How Long I’ve Been Away
Do you remember me? A new demo.
It was a realisation that struck me when we had the first Bandcamp Listening Party last year for the First Step in a Homeward Direction (The Cure For Everything) Maxi single. You can have a new song, a new recording that you are totally familiar with. Something you have laboured and stressed over, something you have an intimate knowledge of. Something that the process of creation forces you to have evaluated a thousand times. You have an attitude, an opinion on this piece of art, one that you think is quite well considered and well constructed. But it is a viewpoint you have created in artistic isolation and the moment you play that song to other people, especially to people removed from your private sphere (so, the moment it goes public) your perception somehow changes. For whatever reason, it just sounds different. It feels different. It’s like the first time you hear your voice played back on a recording. You have heard your own voice countless times through your life but the moment it is recorded and played back you are listening from a different viewpoint. When the song First Step in a Homeward Direction came on that evening it sounded like a completely different song to the one I knew.
And so when I trawl through my demos to find something that might be good for this week’s Substack post I am struck by just how different a song I haven’t listened to for a number of years might sound. And the trepidation I feel at the prospect of others listening to it becomes all too real. Case in point, this week’s offering: How Long I’ve Been Away. The inspiration and genesis of the song are really particular and probably a large part of the reason it has lain dormant (fallow?) for so long.
Basically it was written in a daze and subsequently shelved. The date the computer gives me on the original voice memo file is March 2015. There have been a good four albums since then and I haven’t considered it or offered it to anyone in the ensuing years. The version here is the original iPhone recording of the song with a couple of things added. There was some foot stomping at the start of the original recording that stops after about four bars - which I liked the sound of and so I sequenced that and kept it running through the whole track. I am damned if I know how some people are able to perform whole sets with a steady stomp box beat. Rory McCloud was the first person I ever witnessed doing this and I still think the best and most effortless at this task. I heard Greg Arnold recently on the Things of Stone and Wood reformation tour and he was pretty damn good at it too I’d have to say. Back to the track, beyond that I added a little bit of organ, more to test out the capability of the new recording platform I have adopted than anything else. What you are about to hear is pretty much what the song sounded like when we first devised it.
All I am going to say regarding the writing of the song How Long I’ve Been Away is it was written after I had been in hospital for a couple of unexpected days. My disclaimer here is that I do my very best to avoid talking about ‘health’ - my ‘health’, or anyone else’s for that matter. It’s such a tedious subject. I make a sincere apology to any of the younger players who have found themselves in our orbit: Michael Hubbard, Jac Tonks, Brooke Taylor and now Olivia Bolmat - there’s no excuse or reason for you having to sit in a hire car and endure the horrible phenomena of the question how are you? Lasting for an hour up the highway. From Preston to Kalkallo. None whatsoever.
But the song. It was the week before we were due to fly to Africa for the first of our Tourica Tour junkets. I went to my doctor as I wasn’t feeling great and he took one look at me and told me to go to casualty at St Vincents. They took one look at me and said I wasn’t going anywhere and checked me in without warning. I didn’t tell a whole lot of people as I didn’t want to alarm Matt Collins who ran the Africa tours (or the people who had signed up and paid to go). Consequently I was pretty isolated up there in my hospital bed - floating above Fitzroy. I woke in the morning to see the balloons floating over the city.
It was surreal. I didn’t have a clue what was going on but somehow felt I had lost touch with normal life. They kept me in for a couple of days. I obviously got out in time to go to Africa.
My discharge was almost as unexpected as my admission. Suddenly I was free to go and found myself walking the streets of old Fitzroy, still very affected by whatever drugs they had me on. Look, I was that affected I actually fear I jumped on the tram without touching on my Myki Card as I don’t think I had one on me - but I suppose sometimes you have to live dangerously. Heaven forbid. I got home to find the household functioning pretty much as I had left it three days earlier. And then remembered I had arranged a songwriting session with Brooke Russell (not Taylor) Brooke Russell - that very day afternoon! Too late to cancel it was the best thing I could have done.
Brooke came in and we sat down to write and of course I had nothing to offer but the weird feeling of alienation and displacement I was feeling at that point in time. I felt like Rip Van Winkle or the person from the Persian folk tale that puts their head into a bucket of water and lives a lifetime in the space of five seconds. Time had become elastic. I was all over the shop. This is what it sounds like when that happens I suppose.
Having recently relocated back to the inner north of Melbourne after nearly four years down on the Mornington Peninsula this whole sentiment seems to take on a new meaning for me. On top of that, having just completed the first weekend back with the full Roving Commission there is another significance at play. It was really good to be driving up to the Mallee and Wimmera regions of Victoria with the band, with Wally and Ben. With Ando and Morro - and Brooke and her fine big band. With all the punters. How long I’ve been away indeed. Maybe it’s all too significant
(Pic by Linda Burnett)
To return to the original thought of how different things begin to sound once they are offered up for people to actually hear, I am anticipating the orchestration we might give How Long I’ve been Away. It sounds good with just an acoustic guitar, a little bit of organ and a foot stomp box. I think I can detect Brooke Russell singing in the background. Maybe there are some lyrics that need straightening out and possibly the little 3/4 intro-outro section is too much like the Waifs Shiny Apple - which I now think might be too much like the Stranglers Golden Brown. I’ m sure we will find ourselves in a studio sooner or later and I’m sure we will find this tune will be one that get’s considered. I honestly don’t know how it sounds, until someone else hears it.
What? You can’t hear it? Well that means you haven’t subscribed. Damn - I almost died making this one and you can’t spare a few bucks to listen to the result? Oh please!
How Long I’ve Been Away - with Brooke Russell - Demo Version
