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LP
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SN 026LP
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"I first became aware of Josephine when I was living in Chicago and doing solo songs weekly at The Hideout. Hearing her sing for the first time is a pleasantly shocking experience for anyone, and I was an arm's length away. She seemed very nervous. At one point she had to stop the song and asked if anyone had any water. I'm sure the presence of my bandmates and crew didn't help the nerves. I handed her a bottle of water. She gave a polite thank you and carried on with her songs. Later I heard she had a band with one of her friends from Old Town School of Folk Music (I don't know how true this is, this was just the word on the street). They were called Children's Hour... I don't recall how I ended up playing drums with them but I remember how I felt: it was like putting on a gas mask and getting clean oxygen. The environment I was in was so pocked and cancerous, Papa M and Children's Hour were my only life source... It was music I could understand. I could relate with the lyrics. At any rate, I gave the songs a simple pulse that stadium audiences could easily digest... Fast forward twenty years. The hard drive with the recording is long gone -- ancient, kaput, thousands of miles away in god knows what landfill. Andy, however, still has the rough mixes. Hearing them with new ears I realize what a magical moment was captured, a moment of youth. So I tried to clean up the mono mixes, make the best of them. When, lo and behold, Paul Oldham comes to the rescue with all the individual tracks, preserved and able to be summoned on 2020 hard drives. Long story short, I buff and polish the tracks to create easy-to-digest stems for mixing -- even ducking the instruments ever so slightly when the vocals come in. Sweetening them so that mixing will be naught but a skip in the park. Josephine and Andy travel to Nashville and transfer the digititus to simmering analog goodness and serve up delicious bowls of mixes. When I listen back, the only listening experience I can compare it to is Spiderland. It sounds like some young, forward-thinking, folks who are doing what they do best without any self-awareness... It's pure music. Now, when I need pure music most." --David Pajo, 2024
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