Okkervil River #1

quote:

Op woensdag 20 juni 2007 10:54 schreef pfaf het volgende:
Is dat die DD eerder dit topic afkraakt? Ik heb 'm niet en ook niet meer op de PC.

quote:

Op woensdag 20 juni 2007 11:24 schreef pfaf het volgende:
Oh ja, aan EP's geen gebrek bij OR. Maar inderdaad, die heb ik wel (op de pc :$ ). [/i]O, Dana[/i] is ook geniaal gedaan!

quote:

Op vrijdag 14 september 2007 21:35 schreef -Dries- het volgende:
Wat is een kuisvrouw?

quote:

01 April Anne (John Phillips)
02 Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear (Randy Newman)
03 I Want to Know (Charles F. Olsen/Ed Sanders)
04 Do What You Gotta Do (Jimmy Webb)
05 I Can Here to Say I'm Going Away (Serge Gainsbourg)
06 The Blonde in the Bleachers (Joni Mitchell)
07 Antarctica Starts Here (John Cale)
08 Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas (Will Sheff)
09 Solo (Sandy Denny)

quote:

APRIL ANNE: Recorded at a session for Daytrotter.com during a day off on our 2007 U.S. tour. The
band didn’t know the song at all—I just had the idea to try it about an hour before we left our hotel
to walk over to the Daytrotter studio. We ran through the song once or twice and then recorded it
once or twice and moved on. Everything on this song is recorded live, even the vocals—which is true
of all the songs on here except “The Blonde in the Bleachers.” Jeff Hoskins, our soundman, who
recorded the very first Okkervil River EP Stars Too Small To Use, plays some loud tambourine.

SIMON SMITH AND THE AMAZING DANCING BEAR: I recorded this song back in 2006 in my
friend Andrew Schmidt’s apartment. It was recorded as a present, but then it seemed fun to actually
put out in some form. I love Randy Newman.

I WANT TO KNOW: When I first went to New York to try to write songs for The Stage Names, I
was reading Ed Sanders’ massive fictional history of the ‘60s, Tales of Beatnik Glory, and was quite
charmed by the vaguely cosmic bullshit to be found therein, not to mention the vivid images of a
vanished never-coming-back Manhattan, back when people actually lived there. The Fugs are great
and so is Charles Olsen. This song was recorded at a strings-and-horns-and-backing vocals fiasco we
put on at the University of Texas’s Hogg Auditorium a week or so after we’d wrapped up The Stage
Names.

DO WHAT YOU GOTTA DO: Yet another wonderful song Nina Simone made hers eternally
regardless of its original origin. A true devotional song, full of real pain and real love and real wisdom,
both wrong and right. Recorded in Rock Island for Daytrotter.com.

I CAME HERE TO SAY I’M GOING AWAY: The people at our French distributor, Differ-Ant,
somehow wangled us onto a prominent morning chat show on Radio France. Part of the deal was
that we had to play a cover of a song “well-known in France.” Jacques Brel is one of my favorite
songwriters of all time but I ended up concluding his songs are beyond my meager ability to bring
them across. The songs of Serge Gainsbourg, which I also love, are at least easier to play. Because I
can’t speak French, I decided to laboriously create an English translation of this song based on what I
could pick out. Then I threw some other lyrics in at the end, kind of more as a message to you the
listener than as something the middle-aged French studio audience would have especially noticed.
Radio France had a Paul Schaeffer-like guy they forced us to play piano with on this song. He was
really good. The French pop star Étienne Daho (who someone told me had worked with Gainsbourg)
was a guest on the show that morning. He sat right in front of us while we played, wearing an
inscrutable expression behind the mirrored shades and slicked hair you’d expect and want out of a
French pop star. After we played he said something to the audience in French. I later found out he
was discussing Gainsbourg’s widespread popularity, but at the time we were all hoping he wasn’t
telling them “that was the worst shit I ever heard.”

THE BLONDE IN THE BLEACHERS: I recorded the guitar and vocal at the top of a five-flight
stairwell at our hotel in Münster, Germany. We liked the reverb in the stairwell, so we tried to get as
much of it as possible in our two little mics. The cleaning lady was angry at us because we hadn’t
checked out of the hotel yet. You can hear her during the solo section, two flights down, banging
around. Brian recorded the electric guitar track two nights later, in Berlin, standing onstage at Lido
while the audience for our set wandered in. The next night, Scott recorded two different keyboard
tracks in Hamburg. The higher keyboard part was recorded in the bar of the club we were playing,
Knust, again as the audience for the evening was wandering in. The lower keyboard part was
recorded in our hotel room at the Hotel Pacific, which we found out is where the Beatles stayed on
their last stint as gigging musicians in Hamburg. There’s a music store next door where they’d buy
their guitar strings and Pete Best’s drumsticks and whatnot. Extra special thanks on this song to the
amazing work of Jeff Hoskins, who did all of this remote recording, and Erik Wofford, who mixed it
from across the ocean.

ANTARCTICA STARTS HERE: John Cale wrote this song about Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard,
apparently. One of my favorite movies ever. We recorded this version live on the Austin radio station
KUT, two days after the U.S. tour and still exhausted.

LISTENING TO OTIS REDDING AT HOME DURING CHRISTMAS: This song was on our first
full-length record, Don’t Fall in Love with Everyone You See. This live version of it was recorded at
Hogg Auditorium. I feel like I relate to this song now more than I did at the time I wrote it.

SOLO: Recorded back in 2006, somewhere on the solo tour I took to pay for a long road trip. I
decided to play this Sandy Denny song and I think this was the first night I tried it.


Rock Island tracks sound engineered by Patrick Stolley and Brad Kopplin.
Brooklyn track home-recorded by Andrew Schmidt.
Austin tracks recorded live in concert by Jeff Hoskins,
except “Antarctica Starts Here,” which was recorded at KUT and mixed by Erik Wofford.
Paris track from Le Fou du Roi, Radio France.
German track recorded by Jeff Hoskins and mixed by Erik Wofford.
Chicago track recorded by Heather Copeland, mixed by Erik Wofford.
Coordinated and mastered by Erik Wofford.
“Okkervil River” lettering by Jamie Edwards. Layout by Daniel Murphy.

quote:

Op dinsdag 13 november 2007 17:12 schreef -Dries- het volgende:
Ow, waren ze in Belgie?

quote:

Op donderdag 21 februari 2008 10:58 schreef pfaf het volgende:
Stage Names is echt fenomenaal. Onbegrijpelijk dat ik 'm aanvankelijk maar zo-zo vond. Het is gewoon de beste Okkervil River so far, en dat zegt wat.

quote:

Op donderdag 21 februari 2008 13:43 schreef Summerteeth het volgende:
Uit het concertfototopic:

Okkervil River, 10 februari, Nijmegen

[ afbeelding ]

quote:

Op donderdag 24 april 2008 17:32 schreef emokid het volgende:
Wat is de kans dat ze op Lowlands staan? Wil ze zo verschrikkelijk graag zien, straks staan ze er en kan ik niet naar het festival want dat is nog niet zeker voor mij.

Ik heb de Paradiso gig van een paar maand terug tig keer bekeken maar heb nog een vraag. Spelen ze vaak nummers af nog van Don't Fall In Love(etc)? Kansas City en lady Liberty zijn nummers die ik zeker wel live wil horen.

quote:

Op vrijdag 18 juli 2008 11:22 schreef emokid het volgende:
Ik snap het niet. In oktober zijn ze klaar met de de toer in de vs daarna komen ze naar Groot-Britannie voor 7 concerten. Vervolgens staat er alleen toerdata voor April 2009 in eigen land en in Canda. Wat zouden ze doen tussen november en april? Gezien ze dan toch aardig "in de buurt" zijn rond november hoop ik echt dat ze komen.

The New Pornographers doen trouwens het voorprogramma voor bijna alle gigs die ze gaan doen.