Jared Van Fleet talks about Austin and his SXSW week:
“I moved to Austin in the summer of 2000, and though I spend less and less time there recently, in the seven years since first arriving, I’ve come to know it as my hometown. This was my third SXSW as a performer, and the first time I’d balanced playing with two different bands (in addition to four shows with Voxtrot, I performed two as Sparrow House). Believe it or not, and if you’ve ever been to SXSW you probably do believe it, this is actually a pretty light load of work for the week, and I was still able to have a little fun. I especially enjoyed seeing Sharon Jones, Richard Swift (I was there for some of his Daytrotter session), Dengue Fever, and Dan Deacon, who played an amazing set at an abandoned Amtrak station. Also, I enjoyed somehow getting stuck driving 13 people away from the Vice party in the Wrecking Force (the Voxtrot van) after the balcony collapsed. Almost forgot about that. Then there were the afternoons on the East Side, relaxed by comparison… that’s the area where Daytrotter had set up, at my favorite studio-away-from-home, Sound Team’s Big Orange. The atmosphere there is a nice contrast to the rush-rush on the other side of the I-35, perfectly fitted for recording a Daytrotter session.”

Red Hunter ducked in and out of the studio a lot the week we were down. We obviously saw a lot of the Sound Team bro-sephs, but we came to really enjoy Jared’s company while in Austin. This rainy day – our first for recording – was capped with his session. He was barefoot the entire day and in the studio for six hours straight. – Sean Moeller

First song
End Scene Fade (Sparrow House) [3.58MB] [1884 downloads]


– original version appears on Television Snow
After first playing with Voxtrot and then sticking around to see Tacks, the Boy Disaster, I was getting comfortable again in Big Orange. It started raining lightly onto the tin roof above the control room, and the afternoon’s energy began to fade into a sleepy and dreamlike evening, the calm before SXSW’‘s persistent storm. I hadn’t known what I was going to play when I showed up, but now I let the mood determine my set, and pulled out some of my slower and more spacious songs so I could really enjoy my surroundings. Bill Baird provided the pulsing bass accompaniment here. To me, this song is about immobility and willed isolation and an uncertainty over whether or not anything will ever be done to allow movement or reaching out. It’s also about something more specific, though, isn’t it. This is the first song on my new “I thought it was going to be finished months ago” EP, _ Television Snow_.

Second song
The Reflection (Sparrow House) [3.45MB] [1951 downloads]


— unreleased
I wrote this song one summer afternoon in 2005 at Red Hunter’s apartment. We recorded it onto 4-track then and I never really revisited it until now. Red was in the neighborhood this evening so I gave him a call and asked him to come over and sing harmony. I originally recorded this with guitars, but the piano at Big Orange seemed to fit that whole Pentecostal music feeling that’s going on. Yeah, it’s a little heavy-handed, I think that’s why I never released it. I messed up one of the chords here, but you can’t hear us smile, so I guess you might not know it. When we first worked out the arrangement for the instrumental section, Red taught me something he knew about contrasting motion in harmony. I’m not sure that it comes across so well in this particular take, but I’m thankful for the lesson anyway.

Third song
Last Fall (Sparrow House) [1.47MB] [1753 downloads]


– original version appears on Falls
This is the last song on the first Sparrow House EP, Falls. I thought at one time that I wanted to lose this memory, but gradually realized I wanted only to adjust my perspective. I liked the idea of falling complemented by a high sustaining sound. In a way, it’s the question of whether falling is a matter of weight (pushing down) or lightness (giving up). Drawn to the implications of lightness, I eventually centered that whole EP around the idea of what it means to give up. The actual recording also prominently features a trumpet, a quena, and a vibraphone played with a bow, and for some reason I keep hearing all of those things in the overtones here… although I suppose it’s nice and fitting to have the voice kept simple and alone.

Fourth song
If I Never Touch You (Sparrow House) [4.19MB] [1939 downloads]


— unreleased
I was introduced to this song by Jason Chronis, the bassist in Voxtrot, who discovered it off of an LP from the early 70s he found at a record sale, entitled Aren’t You Ashamed?, by a man named Cap’n Jack. It was one of those all-in-one deals where he had paid for the recording and pressing of the record all together and put it to tape all in one day, presumably printing only a few hundred copies. I initially took interest because he had a song about the town in Georgia where I spent most of my childhood… that song, “Vidalia”, like many others on the record, is beautifully sad, a complex testament of experience that rides the line between regret and hope. Eventually, though, I found myself particularly drawn to this song and decided to perform it. The simplicity of the lyric is deceptive… to me, it manages to express not only the way ideals are constructed as the result of loneliness and longing, but also the realization that if that ideal ever becomes tangible, it stands the chance of losing its perfection and desirability. This arrangement slows the song significantly and substitutes a tiny Yamaha Portasound keyboard for the acoustic guitar that originally accompanies Cap’n Jack’s voice… the powerful promise that makes up the last line of the song, “I will always love you,” seemed a fitting ending to the night.