Marginalia
HARRINGTON: We just rented a house, filled up a rental car with gear, and went in with pretty low expectations — or not even low, really just no expectations, other than we were going to be able to spend a week and change together, cook food, catch up, hang out, and see about making music and see where it took us. It wasn’t like, “OK, here we go, we’re starting the process to make a record.” There was no external pressure, there was no internal pressure. It was really just like, let’s show up. And let’s see if the music is there. And then if it is there, see where it takes us.
HARRINGTON: Especially with this album we were focusing on writing in a different way, like the improvisation happened in compositional ways, and inside of songs, and in generative ways. When I’m doing a Dave Harrington Group record or [a record with jazz drummer Kenny Wallace], I’m using the Teo Macero Bitches Brew method — throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and then liberally edit, chop, manipulate. With me and Nico, that whole process happens just between the two of us and much faster. It’s not like, jam and let’s hope it’s good. It’s more like improvise, change, do a new thing, put this over here, come back to it later, improvise some more, do this thing — oh, I have an idea. We’re going to do this now. OK, go outside, sit down. Try to write with the acoustic guitar. It’s all these different things happening on top of each other. Part of the fun is saying it’s done because there’s an element of like, it can never be done. If you have a rock band, like four folks in a room, playing the instruments, singing the hook, doing the thing, you’re like, “OK, this is a song.” But I don’t really do a lot of music like that. So part of the challenge is waiting for the moment to look around and be like, “Stop!”