right, so... Starhead.

...we've got a song on the new compilation put together by our buddies over at Strawberry Fields - who are freshly moved into their new digs!

The song is "Coda", which'll be on Escadrille, and until the Strawberry Fields comp comes out, it'll be up on the MurdockMyspace for yer listenin.

Escadrille is being mixed by Brent Best right now, then it'll zoom up to Chicago to be mastered by Carl Saff.

Yeah, we're pretty happy.

man, we've gotten louder, tho.

We've kinda posted 'Coda' before, but this version of it is the first 'release' with all 7 members together on it.
Cody plays TWO e-bows onnit at the same time, and yeah, that's a church bell yer hearin in there.

Brent had this big fuck-all old iron bell on his porch, all hundred pounds of it, and, well...

"Two e-bows and a church bell? It is country?"
"Depends on the country, i guess..."
- Joe Cripps



...let us know what you think, for good or ill, k?

and thanks for watching us grow into this...





.

more in my flickr












"The bridegroom
drags you 'cross that room
said I do
but honey you were just a kid
your eyes said I did
still in love with nobody"






.

i do weather, not time




but i did a handfasting ceremony today, friends of friends and friends, rung me up the day before for the favour of my favour: so i made a husband and wife on the lawn at the Denton Courthouse square, under pecan trees draped in lights, watched by our gods, our ancestors, Texas, and a huddle of curious eyes...
we all waited on dusk and brought new light to the world with wine, bread, ribbon and love

and the night before?

this:










and in the meantimes, i sing this and sing it a little more:


"This my excavation and today is kumran
Everything that happens is from now on
This is pouring rain
This is paralyzed


I keep throwing it down two-hundred at a time
It's hard to find it when you knew it
When your money's gone
And you're drunk as hell

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks are your load
In the back with your racks and you're un-stacking your load


I've twisting to the sun I needed to replace
The fountain in the front yard is rusted out
All my love was down
In a frozen ground

There's a black crow sitting across from me; his wiry legs are crossed
And he's dangling my keys he even fakes a toss
Whatever could it be
That has brought me to this loss?

On your back with your racks as the stacks as your load
In the back and the racks and the stacks of your load
In the back with your racks and you're un-stacking your load

This is not the sound of a new man or crispy realization
It's the sound of the unlocking and the lift away
Your love will be
Safe with me"





.

and this weekend we're playin' the Pinebox Serenade CD release, as well.

"What if Leonard Cohen fronted a bluegrass ensemble? Denton's Pinebox Serenade can give you a pretty good answer, somewhere in the middle of their seven-piece medley featuring, among other things, mandolin, fiddle and cello. Serenade has become a ubiquitous favorite in area dives over the past year or two, their fare ranging from dark, smoky minor-chord numbers to old-timey, piston-driven whiplash romps, to Slobberbone-ish whiskey narratives about the other side of the tracks. Not surprisingly, Slobberbone's Brent Best recorded last year's debut and is working with them on this one as well."

and in August, we're playing with Parachutes, on tour from ICELAND. This cat over at Spune is being real good to us, yeah...

hurm.


other parts are quiet.
amnesty, then war.

if i were a rich man, da da deedledaydledeedaydle dum...


yes, that's a lampshade.




Escadrille detrius at Transient Camp Studios



one oh a bunch of pics from last night... i dunno where they all are/who took em or i'd linky


apparently, there's a video of the end-of-the-night where we ( Brent Best, Isaac Hoskins, George Neal, Alex Maples, Grady Dean, Ryan Thomas Becker) took to the stage and all did a song.
Someone may well have been drunk at that point from 5 double Margereeters and 4 shots of Jameson's.













.

so.

at the show tonight, one of my songs was covered.

by Brent Best.

wow. i mean, yeah, i covered one of his songs, but he's this guy, right?> gets royalty checks, tours Europe for kicks, lives in his recording studio.

i'm just a guy.

whoa.

girls are amazing, duh.
the most amazing of amazing examples of amazing things, and i'm unabashed about it.
sometimes i even give my heart away, sometimes on purpose, not always informed.

winter brought me passion, spring: caution.

summer won't tell me; she chants 'Tyger tyger, burning bright...' and i hear it in my undertone while i'm singing in the shower. i feel the rumble in the speakers in the back of Serenity.
i feel the urgent pulse of it in the uncode vibrations in the afterstrum of my guitar.

sometimes i let my heart sing for me, and i sit back and try t'make sure the doors dun fly open as we gain speed.
momentum, too.

so
sometimes i write songs about girls i'm not in love with: i find my inspiration in hedges, consequences dictate my course of action.

i live in the sky, dammit.




Brent covered 'Delirium', and the girl i wrote it of was there, too.


that's some kinda magic, yeah. i needed a little of that.





















"But a woman loved, who yields, is still far from being a woman who loves."
- Rilke

on saturday, we're playin a show where all the bands on the bill are covering OTHER Denton band's songs.

starhead is doing this one ( but a little ...'darker'?):

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Drams/_/When+You%27re+Tired

"and when did you become this way?
and how it starts is a cliche
why do you stay
holed up yeah fading
i pray that you don't fade away

and music never has a chance
with your queasy medicated dance
defiant in stance
cooped up, yeah and you're insolent
a self-inflicted circumstance

when you're tired the world sleeps with you
when you're drunk it spins just the same
when you're high it rises to meet you
when you're sad, it never feels the pain

a simple salve you once believed
a reactive commonality
but it gets hard to breathe
and those days have crumbled
now pre-emption is the policy

when you're tired the world sleeps with you
when you're drunk it spins just the same
when you're high it rises to meet you
but when you're sad, it never feels the pain

there's nothing left now to retrieve
and what is this that you've achieved
and who could believe
such creeping cruel darkeness
floundering in false reprieve

when you're tired the world sleeps with you
when you're drunk it spins just the same
when you're high it rises to meet you
when you're sad, it never feels the pain

when you're tired the world sleeps with you
when you're drunk it spins just the same
when you're high it rises to meet you
when you're sad, it never feels a thing"






that Brent Best feller is gonna make me a better songwriter by accident.
by this time tomorrow, Escadrille will be finished, recorded.


welcome back to the world, Del...





.

i think this song sisters Radiohead's "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi". i could make a trinity with 'iconoclasm'.




and it mightnae be daytime music, so as soon as the sun's not looking, soak in it:






(texas can hear you)

.

right, so those of you who've offered kind words, floorspace, or help in this tour thing, please g'head and email us: 'starheadtx AT gmail'.

i'm floored and overjoy'd at the offers, yeah.










...and i see you, Kid Vegas.

email, and tell the Eskimo to as well. i'd like t'play an ice-cream shop.






.

well, wow.


i just found out that there's a plan for a starhead tour in september/october.
Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, mebbe West Virginia.

did i say wow yet?

Escadrille, indeed.




"we are pirates and our ships are vans".
-mister jimmy of glossary
said this past weekend while on the road with the drams, via Joe Cripps.







.

today, it's four million degrees in Jerusalem Texas.

the AC is buh-roken at the shop, so i closed it and went home. Ironically, i'm gonna go outside and take Jemmy with me somewhere. it's entirely possible that i might get some sun.

and there's a bunch o'new pics of at the starhead site, btw. No new music, tho.. We're in a 'blackout' til the Album drop, cos we're cool ike that. or, at least that's what we've been 'advised to do'. Yeah.

Yesterday's set was a short one, but good.
setlist:


9th Grade Child
Waiting For The Miracle
Song About Nothing
Behind The Walls of You
Flood
Iconoclasm
Coda
Lioness

"Lioness" is working out all slowed down, esp with the violin innit. i sing more, soul more, scream less. on that song last night i got compared to a 'Texas Thom York' but that's way too much rush for me to absorb.
waaay too much. i hesitate to repeat it even, but i wanna document it.

i wanna play where they dun know us and see what ffolks say. San Antonio in September is on the horizon, and Austin? oy.

the newest song , "iconoclasm" sounds real good with Cody all guitarin' ( with all his pedals!) against Tamara's violin. very dissonant and melodic at the same time. "Coda" kinda went the same way, but Sarah's voice goes all operatic and really rips the song into new parts of the sky. When shes sings the 'hallelujah' we all stop for a second, then come back as she's winding down.
It's going on the Strawberry Fields compilation, yeah. Wow. Was supposed t'be "Petal" on that comp, but we'venae gone back to that song in a while.


Lotsa new faces ( scary), and lotsa those faces had kind words afterwards. i guess we're doin it right, but i'm still nae used t'this.





the way the ocean begs the moon...








meh.


now we're getting ready for this:

and now we have percussion, ironically from Alex, ex-of jetscreamer.

Hurm.

and it sounds so natural, like a Mazzy Star vibe, or sometimes Sigur Ros even, especially with Sarah's bells and harmonium...

and if i keep writing songs, the CD will never stop mutating, but
we finished 'Delirium' tonight, and 'Iconoclasm', and re-worked 'Lioness' a bit, made it softer and more urgent ( less angry) somehow. These cats i play with are amazing.

Except Brent slipped and called it 'Epitaph', instead of 'Escadrille'. Hurm.


i'll get on those meme questions, sorry. it's a hard thing, especially fro those who responded. i know 3-4 of them so intimately already,and the others are like those candy coins: i know it's wonderful chocolate under, i dun need to break the shiny to see...




.

So, except for adding Tamara's 3 violin parts, and some re-track of my guitar plus Sarah adding hammer dulcimer to 'Delirium', the album is finished, and ready to mix.




here, distract me, k?

Meet some more of my mates:

Mariachi Inolvidable - how hardcore is a mariachi band on the scene? Don't answer, just enjoy
Will E. Lee - imagine Woody Guthrie living in Twin Peaks, with more beer
White Drugs - Husker Denton, with a healthy dose of a nail in a two-by-four
Little Jack Melody and His Young Turks - and this guy? Smooth as good scotch, and all of the cabaret flavour of the same
LIft To Experience- Its the end of the world and
TEXAS is the promised land! Imagine if Rush were good, and were from here. They've since broken up, and all the members have gone crazy, but the music is undeniable.


kinda deep on the dial with these, but hey...
more? tag is 'denton rock city'


somethin.





.

and it's nights like these that i realize that i dun need you
but i cannae escape that it's you that put me here











i drove almost an hour this morning, on the way home from no more beer and forgetting the fiddle ( but not the fiddler...), trying to find a corndog, listening to Will's plaintive songings and smoky guitars, swimming in the echoes from three awesome nights of music amongst my friends - old and new.


and i came home to two pennies on the floor.







.

umm, not 'supposed' t'do this, esp since it's unmastered and all, but i'm about to burst...


hear 3 songs from the album here:
http://www.last.fm/music/Starhead/Locust+Demos

it'll only be up for a little bit...



yer (honest) thots are welcome, of course...
.

and, except for a handfull of filler, the Album is done. We've pulled alla the songs offa the myspace, cos they're so... umm... primitive compared to the new stuff. - but not in the good way.



diversion: copied from static_hiss's) LJ, who's commented the most on this LJ?

...over the course of EIGHT YEARS? hurm.

( Who comments the most on this journal? )


yeah, and this prob won't work on yer 'secret journal', either. ...might flag it instead...

six ten
9th grade child
waiting for the miracle
the ballad of the temporary angel of bourbon
war damn eagle
song about nothing
delirium
behind the walls of you
the c-word
coda
flood
tempest




'official' release: 08/08/08.

.

So.

...over on that myspace thing, i've posted a new demo version of '9th Grade Child'.

and if yeh'd heard the other one, then, well...damn. try and forget it.

it's like we were just bangin' rocks before...


this is JUST a demo, again, with only scratch vocals, and no guitar part yet, but i'm so fucking proud of it.


yeah, it's like that.


( and thanks)