Patrick Hayden (guitar, vox)
Dave Clark (bass)
Jordan Glenn (drum kit)
Will (Guitar, lap steel)
Influences
The Byrds, Big Star, Stones, The Band, Gram Parsons, Sonic Youth, 70's Rock, 60's Soul, Television, Drag City Records, Crazy Horse, Wilco, Pavement, and more...
The first time I remember meeting Dave Clark he was busy making lemony steamed carrots. I met Howard Libes that day, too, I think. We had mutual friends, notably my love interest and the rock band Heavenly Oceans. Dave approached, Raenie, my love interest, after seeing she and I perform with Will from Human Certainty, at Ty Connor’s righteous “Hot August Nightmare” event. Dave’s interest in playing with us was predicated on the idea of this project resulting in “a rock band.” I was pleased by this proposal, having seen and enjoyed Dave’s playing with the late, great Bourbon Renewal: but also for personal, vain reasons. I, too, was ready for a “rock band,” despite the fact that my other group, the Woods, no doubt qualifies as such. I like playing in rock bands: it’s a long running secret shame of mine, no longer so very secret.
Through our initial jams I hoped that I wouldn’t be shouldering the songwriting duties; it’d be so nice, I thought naively, to have a venue in which I could focus on my “guitar work.” Right. Our jams were directionless and it became clear we needed some forms to work within. Cheekily, I leaned toward the modern forms, trying to steer my life-long spazzy tendencies in the service of plain-speaking rock. Songs like “Lads in the Lanes,” “Squadron,” and “On the Roof,” were all written under this pretense. Like everybody else, I wanted to think that I would write stuff that echoedBig Star and the Faces. If I had been faithful to those grand ambitions, I am sure the results probably wouldn’t even have been in the ballpark of Teenage Fanclub or the Black Crowes.
But things turned out differently, and a lot of that has to do with Dave. Dave hears my riffs in ways that make them a little less esoteric. He has rhythym, you see. I think that’s a big part of it.
Our band name arose by accident. The story behind it is not particularly funny or poignant, so I won’t bother spilling it. What matters is that we’ve gained, I think, from engaging what started as an empty concept, and playing with the ideas of Deke Falcon as person, presence, absence, ethos, rock band, etc. The process continues, albeit in spurts.
Raenie Kane bowed out of drum duties after our first gig, opening for Dan Jones at the Samurai Duck in January ‘04. She remains a great supporter and my one true love, and continues to rock the kit with Ed Cole, the Shudders and the Woods. In the wake of this departure, we found ourselves rehearsing one Jordan Glenn, whose great group the Visible Men were the first rock band I’d ever seen in Eugene.
What I remember most of that first rehearsal was my nervous inability to play Jordan a song without first “introducing it” with an uninteresting, self-deprecating preface. For example:
“Okay: imagine fugazi fans getting into soft rock, but, like, totally earnestly.”
or
“The audience for this tune is obvious: black light-hanging, pot-smoking truckers.”
I don’t know from people skills (as you can see), but I’ve learned that sometimes I make such an ass of myself that people in the room feel a weird combination of joy and disgust - I’ve come to depend on this odd social efficacy, in spots much like that evening in the company of the Jordan Glenn. I’m not sure why he likes to play in our band, except for sometimes, when he starts laughing really hard in the middle of our songs. When Jordan laughs, we all laugh. He is a very gentle man.
As Jordan, Davey and I came to know each others moves we played some fun rock shows, with great Eugene bands like Yeltsin, Hot for Chocolate, the Squids, The College Girls of Tora Bora, Human Certainty, the Visible Men, and many others. Sometimes our performances were pretty good, particularly during the lengthy, stuffy summer of ‘04, during which my guitar came to be covered with sweat chips.
hey patty joe,
been sifting through boxes in my parents basement (they're moving to orlando next month) and uncovering endless unlabeled chosen vessel cassettes. somehow i'd forgotten about the synth version of "manbat." what the hell happened to us?
Deke, for your edification:
scriv·en·er
n. 1. A professional copyist; a scribe,
2. A professional or public copyist or writer of official or formal documents
3. someone employed to make written copies of documents and manuscripts
These all are, in fact, adequate descriptions of my current job..... xoxoxoxox
