Recording with the Turnips

Awake the West!

I suppose if Flogging Molly or Gogol Bordello had ever asked us to record or play with them, it would have been an honor and something we would have done and endlessly bragged about. But we’ve learned something over the years, something that has driven us back to Bristol (and Chicoutimi, and Kelowna BC, and certain Polish towns). many times: there is doing what you love, and there is doing what you love with the people you love.

A lot of people in our genre are perpetually star-struck by the big names. It seems like their gaze is fixed on the big lights and the big stage. We’re human, we love that stuff too, but if I’m getting philosophical—i.e. always—there’s one major reason so many famous musicians become suicidal. The stages get bigger and more isolated from the crowd, the buses wheel them in and out of the venue, the people around them become more interested in their money, they spend absurd amounts of time away from family. That is, by doing what they love, they become severely disconnected from ordinary, normal sources of meaning. And as the great Fred Eaglesmith teaches us, fame doesn't take away the pain, it just pays the bills.

Now, on our first long international tour back in 2009, I wrote the following in my diary:

We went to the West Country of England with several high expectations. We expected to find a folk-punk scene obsessed with Cider... Cider-Punk. We expected to find a folklore tradition centred on Cider, represented by a bunch of stout, broad-shouldered, bald guys who say things like "Oi therr lads, how's about wee go out tae the zoider bars an' get roight sottered, wha'? … We expected, in a word, to be drowning in the fermented apple in all possible ways.

Sometimes, you set your expectations too high, and it turns out that reality cannot possibly match them. You are inevitably disappointed, because you've been imagining something to be much more than it actually is.

This was not one of those times.

It all happened, all of it, and then it happened again and again and again. Over the years, we’ve made merry with Westcountry folk more times than we can remember, and have even been inducted as honorary members in a ceremony involving a very large root vegetable, several pieces of toast and and a helmet emblazoned with the words “cider slut”.

So when the Turnips invited us into the studio to play and sing on what became, to my mind, their finest album ever, the answer was obviously an automatic ‘yes’. “Awake the West” is a goddamned masterpiece. Moreover, as the years have gone by, I’ve found myself retuning to those recordings with a sense of real pride and meaning in the work. It’s hard to think of a firmer principle to live by: do what you love with people you love, and you can’t go wrong. (for 5000 bonus XP, do it with real cider)

I snapped a couple of photos with my crappy phone back in that studio in Bristol:

Fig 1. Apparently I can play the banjo?

Fig 2. Seamus and Amanda Lynn

How good is Seamus as a musician? He didn’t even listen to the material in advance, he is that good; he just took an instrument he doesn’t normally play, listened through once and said: “yep, got it”. The result is the jangly mando/banjo combo on those tracks and a bunch of growly background vocals. I was too excited by the music and the cider and the singing/etc to remember to take any more pics, and after the recording we went straight out to the pub. All that survives from that outing is this photo:

You know when you’re just drunk enough that taking pics like this seems like a good idea? Yeah. I think that’s what was happening there. I can tell because that is clearly beer, and there is only one reason I am drinking beer in Bristol. It’s because I’ve said to myself “whoa, this cider is making me see funny colors and hear strange voices, I better slow down.” The photo is digitally marked 4:34pm. I can only infer that this was yet another Evening of Shame.

Anyway, as the pandemic recedes we hope to forge new connections; for example, singing with the Longest Johns last summer was epic and there have been discussions about trying to record with them. These are the things that keep you going, ya know.