Still Flyin

Shirts Ripped Off, Runnin' Through The World's Largest Sprinkler

Aug 18, 2009

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Words by Sean Moeller // Illustration by Johnnie Cluney // Sound engineering by Mike Gentry

Have you allowed nearly all of the summer escape you? Are you so dumb to have let that happen - all of that Vitamin D in the air in mega-doses, just covering everything you can see through your Ray-Bans or Blublockers and you not taking any of it in? Tsk tsk tsk! Here it is, the third week in August - yeah, the third week in August - and we haven't been to the beach, we haven't been to the swimming hole, we haven't gone fishing, we haven't gone to the drive-in theater out in the country, we haven't just taken the afternoon off in the middle of the week to stroll through a park - we've barely looked around and soon enough it's going to be fucking fall. Sure, it's a fine season, but it's also just the onset of the kind of weather that we hide from, that makes us cover everything we have in five layers and disappear for four months just so we can survive to live a hotter day in the future. Still Flyin', the San Franciscan monster band made up of members of the great, not-really-dead Masters of the Hemisphere and myriads of other groups over the years, doesn't concede these warm weather days to anyone or to any calendar. It encapsulates them and celebrates them in a form of joyous frenzy, an assembly of everything goes that feels like a fireworks display, plenty of weed smoking and a nimble form of leisure time passage that leaves you glowing for days, reinvigorating you enough to slog through a shitty day job without it feeling like slogging. The songs on "Never Gonna Touch The Ground," the band's debut full-length album that was released this past April, is a fling with dancehall rhythms, South American spirit, Oceanic waves, even tans, noodling ideas and thoughts full of oddities all getting out on the floor to cut it up. The smile that's there on your face, you may notice it now. It's there because of Still Flyin'. The band is working with you on that accessory and it's not going anywhere for the time being so just forget it, will you, and work on the other parts. They should be following the lead. Sean Rawls and Bren Mead, who were the two chief songwriters and vocalists for Kindercore Records' most talented band in Masters, are at the front here as well, with the sleepy and witty Rawls drawing on his many, many "lifejams" to create a new elixir, one of elation and conditions that alight a mood. It touches all of the pleasure centers a person can have, making you feel as if all of the sprinklers in the entire neighborhood are on and sending the water specks cascading in sinewy arcs - the rainbows playing off the mist - as everyone just throws their hands up, rips off their shirts and starts running through them.

Still Flyin' MySpace Page
Antenna Farm Records

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1. first song

   Welcome to Daytrotter

   
2. second song

   Runaway Train II

   

   - unreleasedThis is a brand new song we had just started playing, and it was sounding HOTTTTTTTTT.   Either that or we were just excited about it because it was new.  It's about my friends Nick and Annabel getting married in Florida and me being too broke to afford a plane ticket.  I'm bummed about that, so I have the idea of train hopping from San Francisco to Florida.  Over the course of my cross country train adventure I turn into full-fledged boxcar bum: eating beans from a can, attempting to play banjo, teeth rotting out, etcetc.  I decide the life isn't for me so I go back to SF and resume my normal lifejams.  Also, this is the sequel to Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train".

3. third song

   Dead Memory Man

   

   - original version appears on Never Gonna Touch The GroundWhen we play live I usually sing through a delay pedal called a memory man.  I say "usually" because it breaks very easily and also it's a hassle for the sound engineer to deal with so if we're pressed for time I'll just go without it.  We used to do a lot of crazy delay feedback and stuff and I don't know if we just got lazy or what, but now we don't use it as much for that so it's not totally necessary.  This song is simultaneously about that delay pedal breaking and about my poor memory.  I tried to get it to where every single line could be interpreted to be about either thing.  A fun, but obnoxious challenge.

4. fourth song

   The Hott Chord Is Struck

   

   - original version appears on Never Gonna Touch The GroundI can't remember which version we kept, but we did a version of this with a ridiculous soft rock ballad beginning that kind of faded disjointedly into the normal song.  It sounded terrible, but sort of in a good way.  I don't remember which faction of the band won - the "let's do something different with these songs" risk-takers or the "no way we need to play them well" safe dudes.  Either way, this is a jammer and a half.  A tribute song to all the other jammers of the world that we're thankful for the existence of.

5. fifth song

   Rope Burn

   

   - original version appears on Time Wrinkle EjAh, I know this one had a killer alternate beginning!  The greatest sax riff of all time seguing seamlessly into one of our classic jams.  This made me so pumped when we did this.  In fact, maybe we should have Frankie play "Baker St." at the beginning of each of our songs.  He can change the tempo and key of the riff to match whichever song of ours it is.  Imagine that riff at the beginning of each of these songs.  That would take it to the next level.  Anyway, this song is about an alligator in a dumpster eating my dog.  Don't worry, it is fictitious.  She is alive and well.