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THE HOLCOMBE CONTEXT

5/16/2012

Time to honor one of my favorite writer artists:   Malcolm Holcombe…I saw Malcolm Holcombe live, in Ashville NC, in 2006. So, what follows is probably mostly just over confident memory recall. He was in a round with some hit writers in town from Nashville.  With complete disregard for the audience, the other writers, and “round etiquette” Malcolm shredded, just shredded everybody up on stage.  The thing is, any of the other four writers would have been great and entertaining on their own but Malcolm’s lyrical intensity, the enigma of his persona, the alternating sweetness and brutality of his guitar playing combined to diminish the other writers’ work.  Instead of the usual offhand-triumph tenor of some hit-writer-rounds” there was an air of anxiety and reluctance to the proceedings since, in the Holcombe Context, the slightest bit of pandering, melodic button pushing, or cheese would be magnified to un-ignorable proportions .

So, here is a photo of the guy so that if you happen to meet him you can give him a bit of respect.

And, how about these lyrics?

One Man Singin

heard him singin’ in a local dive

where the sun shines inside out
where people go and stay a little while
some folks listen and others don’t
but everyone is there waitin’ to hear what they can take
to make their lives a little better

one man caught my ear and I let go of my hands
i couldn’t help myself but try to listen
to songs about dancin’ in everybody’s shoes
and colors of the rainbow all shaded with the blues

now what do people do when they do what they do
why do people say what they say anyway
tomorrow mornin’s comin’ soon
tomorrow mornin’s comin’ soon

cigarettes and simple smiles
booze and calculated frowns
the crowd was a doin’ the right thing
they came in here to hear one man sing

the soul of his voice was familiar to the marrow
my heart turned loose of my head
and the pain in my chest it stopped just a second
but that was enough
one man singin’ was enough

now what do people do when they do what they do
why do people say what they say anyway
tomorrow mornin’s comin’ soon
tomorrow mornin’s comin’ soon

malcolm holcombe
c. 1993, Purple Girl Music/BMI

These lyrics sum up what I experienced when I heard him “in the round” on his home turf with unsuspecting artists.  It was just pure theater and it reminded me to always play hard and to always mean it.
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9/21/2011 Looking Back:

I listened to my first recordings which were done on a Pioneer Portable Stereo Tape Deck otherwise known as a Boombox. I got to hear my great and lifelong friend Ed Matos on Bass and myself on guitar, laughing aloud while we played impossible songs at impossible tempos over and over again. I’ll try to post something soon. It reminded me to try to stay in touch with my friends.

I have 4478 Inbox messages. WTF!! So I went deleting and stopped to read some emails from my friend, collaborator, and first ever co-writer Clark Slater. Here is part of a message he sent talking about our first co-written song “Open Door:”

>…i came up with some cool guitar parts for the tune and also worked on the melody and chorus.
>i’m mining some ideas from our riffing session the other night…
>going to new orleans to check out thousands of musicians at jazz
>fest. i won’t be able to get together again until i return next week.
>hopefully i’ll come back with a lot of new ideas!

Clark has a great voice and the quality of his musicianship, production, and his concise song structures on his album “Long Way From Home” moved me. We started writing together and took a road trip to Ashville NC to the Durango Songwriter’s Event where we wound up getting some intensely positive feedback and energy from the panelists and other writers. Lots of good memories.

So on this first album of mine, I owe CLARK a HUGE thank you since he came through big time for me with teaching me to write solos, doing guitar sessions on songs, co-writing, brainstorming, and just being a great friend and collaborator. He deserves more thanks and credit than appears on the album and will surely get on the next printing (which will be soon now that I am down to 100 from the first print of 1000).

I will also have to list Dave Hidek as producer since he did pretty much produce this thing (along with some help from myself). I just didn’t know what producing was until after I had printed the thing and Dave being Dave didn’t say much either way.

Good Star Records is a small collective of independent Pittsburgh/NY based artists. Unfortunately for us, the Good Star 1800 number is suddenly not in service. Unfortunately for me, I printed that number on the cover of my CD’s while leaving off the catalog number (GSR001). Aside from those major and minor changes this first printing of my first album was a success.

Looking forward::

I have about 25 songs I am throwing at the “trying-to-make-it-on-the-next-album-wall.” There are the bluesy-twang songs “So Long Heaven,” “Open Road,” “Honest Eyes” “Sarasota Sand,” “Land Of Learning,” “How Bout A Miracle,” and a new one from this summers co-writing batch in Nashville “That Train Is Gone.” There are the songs written on keys like “What You Get,” “Lonelier,” “Bad Memory,” “Let That Woman Be Right,” and “Going Local.” There are the catchy pop leaning tunes like, “Another Day,” “Our Night,” and “Cruising Together” which have their own individual appeal. Then there are the ones I don’t know what to do with like “An Irish Airman Forsees His Death,” “Suicide In The Trenches,” and “My Poppa’s Waltz:” all famous poems which I set to song. Bunch those in with “I Bleed,” “Gov’ment Day,” “Its Not Far To The River” and other oddballs and I have some appealing options that defy my concept of myself as an artist. Not quite sure what my problem is except that I write much more than I can handle independently.

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8/23/2011
The concepts of “one,” “got,” “love,” “time,” “town,” and “live” are the keystones of my album–if one gives this wordle any weight.

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1/3/2011

DARPO

These are the lyrics to the song “Darpo” from my forthcoming album “Move On”–it is also the track that plays on my opening flash page.  This song takes me back to the lake my grandmother Lucy Shannon took me to when I was a child spending summers in Society Hill, South Carolina.  Now a days Darlington bound racing-fans park their campers there.  Back then, after swimming, I would walk to the old corner store where 401 joins 52 and get a bottle of coke from a beat up old cooler that had an opener on the side.  Then I’d linger on the porch of the store and drink it in one of the rocking chairs.  This song was an opportunity to re-inhabit the strange wildness of Darpo, to re-member it in words.

Darpo

By the swamps of the Pee Dee River back in the piney woods
there’s a little place called darpo where the swimmin sure is good
There’s no roads to Darpo–no dock or lifeguard stand
just a footpath lined with kudzu vines and faded old beer cans

Well that summer sun hits the sand it like to burn off your bare feet
it gets you runnin right down to Darpo just to get out of the heat
and you find a stick and you find a stone and you splash them into that lake
you got to scare the water-moccasins and the little alligators away

By the swamps of the Pee Dee river back in the piney woods
there’s a little place called Darpo and I’d take you if I could
to the sweetest little place I know I wonder if I could
I wonder if I could

Well its circled by cypress trees and fed by old swift creek
and there’s nowhere else like Darpo with waters as cool and deep
Well its dark as a Coke-a-cola with a taste almost as sweet
and the bottom feels like velvet tickling you feet

By the swamps of the Pee Dee river back in the piney woods
there’s a little place called Darpo and I’d take you if I could
to the sweetest little place I know I wonder if I could
I wonder if I could

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10/5/2010

I think about songwriting quite a bit.  And not just because I do it everyday.  Its because sometimes I do it well and sometimes not so well.  Sometimes they come out done and other times they never get done.  I think about that.  Like my mother with books, I’ve always got a bunch going at once and at least one I am hot on finishing up.  Been doing quite a bit of writing on a big ole grand piano as of late.  Just like guitars, different pianos find different songs.  Also, found an interesting tuning on a guitar and that has been sparking some moods–almost like turning soil–not quite a song there but definitely preparing some fertile fields.