May 3, 2011
George and I spent a fair amount of time driving through the South and Western landscape in the course of touring with Yeasayer, playing SXSW, and before that playing with our good friend Lucky Dragons in California. Somewhere along the drives we started noticing amazing National Park signs : “Crater of Diamonds” for instance. They sounded like song names. Years prior, in Providence 2006 or so, I had made my first “Dollar Bins Of The Future,” in which I collaged old record covers and made an audio collage to go with them– one of them was a cowboy tune called “Songs Of The West.” This appears on the 10-inch in its fleshed out glory, and was a premonition of the entire project.
The name (Canyon Candy) was coined by Lucky Dragons, because it sounded like a euphemism. But it also conjures up the peyote button, the desert’s psycho candy.
Canyon Candy Album Art
1. Fievel Goes West
2. Cowpoke
3. Estevez
4. Trembler
5. Colorado Trail
6. Winchesters
7. Sagebrush
8. Saddle Sores
9. Strawberry Roan
10. Love Gulch
Which songs will be featured?
We sampled some of the classics, and created some from scratch to sound like classics. Song titles include “Cowpoke”, “Streets Of Laredo”, “Saddle Sores”, “Strawberry Roan”.
What instruments or methods did you use to put a different spin on traditional songs?
Jaw harp, harmonica, guitars, lots of samples of records, we sang, played drum machines, synths that sound like crickets wind or UFOs… when we were mastering at Masterdisk the engineer said one song sounded like The Band mixed with Li’l John.
Where did you record the album and who did you work with for this project? Which label will release this album (and on what formats)?
We recorded some on the road, some at home when on break from tour (it was a crazy time– this project was largely to take what we were doing, which was stretching ourselves out playing tons of high energy shows and dropping it waaaaaaay down to just make some slow, sometimes beautiful, cowboy songs… complete opposite direction…)
It will be on 10″ inch with Luaka Bop (we are planning to personally brand each copy) as a Playbutton(you should check them out– they’re awesome) and will be featured on a STYLISH 12-minute video internet epic of the same title.
We also recorded one song with our friend David who is a barrel chested Texan with a huge voice– we co-wrote a great song together with very literary lyrics, a first for us.