yeah, like all things he's fascinated by, andy just won't shut up about it.
j, on the other hand, quite literally does not give a fuck. he will call you a "pansy ass f*ggot" if you even admit to liking certain music, nevermind letting it have "that feeling" on you. i told him prodigy from mobb deep was not intimidating in his rhymes, but in fact, very intellectually interesting and that his rhyme schemes were fun to study. he predictably called me a "gay ass."
but j, even though he will never admit it, is in fact quite intrigued by the idea of music resonating and being emotionally moving. upon hearing 'shook ones', he will jump around and recite the lyrics in his hardest faux-nyc b-boy stance. he doesn't understand that getting amped up and excited is actually the music resonating with him in a very profound way.
he doesn't understand because he is, after all, a child.
so how the hell did these two manage to collaborate on Philomath. and actually make something beautiful, ugly, sad, exuberant, and ultimately, extremely resonating and coherent?
there was a time when the two of them refused to even acknowledge the other's existence. and, for even longer, one was quite angry and abusive towards the other (i think you can probably guess who was who in that scenario). but they both experienced the same upbringing. it was probably inevitable that they would both arrive at the same conclusion that those summer vacations were invaluable in providing respite and, most importantly, insight.
insight into what it was like to not have that sense of impending doom all the time. insight into what the beauty in a lot of music was actually about; not just speculating on it. insight, ultimately, into what we could be.
andy told me years ago, upon reading an interview with him, that he wanted more than anything to hear david axelrod write arrangements for an entire outkast album. although hiphop moving towards a more conventional mode of musician-based music production will always seem like a radical idea in the larger picture, andy's thought wasn't that far-fetched. after all, axe had long been a sample favorite in hiphop and he even got ras kass to rap on his comeback album. but still, that's just how andy thinks: in the larger picture. he doesn't understand that old jazz man axe coming in to talk shop and collaborate with andre3000 and his prince obsessions probably wouldn't pan out. he simply sees two of his favorite music makers who have given him "that feeling" more than any others and figures that, when they collaborate, it will be multiplied accordingly. he thinks big, not practical.
when he first told me that he wanted to make an album about philomath, i told him to talk to junior about it because that was always his favorite place too. andy, being the wide-eyed enthusiastic person that he is, immediately just jumped into it: "junior, what beats do you have? what do you think of this idea? do you think we can do songs about basketball? is there any way to make it sound like the wind going through the high trees and the water running in the creek at the same time? you remember that, right?"
and on, and on.
much to my surprise, j just kind of shrugged it off and told him that it seemed like, "a cool idea, i guess."
they didn't talk directly about it again for another three years.
andy just started to develop a new song one day and, in a very uncharacteristic manner, announced that he had begun to work on "me and junior's album." i don't think j was aware that they had even agreed to work on anything. uncharacteristic of him to take that initiative, but typical of him to be so idiosyncratic about it.
that song was 161. i always knew andy would eventually write themes for all of my grandparents. he had written one for my maternal grandfather around the time of his passing years ago before andy even knew what a major seventh was. when andy first started to get the chords in order for 161, he just kept saying, "the way he walked was so happy." and he's right; Donald Woodrow Anderson, Senior walked like he knew nothing and everything. free of the worries of the world and simultaneously aware of it all (and therefore, prepared for anything). whether he actually was or not didn't matter; he could be walking down the hall of the philomath food bank (which he founded) to help a patron, or he could be walking into the grocery store to get cat food. it didn't matter; the man was on a mission to live the most content life he possibly could and there was not a whole lot that he let get in his way. andy dedicated his solo album to grandpa andy last year and i knew then that it was only a matter of time before he would want to expand on his idea from years back and start working it into something tangible. and, just like that —as is often the case with andy— it was starting to come to fruition.
j obliged as soon as he heard the melody andy had come up with. because j knew it, i knew it, hell even capital G knew it: it was a variation on one of the things grandpa andy would whistle to himself. i don't know if it's a well-known tune that grandpa andy took from a classical piece somewhere or what; but the point remains: andy somehow transcribed it, despite not hearing the man whistle for at least the last two decades, and we all immediately recognized what he was doing.
j told him that grandma june's theme should have an actual title and not just be "_____'s theme." subsequently, andy made a double exception: he tuned back to DADGAD for the first time in over five years —after swearing off it because, as he put it, "there was nothing else to write about that was that warm"— and he simply said, "call it 'the baby bank.'" 164 was born. one of their favorite places in the entire world, as it had train tracks running just behind it, the baby bank was founded by June Anderson in the late 1980s with the same ideal as the food bank: if you are in need for your newborns and small children and don't have the finances, the baby bank is where you go for resources and relief.
they agreed that andy would play the songs as he wanted to play them and j would make them sound as he wanted them to sound. andy's musical interests have always swayed towards pretty sounds, while j wants groove. andy likes the big beautiful middle eight and j wants the funk. i thought for sure they would never actually get very far knowing this, but andy was surprisingly accepting of j's ideas and j was likewise very sympathetic of what andy was going for. for me, this reaches its' obvious boiling point in 162. andy hates j's mix, but he kept it on the album. for what it's worth, andy did attempt an alternate mix which, perhaps very predictably, gives prominence to those big chords over the drums. for the record, i like both.
he made it very clear from the start that this was his and junior's album. there would be no input from anyone else unless they both agreed to accept that input. i was fine with this, because j had become a lot more outspoken about the musical stuff recently after years of simply being apathetic and i wanted to take a back seat for a bit. and that's what the album is: j and andy throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. and hell, even if it doesn't stick for very long, if at all, throw it in there anyway because this is our music, we'll do whatever the hell we want, and we don't really care what you think, thank you very much.
that is consistently true for all except one of the album's tracks. and i'm not trying to downplay what they did, because i'm really proud of it; but that one track also just happens to be my personal favorite of the entire project.
the new recordings of 120 found an unlikely contributor in the one and only capital G. when andy first started Philomath., he said that he wanted to include updated (and hopefully improved) recordings of all of the spectral projections. compositions — or at least the ones he reveres the most. section two of 120 is subtitled "Gregory's theme." so it makes sense that, after a frustrating afternoon fiddling with different arrangements, capital G finally spoke up and told him, "you're not playin` it right. it should be played to sound like what you think it should sound like." nobody knew what he meant, except andy. after four hours of dissatisfaction and dead ends, they had it tracked and were mixing within ninety minutes. i can't say andy wanted to create what he thinks a proper hiphop album with david axelrod at the helm would sound like, but i have to imagine that's exactly what he was going for with this new version of 'spectral three.'
the album is a mixed bag of old and new compositions. some old ones were kept in the can for a long time, held with the specific intention of being a part of this project: 99, for example, has been kicked around a lot, but it's always been about that thunderstorm in august. others, like some discussed above, were written specifically for this album. 165, another example of a new composition specifically intended to tell part of this album's story, details what andy refers to as his "entrance music for the trailblazers." he remembers when j would rap, word for word, along with his tapes as he would shoot hoops for hours on end. and he actually wanted j to write an original rap verse for it.
(junior declined: "i'm not a fucking rapper, i'm a dj, dude!")
the album's other long form track is an updated take on andy's ever-evolving work that he sometimes refers to as "sunset." — it actually consists of numbers 119 and 121. though this song is always on the move in andy's mind, he wanted to basically make a higher fidelity recording than the one he made last year (in which he got "drum" sounds from hitting the neck pickup on his guitar in certain ways, as opposed to just biting the bullet and asking j to sample drums). when i asked him why he wanted to update "sunset.", all andy said was that he wanted "to do justice to that memory." i don't know what specific instance he's referring to, but if andy has anything close to a "holy" time of the day, it's when the sun is setting. so, i get it: it's a memory that he keeps very close and doesn't really care to talk about in any great detail. that's fair.
andy was regretful of ending last year's lasso. on the sour note that we did. but, as i told him at the time, it was a good story, but it did not have a happy ending. when they had about three or four songs finished, both he and junior started to talk about how they wanted the end of the album to be "sad, but not too sad; not upsetting." because, as j put it, "there was a time when i felt like i could always look forward to going back." and that's true; no matter what happened, 23724 was always a place that we could count on being there when we got the chance to go back. with 166, andy did his best to make the last portion of the album convey as much of that carefree feeling as he possibly could. that's what the joy of riding around Benton county in grandpa andy's truck felt like to andy: a jaunty jangle of a time. however, with 167, they both decided that they needed a "classic-sounding 'last song'."
we're all huge fans of long albums where the track sequence is an integral part of what the album has to say. andy sat down and, unlike any other song for this project, tracked the rhythm part in one take, on the first take. none of us had heard him play it before then. he wrote it down, sussed out the other parts and simply said, "two ninety nine." california state route 299 is one of the roads that we would drive to get back and forth and, upon heading back to reno, driving on it signified that we were now over half way back — further away from philomath, the place he didn't want to leave, and closer to 775, the place he didn't care to ever see again.
so, what is Philomath.?
it's a small country town in west central oregon that my paternal grandparents lived just outside of, where i would visit as often as i possibly could as a child, adolescent, and young man.
it's also andy and junior's common ground. it's where the seeds were planted so many years ago, unbeknownst to any of us then, for healing to finally occur.
it's the closest thing i've ever experienced to a "promised land."
these recordings are, to me, what it felt like to be there at the time.
thank you, guys. i needed a reminder of that feeling.
PS— junior has already started to ask andy to collaborate on further ideas. he has always been fascinated by 127 and 123, so he asked andy to help him with new versions. andy was more than happy to oblige. maybe i'm just jazzed that there's yet another recording of my theme, but i do honestly feel like what they managed to cook up with "spectral six" there is the best thing to come out of this entire project so far.
—g.
