Monday, May 21, 2007

Hawaiian Cowboys


hawaiian cowboys volume 3 number 22
recorded new year's day, 1990.
one of my favorite collaborations came around the time of the making of young lions, just previous to joining david for the Sound and Vision world tour. Goran Andersson, manager of a percussion ensemble from holland called slagerij van kampen had given me a copy of their record a long walk on a short pier which I loved.
slagerij van kampen specializes in field recordings of a variety of world percussion instruments as well as avante garde pieces written for pitched percussion and very smart usage of all kinds of things percussive. their sound is awesome and actually popular in holland.
to check out their vast world of music go to:www.slagerijvankampen.nl

I met with the band while in holland and they graciously offered to let me utilize some of their percussion tracks as the basis for new songs. the idea was for me to write a song over top of their tracks. our first such collaboration was the song young lions. if you listen to that track you can hear their shouts while they play a strongly african flavored drum pattern in a field somewhere in holland.
it worked so beautifully I was excited to do more. so willem, the band's leader sent some tuned percussion tracks. rich denhart and I edited the tuned percussion together in a different way as a prelude to me writing a new song over top of them. I added my own parts including some decidedly african-style guitar and that's as far as I got. for some reason the result was too reminiscent to me of graceland. not wanting to draw comparisons I stopped short of writing a lyric and a vocal melody and shelved the idea.
besides, the Sound and Vision tour was moments away and I had no time left to explore.

drums, bass, guitars: adrian
tuned percussion: willem van kruysdijk, mies wilbrink, dree van beeck, and ellen gieles
engineer: rich denhart
assistant: dan harjung
recorded at Royal Recorders in Lake Geneva, Wis. on January 1, 1990
length: 3:51

4 comments:

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  2. I'd always thought the percussion and third word grunts on Young Lions was superb and wondered why you'd never continued exploring that particular sound alley.

    ADG

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  3. I was wondering what those background noises were on the Young Lions track.
    Thanks for the link. I am always interested in absolutely anything to do with percussion.

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  4. "Young Lions" is one of my favorite AB releases. And even tho he's stated displeasure with having so little time to work on it, I consider it among his best. I was positively geeked to learn that he'd be playing the title cut on the recent tour.

    Now I want to hear "I Am What I Am"!

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