The Time Being | Steve Kilbey

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the strangest of all my solo albums
the strangest for me any way
it was 2001
i was finally off the gear and i was living in the u.s.
it was dover, delaware to be exact
and i decided to make a solo album
my wife had an old school friend who played drums
anthony mayan
who organized a little studio he had heard about
run by a guy called tad jones
and so we began
i always hadda theory that a real songwriter
could write n record songs anywhere under any conditions
i heard a lotta people blame n complain about their tools
they needed this or that or whatever
i was always ready to try something different
and this seemed a quite bizarre idea
so one hot summery day anthony n i
drove up to this leafy house
and with nothing prepared
we started work on dabble
first of all let me say something about myself
my long fight with the evil opium spirit
had left me drained in many ways
i hadnt done much music for a while
i was overweight and underbrained
my natural ability to pull stuff outta thin air was somehow hampered
i could feel this happening as early as magician among the spirits
i could still manipulate my methods
but true inspiration somehow eluded me
the miracle of stuff just appearing in your head out of nowhere
like it did before and like it does now
kids let me tell you
hard drugs damage your ability to create beautiful things
nevertheless
as i said i could manipulate my methods
my tried n true ways
which will always produce songs no matter what
yeah my own mental box of oh! bleak strategies
which often proved most efficacious against writers block
(which i had never really had)
but my soul was unable to communicate properly with my heart n mind
i was a bit dazed
i was not quite myself you might say
i had to try too hard on this record
luckily anthony n tad were up to it
tho neither had worked this way before
anthony proved to be the most excellent drummer
he was always willing to experiment n take suggestions
tad was teacher for his day job
he joined in in the spirit of the random thing
and he made it all happen
eventually tad brought in this guy called deloy
who was an amazing banjo n mando player
he too joined in happily on whatever i was trying to do
i listened to dabble just the other day actually
i hadnt listened to it for a while
i was quite pleasantly surprised
it was full of bits n pieces i’d forgotten about
there are some powerful pieces of music
driven hard by anthony’s relentless pounding
theres some spooky moments
theres some nice country-ish songs there
i can hear that sometimes i’m struggling
(izzy strugglin’?)
i can hear sometimes i didnt quite reconcile it all away
i can hear the method too loudly
but still
it finally has those live drums that none of the others had
it had all that great banjo n mando too
authentic country playing it was
we did it kinda quick
we didnt sit around gloating over what we had done
we had to move on quickly to the next thing
my cohorts quickly grokked my modus operandi
and songs were written n recorded on the spot
tad n his wife betsy were very hospitable folks
and some nights anthony n i ate there too
then anthony n i would sit out the back
under a big tree smoking n laughing under the summer night sky
it was a lot different to narcosis thats for sure
i dont remember reading any of dabbles reviews
i didnt think it would set the world on fire
i wish i’d been able to muster some more of myself for it
but that didnt happen until about 6 years later
when i did my painkiller record
dabble was a step along the way
and i think its quite enjoyable
in its own strange way