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Bermuda Snohawk 2007

by Bermuda Mohawk Productions

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about

So this, the 2nd edition of Snohawk, upon reflection in 2015 (after just releasing the 10th edition, here bermudamohawkproductions.com/album/bermuda-snohawk-2015 ), stands as probably my personal favorite, overall. Much of this is due to (beyond loving the meta-ass/mirrors-looking-into-mirrors, cover-art Craig did...the colors too) the presence of my all-time favorite Snohawk submission, Kevin Madness' tongue-in-cheek "Keep on Diggin' 'til We Find the Devil." Kevin was active in The Boxcutters at this time, and we were hoping to snag a track from them. With time running out, I told Kevin I could swing by with my 1970's tape recorder (of all Smashing Blumkins releases fame. Fun note from the attached art: as of 2007 when this comp was released, "Smashing Blumkins," hadn't dropped the 'P' in "Blumpkins") and capture a track in the weird, shockingly great, old-blues-and/or-rebel-country fidelity that the thing magically records in (this is also how I captured the Pool Party track, right after they'd played a show at Mac's). Anyway, Craig Horky and I went over there and recorded Kevin, off the cuff in what I recall being one take. The resulting track somehow sums up so much of what I love about these. I think he was paring down things to move away at the time and he gave Craig and I a banjo which we've used on Cavalcade and Regretters recordings (on Snohawks even...the "Circle of Snohawk Life") since then. Kevin now resides in Austin and has a killer music column in the Austin Chronicle:
www.austinchronicle.com/authors/kevin-curtin-2/

Other notable items:
1. A slow submission year led to me exorcising some personal demons of mine and leading the comp off with some copyright material (taking advantage of the mixtape freedom of a "100-copies-out-of-the-trunk-of-my-car" type release...also why it's not available for download here) and including a note in the CD, bemoaning Bruce Springsteen's pontificating in the middle of this song that (the now-late, always great) Clarence Clemons probably wanted a new saxophone for Christmas..as if the only thing he knew about his band members was what instrument they played. That always struck me as an uncharacteristically lazy (but probably defensibly accessible) choice for mid-song banter. I used this format to air my (admittedly, nitpicky/stupid) gripe and also give everyone another chance to listen to their favorite super-store muzak holiday jingle.

2. A submission from Cheap Girls that features drummer Ben Graham, playing the bullwhip and whistle. This is a fun track for one that tries to disguise itself as a holiday bummer...another one of my favorites.

3. I edited the "Ben Hassenger" here to include his middle name, to avoid confusion with his dad, who has also performed on Snohawk, here:
bermudamohawkproductions.bandcamp.com/track/ukulele-kings-mele-kalikimaka-feliz-navidad
...this song is also a notable harbinger to Frank and Earnest as it teams with an Otis track from Snohawk 3 (under the band moniker before the band, itself, existed) to be early recordings of tracks that made it onto this great record:
frankandearnest.bandcamp.com/album/old-francis

4. Probably only notable to me, but aside from a minor guitar-flub in the 2nd verse, I like this mostly live-recorded version of the Cavalcade track that would become "Seasonal," more than the album version here:
cavalcade.bandcamp.com/album/into-bolivian
I tried like hell to recreate that guitar tone but couldn't quite nail it. Also, Zak's vocals are particularly unique, off-the-rails, and frightening.

5. The solo in the tCF song required way more studio magic than you'd expect because it took us too long to record the song and Brad got really, really, REALLY stinking drunk. Also, with this being recorded in the midst of the 2008 Presidential campaign, one of the things that made the session take as long as it did, was Ozzie having to keep redo-ing his vocals after accidentally singing, "Hans Gruber versus John McCain," a whole bunch, rather than "McClain" (the song was about DieHard, obvs).

6. I don't really know Bill Morton or how he found out about these, but from what I can recall, he was a dude from an Oi! punk band in the Detroit area who knew about BMP and wanted to submit. I told him that this comp was for Holiday tracks (i.e. the traditional "Holiday," season spanning from Thanksgiving to New Years), and I think he misunderstood me because he submitted a track about Labor Day, called Laborday. At any rate, I featured it anyway because it was a pretty spirited take and also, cuz fuck it.

7. Last but DEFINITELY not least, this is the Dan Fox closing track Rookie Card, so to speak. Dan, more of a contractor than band dude by trade (as probably anyone reading this knows), lived at Old Francis where a lot of this was recorded at the time and really wanted to submit something. Horky and I hacked out a crappy version of Against Me!'s 'Thrash Unreal' and Dan just went to town over it...we were shocked. Obviously this has become "a thing," and one of Snohawk's more reliably offensive and entertaining parody tracks every year, but we didn't really expect much from the first one. I'm not sure why we started trying to do this over the biggest pop hit of every year, but fwiw, "Thrash Unreal," was a lot more ubiquitous in 2007 than most probably recall offhand. Either way, seeing how easy it is, musically, to shoddily recreate the year's most profitable songs for Dan to make them dirty and ridiculous is always a fun exercise.

Merry Christmas 2007,
Cale

credits

released December 1, 2007

Ryan "Gyuri" Tarrant handled the lion's share of production/engineering, I recorded like 4 songs on my 70's cassette recorder, Featuring Art by Craig Horky. Bermuda Mohawk Productions/Good Time Gang

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Bermuda Mohawk Productions Lansing, Michigan

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