Last summer my friend Jonathan, his brother Jacob, and I were in a conversation in a coffee shop about making music in a fast, organic way on a Sunday afternoon. We started talking about how much fun it would be to cut a record in a day. Then we started talking about how we could make it happen.
Soon we settled on a roots-rock/county/folk style and decided we should each bring some songs we’d want to do in that style. We agreed that we’d gather other interested parties and meet at Jonathan’s house in one week for the purpose of making a record in a day. In a session later titled “Country-Folk Sunday in August,” I met with Jon, Jake, their Dad Scott, Clay, Ivan, and Jenny in a living room in South Central Seattle.
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These are the results of that meeting:
Wish You Were Here [Pink Floyd]
Going North [Missy Higgins]
Can't You See [Marshall Tucker Band]
Straight-Mouth Stomp [16 Horsepower]
Sweet Ann [Benji Jones]
Gun Street Girl [Tom Waits]
Jam [Artificers]
Will The Circle Be Unbroken [The Carter Family]
God Bless This Mess [Sheryl Crow]
Folsom Prison Blues [Johnny Cash]
Are these songs radio quality? No. Will they make us famous or have clubs clamoring to have us grace their stages? I doubt it.
So why did we do this? I’d like to think we did it for reasons made famous by Steve Albini. In this video Albini talks about making “Demos” in college. These were not created to demonstrate anything. Instead these recording were “keepsakes” and “evidence” of the existence of groups of friends that made music. These recording linked above are artifacts pointing to specific time and a place in our lives, when we were friends living in the same area, making music. Based on this, we took the name Artificers.
There are two originals, but most of the songs are covers we thought would be fun.
We had a lot of fun bringing these songs to their creaky, flawed life. Although we mainly recorded these for ourselves, I share them here because I hope the fun we had making them rubs off on you. Maybe you can join us next time we cut a record in a day.
