Like so many people do these days, we met Raymond Raposa through a MySpace message. It’s funny because we should have and likely would have been courting him, given enough time, but he beat us to the punch. It was all we could do not to be pleased with our great fortune. Ray was curious about session availability and as the conversation got cold – a Castanets tour was so long off – the idea stayed on the back burner, but a date was never set. Raposa was an invited guest without a date for the gathering and as more luck would have it, he ambushed us again. We’d scheduled a session with Phosphorescent (mind-blowing and upcoming) for the 14 th of December and had no idea that he would just so happen to be in Matthew Houck’s band for that tour. How extremely serendipitous. I arrived to the session shortly after they’d arrived as I was out doing a new daddy thing – buying bubblegum “It’s A Girl” cigars. It’s a much more difficult task than one would imagine as they are carried by few stores these days, so the driving took me to five different establishments before finally finding them. Ray introduces himself and in two split seconds, we had a second incredible session on tap for the afternoon – the day my first-born came home from the hospital. It’s hard to forget all of that. When Phosphorescent finished the 4-song set, Brad quickly set up a single microphone for vocals and one for the guitar, along with an open microphone in the room to capture the backing vocals crooned out by Houck, hanging out in the corner of the live room. When you hear the recordings, they cut in so nicely that you get a prickle in your spine, or at least I do. As far as I am aware, this is the first time that Houck’s ever appeared on any of Raposa’s Castanets recordings. Surely, someone absolutely beside themselves will set us straight, but that’s our story and we’re sticking to it, for now at least. These three songs are true and blue and gold all over. I believe Ray got one of those pink cigars. – Sean Moeller

First song
This Is The Early Game (Castanets) [2.58MB] [2509 downloads]


— unreleased
Because I have a lot of friends that made a lot of trouble. Because the world is round it turns me on etc…Because I am here and looking at that over there. It’s right over there lemme at it. Get me away from it. Because one of my first memories is shooting with my family in the Nevada deserts and maybe then with a lady down the line. You ever been to Redding?

Second song
Three Days, Four Nights (Castanets) [2.29MB] [2324 downloads]


– original version appears on Cathedral
Wrote it in Washington somewhere near Kevin Costner’s house after leaving my band to drive themselves home while I walked around graveyards and woods and a girl’s boyfriend’s house making strong teas out of weird herbs in big, loud Winter storms. Her dude was coming home at some point so I left. There is a sequel to this song on the next record.

Third song
The Smallest Bones (Castanets) [3.19MB] [2362 downloads]


– original version appears on Cathedral
It’s a true story.