Bart Davenport
A Heart's Lounge On Sturdy Ground
Feb 6, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Jon Jon
original version appears on Palaces
I actually got the bah, bah, bah, melody from Jon Jon himself. He's a real enigmatic character, sort of a Gatsby (or at least a Robert Redford) to me. This tune is an homage to him and he's a friend of mine. The tune has drawn a lot of comparisons to this or that artist, but it's really my kind of thing. The Amajor7 chord is pretty much where I live.
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A Young One
original version appears on Palaces
This tune started out in the Bread, soft rock vein. Kelley Stoltz convinced me to commit to it as a full-on Philly soul, old school slow jam. He even bought a Glokenspiel for that tune. At this live session, it's my girlfriend Cris on the Professional Concert Xylophone. There's a video for this song on YouTube. Check it out!
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Palaces
original version appears on Palaces
Written on a sunset beach in Summerland, Calif. I guess it's about the importance and non-importance of art. It's about the fleeting nature of things we make and the inevitability of their corrosion but it's also about their simple, momentary beauty. It's a reoccurring theme for me. Autumn is my favorite time of year. Sunset is my favorite time of day. You might have to be Californian to embrace this kind of shit.
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Jet Fighter
unreleased
A cover song from my youth, by The Three O'Clock. They were one of the first bands I went to see live and I loved them (still do). I think this song resonated again with me and others more recently because of the war in Iraq dragging on and on with no end in sight. "Airplanes fly and yet I feel so low". Also, I love the whole Paisley Underground era. It's like nostalgia but for something that never really happened in our universe, a wrinkle in time where the 60s and 80s converge. The version on the Seal The Deal EP is acoustic, so it's nice to see this live band version on Daytrotter!
Don't ever call it a fool's pursuit, this making of stuff, this choice to use brains and a body's time to write lovely things, to make paintings and to cling a voice to others in a miracle formation - a noteworthy example of people coexisting to manufacturer's specifications. Bart Davenport would gasp, a loud and demonstrative gasp, and strike you across the cheek just to send a message, but then he'd smooth over the violence with a counterpoint that would include him pulling you close and rubbing out the sting in your cheek, saying, "Tell me about. Let's get a coffee. I think we've got a lot to talk about cause I think the same thing sometimes and I beat myself up about it quite frequently too." Davenport, the longtime San Franciscan, is a staunch disbeliever of the thought that either his life's work of writing alarmingly brilliant pop and soul songs - or anyone else's life's work in the creative arts - is a toss-away sort of action. It's not a time-waster. It might not always pay the bills, but it's not a joke and somewhere in the pantheon of valuable but thankless pursuits, it should rank very high. The music that this trim man has been making for decades is rife with a soothing measure that freezes you right where you are when it begins to play. It doesn't take you into the countryside along with the corncribs and the babbling brooks, the peasants rising like gangbusters from the under brush and the crisp airs of the Northwest like the songs of Fleet Foxes do, but instead they touch on a similarly irresistible vibration that zings your entire body with an electric warmth. It goes well beyond just the song qualities of the material and actually gets into the inner organs, into the hair follicles and starts acting on many of the deeper substances. Davenport takes us down the avenues of love and relationship that are classic, that are moving and sweet. He takes us inside the ropes and dissects the most trying aspects of love and then regenerates his findings into both sing-along choruses and rainy-day transports that are eerily magnificent and irrefutable. There is enough about each and every single one of his songs that could make anyone hearing them to make a claim that he's one of America's finest and most underappreciated troubadours. There's enough in each and every single one of his songs that could make anyone hearing them stumble into a blathering stammer about how modernly antique it all sounds. It will make you feel wise and smiley. It will make claims that you need to start lounging more as the music can't lounge any more than it already does - in a very workman-like fashion - dreamily suggesting that troubles will wash in the rain and the odds can't be stacked against us, they just can't. He sings of palaces sitting on shifting sands and that's Davenport's way of examining the importance of not only his life, but the pursuits of so many doing what they feel they're being compelled to do - another in a long line of folks attempting to make sense of and to bring general betterment to the place they call home for whatever the time being calls for. It's a question always worth asking and rarely worth understanding as these relics of the creative process will stand in these wrinkles that are made and the debilitating thought of them being needlessly constructed and offered shouldn't break his heart or his hands. His songs - unlike summer and migrating birds - won't fly. They belong here and they're staying put.
Bart Davenport Official Site
Antenna Farm Records
