Ragged Claws
Let The Dim And Deep In For A Night
Jun 7, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
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Welcome to Daytrotter
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Lully, Lullay
original version appears on Sleepwalker
This song is based on an old hymn called the Coventry Carol. It was sung at the end of a medieval miracle play called 'King Herod and the Slaying of the Innocents.' I changed the words a bit, but the tune's generally the same. The major third at the end of the minor hymn made me want to make a blues out of it. It's one of our favorites, despite the subject being somewhat of a downer.
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The Widow Cook
unreleased
This is a song about Captain Cook from the perspective of his wife. His story is one of the great myths of western civilization, though his wife's is one of tragedy. Having lost almost all her children at very young ages, she eventually got word that her husband kinda went nuts and was brutally killed by the natives who supposedly hailed him as a god or king. I guess I felt bad for her.
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Shortcomings
unreleased
According to the ADHA, proper brushing is essential to oral health, and can help prevent periodontal disease and gingivitis. To stave off these terrible diseases, one must brush at a 45-degree angle, with the bristles contacting both the tooth surface and the gumline, in a vibrating back & forth rolling motion. MAINTAIN THE 45-DEGREE ANGLE WHILE VIGOROUSLY BRUSHING ALL TOOTH SURFACES. When I fully comply with the medical community's hygiene recommendations on this matter, I bleed.
-Kimberly
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The Partisan
unreleased
I always assumed that Leonard Cohen had his friend sing over the second half of this song because he was embarrassed about his French. Regardless of whether this is true, I wish Kimberly were a bit louder on this one. My French isn't bad so much as it's just not French.
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Tired
unreleased
We've been delving into some old classical art songs to varying results. This one is by Raiph Vaughn Williams and was written at the end of his life. The piano part lent itself really well to guitar and I liked the repeating chords he used. His wife, Ursula wrote the poem, which became the words for this song. High art, shmigh art. This is the classical musical equivalent to 'Hey There, Delilah' or at least 'I Will Follow You Into The Dark' by Death Cab.
Oh, there's a lot more going on in Ragged Claws songs than just words and notes and even those words and notes aren't just quick scribbles upon the backs of napkins, but calculated storylines and sweltering, beehive-like tension that breaks free like a cooked egg yolk, crookedly flooding the plate at the right moment of punctuation. And at other times, it just stands there, or hangs there, like a ripening cocoon of something fairly dooming or evil, or just perceived to be evil, which is often just as bad or better - if you will. The songs come off as dusty, wrinkled caterpillars, but they're really treacherous tales of death and depression, life's many little disasters, and they're laid out here behind the spare folk, grandpa instruments that will turn these various sorrows into the lilting and haunting poetry that is becoming for a black veil, a widow or a widower. It's music of great loss, or it's at least disguised as such, one big wet tear slipping down over a cheek and onto the dirt below. Chicago's Ragged Claws are the kind of a band that would play its songs in rooms with dirt floors, buildings with no indoor plumbing or running water and with only a wood-burning stove for all of the heating tasks. It's a place that would constantly smell of a pasture, a horse barn and a dry forest burning to the ground. And maybe bread baking or a piping hot fruit pie. Paul Karner and Kimberly Sutton cast a shadowy air over everything they sing and play, making it feel as if it's music from the grave - not necessarily music from someone already buried underneath the ground, but coming from someone visiting the gravesite or the marker where a loved one is now resting forever. They are songs coming from the mouth of someone clutching some lingering anger, lingering fear and disappointment and a bouquet of flowers that they'll leave behind on the cold and wet earth - a token for the late loved one to feel heavy on their decomposing chest as they lie there. Ragged Claws make the kind of folk music that isn't sung in the round, passed down through the generations as something comforting to coo lightly in times of need - it holds few strengthening, upholding powers - but it does lead us to those stuck together pages of photo albums, the members of the family that don't get talked about as much now and the various things that they did with their lives, forgotten as if they accomplished very little in their many decades. They bring us to the stories that have stopped being told or never were because they were either classified as deep and dark secrets or something even worse. Sometimes people don't talk about their fears enough and sometimes songwriters don't feel remorse for the wives of old sea captains and barbarians who ultimately were bad people, but still had families of their own and died in gristly, heinous ways. These are the stories that Ragged Claws would very much like you to bring into your home and entertain for a dimly lit evening.
Ragged Claws
