Here's the opener: 

1. Like You Really Care

The finished track : 

The demo below was the first thing we put down in the Jon's studio in Jan 2014. At the time, it was my newest song. We'd already decided to put the Paradise Bound project on hold and just do a little EP of some new songs around the idea of songs that dealt with unrequited love.

I sent the piano demo out to the gents for comment and in no time Aaron sent back this version with synth orchestrations which blew me away and pushed the sentiment uphill to a higher romantic plane :

Then, Andrew took Aaron's brilliant vision and got the parts all worked out for the violins (Carla Kihlstedt) and cello (Elizabeth Schultze) and french horns (Kari Fietek). 

THE STORY : I'm still not sure where this one arrived from. It's not based on someone specific or some specific place. The images exist as a sort of comic book in my mind. Maybe an apartment in Brooklyn, or perhaps a piece of something from a party in Boston that I went to with Josh. I forget. But the fleas image actually happened here at home when I was working the song over. Heather was sitting up against the cabinets sitting on the kitchen floor and picking fleas out of our cat Lou and it reminded me of a time back in college where we were walking at night and stopped where some people were gathered around on the sidewalk. There was a rather large snake, in my mind it was reddish, but that might've been the streetlights. Heather was the only one to try to pick up the snake and get it out of the street and to a safe spot on the other side of a fence in a garden nearby. That's someone you might want to follow around even if they say they don't really care if you do or not. 

Have most people have been on both sides of that equation?

Lyrics

I was bored
I was really bored
Didn’t know anybody
At this party
In my own apartment
Got into this argument
With no one about nothing I can remember

Then you chimed right in Like a carnival arriving
You climbed right in Like it was your life that you’re driving
You take my wheel and you make straight for the future
You made me feel I could get used to this torture

I sit and stare while you’re picking fleas off my cat
You’re sitting there sticking to the lies that fell flat
I mistake your smile for the truth you hold there bleeding
It takes a while but I fold up into nothing

I’m falling, I’m falling for you
Am I falling for you?
You say you can’t be true
Well that’s what you say, I know
I’ll see it your way someday
But for now I don’t think you’ll be getting through to me.

You sleep around and you tell me all about it
I keep it down in the hell you built around it
You take me up to the park out past the landing
I make believe your heart is where my hand is

You say I’m free, just as free as you are
I say I’m me and I want you here forever
Your eyes fall away from mine

I’m falling, I’m falling for you
I am falling for you
You say you can’t be true
Well that’s what you say, I know
I’ll see it your way someday
But for now while you’re lying there
For now, while you just lie there
For now, I will play like you really care.
Like you really care.

music and lyrics by Humberto Cordero

orchestration by Aaron Mayo & Andrew Fietek

Hum : piano, vocals

Andrew : drums, percussion

Jon : upright & electric bass

Carla Kihlstedt : violin

Elizabeth Schultze : cello

Kari Fietek : french horn

Recorded and mixed at Brick Hill, Orleans. (except french horn at Andrew's house)

Mastered by Coast, Berkeley, CA

hum style chart of Like You Really Care.

the cat pictured is big ol' LuLu. Rarely had fleas actually. Alas, he is now pushing up daffodils in the backyard.

LISTEN TO THE WHOLE ALBUM : : : AND NOW AVAILABLE ON iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and all other music platforms.

2. Really Wish I Could

THE STORY : 

The primary inspiration for this song comes from a phone call I had with a friend living in Berlin, we'll call him Pedro. Anyway Pedro had been recently married to a fellow doctor. He assumed he'd be deep into that ever so sweet honeymoon chapter of his relationship where the love is just bubbling over. Now, it's not unusual for one spouse to be called away on duty or business and when this happens during this honeymoon no one is happy about that.

The way I heard it, instead of accepting a local job she chose to leave for a year on the other side of the earth and this was not the first time and this put Pedro into a dark dark place where he didn't really know how to take this abandonment. The relationship, he admitted, had had some major tensions stemming from his own relocation to a new country/continent and this leaving just made him question what she really felt about him. He gave it his best shot. He sat at home and texted a lot trying to keep the embers glowing and his spirits up. 

It didn't take long before he realized that, unlike their last separation, he hadn't really started missing her at all, at least not with the intensity he felt he should. What could this mean? After some time in it dawned on him she'd sort of done him a favor by leaving him all alone. He told me he felt he was "back in the Land of the Loving". Had to stop him on that phrase, wrote it down, and that became the center of the song : his emergence from isolation to being free to accept love again. I finished the song that afternoon. 

HERE'S THE FINISHED TRACK : 

I'd originally thought I'd take it in the direction of "Singin' in the Rain", sort of a jaunty stepping out into the streets again, perhaps a melancholy tap dancing through the bridge. But, I think it was sitting with Jonathan Donaldson and playing it for him one Sunday morning that made me realize it could be a little more. Often happens sitting with Jonny. Forces you to up that game.

Here's the original sad swingin' demo : 

Here's where we headed soon after. This demo from our first rehearsal of this song includes the a rough sketch of the background vocals. Listen to Jimmie blazing a trail through that forest! Something nice here that I think we lost in the final. Always happens.  : 

RE Dan Hicks : It might've been when we started recording this that I realized I might have also tapped into another song I'd heard, at least as a sort of corollary to Pedro's situation. When Heathe and I were living in the Czech Republic, we had a drummer friend who was playing with a bunch of Irish street buskers. One gray afternoon we were sitting with them in Staroměstské náměstí, the old town square, and they started up this Dan Hicks song with a kind of Pogue bent and I just fell in love with it. That twist. I think Really Wish I Could owes something to this tune. Clueless as ever, I have to admit that it wasn't until I was preparing these notes that I realized it wasn't those buskers who'd written it. Alas, Dan Hicks (1941-2016) had to wait until he'd died to be recognized in my universe. :  

Lyrics

I’ve been trying to miss you, but it just doesn’t come easy
does it mean there’s something wrong with me or wrong with us?
seems you’ve been gone forever, long before you left
longing to be together doesn’t enter my mind
it just hasn’t happened yet

guess I should thank you. you’re welcome to stay away
Really wish I could miss you,
but it just hasn’t happened, I can’t say it’s happened yet

Let me tell you a fairy tale story,
turns out fairly stale and boring
Stop me please if you’ve heard this one before

Glory be, The Kingdom of Me!
I’m back in the Land of the Loving!
After living every day inside that frame
that just fell off the wall as you were leaving.

Guess I should thank you. You’re welcome to stay away.
Really wish I could miss you,
but it just hasn’t happened
I can’t say it’s happened yet

I’m still waiting, still waiting, waiting still...
Guess I should thank you, you’re welcome to fade away
Really wish I could miss you,
but it just doesn’t happen,
I can’t say it’s happened yet

I’m still waiting...

(the last third of the song is just an excuse to let Aaron take off on an extended solo. Anyone who's played with Aaron knows it never doesn't make sense to let Aaron take an extended solo)

music and lyrics by Humberto Cordero

Hum : piano, organ, vocals

Jim Snider : upright & electric bass

Aaron Mayo : guitar

Andrew : drums, percussion

Emily Wade Adams : vocals

Recorded and mixed by THE Jon Evans at Brick Hill, Orleans, who, as always knows how to build those background vocals into something special.

Mastered by Coast, Berkeley, CA

chord chart for Really Wish I Could.

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UnReQuieted, the new dram pop excursion is underway. 

Like You Really Care  >  Really Wish I Could  >  Who Can Say?  >  My Father's Hat  >  Gordon Matta Clark  >  Mar Y Cielo  >  Vibrations  >  This  >  You Know I Know  >  Who Can Blame Me?  >  Astray  >  Dear Mongolia  >  Mar y Cielo (reprise)

3. Who Can Say?

THE STORY : 
Your relationship is an entire country that you've carved out of the world, a place with hard-fought borders, with its own language, customs, allies and enemies. And if you are a particular brand of self-centered, jealous, controlling lover (though you don't have to be), you may quickly find yourself alone, holed up in the basement of the palace with all the furniture up against the huge gilded doors (it's that kind of palace and that kind of hollow empire that you've built), listening to the crackling and sirens above while sipping at the last bottle of your dwindling power, waiting for them to take you bound down to the main square.

Here's the final track :

Actually, just occurred to me that this is sort of like a sister song to "No Regular Day, No" from Like...This. Sort of. That one had a sort of Ceausecu thing going on. Anyway, I still feel for the guy (in the song, not Nicholai). Doesn't have to have been a jerk to feel like the the whole world has collapsed and the Rule of Love has ended. 

Anyway other than a couple of Jimmie's bouncier numbers, Who Can Say one was one of the rare originals that people figured out how to dance to when we were 4Eyes and gigging the Squire. Might've been this one that resulted in the guy getting a broken shot glass in the mouth? 

AN ASIDE : 

Not sure if I can say enough about the chill magic of Jon Evans and what he's built at Brick Hill. Everything we brought there was just a shadow of what came out. This song is a good example.

Here's the "bullet" mic Jon used for the first verse vocal  : 

That mic sound started to fill out the whole narrative daydream I'd always had while performing this song. This eventually led to the "Russian Army" scene in the bridge. Down comes Jon with three pairs of boots. Nice boots. And then it was Jimmie and Aaron and I up to the mezzanine to clomp around and sing in our best infantry baritones. This is what I love about the recording process: all the drama playing out in my head when I'm singing these characters has a chance of getting externalized so I can really see it. 

Lyrics:

My body’s silent as a drum
Since you took your hands away
I’m going blind my mind is numb
Since you took your eyes away

Birds have flown to parts unknown
It’s a cold and icy, stormy May
I huddle here without your warmth
My lips are blue, my lips are blue

Who can say how this will end?
Who can say how this....is gonna end?

And all the streets are empty now
Since you took your smile away
The electricity is out
Since you took your laugh away

The shops are shuttered cross the town
Their shelves are empty
My government comes crashing down
Marshall Law begins today

Who can say how this will end?
Who can say how this ...is gonna end?

I hear the drums outside my door
I hear the drums, the drums of war
Why did you leave me here all alone?
Why did you leave me? My birds have flown away.

Who can say?

music and Lyrics by Humberto Cordero

Aaron Mayo : guitar, Russian Soldier #1, marching

Andrew Fietek : drums, percussion

Jimmie Snider : bass, wounded Russian Soldier #4, marching

Humberto Cordero : vocals, accordion, Russian Soldier in ditch, marching

Recorded and mixed by Jon Evans at Brick Hill, Orleans.Mastered by Coast, Berkeley, CA

Here's an old live recording from a 4Eyes gig long ago. 

Here's our first take from the first session together at Brick Hill.  You can see there is not yet an inkling that the Russians are coming. 

LISTEN TO THE WHOLE ALBUM : : : AND NOW AVAILABLE ON iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and all other music platforms.

UnReQuieted, the new dram pop excursion is underway. Here's track 4 :

Like You Really Care  >  Really Wish I Could  >  Who Can Say?  >  My Father's Hat  >  Gordon Matta Clark  >  Mar Y Cielo  >  Vibrations  >  This  >   You Know I Know  >  Who Can Blame Me?  >  Astray  >  Dear Mongolia  >  Mar y Cielo (reprise)

4. My Father's Hat

THE STORY : 

This song was inspired by a story that Baumi told to me one night in the parking lot of Barandov Studios in Prague. 

Baumi (Karl Baumgartner) had gone to his car to get me a cassette tape of the soundtrack Life on a String that Pandora Films was producing or had just produced in China. It included a song which he explained to me in his lovely intense way (or at least this is how I remember his explanation) :

"there are these two armies which are marching, moving toward each other on this wide plain. And the master and his student (and/or son) are watching this impending battle from a hill overlooking the plain. The master is a master of singing and playing some sort of instrument, maybe an erhu. The scene ends with the master coming down and sitting in between the two armies and playing a song which ends the fighting. The master will die when the he breaks his 1000th string."

It was dark and after dinner which probably means we'd had a little something to drink. He loved the melody and challenged me to come up with some English lyrics to fit the melody (I'm looking for this). I also remember he was very excited about the band on the other side of the cassette, Madredeus. I think it was O Espíritu Da Paz. This is twenty years ago and he put the tape into the yellow walkman for me to hear. Baumi was in Prague producing Kusturica's Underground. I was just lucky to be there. 

I remember commenting on his fingers which had some gnarly looking fingernails and he said this was a result of his habit of chewing on his fingers for many years. Resonated with me as I had not long before, living in NYC, started a serious finger-chewing habit that continues to some degree. I'm starting to see some of the same effect now and it reminds me, warmly, of Baumi. I only found out he had died in 2014 when I was preparing notes for this release. 

Anyway, I don't know how it came about, but he mentioned he had a very heartbreaking thing happen on a recent trip. Baumi's father died when he was 15. Since then he had taken to wearing his father's hat everywhere and all the time. It had become a constant bittersweet reminder. 

Then, after arriving at some airport, he realized he had left the hat on the plane. Though he went back to find it, it wasn't there. He had lost it. Or, it was lost.

He was truly devastated. He said he missed the pain that the hat allowed him to feel.

Like any scrap of your lost beloved’s hem that licks the wound of loss to a sweet-tasting rawness, these momentos reassure you that the love was real and deep. That you could love. 

Or something like that.

I demoed the song once laying in some mourning doves. But, I especially remember performing it live for the first time for a small group at Margo and Dan's Day of the Dead party.  

here's that Demo :

Andrew and I set out to record some basic tracks for the Paradise Bound project back when he was a music teacher at a private school outside of Boston. We'd blocked out a weekend during Christmas break and were recording it in the band room there. He lay in the rhythm for My Father's Hat and I'd done a scratch on the old accordion. Then a gigantic snow storm came in and nothing else happened for another decade when the song seemed to fit in with the UnReQuieted set. The rest of the instruments were recorded by Jon at the ever-loving Brick Hill. 

Lyrics

I lost my father's hat
and now I've got a ghost on my head.

When you love someone so much, you hold on to the pain,
the pain of a touch that you'll never feel again.

It's like a talisman, a fetish, a gold magic watch;
you guard it at all cost.
and now it's lost
my father's hat

I've lost my father's hat
and you wanna know my only comfort....my only care.....?
that's that that hat like my father is out there.
I've lost my father's hat.

music and Lyrics by Humberto Cordero

Andrew : drums/percussion

Jimmie : bass

Aaron : guitar

Humberto : vocal, accordion, electric piano

Recorded by Jon Evans at Brick Hill Studio except drums/percussion which Andrew recorded when we tried to start Paradise Bound about ten years ago until we got shut down by one of the biggest blizzards in Northeast history. I can still remember that guy outside windows of the school with the snow blower going back and forth.

Mastered by Coast in Berkeley, CA

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4. Gordon Matta-Clark

UnReQuieted, the new dram pop excursion is rolling into the second act. Here's track 5 :

Like You Really Care  >  Really Wish I Could  >  Who Can Say?  >  My Father's Hat  >  Gordon Matta-Clark  >  Mar Y Cielo  >  Vibrations  >  This  >  You Know I Know  >  Who Can Blame Me?  >  Astray  >  Dear Mongolia  >  Mar y Cielo (reprise)

HERE'S THE FINAL VERSION :

Gordon Matta-Clark is the oldest song in this collection. I first became aware of land artists like Robert Smithson, James Turrell and Michael Heizer thanks to Zisso, my architectural thesis advisor. Gordon Matta Clark was sort of lumped in there. His most engaging works for me were his carving dizzying volumes into the thick fabric of derelict buildings. I didn’t really get deep into his work until later when I was working my first architecture job in NYC with Emilio Ambasz. 

It was during those few years there that I started meeting with Merritt after work, often with bottles of something and going up to the roof of his apartment. (It was going up one night that Merritt and I were held up at gunpoint in the vestibule of his building.) It’s a little hard to remember exactly how the songs of that time came to be written but I remember he’d just strum some and I would start singing something and that was pretty much it. If something caught I’d turn it over in my head walking around the city and we’d develop them little by little after hours. Many awful songs were left on the rooftop. This one we actually did a little demo (demo now, but then it seemed like a major 4-track production). I remember working on the last harmony vocals in my apartment in Brooklyn before the party the last night I lived in NYC.

This song is probably the only one on the album that doesn’t quite fit the UnReQuieted theme. No love lost, really. Perhaps just the destructive obsessive  love of one’s own dark self and paralyzing bad habits. More like ReQuieted. Just thought there should be something bouncier here. So I thought there was no connection until this morning when Heather discovered Laurie Anderson's 2015 album which included this : Three Ghosts  where she talks about his death at 35 from pancreatic cancer. 

I had thought of using GMC's Splitting for the cover art of UnReQuieted before knowing Laurie's take that it was about his parents' divorce. Duh.

The horns were arranged by Andrew. At the end of each chorus I wanted to have what we called a “miasma" letting the horns just play anything to try and show the release of the singer’s pent up soul out through the beautiful holes in his heart. 

Something nice here in our first run through :

Lyrics

You work on my life like Gordon Matta-Clark
you’ve taken this condemned old pile and cut into its heart
to reveal all the spaces and a clear view to the stars

I was folded up so tight no one could squeeze inside
but with a clip clip and a flouirsh, unfolding me so wide
you unreeled all the faces I swear I had to hide

You divined invisible lines
and forced me to concede that gravity isn’t what it used to be

You work on me with a solid patience
Now that I have found my footing
I'm lifting off of my foundations.

Between every room I built heavy walls
I layed down lathe and plaster and bricked up all the doors
to conceal, eliminate a straight shot to the core

Then you came in with chainsaws like Gordon Matta-Clark
cutting through linoleum, day breaks through the dark
and you peeled back the layers and I can feel the air is finally moving
Chainsaws all are singing:
 
You divined invisible lines
and forced me to concede that gravity isn’t what it used to be

You work on me with a solid patience
Now that I have found my footing
I'm lifting off of my foundations.

You work on me. Gordon Matta-Clark.

music and Lyrics by Humberto Cordero and Merritt Bucholz

Korey Charles : trumpet

Bruce Abbott : alto and soprano saxes

John Wolf : trombone

Dan Sullivan : baritone sax

Jim Snider : bass

Andrew : drums, percussion, guitar

Aaron : guitar

Emily Wade Adams : backing vox

Hum : vocals, keyboards

Recorded by Jon Evans at Brick Hill StudioMastered by Coast in Berkeley, CA

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6. & 13. Mar y Cielo

UnReQuieted, the new dram pop excursion is reaching the half-way point. Here's track 6 and, as a bonus, track 13:

Like You Really Care  >  Really Wish I Could  >  Who Can Say?  >  My Father's Hat  >  Gordon Matta Clark  >  Mar y Cielo >  Vibrations  >  This  >  You Know I Know  >  Who Can Blame Me?  >  Astray  >  Dear Mongolia  >  Mar y Cielo (reprise)

This is one of those boleros where the knife goes in and just keeps twisting. The sea and the sky look like they eventually meet, but they never do. And that's the two .

Mar y Cielo is one of my grandfather's favorites. He used to tell the story, perhaps apocryphal, that when the wife of the songwriter, Julito Rodriguez, heard the song for the first time, she filed for divorce. My abuelo was a multi-instrumentalist who loved these old tunes and was from a generation that would get a couple of friends to come with him and serenade these boleros under the window of someone he fancied. My abuela, who might've been in that window, would have been horrified by our spiced up unfaithful version, so to appease her we've recorded a more traditional take. 

Julito was the lead singer for the famous Trio Los Panchos, shown in this video, with the composer singing. Obviously part of some movie. What's very strange is why this dancing pair are smiling so lovingly at each other considering the lyric. 

We recorded two versions, one re-cast and one more traditional.

Here's the version that comes after Gordon Matta Clark on the album : 

Here's the version that closes the album : 

Alas, my spanish is pretty awful. Not Nat King Cole bad but, those who know, know I'm a little iffy. 

Lyrics

by Julito Rodríguez
Lyrics in spanish and a translation :

Me tienes, pero de nada te vale
soy tuya porque lo dicta un papel; 
mi vida la controlan las leyes, 
pero en mi corazón
que es el que siente amor
tan sólo mando yo.

El mar y el cielo
se ven igual de azules
y en la distancia
parece que se unen.

Mejor es que recuerdes
que el cielo es siempre cielo, 
que nunca, nunca, nunca
el mar lo alcanzará; 
permíteme igualarme con el cielo
que a ti te corresponde ser el mar

A SORT OF AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION:

You have me but it's of no value to you.
I'm yours only because it says so on paper. My life is controlled by what's legal. But, here inside my heart, that thing that feels love, only I rule.

The sea and sky appear equally blue, and in the distance it looks like they come together. It's better that you remember that the sky is always the sky, 
that never never never the sea is going to reach it.

Permit me to consider myself like the sky, because you are most certainly the sea.

Track 6 : 

Andrew : drums, percussion, marimba, congas

Korey Charles : trumpet

Bruce Abbott : sax

Aaron : guitar

Jon : bass

Emily Wade Adams : vocals

Hum : piano, vocals

Track 13 : 

Andrew : congas

Aaron : guitar

Jon : bass

Hum : vocals

Words and music : Julito Rodriguez Reyes

Copyright Southern Music Publishing Co., Inc

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7. Vibrations

The story of two trains passing in the night...

Like You Really Care  >  Really Wish I Could  >  Who Can Say?  >  My Father's Hat  >  Gordon Matta Clark  >  Mar y Cielo  >  Vibrations  >  This  >  You Know I Know  >  Who Can Blame Me?  >  Astray  >  Dear Mongolia  >  Mar y Cielo (reprise)

Here's the final version :

When I was living in the Czech Republic, working on Underground (see My Father's Hat), I would take the late train out about an hour east of Prague to a farm in a small village where Heathe and I were living. In this post-Soviet landscape, on this rattling train, I'd get sleepy, and putting my head on the glass and feel every splice in the rail in my head, lulled until you'd got the explosive slam of a train blowing by in the other direction. In the stations you'd have those unexplained delays where someone else in the cabin on the other side, inches away from your face, has their head up against the glass. There's got to be a french movie somewhere that starts with two strangers on scheduled trains, going opposite directions, seeing each other across this silent gap through windows, and falling in love over a series of 5-minute stop overs in a station where neither of them lives. Got to be, right?  

Anyway, it was on one of these late trains that I wrote this song, imagining these lovers being the trains themselves (no faces like Thomas) aware of all inside, in the night between stations, the expectation of that explosion as they pass each other once each night, and then go on their way. 

Here's is a recording I did at the time with a bluegrass band I sat in with in Prague. The Czechs like their bluegrass. Jeržy, Tomaš and Luboš let me sing and play my first wheezy accordion. 

Tearing through the night’s long skirts

This train is on its way to morning

The shifting of the passengers

the sweating of the babies

seduction in the front car

uncovered by the moon

and forests in the cloudless stars

also want to forget you

but I feel vibrations of your passing

underneath my wheels

the rails both tremble slightly

as you somewhere pick up speed

and I’m heading to the east

with your vibrations taunting me

t’turn back...t’turn back...t’turn back

but the track, but the track.

Words and music by Humberto Cordero

Aaron : guitar

Andrew : drums

Jim : bass

Jon : lap stee guitar, piano

Humberto : vocals

Recorded and won by Jon Evans at Brick Hill Studio, Orleans Mass. 

Mastered by Coastal, Berkeley Cal.

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8. This

Sleeping with the ex...again

Like You Really Care  >  Really Wish I Could  >  Who Can Say?  >  My Father's Hat  >  Gordon Matta Clark  >  Mar y Cielo  >  Vibrations  >  This  >  You Know I Know  >  Who Can Blame Me?  >  Astray  >  Dear Mongolia  >  Mar y Cielo (reprise)

Here's the final track :

if you're having trouble with SoundCloud : 

This is just a little ditty of a scene I saw/overheard in a cafe on the East Side. 

It was definitely a morning after. Perhaps a morning before. Likely both. 

Appreciate Bruce Abbott's flute which he nailed on the first pass. I wanted this version of "one note samba" and he laid it down.

Here's the demo, just me and the accordion : 

Lyrics

What am I supposed to do with information like this?

under the table you kick me hard

all of a sudden This

Give me a break, give me some time

to figure out what I want to make of This

I thought we talked This out

I thought the last thing you'd want was...

This is no surprise

This look in your eyes

This finger on my skin

as this us begins again

this simple morning giving way

to this more complicated day

this is the ache I've always missed

this kiss, this kiss

This is no surprise.

What am I suppose to do? You just can't seem to choose

you say your boyfriend is gorgeous now

all of a sudden...This

Give me some space, give me some room

to out-maneuver your tricky heart like...This

I thought you said last time

that that would be the last last time

This is no surprise

this look in your eyes

this finger on my skin

as this us begins again

this simple morning giving way

to this more complicated day

this is the ache I've always missed

this kiss, this kiss, This is no surprise

this sleepy look in your eyes

you linger on my skin

as this fuss begins again

is this us beginning again?

or is this just the beginning

of another end?

I don't care much right now.

Words and music by Humberto Cordero

Bruce Abbott : flute

Aaron : guitar

Andrew : drums, percussion

Jim : bass

Humberto : vocals

Recorded by Jon Evans at Brick Hill Studio, Orleans Mass. 

Mastered by Coastal, Berkeley Cal.

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9. You Know I Know

an elegie for Vlad

Like You Really Care  >  Really Wish I Could  >  Who Can Say?  >  My Father's Hat  >  Gordon Matta Clark  >  Mar y Cielo  >  Vibrations  >  This  >  You Know I Know  >  Who Can Blame Me?  >  Astray  >  Dear Mongolia  >  Mar y Cielo (reprise)

Here's the final version :

if you're having trouble with SoundCloud : 

This one goes back a ways. And, if my inability to keep it together in studio is any indication, it also goes deep as well. 

Vlad was my friend from the first day of architecture school. From Mexico City, with pronounced Mayan features, he famously kept a bottle of Tabasco at his desk for when he needed a little pick-me-up. We all spent a lot of time together in that studio but I found Vlad to be one of the few people that I had met up to that time to whom had felt a real fraternal bond. We appreciated each other, flaws and all.  

Without getting maudlin, this is a song about not holding up ones' end of the friendship contract. This is me trying to figure out what was going on after it's too late to know for sure. You fall in with other friends, you're in school, you disconnect. You miss the signs. Or ignore them. Mark, who had been there like a ref on the quad when Vlad took me down (barcardi 151 the partial culprit) was the one who called me in Rome to give me the news that Vlad had hung himself over Christmas break. I took a walk around and around the Circus Maximus.

This one wrote itself one morning while I was on a run. It was slated for the next project, Paradise Bound, but I thought it worked better here among the unrequited. 

We recorded Andrew's drums, and Jonathan Donaldson's guitar and bass back a ways at the school where Andrew taught. The dozens of vocal takes was done with Jon at Brick Hill. It is a testament to his gentle guidance that this song is, hopefully, not unbearably overwrought. 

Here's the demo, with Jonathan (on his four-track?) and me on accordion : 

Lyrics

The world was always trying to break him down

with sticks and stones and pavement but he would never cave in

no, he outwitted them all he dropped the ball and got off scot-free

He was always trying to fake me out

he'd drink himself half empty and then he'd get half angry

and then when we were eye to eye that's when he'd hit me with the hardest question:

Why do you look at me that way? You know i don't care what they say.

You know I know you know I know you know I know you inside and out.

I was always trying to make him out

to be the one who couldn't clearly make his intentions known 

nearly impossible to pin down, I still look around for some kind of clue

Why do you have to go away? You know i don't care what you say.

You know I know you know why I know you know I know you inside and out.

the world was always trying to smoke me out.

but he was just one fire until he got too tired

and then when we finally got the call, I knew it all before they could speak

 Why do you look at me that way? You know i don't care what you say.

You know I know you know I know you know I know you inside and out.

I wanna take you down I wanna break you down

I wanna make you choke on your own words

I wanna take you up I wanna take you up

I wanna take you up into my arms.

Words and music by Humberto Cordero

Humberto : piano, vocals

Jonathan Donaldson : bass, guitar

Andrew : drums

Aaron : guitar

Jim : guitar

Emily Wade Adams : background vocals 

Recorded by Jon Evans at Brick Hill Studio, Orleans Mass. 

Mastered by Coastal, Berkeley Cal.

LISTEN TO THE WHOLE ALBUM : : : AND NOW AVAILABLE ON iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and all other music platforms.

10. Who Can Blame Me

just barely.

Like You Really Care  >  Really Wish I Could  >  Who Can Say?  >  My Father's Hat  >  Gordon Matta Clark  >  Mar y Cielo  >  Vibrations  >  This  >  You Know I Know  •  Who Can Blame Me?  >  Astray  >  Dear Mongolia  >  Mar y Cielo (reprise)

Here's the final track :

if you're having trouble with SoundCloud : 

This one is a total throw away that turned into perhaps my favorite song on the album. 

I wrote this one on a walk and it never really had any music attached to it. Just the melody. I might have performed it once or twice a capella.

When the theme of this album started to come together, I thought this could fit but I couldn't figure out the chord structure that went with the melody. Then I heard this Nina Simone snippet and realized perhaps all that was needed was some clapping. 

So I did this demo, with me clapping : 

Then, when I knew I was going to have the horns in studio for Gordon Matta Clark I thought maybe one miasmic chord could glue it together. That all sounded really great to me and I was going to leave it at that, until my friend Kyle heard it and suggested it would be cool to have some sort of deranged guitar off in the background at the end, like "a far-off Sonny Sharrock kind of guitar thing". I had no idea who Sonny was but, after a little searching I think I understood. I don't know what Aaron had listened to before he came into the studio to do this take, but one take was all it took. 

And, again, thanks to Jon Evans for molding it into this Golem. 

This is perhaps the most pathetic of the protagonists on this record.

Lyrics

You treat me so tenderly so rarely.

You say to me that you love me but just barely. 

You give me too much time to think whether you care for me or not.

You give me too much time to drink myself into denial

about your accusations and your trials

my deliberations and your sentences 

get all muddled up

until you cuddle up

and say "I'm sorry" 

again.

Is it ten times this week or more?

Baby, I don't want you to think I'm keeping score,

but you treat me so tenderly so rarely.

Who can blame me?

music and Lyrics by Humberto

Korey Charles : trumpet

Bruce Abbott : alto and soprano saxes

John Wolf : trombone

Dan Sullivan : baritone sax

Jon : bass, clapping

Aaron : guitar

Hum : vocals, clapping, percussion

Recorded by Jon Evans at Brick Hill StudioMastered by Coast in Berkeley, CA

LISTEN TO THE WHOLE ALBUM : : : AND NOW AVAILABLE ON iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and all other music platforms.

11. Astray

Featuring Siobahn Magnus.

Like You Really Care  >  Really Wish I Could  >  Who Can Say?  >  My Father's Hat  >  Gordon Matta Clark  >  Mar y Cielo  >  Vibrations  >  This  >  You Know I Know  >  Who Can Blame Me?  >  Astray  >  Dear Mongolia  >  Mar y Cielo (reprise)

Here's the final track :

if you're having trouble with SoundCloud : 

I can't tell whether this is the story of two young people who meet for a brief eternity in the middle of some rave, or it's the story of two old flames getting together in their later years. 

Either way, the song only began to become a conversation when Jon suggested having Siobahn Magnus come in to do some background vocals. Since there's no denying her huge voice, we thought it'd be better to put her in the middle of the action. Mind you, super trouper Siobahn showed up to studio with a pretty bad cold...

Here's the awful demo with too many pianos : 

Lyrics

Even though we're both so tired and hazy

Sometimes when we fall together it gets so crazy.

Even though we both know it’s only for a moment

if only for that moment we know exactly what

we want the sunshine. 

here. this is all mine

and all yours

Even though this won’t grow outside this hothouse

we both know this hothouse is bigger than a jungle.

Even though it’s still so late for us both, dear

here is my hand you can lead me astray.

Here is the sunshine. Here. This is all mine

And all yours.

Here is my hand. You can lead me astray...

music and Lyrics by Humberto

Siobahn Magnus : vocals

Humberto : accordion, vocals

Aaron Mayo : guitar

Jon Evans : bass

Andrew Fietek : drums

Recorded, Produced and Transformed by Jon Evans at Brick Hill StudioMastered by Coast in Berkeley, CA

LISTEN TO THE WHOLE ALBUM : : : AND NOW AVAILABLE ON iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and all other music platforms.

12. Dear Mongolia

...how to begin? 

Like You Really Care  >  Really Wish I Could  >  Who Can Say?  >  My Father's Hat  >  Gordon Matta Clark  >  Mar y Cielo  >  Vibrations  >  This  >  You Know I Know  >  Who Can Blame Me?  >  Astray  >  Dear Mongolia  •  Mar y Cielo (reprise)

So, here we are on the last song of the album. We saw this as the finale, the final battle, with Mar y Cielo (reprise) as the music for rolling credits. 

Here's the final track :

if you're having trouble with SoundCloud : 

The Story

The immediate inspiration for this song was the Letters to Mongolia that Amy sent me. I hadn't gotten through half of them before I started writing the song. The lap-lapping of it.

The Letters were in one of the many magical packages we've received here from Amy over the years. To begin to detail these collections would take weeks. They exist as a kind of inspirational stand-in for Amy K. Mimi Allin, an integral part of our family though we have not seen her for more than a decade. She plays the role of our non-resident shaman. She is a poet and artist living in Seattle. At this moment (end of Aug 2016), she is in the middle of performing a piece called In Search of Bas Jan Ader, a 33-day journey in an open boat through the Salish Sea in British Columbia with a letter to Bas Jan Ader on her hull. The artist, Bas Jan, disappeared at sea 41 years ago while performing a work called "In Search of the Miraculous."  Amy's piece is part of a multi-year investigation called The Clown which includes her attending clown school in France, and ultimately practicing as a clown in Mongolia. For me, that is the real journey told in the song. The trip that never leaves port yet travels half way around the world just to exercise the yearning for the destination. As many have remarked to me, hey, Mongolia has no shore to land on. It's entirely land locked. Well, guess that makes the journey that much more difficult. 

Amy wrote these letters during a residency where she lived in an art gallery in Seattle. Here's how it was described : 

HAM--Hold, All Movement is the title of Allin's project, for which she built a 8' x 11' hold (think of a ship's hold) within the P:SA studio & outfitted it with a cot, teapot, personal library & communications station (shortwave, marine VHF & HAM radios). She then earned her Technician's Class Amateur Radio License (in 2 weeks she'll be issued a call sign by the FCC!). An official Ham, Mimi is now residing full-time in the hold, listening to radios by night & turning that info into gestures by day. Radio gestures. At the end of her residency, she'll present this work in 3 public shows. O yes, and she's been eating ham (pink organic meat) everyday during her residency. Mmm.
 

Informed by Amy's own South Sea voyages, the letters describe, in sometimes beautifully mundane detail, months at sea on route to a shore that doesn't exist. This is a story of mutual longing : the dreamer for the dream, and the dream for the arrival of the dreamer. 

If you want to get things done, you've just got to start doing and hope you get lost. 

Here's the original demo, just piano. 

The Recording

This may be the messiest song of the lot. 

The original idea was to start tight, in the hold, in the fevered mind of our dreamer, and then expand it out over the ocean, until it sounds as if he were roaring his love adventure in song out to a dark tavern full of drunken sailors, recounting his journey, then realizing he'd actually never left and had imagined it all. So, I think Jon was on tour and we thought we'd try recording this one in The Audience Room where the visual drama is high and there was an excellent piano and perhaps the best tracker pipe organ around. Andrew geared and engineered in that crazy space, and after a long and beautiful day, we had the major dramatic gist. 

 Carla Kihlstedt was in to lay those strings on Like You Really Care at Brick Hill and I thought she could bring a little color into Mongolia. Instead she strode onto the deck of this old junk of a tune and, in one take, took the helm. Check out everything she's done including her sharp work with Tin Hat and this recent concert with Jeremy Flowers. 

One of the first exchanges Jon and I had when I first visited the studio was my remarking on the "thunder drum" he had. He said that thing ends up in every recording somewhere. And the last thing we did was to add the "thunder drum" to the final half of Dear Mongolia. Like the guy in the front of the viking ship calling out whatever is Norse for "Stroke!!!".

I know it's a bit of a mess. I know that this may all be my own fevered head hearing what I want to hear in this. But even if I can just glimpse the shore of what I had wanted it to be, well, that's my Mongolia. 

Lyrics

Not yet, Not yet, Not yet begun.

How to? How to? How to begin?

Somewhere, Somewhere where everything

is what it is, is everything

Dear Mongolia, I'm on my way.

cut the lines....

............

Coffee, a radio, a porthole, a pen,

violin, Tolstoy, a destination

Wring! Wring! Wring myself dry.

So as to be able to drink the more

So as to be able to drink the more

So as to be able to drink all the more.

Dear Mongolia, I'm on my way.

............

I'll be, I'll be down in the hold.

Hold me, hold me, so dark below.

Hanging, hanging up there so far

not saying much, just like a star

too close to touch, I hear the sharks.

I'm keeping watch, and I'm on my guard.

Dear, dear Mongolia, I'm on my way.

............

Of course, I'm off course

Plugging the leaks

So sick, I'm so sick

I feel so weak.

Hold on, Hold on, just close your eyes

I'm there already, just like a dream

I shall want nothing, you're everything

my sails may be empty, but I still believe

............

Let me, Let me knock at your door

the Ocean is dancing me into your shore

Why you? Why me? They all want to know.

Because you are tough, because you have time

Because you are simple, because you are mine

The Desert surrounds you, your door's open wide

You're so temporary, your house is so round

Because of the journey, your ocean so brown

Because you are far, so far away

Oh, because, just because, no reason at all

The cold wind is full, full of your prayers

Dear, dear Mongolia, I'm on my way.

Not yet, Not yet begun. Dear, Mongolia, hold on.

music and Lyrics by Humberto

based on Letters to Mongolia by Amy K. Allin

Carla Kihlstedt : violin

Humberto : piano, pipe organ, vocals, thunder drum

Aaron Mayo : guitar

Jon Evans : bass

Jim Snider : bass

Andrew Fietek : drums

Iain Ellis : drunken sailor

Piano, Pipe-Organ, Guitars and Drums recorded by Andrew Fietek in The Audience Room, Yarmouth Port.All else Recorded, Produced and Brought into a safe harbor by Jon Evans at Brick Hill StudioMastered by Coast in Berkeley, CA

I've set a couple of Amy's poems to music before including this from the Like...This disc : 

Walk Toward This Moon : 

it was a moon to follow

it was a moon to swallow

it was a hairless moon

the barnacles and seaweed stripped

this last ocean dip must have been acid and turmoil

so walk toward this moon

with your paper cup

and fill it with water

walk toward this moon

with your heavy soul 

and sand your edges

such a fool to walk toward this moon

that chalks you and makes you human

walk toward this moon

LISTEN TO THE WHOLE ALBUM : : : AND NOW AVAILABLE ON iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, and all other music platforms.