We are so excited to release Another Adventure in Red, out today on Procrastination Records! This album is particularly special to us for a lot of reasons: it features so many of our wonderful friends as collaborators, and it was also recorded in our last three hometowns, Princeton, NJ, Greensboro, NC and Baltimore, MD.
First and foremost, we want to thank Tommy Hambleton, who in addition to releasing this on his record label, recorded the loveliest lap steel guitar part on the title track. John and I loved it so much that we knew immediately we had to create a remix from it, which became “Adventure in Green.” This was a joint production, and it was such a joy to work on, especially in a year without live performances. We built an arrangement around Tommy’s lap steel part for “…Red” and we just kept going and going!
Next we want to thank our dear friends and labelmates Joe Martin and Robin Eckman, of the duo 3rd Grade Friends, who we met while sharing a bill in a tiny little bar in Baltimore about a million years ago and we’ve played about a million shows with since, and it is always a blast. We had been meaning to record something with them for a while and then, a couple years ago, they drove up to Princeton, we all set up in the school’s studio, and recorded several hours of improvisation. With Chris and Robin each on their own drum set with their own assortment of percussion toys, Joe on guitar, John on bass and myself playing saxophone in addition to engineering (luckily we had enough mics and inputs for everything!), it was a great day of music! We made a note of when we hit our stride, but then, as things do sometimes, it sat on a hard drive for a while before John and I finally started mixing it. I never get tired of listening to “3rd Grade Fire”.
There are two tracks with vocals on this record, “After” and “Night Sticks,” and the lyrics to both were written by poet Brian Lampkin, who is based in Greensboro, NC. We met Brian when I was a student at UNCG, and he wrote the lyrics to “Night Sticks” while we still lived there, back in 2014. That was our first collaboration, and we actually released it as a single a few years ago. Natalie Havens, an amazing singer who was a fellow grad student at UNCG, provided the powerful vocal performance on this, and we got to perform it with her in NYC a couple years ago, where she is now based. We meant to release it on an earlier album but it never quite fit. But Mat Leffler-Schulman, of Mobtown Studios, updated the mix — we told him to go hard with it and he definitely did! And Chris’s wonderfully inventive beat on “Night Sticks” (he put a splash cymbal on the snare, creating an anvil-like sound every other hit) drives this near-disco rocker over the edge.
I first wrote “After” as a one-minute long piece for Rhymes with Opera. I had set another poem of Brian’s for a chamber music piece, and when RWO asked me to write something for a virtual performance this past summer, I found some of the other poems that he had sent and was immediately drawn to this one. I had a short synth loop that I had improvised a couple weeks before and they fit perfectly together. When John heard it, he said we should expand it into a JoF tune, which we did together. He had the idea for the structure, and also the idea to ask David Degge to play hammered dulcimer on it. David’s dulcimer parts and improvisation were just so beautiful. And then we had Mark Eichenberger play drums on it, who came up with the grooviest drum part for it—I am pretty sure I shouted when I first heard them. David and Mark brought this piece to life, and I am so grateful to them, for not only being a part of it but also recording themselves for it. Once we can hang out in real life, I owe you both so many beers!
John and I had so much fun working on this album over the past few months. When we first started working together in 2009 (holy cow it has been a long time), I had no idea what working on an album even meant. He has encouraged my growth as a musician, composer and producer and has taught me so much, and it was an honor to be his co-producer for this record. Hopefully he doesn’t make me cut this part of the blog post; I know I’ve gotten long-winded and cheesy. He is an amazing composer and bassist, he is constantly thinking about music and how to structure it perfectly and patiently. And I really think you can hear that on this record.
We consider Tommy, David, Mark, Joe, Rob, Brian, Natalie and Mat part of the Joy on Fire family, and would like to thank them all again!
Additional thanks to Dan Gutstein, Gareth Thompson, Bob Boilen, Brian Erickson, Zach Herchen, Ruby Fulton, Mika Godbole, Damien Davis, Mark Isaac, Gabriela Bulisova, Dmitri Tymoczko, Brian Platzer, and Funz.
with love,
Anna
