Say your mother goes to a discount store and buys you a flashlight that has an elastic band attached to it that you stretch around your head and have the little flashlight mounted right above your eyes. My mother knew this would come in handy to me so she bought it for me for Christmas. I’ve never wore it around my head but Dafni has.
Dafni approached me at a bar one night at a Randy Weeks show and asked me to produce her next record. I had never heard her but she was real enthusiastic and by her character I got a sense that she might be good. Dafni is under 5 feet tall and maybe 90 pounds on a heavy day, her curly red hair hangs below her butt and she stares you right in the eyes with a big toothed smile full of excitement when she talks to you. “I know Charlie with you we can make the best record!” “A hit record” I said.
We set a recording date. I told her I avoid using headphones, click tracks and that I like recording as live as possible. She had her regular band ready for the session and they all showed up one Saturday afternoon at Big Ol’ studio in North Hollywood. (Big Ol’ studio is Mike Stinson’s and my house, it’s an apricot farmhouse built in 1894. It was Christened “Big Ol’ Studio” after something Delany Bramlett said when we were at his ranch with Ramsay Midwood. Anyways…)
The record was cut all in the same room, no headphones, Dafni singing just a few feet away from the other players, drums, upright bass, accordion. That session became a party, Dafni had a crazy look of excitement in her eyes at the end of the night with the flashlight strapped to her head. The following day, a Sunday, I did rough mixes of the previous day’s work by myself. (“The beer I had for breakfast, wasn’t bad, so I had one more for desert” etc…) I handwrote on the rough mixes the date and “Charlie’s Lonely Sunday”. That stuck with Dafni and she wanted to use it as the title of the record.
I still don’t know her last name, I’m a bad speller and it’s hard to pronounce.
-Charlie McGovern
Salinas, California
February 22, 2008
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