*100 copies limited edition* "Will and I have been playing together for a very long time and in a lot of very different contexts. Our musical history goes back to playing basements and art galleries in Providence in 2008, wanders through a years-long informal residency playing as a sax and guitar duo in Bushwick and Ridgewood, and brings us up to just last week when Will joined Taper’s Choice at a sold out Brooklyn Bowl to celebrate Relix Magazine’s 50th anniversary—more on that again later. In 2019 as I was preparing to leave NYC where I grew up and move to my new, beloved home of Los Angeles, Will and I decided to spend a week in the studio with friend, collaborator, engineer, and wizard Phil Weinrobe to document some of our shared loves, new ideas, long held mutual musical manias, and generally capture a piece or our deep friendship—musical and beyond on tape.
We recently uncovered some of that music and amidst its many mysteries lay our cover of Bob Dylan’s “The Man in Me”. Equal parts song and cinema at this point—the song represents a through line between the two of us that really ties the room together, as it were, blending my love of pulpy cinema with Will’s deep deep affection for the man on the forever tour, Mr. Dylan. The song is the perfect cipher for almost everything we do together: sincere but not self-serious, jammy and playful, heartfelt and fun. It was recorded in that very spirit, fast and loose with the two of us playing all the instruments in a quick succession of first or second takes and often at the same time, pulling the song out of our shared memories. Will, for many years, liked to refer to it as “the only Bob Dylan song Dave liked.”
In a way, “Dark Star” functions similarly here but in reverse—it merges Dave’s deep love of the Grateful Dead with Will’s penchant for abstract psychedelic droning and modal investigations. But don’t take this the wrong way, Will loves Jerry too. It’s worth noting here that we’ve been playing “Dark Star” together for at least a decade now, in performances ranging from an hour-plus long abstracted meditation on the theme in an art gallery, to a live recording from The Knockdown Center in 2016 presented here, to the afore-mentioned gig at Relix 50 last week where Will joined Taper’s Choice along with “Dark Star” originator and Grateful Dead keyboardist, the now 80 years-old Tom Constanten.
We hope you enjoy these first uncoverings, it’s pretty funny to consider that after all the gigs played in all the different bands (High Water, El Topo, DH Group, Nicolás Jaar (live), Bladerunner) this is our “debut recording” but here we are. And as Tom Constanten told me before we went out on stage last week, “When you’re there, there you are.” - Dave Harrington
