Clay Jones is Dead

I am ended my second week in Toronto with a trip across the lake to my home land, Rochester, NY and more specifically Canandaigua. What started out as a simple direct flight to Rochester for the three-day weekend—which happens to be Canadian Thanksgiving—to visit my parents, turned into an out-of-the-way connection through JFK for a forty-eight hour pass to my parents' empty house.

Still totally worth it.

It was odd though to look out the window of the plane to see we were literally within a couple miles of my parents' place in Canandaigua, then shoot a couple hundred miles past it. I waited around in the bedlam of JFK for about an hour before boarding my flight to NY—which happened to be the same plane and crew I had flown with from Toronto.

We then flew directly over Canandaigua lake yet again to shoot some forty-five miles past it land in Rochester.

I had heard, a couple weeks ago that Jimi Heselden the owner of the Segue company (not the inventor Dean Kamen), apparently rode a Segue off a cliff in England and died.

I guess he 'Segued' into the next beyond.

That is all I have to segue into the blog about my next song on the CD. A song of death.

Did you see how I did that?

So far, four songs into my album, the body count is eighty-two and one close call in freezing waters.

We're about to add one more.

Is it the girl tied a chair in a burning house? Her husband bleeding and left for dead outside the local saloon? Is it the oversized over-emotional jilted bully that put them both there or the well-meaning but not very handy uncle?

Om... If you really want to be surprised, try to ignore the title of this song, of this week's blog and the first few miles of the song.

What do you mean “too late?”

I've always been fascinated by those morbid folk ballads that told tales of woe and often included heinous crimes of passion and based, at least initially on some actual occurrence that became a legend in some little community.

Such legends were both the horror movies and the six-O-clock news in such places before there were either.

I wanted to write one of my own legends. It was simply more fun to make up my own than to find a real one of my liking. I placed it in a setting and time that is implied by several things. The language, marriage before the age of sixteen, a back-woods sense of justice, where sometimes, it is in everyone's best interest to bypass the formal process and the presence of some dark-hearted villain that brings trouble to mix of an otherwise God-fearing community.

I also wanted it to be ironic and just a little bit humorous.

When I perform this song I always introduce it like this:

“When you pit a belligerent bully against bad carpentry, bad carpentry always prevails.”

Click to listen to the song as you read on

Clay Jones is Dead

© Joel T Johnson

Justice been done no need to wake the Sheriff

Justice been done no need to wake the Sheriff, no

Clay Jones is dead

Just let the tall grass grow

Jenny was married the day before her sweet sixteen

She never knew a man till the eve of her sweet sixteen

It wasn’t Clay Jones and that made Clay Jones

crazy mad and mighty mean so…

He came ‘round on the night of the first new moon

He crept round her window in the dark of the first new moon

She was waiting for her man, but her man

Was lying in blood

Outside the saloon

And big Clay Jones

Is in her room

Instrumental refrain/solo

The chair was a wedding gift from her uncle Stan

Like the house, a handmade gift from her Uncle Stan

Now she was tied well to it by a man

With a heavy heart and a heavy hand

(at that same hand)

Lit a match and set it to the kerosene

Jenny’s eyes cried in the fumes of the kerosene

The floor creaked and groaned under big Clay Jones

Stan built his floors

A bit too lean

A bit too lean

Instrumental refrain

Clay fell through the floor and stuck fast in the wood

Jenny broke the chair and ran fast as she could

Poor Uncle Stan, a real nice man

But with a hammer and nails,

He’s not much good

Justice been done no need to wake the Sheriff

Justice been done no need to wake the Sheriff, no

Bury him deep and let the tall grass grow

Clay Jones is dead just let the tall grass grow

The Recording.

I had originally written this song on electric bass. I used a playing style that mimicked the sound of an upright (acoustic) bass. The main riff of the song was inspired loosely by the upright bass riff prominent in the movie Guy Richie movie “Snatch”.

I had recorded several versions with the electric and even tracked a bass 'lead' part—that's right this tune is 100% guitar free.

Why not go for the real thing and play it on an upright for the recording?

For starters, I didn't have an upright bass.

On one summer day in the summer of 2007 I was setting up for a gig at a casino in Western Wisconsin. A girl walked up to me and started asking me about my gear.

Okay, that's never happened before.

Anna, as it turned out, was the bass player for the next band playing that night. She was from LA too and played upright bass as well as electric. Unlike myself, she actually owned one.

Cool!

I had fun talking 'shop' with her and left my card on the stage on my way out to the bus while her bands was playing.

When It was time to record Clay Jones I knew who to call. Anna graciously agreed to let me come and record on her upright bass. Armed with my mobile recording rig I went to her house and attempted to play “Clay Jones”.

It didn't work.

Hand positions on an upright bass are different due to the significantly longer string length. The hand covers four half-steps on an electric (one finger per note) but on acoustic the same fingerspan covers only three notes.

I thought perhaps I could stretch my large hand out and make it work but it just wasn't big and wide enough enough. Anna kindly gave me a pointer or two and with a little practice, I was getting the effect that I wanted with the standard acoustic bass hand position.

As with all my bass tracks, they are among the most important, so I used four tracks to record Anna's bass. Her bass had not one, but two pickups. One in the bridge which renders a more mid-rangy nasal sound often heard from amplified uprights, and one in the body which gave a deep bass tone. I also mic'd the F-hole... No, that's not dirty, it's the sound hole on either side of the bridge of any classical stringed instrument. It happens to be shaped like the lower cased “f”also used in music notation to mark forte or loud.

There is a philosophy I have tried to adapt with this recording. There is no way I can create a completely pristine recording with my modest gear, fair to mediocre recording skills and AD HOC recording environments. Many home recordists tackle this problem by close miking and controlling their environments in any way possible. But this can sometimes result in a recording that sounds like so many others: either closed and lifeless, or awash in too much artificial reverb.

I decided to try to use my weaknesses to my advantage. Instead of trying to make my recording sound like a controlled environment I would celebrate certain imperfections in the hopes that the resulting charm would rise higher in the mix the 'error'.

While working in film I heard a legend of an old-time cinematographer who would meticulously set up his lighting exactly as he wanted then he would go around and give each light stand a little kick.

I don't know if that's true but I like the idea; do your best to make it good, then turn your back long enough so that the Gods may add their sprinkle of spice.

I did this in many ways throughout the album, little things; some I did with intention and design, others by leaving certain things open to chance.

When I recorded upright bass at Anna's house—for three tunes in all—there were a set of wind chimes just outside her door. Instead of taking measures to silence the wind chimes and even the voices of her nieghbors walking back to the apartments behind her house or children playing across the street, we left the windows open and allowed everything into my microphones. Every one of these things is audibly present on my album. Even though I myself wondered one or twice if I should have been less carefree, now, I would miss any of them.

You don't even have to listen all that carefully to hear the wind chimes that occasionally show up during Clay Jones, Rice Crispies and Gin and The Cider Miller's Daughter.

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