Hey Mama, I'm Writing The Same Song As You

"I told him it was not the perfect country and western song because he hadn't said anything about momma or trains or trucks or prison or getting drunk." You Never Even Called Me By My Name

One of the rewards for donating money to our project was that for $100+ I'd write you a song with the title and style of your choice. My mom was one said donor although unsurprisingly she didn't really care what song I made. I like to think that 'hey mama' is kind of country-- I do mention 'mama' and 'mexico' in the same song-- however Ben thinks it's more folk. In any case, here's the song for my mom that she'll probably be just as pleased with as anything else I make. Thanks for loving me so unconditionally. Sorry my propensity for sad bastard lyrics didn't fail me here either.

Ben and I started work around 2:30. Prior to going to Ben's house (a recording paradise: all wood, no neighbors, and no direct sunlight,) Logan and I spent half an hour or so by the river where I came up with the music for this track. I'd been carrying around this line "Hey Mama, I'm writing the same song as you" for awhile but didn't really quite understand what it meant--personally or in any larger context. I don't know how other people write lyrics but I usually build mine from a line or two into something larger. I rarely, if ever, think of a theme/story in its entirety beforehand.

This song poured out. I played the tune for Ben, he picked up his mandolin and we arranged this thing in about ten minutes. Every time I got stuck on a lyric, he'd swoop in with a really good one like 'even worse the places I always end up' or "but for now found some friends/ don't know when I'll be back again." When I couldn't figure out how to sing over the Am-D-C bit before the chorus, he fit the lyrics in with ease. I like the way our voices sound together. He fills out my clean tenor with his smoky tenor. Monday night, I walked into the Under the Hill Saloon while he was playing 'Crazy' by Gnarls Barkley solo on guitar--something I've recently attempted-- and I knew we'd be able to work something nice out.

Ben's playing mandolin, trumpet and singing. I'm playing guitar, harmonica, singing and shaking the sugar container. The great joy I felt when he suggested we add trumpet after the line about Mexico. Logan experienced that joy too. There was lots of laughing. (Thinking about it a little more now, It was Ben's idea to use Mexico as one of the places in this song. Maybe it was his scheme along.)

I am, again, amazed at my collaborator's graciousness and willingness to help us on our crazy adventure. I wish there was a way I could plug Ben's shit on the interweb but if you want to hear him you're just gonna have to come on down to the Under the Hill Saloon in Natchez, MS. I think that Ben Lewis and The Brood could write an album together. We'll get to all the topics from David Allen Coe's speech and tastelessly use trumpet on every track.

hey mama, I'm writing the same song as you

Yesterday: trying to touch the river

Ate a big ass poor boy for brunch and then hit the road. Met this genial gentleman somewheres along the way. -L


Approximately where LA-415 and LA-416 meet– The rain thwarts our attempt to mount the levee and see the Mississippi. L&W in the rain

In between Morganza & Batchelor, Louisiana. We see an ornate church surrounded by a cemetery. Monument to the soldiers of Coupee Parish who died for the CSA. Turns out to be an Episcopal Church which explains why it's so well-maintained given the relative scarcity of money and people. Logan: "Aren't churches always unlocked?" This one was and each pew had an African American Spiritual Hymnal on it. (How do you get from Confederate Monuments to all black congregations?) If I didn't feel so guilty about being inside in the first place I probably would've taken one. Didn't feel bad enough to keep my hands off the organ.

Organ 2organ 4

Finally, near dusk, we come to the first place in literally hundreds of miles with a natural levee and we get right up to the River. I can feel some people's eyes rolling, across miles and miles of America (still rolling,) at the sound of this next mp3 BUT this is the most peaceful minute of mp3 I've captured yet. Natchez, Mississippi under the bluff.

Mississippi @ Natchez


We met some great folks at the Under the Hill Saloon. We're about to go eat at a place called, Mammy's Cupboard with new friends today. This afternoon, I'm gonna record with this guy I met at the bar, Ben Lewis. Promise to post more mp3s later.

NOLA: collaboration with Native America.

What a mench Ross Farbe of Native America is...

Six Degrees of Separation: ME--Logan Beck--Derek Beck (logan's brother)--Chris Reim--Ross Farbe.

Not only had I never met Mr. Farbe before yesterday, I'm not really even friends with the guy who put us in touch, Chris Rehm. Chris is a member of an amazing NOLA band, Caddywhompus. Chris is also a former Houston band kid like myself and when my band was dying, his was becoming the shit. (among the two hundred people that ever listened to our bands, that is.)

Long story short, I asked Chris if he could put me in touch when anyone in NOLA who'd be into the project. A phone call, text message, and bandcamp listen later, I've got a recording date with Mr. Farbe a.k.a. Native America. (yes, we discussed the absurdity of having monikers when we're only two people.)

Yesterday, I brought my recording equipement.

and Ross brought his

and we started working right away. While I was waiting for him to show up to the Loyola University practice spaces, I started working on the riff that would become the song. There wasn't too much discussion. We laid down the acoustic guitar track and pretty much built the song from there. I'm playing the guitars and piano. Ross is on drums and banjo. Before we left Loyola the song was very laid back and folky.

Ross wanted to track the vocals in this abandoned space near the New Orleans. It was truly fucking frightening--like to the point where we walked to the car together every time. Did I mention we were recording completely in the dark? Don't let Logan's well lit photos fool you. It was dark. The wind was shaking fences, whistling through broken windows, engines backfiring, sirens.... New York has made me a lot more cautious. Bringing some of my most valuable possessions into this space was nerve-wracking. Ross was pretty unfazed. The lyrics and vocal melody were written and recorded here. This definitely accounts for the anxious tone of the track.

june 28-nola2

Mixed this at Raleigh's place. (Thank you forever for hosting us buddy.) Many thank yous to Native America as well, a kind and gracious collaborator. Let's do it again in less scary places.

NOLA

So yesterday we woke up late, I wrote the last post and Walker wrote and recorded a song with Ross in the span of 12 hours. I let him tell you about that and I'll tell my own story.

I took a good little 10 mile ride down the Mississippi River while the sun was setting. I followed the river upstream along the Mississippi River Trail on the levees. Here was my route.



Out on the banks of the river I discovered a strange ritual. A group of 40 or so people (read: hippies) dressed in white were chanting and bathing in the murky shipping lane that is the Mississippi. As far as I could gather it was a protest against BP and environmental destruction in general. They rolled around in the mud while read poems about Poseidon's anger... not something you see every day.

I rode until it was too dark and turned around to chance the horrible New Orleans roads in the dark back to Raleigh's. After that I went and met Walker and Ross at an abandoned warehouse near the railroad, but not before stopping at NOLA Grocery and getting a ridiculous 15" shrimp poorboy. (I couldn't finish it, so you know it was huge) Here are some pictures.

Logan

On Avery Island and other tales

So I began my journey yesterday morning at 6 am, threw on my road-trippin' clothes (I always wear a shirt with a breast-pocket) and said goodbye to CB. After struggling to wake Walker from a drug-induced stupor we (finally) got out the door at 8 am. We hit the road to New Orleans, which, for those of you who have never had the pleasure of enduring this drive, sucks. But we made due and Walker happy as a clam for the fact that I was his chauffeur for a two-state tour of Waffle Houses. After four or five hours of this there came a shining beacon of hope– a 30-foot tabasco bottle looming on a highway-side billboard. I can't remember if there were any words on the sign, but we didn't need them, we were sold the moment we laid eyes on that glistening enamel. So we followed this alluring piece of Americana to it's origin: Avery Island.

Yes, this is the same Avery Island from Neutral Milk Hotel's incredible debut album On Avery Island. It's also a nature preserve and the site of the Tabasco headquarters. In fact, on Avery Island Tabasco acts not only as overlord to all who inhabit the salt dome but also as an edible food-like spice for every meal of the day (I heard you can put it on watermelon to give that boring 'ole melon a whole new twist!) and as currency (bottles are traded based on commodity prices for, well, mainly other bottles of tabasco– there are several flavors– collect them all!) and as a powerful hallucinogenic (one must consume 2 gallons to feel any effects, so I guess once you get there you've earned it). There are many other uses for this versatile flavor-enhancer that I won't have time to get into today, you can read about them on the internet.

Kidding aside, Avery Island (not actually an island, a natural raised mineral deposit) was the beautiful home to alligators, cicadas (or grasshoppers, I'm not sure) the size of your fist and several other visitors who, like us, were drawn in off the highway by the magical billboard. It was also home to many an old-growth oak tree covered in Spanish moss. "We begun to come to trees with Spanish moss on them, hanging down from the limbs like long gray beards. It was the first I ever see it growing, and it made the woods look solemn and dismal." (Huckleberry Finn)

After hitting up the gift shop for both the park and the factory, we parted ways with this magical "island." We set sail for our real destination for the day, Grand Isle. Grand Isle is the closest town we could figure to the delta and we thought it would be important to see where the great river spits out into the ocean. The island was also where some of the first oil from the BP disaster washed ashore, so we wanted to see if we could find any traces of the spill. The road to Grand Isle was surprisingly beautiful. We encountered expansive wetlands, which are being destroyed daily by companies which encourage the intrusion of saline water by cutting canals through the marsh. This is particularly important because the wetlands (according Raleigh) offer the first line of defense against hurricanes. A very interesting and politically charged topic, but not necessarily the topic of the post.

BP's presence was felt more and more as we closed in on the coast. The beaches were shut off, there were eerie white tents housing twenty-four hour clean-up crews and there were news trucks smattered across the town. We were lucky enough to get out on a pier and catch a glimpse of the damage, and the clean-up effort. It didn't look too bad from where we were, the water didn't appear to have any more oil in it than Galveston would on a normal day. The beaches had already been cleaned and apparently the winds had shifted and the oil would be hitting further west from where we were. I wish we could have explored a bit more but it was a two hour drive back to New Orleans and we were hungry. And you wouldn't like me very much when I'm hungry.

We ate at an amazing restaurant, Atchafalaya and then went out on the town. Today, we've been recovering and working on our various projects. Walker is recording as I write this with Native America.

I'll just let the pictures tell their story from here. Enjoy.

But before the photos, Walker's got a great little piece of audio from an interview yesterday. It's a Katrina horror story from this man:




Raleigh tells a great story.

katrina story

More soon,

Logan

PROLOGUE

What’s the worst thing that could happen before the trip?
A) bike, car or music equipment getting stolen.
B) The demise of Logan and Walker’s friendship.
C) A hurricane.
D) Death of a loved one.

Dramatic preambles aside, I fucked my arm up last night (6/24/10)—not quite sure if it’s sprained or if there’s a small fracture. Doctor Ann told me there’s not much of a reason to meet with the orthopedist until the swelling goes down. She also couldn’t see a problem with me getting on a plane or traveling up the Mississippi. The Beth Israel ER was everything that TV has led me to believe: drunks, pregnant crackheads, Chad Plaid Shorts with the allergic reaction. Mad respect to the people who work their every night. I witnessed more than one person try and hit a nurse.

Ways that this could lead us to greatness:
A) Well, they gave me Percocet.
B) I already have an idea for the first song
C) Gonna have to do a lot more ‘directing’ than ‘playing’ during musical collaborations bits.
D) We might buy one of those pulley cars for children and attach it to the back of Logan’s bike. Logan vetoed a whip.

Ways that this could lead to implosion:
A) I definitely can’t ride a bike for the next few days.
B) I don’t think it’s safe for me to drive a manual car.
C)Logan is gonna have to zip up my pants (let’s go ahead and potentially add this to the first list as well.)
D) At this point, I can’t strum a guitar too well. (fingerpicking is still possible.)

You might be asking, why still go on the trip? Music dates, sleeping arrangements, substitute teachers have all been found. Plane tickets have been purchased. Also, Logan has a solo exhibition in August so we wouldn’t be able to push the trip back very far. Maybe this is the trip that is supposed to happen anyway—I don’t wanna sound too fatalistic but sometimes the journey you’re on is not the one you think you’re on. (anyone read that book The Crossing?) Sorry, script for Percocet.

Much love to my roommates, Jamie and Lindsey for sitting with me through the night at the hospital. Thank you for all the kind words from everyone at work today.

Knowing Why The Caged Bird Sings,

Walker

Hello & Welcome

We are Logan Sebastian Beck and Walker Phelps Lukens, two friends, artists and itinerant journeymen intent on an adventure of epic proportions. Both of us are from Houston, TX but the budding careers have placed us on opposite sides of the country. Beck, the photographer among us, lives and works in Houston, TX while Walker, the musician, lives and works in New York City.

Like many of our peers, we are well travelled and easily bored young men. While we have always regarded travel as a break from our everyday lives, we both have an affinity for travel that takes us out of our comfort zones—the type of travel where how we get along is the main focus.

As we’ve become more settled in our mid-20s, we long more and more for an epic adventure to foil our day to-day lives. The kind of journey that would combine physical and mental challenges with sheer ‘epic-ness’, natural beauty and the spontaneity of journeys past. After much discussion we decided on a bicycle tour/ roadtrip from New Orleans, Louisiana up the Mississippi River to Mark Twain’s hometown, Hannibal, Missouri. 2010 is 175th anniversary of Mark Twain’s birth and the 100th anniversary of his death so it seemed like a pretty opportune time.

We will be updating this blog every day during our trip. We leave Saturday, June 26, 2010. We will be traveling until July 6th, 2010. 11 days of photographs and recordings. 

On August 20th, 2010 Logan has a show at the Lawndale Art Center in Houston, TX. Come see the pictures from the trip!

We would like to thank all those who supported us on kickstarter, the Lawndale Art Center as well our respective employers for giving us the time off to take this ridiculous journey.

Our best,

Logan & Walker