Peter Pan's Lemonade Stand

At its core, this song is about marketing strategy.

A few years ago my wife, Lynn, and I were talking about my 'music career,' such as it was.  The phrase popped into my head as the perfect explanation for how I like doing things.  'Peter Pan' refers to the fact that I'll never grow up.  And a lemonade stand is a business where it's not important to make any money.  It's more about hanging out on a sunny day and sharing with the neighborhood.  I own the lemons, the sugar, the water, the cups, etc. 

This was one of those songs that, as soon as I wrote it . . . I hated it.  But I liked what it said.  The original groove was more of a cut-time 2/4 thing.  I piddled around with a little, played it for Jonathan and a couple other people, got good feedback, but still didn't like it.  And then, I played it for Rocko.  He put a whole new spin on it, and now it's a favorite of mine.

This might be one of those one-take songs, two at the most.  Including the guitar solo.  Jonathan does a really nice little harmony on the chorus, but he wasn't there when I went in to re-do the vocal, so I did that one myself.  Sorry, Jon.

Heartbeats, pg. 2

I got so involved with telling how the song got written, I forgot to mention how it got to be recorded.

The original plan for our album was to record it ourselves. That would save a lot of money. Then, Rocco gave me a copy of Stovepipe Mountain's CD. One listen was all it took to convince me that you get what you pay for.

I made arrangements to visit the place where it was recorded, and meet the man responsible. Wes Chapmon owns and operates Studio Bohemo in Bath, NH. I hope I'm getting this story right; he used to co-own a commercial studio in Texas and wanted to open a little one of his own. His wife happens to be from New Hampshire, so they found a place and set up shop.

We hit it off immediately, and I was very impressed with the facility. He even offered to cut us a break on the price, and we set a date for the first session. Jonathan, Rocco and I got there about 9 am on a Saturday, set up, and started. The plan was to do basic tracks for as many songs as we had time for, and build the finished product from there.

By the middle of the afternoon, we were pulling out songs that the three of us had never even played together. Every song on the CD was begun that day, and most of the bass and drum parts are from that first session. A lot of the rhythm guitar, and even some of the leads and lead vocals all happened in that one day. I don't think we needed more than 3 takes of anything, and some we nailed in 1. It was quite exciting.

This song in particular is an example of the magic that Wes worked from that point on. The rhythm guitar parts were done with a Fender Strat, through my Deluxe Reverb. I went back in to add leads with a Les Paul and one of his Fender Princetons. I also re-did the vocals.

At that point, Wes took over. We did the original guitar parts dry except for a little reverb, so he added some effects. He also pulled the rhythm guitar completely out of the first half of all the verses, which I thought sounded great, so we do it that way live now. He also put a little synthy-thing in that same spot, which gave it a nice little edge.

I have made it a point to not ever ask Wes what he thought of the music, whether or not he liked it. Jon and Rocco, yes. It was important for me to know what they thought of what we were doing, because it was as much theirs as mine. If I find I've brought them a song that either of them don't like, it's gone. Wes, on the other hand, is essentially a sub-contractor we hired to perform a service on our behalf.

The mark of his professionalism is that he tackled the whole project with a passion, working hard to make every note as good as it could be. I would like to think he would put that much into any project he worked on, even if he didn't particularly like the music. Whatever his opinion was of what we brought him, he truly became the 4^th member of the band.

So anyway, thanks, Wes, for a job very well done.  I'm honestly amazed at how good the finished product came out.  It sounds better than I could have expected, and much, much better than what we'd have done on our own.

Studio Bohemo has a very good web site, http://studiobohemo.com/ and they sell gear on the side.  I've got my eye on one of those D'Angelico archtops.

In Between the Heartbeats

The genesis of this song was a chance meeting with a gentleman who had once been a member of an outlaw biker gang.  As he explained, there are only two ways out of such gangs.  One is, to die.  The other is, as happened to him, "getting religion."  He became a born-again Christian, and promptly told the leadership of his gang that he could no longer participate.

Now, anyone else who said such a thing, announcing that they would no longer be a part of the gang and its activites, would find leaving very difficult.  In his case, he was shown the door.  It seems that, while not understanding the impulse to surrender oneself to ones creator, it is traditional to at least show said creator a certain level of respect.  In a nutshell, if that guy is now the property of God, and he's willing to risk his life to tell you so ... well, that's an owner they don't want as an enemy.

Being the inquisitive type, I asked about life in the biker gangs.  The gentleman told me about the breadth of influence these gangs hold over large segments of society.

"My God!" I said.  "You should write a book!  Expose them."

He just laughed.  It seems the books have already been written.  I'd even read a couple of them.  And, the gangs go on as if nobody knew a thing.  So, I asked him if he felt a responsibility to do anything about them.

Turns out, he does.  He goes back.  Not to join in on their crimes, or get hammered at their parties.  He goes to be available.  He does whatever he can to be allowed to hang around; cleans their bikes, get someone that's passed out to safety, treat injuries; he's cleaned up messes when somebody throws up, gives "guests" rides home, whatever he can.

If you've ever been to the Bike Week festivities at Weirs Beach, you've surely seen tables occupied by different chapters of some bike "clubs."  Members of the chapters sit out in the hot sun and promote the clubs more beneficent works.  This guy will bring them bottles of water, no charge.

His whole purpose for hanging around a group of people whose activities he has disavowed is; every now and then, somebody else gets the idea that they'd like to leave.  They'd like to put that life, and the things they've been doing, behind them and move on.  But so far as they know, there's only one way to do that.  He hangs around, to show them that there's another alternative.  Not that they have to respond as he is doing, but just so they can get out.

I have thought a lot about that conversation over the years since.  I've come to realize that this situation is not restricted to biker gangs.  We are surrounded by groups of people who have a unified identity and a singular vision.  A lot, if not most, (if not all) of these groups may present a public face that is benign, to show that their motives are pure and good and righteous.

The reality is that they exist only for their own benefit.  They are willing to go to varying degrees of effort to advance their agenda.  Often, a few at the top of the pecking order run things and the deception dribbles down through the ranks, until the operatives in the street believe the lies themselves.  If they challenge the holes in the logic they promote, they are silenced.  They may be directed into activities that keep them busy, or driven out, or even promoted.  It's a way of dealing with people who say things like; "If A is B, and B is C, isn't C really A?"

A lot of times, a person who has invested their efforts, time and treasure into something comes to a crisis point.  They wonder, what the hell am I doing this for?  I work and work, and we all do, and it all seems to be going nowhere.  Maybe they've even gotten a peek inside, and come to the realization that the people they've been following are not what they were thought to be.  Maybe what they're part of was founded on a lie.  Or maybe it was founded on a good idea, but that idea has become lost over time and succumbed to selfishness.  The thing they believed in has become a means of acquiring power that is now being misused.

The world, life, is a living thing.  It moves in a rhythm.  All things are like music, moving together from one moment to the next, the rhythms bouncing off each other, the notes struggling to harmonize.  Our brains are wired to try and make sense of it all, to catch the melody line, to move in harmony and rhythm with it.

We know that we cannot hold all of this within our minds, hear it all, dance to it all, so we try and hold onto the parts of it that make the most sense to us and hope that we are a "good" part of the music.  Or, it's all so confusing we decide we just don't care, and sing our own song.

And every now and then, in the little spaces between the notes and the beats, we get little glimpses of something.  In between the protons and electrons and neutrons of every atom, there are vast reaches of space, unoccupied areas that dwarf the physical particles that orbit one another.

They'll Never Shut Us Up

 

Somebody suggested that the only thing missing from the new CD is liner notes.  So, with that in mind ...

The Rick Clogston Band is the alter ego of the Red Hat Band.  Both names come from a complete lack of ability to think up a name for either version. 

I have a red fedora, the third in a line begun when Lynn Bradley bought me the first at Rochester Fair back when we were dating.  We'll celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary in July, 2018.  Anyway, it's become something of a trademark for me, and the band.  During the years while we kept trying, and failing, to think of a proper name, people were asking club owners when the guy in the red hat was coming back.  So, when we got booked, they would put on the sign out front; "The Red Hat Band."  And it's stuck.

So, that band is myself on guitar and vocals, Jonathan Sindorf on bass and vocals, and Ken Anderson on drums and vocals.  But that band does nothing but cover tunes, and I write songs that weren't getting played by anyone.  Jonathan very graciously agreed to help me get them played, and possibly even recorded.  One of our fill-in drummers, Rocko Russelli, also agreed, and the second band was born.  Again, couldn't think of a name, so the guys sat me down.  They pointed out that we're doing songs that I wrote, and I'm singing them and playing lead guitar on top of it, so it's the Rick Clogston Band.  I would like to note that the RCB could not exist without the RHB, so thanks, Ken, for helping make this possible. 

We contemplated recording it on our own, seeing that there are so many options easily available at reasonable prices.  Luckily, one of Rocko's other bands, the Stovepipe Mountain Band, was thinking the same way but much more intelligently.  They had gone to a local studio in Woodsville, NH called Studio Bohemo operated by Wes Chapmon.  The finished product sounded great, so I just had to meet this guy.    He impressed me as much as Stovepipe's CD did, so we made arrangements to come in and record.

We arrived on the appointed day, set up, and got to work.  We quickly ran through the songs that we had prepared, and it was going great.  We'd get a good take or two, and Wes would turn to us and ask; "What's next?"  So, we kept on going.  Pretty soon, we were running through songs that Rocko had never played, although you'd never know it.  The basic tracks for every song on the disc were recorded that day.

The way it was done, we were basically live in the studio, but any part of any song could be done over.  What we were recording was considered to be scratch tracks, but some came out so well we kept them.  On most, I went back in and re-did the lead vocals.  Most of the lead guitar parts are overdubbed, although some were left from the raw scratch tracks.  There were also some background vocals recorded later on.  I think I did one song, Jonathan did a couple, and my daughter, Cathleen, came in and did a couple as well.

From there on, it was up to Wes to mix and master.  We came by the studio to sit in on the major mixing, and he took it from there.  He actually did quite a bit of tweaking on it, and I am flabbergasted by how good it came out.  As it progressed toward completion, we started to think about the cover art.  I had a rough idea, and knew exactly who I wanted to do the photography.

My thinking was, if we put a picture of the three of us with our instruments, people would make a judgement on what was on the disc and decide from there whether they were interested.  I thought instead that it would be fun to have a cover photo that would really give no clue to what the music was, and that would either pique their curiosity . . . or not.

The pictures were done at the Pemi Valley Church in Woodstock, NH.  This is the church I went to when I moved back from California in 1985.  It's also where I met my wife.  And, they have this beautiful old pipe organ, which made the perfect backdrop.  We brought various instruments, and I handed the idea over to my son, Alex Clogston, who happens to be an excellent photographer.  He was ably assisted by his girlfriend, Jess Nichols.

The three people on the cover are Jonathan's son, Peter Sindorf; my daughter, Cathleen Clogston; and my mother-in-law, Sharon Bradley.  The picture on the back cover happened when somebody brought the little white bear, and then somebody else set the hat on its head while it was sitting at the organ.  Alex couldn't resist taking a picture of it as well.

As for the title, that comes from what has been my standard retort for years now.  People I've known for a long time will ask; "Are you still playing?"  And I reply; "Yeah, they'll never shut me up."  And by gum, they won't!

So, that's the story of the CD.  I'll take apart the songs in future posts.  And if anyone has any questions, I'll be happy to answer them here.