Looking Back - HFAGS Dec 2006

Hope For Agoldensummer will be playing at Workplay on Friday, May 16th with The White Oaks. Their latest album, Ariadne Thread, was released in late 2007.



Here's a short chachipiece from Dec 2006, brought along by Hope For Agoldensummer's previous album i bought a heart made of art in the deep, deep south.

Laying down the gun....

This morning as I mindlessly packed my little bag for work, I pulled the Hope For Agoldensummer album from the towering stack of cds sitting dangerously close to my bed and slipped it into the inside pocket. I had to bring it with me, because every time I've taken a moment to daydream in these last two days, every minute wonderfully wasted, I hear "Laying Down the Gun" and it has been building and building and building into a frenzied triumphant chorus.

I see my friend Sunni just as she sat on her couch Saturday night, leaning back with Ralph's steel guitar, pushing her golden hair out of her eyes and picking out the all of the tiptoeing, intricate loveliness of every line as we sang the harmonies high and whispered:

"It turns out, instead of blood you've got love songs traveling through your veins. What I found were all the words you ever sang tapped into the bones of your rib cage...."

I think of the first time I saw it performed live, upstairs at the Moonlight, the tense and burning energy turning around the stage. Deb Davis and her xylo. Will Taylor wavering from side to side, cello churning. Claire's eyes are closed. She's sitting straight and tall, her face turned up into the light as she's crying out:

"Instead of stopping our hearts, we play music because we're rock stars.
We come together and we work and we fall apart...."

I listen to the song again and again and it burns brighter every time.

"I play music because I'm in love with silence and sound. Just like a machine I picked my pen...."

And all of the sudden, it stops.

singing me to sleep

I have 13 minutes to write. 13 minutes until I yawn and stretch my toes and fold myself into a great pair of quilts my great grandmother stitched together to keep her family warm. They do keep me warm. Warm and safe. I will soon drift away on a sea of sleep and the sound of Claire Campbell's hollow, soft alto singing me a secret:

Do you laugh,
Do you cry in your secret room?
Do your wings make a sound?
Do your feet touch the ground?
I love like a sailor.
I dance like a princess.
Tomorrow I will stand in the middle of the road.
Until I get run down.
Until the sun sinks beneath the ground.
I sing like a werewolf.
I shoot like an outlaw.
I love like a sailor.

--Love Like a Sailor

words adapted from a poem by Ben Roth
performed beautifully by
Hope For Agoldensummer
on the album
I bought a heart made of art in the deep deep south

http://www.hopeforagoldensummer.com

Laying down the gun....

This morning as I mindlessly packed my little bag for work, I pulled the Hope For Agoldensummer album from the towering stack of cds sitting dangerously close to my bed and slipped it into the inside pocket. I had to bring it with me, because everytime I've taken a moment to daydream in these last two days, every minute wonderfully wasted, I hear "Laying Down the Gun" and it has been building and building and building into a frenzied triumphant chorus.

I see my friend Sunni just as she sat on her couch Saturday night, leaning back with Ralph's steel guitar, pushing her golden hair out of her eyes and picking out the all of the tiptoeing, intricate loveliness of every line as we sang the harmonies high and whispered:

"It turns out, instead of blood you've got love songs traveling through your veins. What I found were all the words you ever sang tapped into the bones of your rib cage...."

I think of the first time I saw it performed live, upstairs at the Moonlight, the tense and burning energy turning around the stage. Deb Davis and her xylo. Will Taylor wavering from side to side, cello churning. Claire's eyes are closed. She's sitting straight and tall, her face turned up into the light as she's crying out:

"Instead of stopping our hearts, we play music because we're rock stars.
We come together and we work and we fall apart...."

I listen to the song again and again and it burns brighter every time.

"I play music because I'm in love with silence and sound. Just like a machine I picked my pen...."

And all of the sudden, it stops.

**********************************************************************

There is a cave up by Garden City that is rumored to have been used as speakeasy during Prohibition. The Welch* brothers told me about it today. They smiled at me, standing to either side of their elderly mother as she was signing her paperwork, and looked up into the flourescent light above my head and then at each other. Jeff* turned to his brother and then to me,"It's still intact. I think so...at least it was when I was younger. You'll have to use a rope to get down into some parts of the cave, but it's worth it....Banger Cave is the name." Interesting. Sounds like an awfully good adventure for the spring. If anyone possesses any additional info about the cave, please let me know. Joe* gave me some general directions.

***********************************************************************
Pictures:
From Saturday night's Skybucket Workforce Extravaganza


Amber and George the Turtle. BFF.

(from a play-by-play sent to gorjus later that evening)

"...the deadly Connect Four match between George the Turtle and Michael Douglas the B.H. Action Squirrel. A few borrowed Busch Lights into the evening, Travis and I dueled (through our plastic animal counterparts) and sadly, I must say that Travis and Michael Douglas won. After realizing that he had the winning row, Travis promptly jumped to his feet, hoisting Michael Douglas with his wildly wobbling head into the air and raced out the front door and down the street, yelling "We WON! WE won! YAYYYY!!!" all the while."



I, in the mean time, collapsed into the floor, defeated and downtrodden.

I bought a heart made of art in the deep deep south....

So--
One of my favorite bands in the wide wide world played at the Bottletree last Friday night.

I think it was February of 2005 that I first found Hope For Agoldensummer. I was playing the friend of a friend game on Myspace, going from Caleb engstrom, a boy I knew in college, on to a band he was friends with post Greenville, to a friend of theirs and so on.... I took the time to listen to the bands that afternoon that I would run across, band after band after band... and then there was this moment. I had stopped on the page of a band form Athens, and this beautiful xylophone and guitar intro danced out of the computer speakers and into my hungry workday ears. The recording was live, the song was Malt Liquor, and to be honest Claire Campbell's voice came across as this completely androgynous, heartfelt pleading raw piece of lovely. I didn't know what to do with it, except play it over and over and over.

As I started to book a few shows, here and there, for the Moonlight Music Cafe, I couldn't get the thought of Hope For Agoldensummer playing that small purple room out of my head. I heard from Chip, the drummer for Wild Sweet Orange and The Great Book of John, that Claire was interested in breaking into Birmingham, thinking of Workplay. I knew Workplay was not for them. The Moonlight show was very small, attended by a group of friends and family members, it was beautiful, this perfect night. At the Moonlight, a listening room, people were listening, catching every little moment of genius as it came whether by saw or skillet or accordion.

The next step, I thought to myself as I watched the band pack up their gear that evening, was to get them to the Bottletree.

So it happened, this last weekend, Hope For Agoldensummer played at the Bottletree with the Delicate Cutters. I don't think could be a venue in Birmingham better suited for them. This tribe of artists bringing together such vibrant and incredible sounds in a place where the increasingly eclectic, beautiful music scene of Birmingham has put in roots and has started to flourish. This makes me so happy.

.

http://www.thebottletree.com