Roman Candle
Pine Needled For The Sleepers
Jun 20, 2009
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Sound engineering by Mike Gentry
-
Welcome to Daytrotter
-
They Say
original version appears on Oh Tall Tree In The Ear
This record was written, for the most part, in a room that used to be a horse stable at Burton Agnes (East Yorkshire U.K.). Candidly, I wish we had the good fortune to write all of our songs there.
We had taken a few books with us, and were there for a month with an acoustic guitar. We also had access to a piano (in Burton Agnes great hall) which we could use during the daytime, when the house was open. We drank p.g. tips, wrote, heated pies in the oven, drank cans of kronenbourg, walked in the woods, drove into Scarborough in the evening to find a pub.
"They Say" - i guess this is us trying to make a Ronnette's record in a way. It was the first song Logan wrote mostly for the band, which was a lot of fun to do. Lyrics I imagine are pretty self explanatory.
-
Eden Was A Garden
original version appears on Oh Tall Tree In The Ear
this is the first song on our record. We knew early on, it would most likely be track one, because it seems to carry in it, quite a bit of what the rest of the songs are also about.
The song ( & record) starts with songbirds. (the only animal that sings by nature - "Never again would Bird's Song Be the Same" By Robert Frost was a poem we read quite a bit when writing this one). Captain Beefheart says that if you want to learn how to play guitar, listen to the songbirds. He's not being quirky. He's saying if you want to be any good at guitar, you have to get back to things which are very primal, and these are (literally) the original musicians. Anyway a lot of this record, for us at least, is about the relationship between music and desire, or what you hear and what you long for. Doing our best not to sound miserably pretentious : We wrote these songs trying to explore, in earnest, ways in which the connection between music and longing manifests itself. Sometimes it seems to be up in your face (on our record - why modern radio is a-ok) and sometimes it's more subtle (one more road, sonnet 46) The R.M. Rilke book we took our title from (Sonnets to Orpheus) really influenced how we thought / think about it.
The idea itself is an old one really, that was written about by John Keats, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and Jimi Hendrix even (manic depression).
-
Why Modern Radio Is OK
original version appears on Oh Tall Tree In The Ear
this is a conversation between two friends. it's also *not* a particularly nostalgic song.
-
Starting From Scratch
unreleased
this is a song about having no connections and no money and having specific artistic ideas that are working their way out. It's got a spirit of the song "God Bless the Child" that Billie Holiday made famous, but it's talking about different things. This one is the last song we wrote for the record and we finished it in the studio about a day before westarted mixing.
The members of Roman Candle were in a hustle at the conclusion of their taping here in Rock Island earlier this spring, needing to get to Indianapolis before bedtime - not their own, but that of some of their children who were staying with family while mom and dad were out on the road touring behind a soon-to-be-released at the time album, "Oh Tall Tree In The Ear." It got me thinking about what kinds of songs lead singer Skip Matheny might sing to his children at night. My little girls get their mother singing "I've Been Working On The Railroad" when it gets to be 8 o'clock or so, tunes like those. There aren't many life lessons in those nursery rhyme-like songs and limericks. There's not really much rhythm or melody either in any of these ditties, just halting and pedestrian, one-size-fits-all cadences. They're filled with absurdities and usually small items about food or hurting oneself - sticking in a thumb, pulling out a plum, supping on cold peace porridge or breaking a crown for Jack or some blind mice having their tails severed off with a butcher's knife. There's much violence and much hunger in those nursery rhymes. Matheny and Roman Candle don't make nursery rhymes, but hearing him sing these gorgeous songs of affirmation and uncanny depth of character to little children would be touching and a lovely way for the tykes to end their days and drift off into their little dreams. Matheny would have to lower his voice just a little bit as the album shows him belting, projecting these songs of soft visitations, from the timid aspects of a lazy afternoon to the eventful dramas of a stormy one. There is an abundance of colorful reasoning, bright and starry touches that shine through his poetic words about humble men and women just doing their best to not get trampled in the stampeding rush of everything else that's out there on the other side of the fence. The music has a way of tearing us out of the present, despite such modern feels and scents, and into the 70s or 80s or earlier, when people still called bars watering holes and jukeboxes held 45s that were manually snagged from their placeholder and thrown down under the needle for that quarter's worth of music. It's when dartboards weren't computerized and you checked the pool table balls at the bar, leaving your driver's license as collateral. In every song, there is a discernable connections to the protagonist's surroundings, such as roads blanketed with fallen pine needles or a serenity that cannot be found in urbanized multiplexes, where everything's open 24 hours a day and people just get in each other's way all day long. Roman Candle are from Chapel Hill, North Carolina and they seem to bring that state's vast beauty into the words Matheny sings, when he does so about kisses on the mouth and the foolish things that happen when love gets all twisted, or right before love gets all twisted and indistinguishable. It's like taking hike into the woods, a woods that goes on and on and is always woods - with a dense undergrowth that makes the words stick better and assume more impact. There would be quaint little ponds, lined with water skating insects and water lilies. There would be a need to be there with someone else, someone you cared about, someone you could sing to sleep and then fall asleep next too, completely and blissfully. Matheny takes us there, in a moonlit coach with the words, "There's a beauty in every streetlight and every moth/But all I want to do is lay down in bed," in the stunning song entitled "Big Lights." And he leaves us there with all of our thoughts. He leaves us to our dreams and stinging sorrows and getting back is part of the joy as we have to pass all the same scenery.
Roman Candle Official Site
Roman Candle MySpace Page
Carnival Recording Co.
