joel's one take
vocal run
CASINO I'll get him here to talk about this one (Joel)...he
wrote and played
LAND OF SPRINAGAR I had been wanting to do a large scale piece for quite
some time
MANTRA SUNSET
Ending the album with Sprinagar seemed a bit too obvious
so
Wayne and I had been in various bands over the years....nothing
too exciting Just various jam bands ect...I had taken off for several
years and done quite a bit of traveling mostly Canada and Australia.
I was writing mountains of material, poetry, various riffs and short
stories...as well as a daily journal. Upon returning home Wayne
and I played together and we tried out some of the music, just guitar
and drums and occasionally a bass riff. I think Wayne was
excited and could feel something happening..things were fresh
and felt genuinely inspired...not just ...ok lets do this heavy riff thing
or something...but there was a certain electricity happening.
After a short time we both knew that a band would be the next step
and we both agreed to the idea of a power trio..
My guitar style was finally taking shape after years of searching
for a definitive approach based mostly on various unorthodox tunings
and such...I felt I would be able to hold the music together without a rhythm
Guitarist or keyboardist when I stumbled across an old analog tape delay
unit (Roland Space Echo)...The Roland gave such a rich tone even
without using delays that it really just started to take over and find
it's own life...I still use it to this day and prefer it over the colder,
and to me, more lifeless digital effects that so many guitarist use today..
months later where Joel had been working. He had recently been
transplanted from San Antonio Texas and Wayne played him some
rough boom box recordings of what we had been working on. Joel,
we found out, had been writing in quite a different style and had material
that was much more polished and defined than what we had...I felt
Joel was maybe more of a studio creature and I'm not sure
what he thought of us.
...I don't really know how to describe it...I mean you hear that all
the time but I really think this was something very special...You can
feel it on the record. Again Wayne came through for us and found
us a rehearsal space in the back of a farm house..at Beverly's...
Beverly Robertson that would be...It was a small one room
guest house in need of much repair where goats used to live...
..In fact as we would head down the dirt road to the space,
Beverly's goat... "Homer" would often block the road and we would
have to slowly nudge him out of the way with the bumper of
the car to get him to move...we called him "Homer the Gate Keeper".
So we would just be down there all the time nearly every day...recording,
playing, sitting on the roof writing and trying to make this
record...I don't think we really knew what it was going to sound
like when it was done but we were all very excited and just kept
on it with a tremendous amount of motivation. That's really how it
got started.br>
about it when I can... As far as the recording goes...after I read the
lyrics, I felt the guitar needed some extra body and I was really
shooting for a big reverberated open sound to go with the slow
building epic feel. It was one of the last songs we did which was
obviously in contrast to it being the first song on the album!
The first takes I recorded off a scratch track in a friends metal
trailer out in the country...I used a Marshall half stack, very old
vintage 60's and just blasted it with my electric 12 string on the
top of my white double neck Ibanez.
Once I had a stereo take I then played it back through
speakers inside a racquetball court and then re-miked it
again...I took the four tracks...blended them all together into a
stereo mix wa-la...it worked well...I used this technique quite a lot
on the album..not this exact approach but similar.. I really wanted
every song to have a unique guitar sound and be recorded in it's
own unique way...and I believe to this day it makes a real difference.
getting too detailed about the lyrics it basically represented the
searching and struggle to find truth in the context of our ever
changing world and it's seemingly endless frustrations and dilemmas.
I think most of it was written while sitting bored to death in some
awful political science class at the university I attended. Musically
I had the idea to put the guitar slightly out of tune in the very beginning
to represent the sort of "out of tuneness" we all often feel at various
times in our lives. Things then sharpen up as we descend into
life.... build into a frenzy and often leave us just where we
started...wondering and questioning...
Joel had a particularly difficult time with the vocals until he
went to the mountains...recorder in hand, and had a talk with
the sunshine. After he returned you get to hear what happened
and if your like me....I think its quite interesting.
on the island of Prince Edward or as most would call it PEI. A very
light and happy tune played in an open tuning. It's always one of
my favorites any time I'm doing a solo gig or just playing around a
campfire with friends. I think it fits nicely on the album like a quick
breath of fresh air between Time of Year and Dying Day.
I'd been working on for some time. I know it's Joel's favorite on the
record. the lyric is pretty self explanatory for sure. We really tried
to capture a specific feeling with the music. We were probably half
way into the album and Wayne was going through a difficult time and
I think he felt a lot of pressure and anxiety about how the album was
being recorded. Joel and I were very excited and motivated and
Wayne just took a break for awhile and we brought in our friend
Gary Newmark to help us along...This was the 1rst song we did
with him...the others "Why" and the huge "Land of Sprinagar". We
decided to go for a big ethereal sound to enhance the lyric and
Gary was instrumental in giving it a more interesting rhythmic
backbone than what Joel and I had intended. Rather than put in
some big predictable guitar solo we brought in Ann Jorgenson
from the local symphony to further the development with her flute
and that really gave the piece a kind of mystical aura... that I'm
not sure I would have been able to capture with just the guitar.
I used a stereo guitar track panned dead open in the mix and Joel
spent quite a while playing with his bass tone getting a smooth yet
crunchy sound to me felt like walking on jagged rocks when your
at the ocean...calming yet still careful.
Rockies, not far from Radium and you could see the glaciers melting
into the streams and I just felt this feeling of unbelievable perfection
and beauty.. the streams turn into bigger ones...eventually
rivers....across great vast plains then finally to the ocean giving
life to all the seas wonders. Yet with the ever encroaching danger
of modern life we must protect such pristine elements and be careful
with what we have recently created in the industrial age..Musically
very simple... just simple A and C cords gently swaying back and
forth through the Space Echo... and rather than giving
acknowledgment to any negativity lyrically...I just played a few
dark cords in the middle of the song to represent that musically...Joel's
peaceful and soothing voice bring the lyric to life and I think one
of the simplest yet most impressionable songs I've ever done to this day.
Vic and I met a young girl from New Zealand who was also just
traveling around with a backpack and living that gypsy bohemian
life. We spent a day in Glacier National Park which is shared
by the U.S. and Canada. In this true story they fell in love, ended
up married and this song really came out of that experience....On the
long drives in the weeks ahead, we worked out the lyrics and
music to what would later become this song. It's really about that
new and fresh feeling of being in love and the feeling of what to
do when they live on the other side of the planet! When I put the
song on the table for Mantra Sunrise to record... it became a difficult
task for us to produce...Wayne spent weeks working on a drum
sound that would compliment the light and airy acoustic guitar
sound I was aiming at. I think Joel did a wonderful job with the
bass, accenting Wayne's kick drum in the right pocket... It was
certainly the most challenging song for Joel vocally on the
record. We probably did more takes at it than the whole record
combined! I think the end result worked nicely but not without struggle.
I think the song called for a tight clean sound and we just had to work
on it a lot to get it there. The end of the song is really just row, row,
row, your boat gently down the stream....happily, happily, life
is but a dream!
in a finger picking style...same chords and arrangement..yet so
completely different. I thought it would be nice to also have it presented
in this way. I used a similar recording style as Mantra Sunset...a few
less mics. I think I recorded about 5 versions and just took the best
one...this being it!
was all it took here...Your Heart is just not the kind of song you
can over think...We later messed around with different approaches
but nothing came out with as much emotion as the first time.
This painful song is surely not about being too perfect! Wayne
actually gave birth to this tune with some drum tracks he handed
me. I had fiddled around with this somewhat bizarre 18 chord
progression in a strange tuning over the top of his drums...very
haphazardly and without much thought or design...I wrote lyrics
to match the dark tone of the song based upon a recent experience
of mine and it just started from there. Joel then twisted the vocal
melody from there and it just really got out there...A real group
effort! The guitar was recorded at the Goat House and I really
wanted to max things out sonically so I ran a chord outside
and played in the sun while the Marshall amp I had shook the
structure inside...we used tons of mics and had another amp
I think an old Sunn stuffed in a closet upside down. It was a
very fun song to record and really went down pretty easy. I'd
call this the most experimental piece on the album short of
Sprinagar. Live we would often extend the intro for several
minutes while I was changing or retuning guitars....I remember
one night losing all sound from my guitar and Joel and Wayne
just played the whole thing without me...I don't think anyone noticed!
it himself other than a bit of backup vocal..Very visual song and
I think the most sensual piece on the record.
and the aspiration for that came on the ferry ride from Vancouver
to Victoria, I love that place! I had been reading Paramahansa
Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi and oddly enough I was
sitting next to an East Indian man on the ride over. He didn't speak
English very well and seemed to say Sprinagar...with a very
pronounced "P" in it...I thought that a bit unusual so when it
came time to name the mammoth piece it only seemed appropriate!
Upon arriving I meditated for an hour or so and then picked up
my guitar and wrote the whole rough draft for the song in about 3
hours! I wish that would happen more often! I was so excited
and inspired I could hardly sleep for days. The song was recorded
in five sections and literally took six months to record... It nearly
broke the band up and Wayne actually quit half way through it.
Both Wayne and Gary's playing is on the song. I spent a week
writing the two guitar solos and a month figuring out and recording
the ethereal key thing in the middle. The song was just a monster
to mix and left me totally drained emotionally when it was done.
You have to love this song...you have no choice!
The song is about the passing of wisdom from generation to
generation...and the constant seeking of truth in the three
worlds...the physical represented in the drum solo. The intellectual,
guitar solo. The Spiritual, keys. This song was a real labor of love...
I thought it would be nice to wind things down a bit and put this
little solo acoustic piece on the end. I wrote it in Sedona Arizona
during my travels and it really came quite quickly. I had hiked
up top of House Rock bluff with my guitar over my shoulder
and just played up there till the sun went down...... later finding
a few passing chords and the piece was done. Recording it
I used a Yamaha acoustic electric and using several mics and
one direct line..another bussed through a tape delay unit and it's
got a soothing warm tone. It was actually Joel's idea to name
the band Mantra Sunrise after this song..so we changed it from
sunset to sunrise!
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