A lot of different things can make music.  It doesn't have to be a traditional instrument.  The band got this old washing machine at Goodwill because we were tired of showing up at gigs in filthy clothes, plus, because of the places we played, they would be twice as filthy after the gig.  So, a washing machine for eleven dollars.  Great deal!

Or so we thought.

Something bad happened on the fourth load we did (which was huge because we mixed every color and crushed in every T-shirt we had).  A grease seal or an oil pump or a something-or-other blew up, and the machine started making a sound like an old man dying of emphysema while being clubbed with a bag of ball bearings.  You know, something Republicans would do to save money on Social Security and Medicare. 

But it was rhythmic, ironically, like a beating heart.  Kimbo said, “Hey, I’m feeling this groove.  Let’s set up a mic and record it.”

We ran a cable from the laundry room to our Pro Tools rig in the basement.  That was the basic track.  We called up this lady flutist, or floutist, or whateverist, that we met playing at a Max station on Yamhill Street, and she agreed to overdub for some food.  The three of us added some little parts here and there that we played with stuff we found in the garage.  James mixed it all with various filters, some reverb, and a little delay, and we were done.

Our clothes were done, too.  Ruined.  Permanently stained with oily grease and rancid chicken fat.  They looked like mechanic’s rags that could spontaneously burst into flames.  We had to buy new (old) wardrobes at the giant Goodwill outlet store on Ochoco Street.   We got a couch, too, for three dollars.  A week later, Kimbo fell asleep on it while he was smoking.  Damn.  Smoking can kill you — or destroy your new (old) couch.


Electromatic Wash Cycle / the Foaming Ferrets

After completing his community service for a pot bust, Kimbo decides to take an “art” class at the community center where he pulled weeds and built a compost rotater. The “teacher” is this ancient, near-death, semi-celebrated Portland guy who tells the class at least three times a week how he hung around at the Knitting Factory with Andy Warhol.

The “teacher” claims he got his “training” by painting 50 nude “impressionistic portraits” of Nico in 50 days.  Yeah, nice “work” if you can get it.  The “teacher” also claims he was so poor that he had to eat Campbell’s soup out of the can to survive — one can, and only one can, per day.  On a “lunch break” in the afternoon, Andy drops by to see how the day’s “portrait” is going.

Andy doesn’t even notice the painting, which is a provocative three-quarter, from-the-rear fresco. No — he’s fascinated by the soup can.  He had never seen one before.

Yeah.  That’s how it all happened, according to the “teacher.”

Anyway, on the third night of class, the “teacher” says to Kimbo, “You’re ugly.  Stupendously, unredeemably ugly.  Look in a mirror and paint yourself.  See and feel the hideous deformity, and you will create art that is truer than pain.”

What kind of a “teacher” talks to a student like that?  Harsh!  However, having just followed orders for 30 days on the work crew, Kimbo did as he was told.  He painted a self-portrait that, except for the rivers of blood-tears streaming from the eyes, is fairly accurate.  When he tells the story to the Ferrets, naturally, James says, “That is a song, man.  I know that is a song!  Go write some lyrics based on this twisted painting while the rest of us set up for a session.”

Our friends Buzzie, Chris and Pete played on the track with us.  Though the “teacher” turned out to be a complete and unapologetic alkie, Kimbo decided to take his “sculpture” class next term.  Maybe we’ll get some new “mugs” if Kimbo does his homework.




Things I Hate About Me / the Foaming Ferrets and friends

James goes to the Ace Hotel downtown, or maybe it was Clyde Common, or Dante’s, anyway, one of those places where the Portland hipsters hang out, comparing and contrasting skinny jeans and bicycle locks.  By the time he gets home, he doesn’t really remember where he has been. 

He had met this stunning woman.  His heart is pounding.  There’s an electrical connection.  They talk.  They flirt.  She touches his shoulder when she gets excited about the new Eritrean food cart on Ninth Avenue.  She tells him about her new ink, and casually mentions that maybe he could see it sometime, when the swelling goes down.

Then her girlfriend shows up.

“Nice talking to you,” she says to James.  Then they kiss and walk off.  Just to be perfectly clear, the two girls kiss.

What the?

When James finishes telling the story to Rufus and Kimbo, they both say — at exactly the same time — “Dude, that is a song!  You gotta go write that!”  Which is funny, because that’s exactly what James would say if the stiletto was on the other foot.

It’s good advice.  The best songs come from stuff that hurts you the most.  So James says, “Yeah, you are so right.”  He goes to our recycling container and gets a piece of cardboard and starts scribbling.  An hour later, he is recording what he wrote down.  Rufus adds a little percussion.  They do one take.

Kimbo is running the board, and he says, “Not bad.  A couple of hiccups.  Let’s do another one.”

But James puts down his guitar and says, “I’m never playing that song again.  When she was walking away, she didn’t even look back.”







Lez Is More / by James

So James breaks up with this girl, Natasha, or, really, it’s the other way around. He “loans” her his car to drive to see a “friend” in Seattle, and when she doesn’t come back after four months, he begins to understand that it’s over. Since we have only one TriMet bus pass between the three of us, the loss of our only car hits pretty hard.

Of course, we never had any money for gas, so the car mostly just sat around in the street. The other thing that hurt, though, was this crazy evil tire-slashing terrorist who was plaguing Portland got us, too. The two tires he ruined were both dangerously bald, and we had to wonder, Why would anybody do that?

James spends his last $40 on a couple of no-name tires from the junk yard. The car, a 1972 Dodge Dart, is a piece of junk itself, but now it at least has four tires that hold air. Then Natasha steals it.

But James gets a song out of it, which might be a fair trade. 

He plays the tune through a few times to work out the chords, then when he’s ready to do a recording, Kimbo adds his Hwangshou Li double bass and Rufus plays a little percussion part. Kimbo makes some mistakes and begs to do another take, but James, just like on “Lez Is More,” says he will never play “So Nowhere” again.

Break-up songs hurt. They aren’t just words on paper; they’re like slashed tires, only twenty times worse.


So Nowhere / the Foaming Ferrets

So a conversation in the kitchen goes like this:

Rufus: “Dude, you have been wearing those sunglasses for three months now, November, December, and January — the darkest months of the year. Even inside the house. At midnight. How can you see anything? What is going on?”

James: “I’ve been listening to a lot of Miles.”

Rufus: “How many?”

James: “How many?”

Rufus: “Yeah, how many miles? And what were you listening to?”

James: “Dude, are you kidding me?”

Rufus: “I’m just wondering what the deal is with the shades.”

James: “Miles Davis, man, I’ve been listening to Miles DAVIS.”

Rufus: “Who’s that?”

James picks up a big Laurelhurst Market butcher knife and starts to stab himself in the stomach, seppuku-style, but he can’t even stand to get his finger pricked for a blood test, so he doesn’t follow through.

Rufus is all what?

James is like dismayed. “Seriously? You don’t know who Miles Davis is?”

“Is he a drummer?” Rufus asks.

“No.”

“Then I don’t know who he is. Sorry.”

“OK,” James says, “go Google him, then come back and we'll cool out. Then we’ll record something on the four-track, something that maybe Miles could listen to without having to overdose on heroin to ease the pain.”



Can You Feel It? / James and Rufus

So we get evicted from our cheap rental house a block east of 82nd Avenue. The owner wants to redevelop it into a Johnny-Boy Quick-Serve Wash-up™ which would provide a much-needed place for the prosties’ customers to remove the evidence after taking care of their personal business.

But we find another rental in Buckman, so we’re moving up in the neighborhood world. One morning in April, about a week after we move in, we are awakened by this music that seems to be coming from a dream. 

Turns out, our neighbors are out on their porch playing wind instruments, to welcome the sun, which we had not seen for eight months. James makes a short recording to document this shocking weather development. Rufus plays on the track, so he could be credited as a classical percussionist. OK, he played one note, but if you bring your own gong to the jam, you deserve a little credit.

We love the new neighbors. We love the new house. We will probably be evicted pretty soon.

What’s That? … The Sun? … Huh? / our neighbors and a Ferret

The Ferrets went through a tough time last year.  Capping it off, Rufus got busted for doing a 420 on his skateboard through the Pearl District.  You would have thought the cops could cut him some slack, as it was one day before Oregon legalized marijuana.  But no.  Long hair, baggy pants, a bad attitude, and a fatty — of course he was arrested. 

We had to choose between paying rent and getting him a lawyer.  We went for the mouthpiece.  We had to shop around; our landlord had raised the rent on our hovel to $1,600 a month.  That's how much we had.  

The only lawyer we could find who would do it for $1,600 had bulging-yet-beady eyes and a suit that had been purchased during the Reagan administration, and dry-cleaned most recently during the Clinton years (Bill, not Hill).

Ironically, the attorney was stoned out of his gourd for the trial.  His closing argument was gibberish, a rant about how hemp was the first plant cultivated by Adam in the Garden of Eden, and had more nutritional value for the soul than the apple.  

The jury didn’t go for it.  Rufus got a year in  prison.  When the judge handed down the sentence, James said, “That’s the way it goes.”

Kimbo said, “Oh, dude, that is a song.”

James didn’t see it at first.  We told the attorney we would not pay him, but he threatened to sue us, so we did.  Rufus went to prison, and we had to move into Right 2 Dream Too in Old Town.  We sold all the band’s gear, except for an acoustic guitar.  James wrote “Rock and Roll Flow” on it, when he realized that, yes, “that’s the way it goes” was a song.  Also the story of our lives.  When Rufus gets out, if we can get some gear together, we will record it the way it should be recorded.  Electric.

Cosmic footnote: The demo ended up being 4:20 long.  That’s the way it goes, indeed.



Rock and Roll Flow / acoustic demo

99 Names For God

We’re gonna need a “healthy” dose of opiods, vasodilators, and good old-fashioned organic weed to get through four years in Trumpland.  Oh, wait.  Most of us will be dead.  Never mind.

America the Beautiful Pharmaceutical

If we make it to 92 years old like our dad has, deaf and turning dumb, we are not going to sit around in the bark-o-lounger watching Fox News all day.  We will kill ourselves with a massive morphine overdose.  Sweet relief.  Only question is, How do we score the ’phine when we can’t get out of the chair?

Take Me On Down the Road

So-called president stealin’ our dreams, lyin’ about his schemes
Missiles may fly, we all may die, madman on the loose
Nazi torches burnin’ the night, alt-right’s now all right
Protest for a country that’s just, save it from the dust
Political ethics down the drain, nuthin’ will ever be the same

Resist the rich, survive in a ditch, we shall overcome
Now is the hour to seize the power, beat the freedom drum
Band together, forget the weather, we are the lightning bolt
Declare war on the racist whore, start the new revolt

Bigot-in-chief, nuthin’ but grief, someday we’ll get relief
Corrupt sad man, got no plan, stuck in Afghanistan

So-called president stealin’ our dreams, lyin’ about his schemes
Missiles may fly, we all may die, madman on the loose
Protest for a country that’s just, save it from the dust

. . . Save it . . . from . . . the dust

Save It From the Dust / the Foaming Ferrets

An early recording with the Stragglyrs. Nice mic placement on the drums. James on guitar, Buzzee on drums, Chris on bass.

Found the Cure / demo

Trump Cabinet Meeting

Beautiful Clean Coal Trumpocalypse

You Can Have My War

Jaxie’s Alto

This tune was a convergence on a rare snow day in early February.

Rufus sets up his kit and starts grooving, passing time, keeping time. 

Our neighbor Zee comes over and she’s ranting like one of the Furies about how Trumpty-Dumpty is destroying the environment — “Ignorant fool’s gonna turn America into a shithole country.”

“Too late,” James says. “Sick Swamp Monsters at the EPA don’t care.  Their job is to destroy not save.  Get your horn, Zee, and play something with Rufy.  Make it groan and growl and cry and scream.  Play what you feel.  Like a NOLA funeral.  Cause we’re all dyin’ here.”

Hurridrain Gonna Get Ya!

Our friend Neeri gets a free piano off Craigslist. She comes over to ask if we want to use it on a song.

James says, “Is it in tune?”

Neeri says, “I should tell you it only has two strings.”

“Which ones?”

“The low A and the low D sharp.”

“I TOTALLY wanna use it on a tune!” James yells.

Neeri says, “Really?”

“Yeah! That’s the tritone — the diabolical, evil interval. The tritone is to music what Tee-Rump is to America. And you’re gonna play that interval on the recording.”

So we’re setting up in Neeri’s basement, which has about an inch of water in it. We’re being really careful with the gear and the cables, you know, electrocution, and Neeri is raving about how “the Democrats are finally gonna get Trumpie Boy’s tax returns and he’s gonna squeal like a stuck pig snake.”

Hence, the tune’s title.

James did the electronics, and Kimbo gets credit for the “pig” part. That’s him playing standup bass with a bow made out of hand-woven hog bristle.

President Pig Snake

Vote Like Your Life Depends On It

Sworn Horn Born

Written by James.  Played in the basement at 3:20 a.m.  Who can sleep when bad memories kick in?

So Nowhere

James got a mover’s dolly off Craigslist for five dollars. He got a piano off Craigslist for free. Surprise: It was in tune and sounded good. And not much water damage after seventeen years in a Portland basement. 

We trundled it home about two miles on the dolly. Every once in a while, people would join in to help us stop it from rolling down the hill. 

The next day, our friend Benny came over with his clarinet. He's a good man. After jamming for a while, we hit the record button. And then this happened.

And Then This Happened

The Foaming Ferrets' drummer, Rufus, went to Reed College for one semester before his parents realized it was a huge, screaming waste of money.  Rufus, who was extremely troubled during the "Reed minutes," fell into one bad relationship after another while he was ditching his poetry and sculpting classes.  

Heeding the advice to "write what you know," he translated that personal agony into the lyrics for this song.  Incidentally, Rufus performed the vocal live, in one take, after one rehearsal of the song.

I Got Six Words / the Foaming Ferrets

Normally you do not want a song to spring straightforwardly from an event, an occurrence, a happening. It should go through some transliteration, yet still be connected tenuously to the inspiration. Thus, it becomes "art." 

However, if the event is explosive enough, perhaps transcription is enough. Rufus went through a skateboarding phase, which ended when a hit-and-run driver nearly killed him.

As we tried to take his skateboard away so he could be placed on a medical cart, he said the words that became the main lyric to this song. 

When lightning (or a big SUV) strikes, you must go to work immediately. Rufus recorded the vocal in the emergency room, onto his iPad. 

The band completed the tune in the studio. Sometimes it just happens like that. If the guitar part begins to sound vaguely like an ambulance midway through, we achieved our goal.  

My Cold Dead Hands / the Foaming Ferrets

A kid from next door came over crying. You might not think drummers are the sensitive type, but Rufus says, "What's the matter, little man?"

The kid says, "I lost my teddy bear again!" 

Rufus gives the kid our last Voodoo Doughnut to try to calm him down, but James says, "Oh, my god, that is a song!" 

We were in the process of moving out after the foreclosure, and all of our furniture was on the lawn, waiting for Kimbo to show up with the truck.  The kid happily goes home with the Voodoo, and we go into the bathroom to record a demo.  Just guitar and percussion on the first pass.  We liked what we did and went out to see if Kimbo was there.  Of course he wasn't, and of course somebody had stolen our two couches.

When Kimbo finally showed up, late as usual, James told him he was responsible for the furniture theft, and to make amends he had to overdub a bass line on our new tune "Unsteady Teddy."  Kimbo said our manager, Roddy, "will never let a kid tune on an album."

Well, Roddy had been stealing from us for some time and we were about to fire him, except Kimbo insisted that "having a manager who steals from you means you're a real rock and roll band — we can't let him go."  Anyway, big argument. Again.  

When Kimbo chilled, he did lay down a modern bass line on the track.  And he was correct.  Roddy said no to the song, and it never got past this demo. Ultimately, we changed the title to what the kid from next door had originally said, which seemed right. Always go back to the original inspiration.


I Lost My Teddy Bear Again / the Foaming Ferrets

James comes home about 1 a.m. on a Saturday and says, "I got the blues."

Kimbo looks at him and says, "Uh, yeah, there's blood dripping down your chin, and your lips are swollen up like a blimp."

James says, "Rosetta kicked me in the teeth."

Kimbo says, "Yeah, so? She does that once a month."

James says, "No, it's not a metaphor. I mean this time, she actually kicked me in the teeth — with her Tony Lamas. That's all she was wearing, nothing but the boots, so I didn't see it coming."  He opens his mouth, and his two front teeth are not there anymore. They're GONE. It looks painful, but he's grinning.

Kimbo makes one of his bass-player agony faces and says, "We gotta get you to the dentist."

James says, "No, I'm fine. I went to OHSU emergency and they gave me some morphine.  I'm good.  What we have to do right now is set up in the bathroom and record a song.  This is a song, you dig?  And I want you to play stand-up acoustic bass, like some old blues cat."  Kimbo suddenly gets interested in the effects of morphine, because he has never heard James say "you dig?" before.  It's like he's got a new personality.

Anyway, Rufus gets his drum kit together, James gets his guitar, and Kimbo grabs his "Giovanni Battista Rogeri" double bass that he used when he auditioned for the Portland Symphony.  He did not get the job because he could not keep perfect time, and his sight-reading was iffy.  Plus, Carlos pretty much threw him out of the Schnitzer Auditorium when he realized the bass was actually a made-in-China knockoff.  There's a noticeable difference in tone between a 1635 Giovanni Rogeri and a 2009 Hwangshou Li.

James had jotted down some lyrics while he was waiting to see the doctor up on Pill Hill, and it truly had to be a blues tune because the paper was stained with his blood.

We do a couple of run-throughs to work out the tune, and they are both pretty bad, we're finding our way into the music.  James decides to change the chords and the timing, and suddenly it comes together.  We record two takes, and the second one is better.

When we're done, Rufus says to James, "You know, they're doing amazing things with implants. You could get two new teeth put in there and they'd look good, way better than your old ones."

James, who is still feeling the morphine, says nonchalantly, "I don't think so.  Where would I get the money for that? Anyway, I kind of like the look.  Plus, we got a song out of it.  I'm keeping them as is."

If you listen closely to the tune, James is breathier than usual in his singing, and that's because extra air is leaking out where the teeth used to be.





Don't Want No Three-Time Blues / the Foaming Ferrets

Every band goes through name changes. Our band started out as the Beautiful Pharmaceuticals. Then we moved to Portland from Minneapolis, and we got into the whole "keep it weird" thing. But we got here in August, not knowing that we were in for nine months of bone-chilling, soul-destroying gray days and black nights. So we renamed ourselves Sunshine. We also wanted to keep it ironic.

Then we all lost our jobs in the same week — at the bike shop, the taco truck, and the pizza parlor. Unfortunately, we had bought this old house up near Alberta Street. Of course the bank foreclosed on it.

Kimbo took it pretty hard. He usually chills about most anything, but not this.

We had a deadline to get out or else the sheriff would arrest us, and on the next to last day, James comes home from the unemployment office to find Kimbo with a five-gallon can of gasoline, splashing it around his bedroom.

James says, "What are you doing?"

Kimbo says, "I'm gonna burn down the house."

James says, "Well, whose fault is it that we lost the house?"

Kimbo says, "I blame Wall Street."

And then James says what he always says, "Oh, man, that is a song. I KNOW that is a song. Get your bass. I'll go get Rufus. Meet us in the bathroom."

Kimbo puts down the gas can to grab his bass, and James says, "Wait a minute, aren't you going to light it up?"

Kimbo says, "I thought you wanted to record a song."

James says, "Yeah, I do, and I want to record it while the house is burning down."

Kimbo thought James was messing with him, but James says, "I'm serious, dude. Light the match. We're gonna do one take, and whatever ends up on tape is the song. I think it's got to be some kind of blues, and you're gonna sing it. And you are really gonna FEEL IT — because it'll be real, you know?"

So Kimbo lights a match and drops it on the floor, and the fire starts.

In the bathroom, James starts us out with a guitar riff in the key of E, just a 12-bar blues. Kimbo and Rufus kick in with bass and drums, and James pulls out a harmonica, too.

Kimbo, when he gets into the vocal, is really angry.  We do one take, then we go check on the fire. It turns out that the flames didn't catch on, and the fire got put out by all the moisture and mold in the walls and the floor. It rains all the time in Portland, and our house leaked like a Louisiana shack.

So we go listen to what we did, and we like it — the tune is dark and dreary, just like Portland. James says to Kimbo, "I know you felt the song, cause I saw you foaming at the mouth. You looked like a ferret, man. A foaming ferret that was gonna tear into some evil Wall Street CEO bastard."

And that's how we got our new band name. No more Sunshine for us. 





I Blame Wall Street / the Foaming Ferrets

Going on the road is always asking for trouble. Our friends the Stragglyrs were coming from the Bay Area to Portland for a gig. The problem is, they have (uh, had) a tour van that is (was) even older than ours, plus it came from Latvia, which is the absolute worst place to get a used vehicle, other than Ukraine or Poland. But the cars are cheap there, so that's what they got, with a winning eBay bid of $27.50 (plus $1,800 for shipping).

Medford is an unlucky place. Nothing good ever happens there. And of course the Stragglyrs' van blew up just outside of town on Interstate 5. They lost everything in the fire except for Buzzie's cymbals, which he has used for years as woks for his infamous stir-fry meals. The Strags thought they had about a hundred miles left, so they got a big yellow taxi to take them the rest of the way. When they got to Portland, they owed the driver $697. Tom pawned his Gibson Flying V to pay the guy, who had a gun and insisted on getting his money in cash.

When the Strags got to our house (this was about three months before the foreclosure), they told us the story, and James says what he always says, "THAT is a song, man, I'm telling you. Let's set up in the bathroom and record something. Tom can play my old Strat, and Gerard can use my Paul Reed Smith."

Rufus still had casts on both legs, so Buzzie took care of the kick drum, and Kimbo loaned his Hwangshou Li double bass to Purd-Man. Everybody was really tired. It took about 30 takes for the two bands to get it together — many false starts and breakdowns —  and "Big Honkin' Taxi" is what we ended up with when we finally quit at 4 a.m. 

James did the vocal, and the lyrics kept changing because nothing really rhymes with "Latvia" or "blown head gasket" or "axle fire." By the time we were done, the tune had morphed from a bad luck travel song about Medford into a bluesy thing that owed more to Joni Mitchell than Interstate 5. It was a crazy jam, and when the Stragglyrs left for Seattle (we bought them tickets for the Coast Starlight), Buzzie yelled to us out the window as the train left the station, "Never buy a van from Latvia!" 

And James said, "Now that is REALLY a song!" We figure we'll record it with the Stragglyrs the next time they come through Portland.





Big Honkin' Taxi / the Foaming Ferrets and the Stragglyrs

One day James says, "We should record a song that says something, even if nobody hears it. You know, the tree that falls in the forest, yeah, it makes a sound, and it also smashes the ground. And right now, I would like to smash something."

Some Oregon National Guard soldiers had just won $85 million in a lawsuit against KBR, which was found guilty of knowingly exposing them to a carcinogen in Iraq. This orange powder was blowing all the time where the Guardsmen worked. 

The verdict looks like it will be appealed. Who knows whether the soldiers will ever get their money. Later, KBR said the government owed it $15 million for legal fees. Goddamn!

James had recently come home with this piano that he got for free off craigslist, and that's what he played. He also had some electronic boxes that we didn't know how to use. "These are going on the track," James says to Rufus. "They make ugly sounds, and they are out of our control. Does that sound like a metaphor to you?"

We go into the bathroom and start to jam, with no idea of where the song is going, or if it will even be a song. After a while, stuff starts to happen, a structure, a progression, musical anger, a bass line, spoken words, eerie sound effects. Two days later, we end up with "Dead In Baghdad." Maybe you will recognize the "special guest voice" at the end.



Dead In Baghdad / the Foaming Ferrets

We recorded this tune during the same two-day session that we did "Dead In Baghdad," and this one is kind of the sequel. James's free piano went out of tune, so we had to fill in with other sounds, and mostly they came from the electronic boxes that we didn't know how to use. James did play guitar on the track, but it's so heavily filtered you might not even recognize it as a stringed instrument.

Rufus and Kimbo's parts are in there, but heavily submerged in the mix and the electronics. This song came together (that is, it was assembled) in the editing, not the playing, which is unusual for us. Normally we would record everything live, all together in the big tile bathroom, and not fix the mistakes, calling them part of the vibe. That process couldn't work on a song like this.



Dangerous Men (Even Deader In Baghdad) / the Foaming Ferrets

The Ferrets moved to Portland from other miserable cities where the politics are ridiculous.  They think rents are too high here.  For a while they lived in a broken down van . . . it's a long, stupid story, never mind.

FoamingFerrets

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