The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard

the sermon on exposition boulevard

	click on image for enlarged view Peter Atanasoff and Rickie Lee Jones improvising; Marc Chiat's art studio, Culver City, 2005 the project takes a dramatic turn: improvisation tells the truth "This isn't working, Rickie said, and put the book down. Everything was about to turn upside down." We were now into our second week at Marc's studio, mid-June, 2005. I asked Rickie Lee Jones if she would come across town to Exposition Boulevard and read from the book. We had selected two or three tracks that we thought might work as backgrounds to her reading. Mike Watt had already completed the chapter called *The Harvest. Peter and I were both anxious to add Rickie's voice to the project. For as long as I had talked to Mike about this, I had shared the same vision with Rickie, and felt that it was important to have a woman's voice reading the Jesus words. Rickie arrived in the afternoon, and we looked over a few chapters that might appeal to her. Rickie said she was ready, and we did a test reading for levels. She read only a few sentences, and abruptly stopped. "This isn't going to work for me," Rickie said, and suggested that she sing her lines, and that, instead of reading verbatim from the book, she use it as a reference and improvise lyrics based on one or more pages. We all agreed that she should try this approach, and selected a track that we thought would serve her voice. Bernie set up a vocal microphone, from his collection of antique sound equipment. (We went on to use a Russian microphone for Rickie's vocals. When it broke, we couldn't fix it, because the transformer and all the literature was written in Russian.) I asked if Rickie would like to hear the track through her headphones, so she could get a sense of the melody, chord changes, and length. "Sure," Rickie said, and we played about twenty seconds before she stopped us. "That's good. I'm ready now," she said. "Just let it roll and let me see what happens." the sermon on exposition boulevard is born: "do you know my name?" I closed the sliding fire door to give Rickie some privacy. Bernie cued the Logic track on his laptop. I looked at Peter. What was Rickie planning to do? She didn't have any lyrics. She didn't even know what the song sounded like. The track started, two guitars, chords pounding out a tribal beat. "For a thousand years," Rickie sang. Her voice was plaintive, filled with sadness, timelessness. "Now I walk among them and I see them, and I open up my wrists and nobody knows my name. So I walk again ...I look at you. Do you know my name? Say it...do you know my name? Do you know my name?" As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. To say we were stunned would be an understatement. "That didn't just happen," Peter finally said. I rolled the door back. Rickie was still standing at the microphone, her eyes closed. I waited until she took off the headphones. I tried to say something appropriate, but the words wouldn't come. Rickie's performance had changed the project in the three minutes and thirty-four seconds it had taken to record what became Nobody Knows My Name. Without hearing the track, and without lyrics, she had reset the direction for the project. She turned and walked out into the early evening, absorbing slowly what had just happened. I walked up Exhibition with her, but we didn't talk. She had emptied so much emotion into that song. I thought about the lyrics. "Did the anonymous Christ walk among us? In using his name, did we reveal that we did not know or recognize him?" There were many implications in what Rickie has just "written." And more depth was to come... Should we try this approach again? I didn't want to impose this on Rickie, but we all agreed to record another track. Peter and I picked some music we thought would work, and waited. "How about the chapter on prayer," I suggested when Rickie had returned (physically and emotionally). She read a few pages from the book, then put the headphones on. The door rolled shut and Bernie hit command "R" on the laptop. The cursor began tracking along the timeline. Again, Rickie was hearing the song for the very first time. "I wanted to pray," she sang, and followed, "How do you pray in world like this? You know I see the people on TV and they close their eyes and they bow their heads and they say, 'Let us pray,' and it feels so cold and meaningless..." Five minutes later there was only silence. The first two songs, Nobody Knows My Name* and Where I Like it Best were finished. We never did go back and change one note of these tracks, all the way through to mastering. The melody and lyrics remained exactly as they were captured that afternoon and evening, beneath the dusty skylight of the cluttered studio on Exposition Boulevard. Instead of a literal reading from the book, Rickie was guided to say what she felt in her spirit, to answer without thinking, to seek without implying that she knew, or could know, the answers. It is recorded that Jesus once told his followers not to be "like the religious" who repeated (memorized) prayers over and over, thinking that God would hear them because of their repetition. Rickie's decision to improvise, in that moment, forced us away from stereotype or dogma. "You wake up one morning and you're someone else," *Rickie sings in I'll Be True.* We were blessed to have some great musical company with us from the start. Jay Bellerose brought in his misshapen European drum kit and proceeded to caress and sound canon shots. Joey Maramba bowed his electric bass, at times creating an orchestra of one. Joey Warronker also played drums, as we were finishing the record in Hollywood. Jonathon Stearns coxed his trumpet to sound very old and heraldic. Rob Schnapf and his engineer Doug Boehm finished the work that Bernie had begun, with Rob overseeing the completion of the record. Through it all, I believe, Rickie managed to stay true to that original moment, imploring, and then making room for, the spirit to speak through her voice and words. postscript It's an early Friday morning in September, and the night sky was paling. The stars overhead were beginning to fade. In a few hours, Alan Yoshida would be mastering The Sermon in the all analog room at Ocean Way. Doug Boehm, our engineer, and I are listening to a track that will hopefully make the final New West CD. It's an autobiographical improvisation called I Was There. My heart skipped a bit. I had been there, too, participating in, and witnessing this experiment. Suddenly, I felt so lucky. The Words had been written in new words, and had spoken to us. Rickie had been the first to recognize this, and we had willingly, gratefully, and gleefully followed.* I was reminded, during the making of the record, of something W. H. Auden once said. He was talking about the spirit of creativity and likened it to the Holy Spirit. He said he knew when the Holy Spirit was speaking to him, because the idea was always new, something he had never thought before, and it always demanded something of him. I think we would all agree that this happened to us during the months that we engaged ourselves with The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard. Each of us heard and felt something new, and, in turn, we were challenged to act on what was expressed. There is truth in these songs, lightness, and lack of artifice. May they "catch you in its ray." LEE CANTELON Hollywood * Rickie sings these words in one of the most beautiful lyric improvisations on the record, It Hurts.

click on image for enlarged view
Peter Atanasoff and Rickie Lee Jones improvising; Marc Chiat's art studio, Culver City, 2005

the project takes a dramatic turn: improvisation tells the truth
"This isn't working, Rickie said, and put the book down. Everything was about to turn upside down."

We were now into our second week at Marc's studio, mid-June, 2005. I asked Rickie Lee Jones if she would come across town to Exposition Boulevard and read from the book. We had selected two or three tracks that we thought might work as backgrounds to her reading. Mike Watt had already completed the chapter called The Harvest. Peter and I were both anxious to add Rickie's voice to the project. For as long as I had talked to Mike about this, I had shared the same vision with Rickie, and felt that it was important to have a woman's voice reading the Jesus words. Rickie arrived in the afternoon, and we looked over a few chapters that might appeal to her.

Rickie said she was ready, and we did a test reading for levels. She read only a few sentences, and abruptly stopped. "This isn't going to work for me," Rickie said, and suggested that she sing her lines, and that, instead of reading verbatim from the book, she use it as a reference and improvise lyrics based on one or more pages. We all agreed that she should try this approach, and selected a track that we thought would serve her voice. Bernie set up a vocal microphone, from his collection of antique sound equipment. (We went on to use a Russian microphone for Rickie's vocals. When it broke, we couldn't fix it, because the transformer and all the literature was written in Russian.) I asked if Rickie would like to hear the track through her headphones, so she could get a sense of the melody, chord changes, and length. "Sure," Rickie said, and we played about twenty seconds before she stopped us. "That's good. I'm ready now," she said. "Just let it roll and let me see what happens."

the sermon on exposition boulevard is born: "do you know my name?"
I closed the sliding fire door to give Rickie some privacy. Bernie cued the Logic track on his laptop. I looked at Peter. What was Rickie planning to do? She didn't have any lyrics. She didn't even know what the song sounded like. The track started, two guitars, chords pounding out a tribal beat. "For a thousand years," Rickie sang. Her voice was plaintive, filled with sadness, timelessness. "Now I walk among them and I see them, and I open up my wrists and nobody knows my name. So I walk again ...I look at you. Do you know my name? Say it...do you know my name? Do you know my name?"

As suddenly as it had begun, it was over. To say we were stunned would be an understatement. "That didn't just happen," Peter finally said. I rolled the door back. Rickie was still standing at the microphone, her eyes closed. I waited until she took off the headphones. I tried to say something appropriate, but the words wouldn't come. Rickie's performance had changed the project in the three minutes and thirty-four seconds it had taken to record what became Nobody Knows My Name. Without hearing the track, and without lyrics, she had reset the direction for the project. She turned and walked out into the early evening, absorbing slowly what had just happened. I walked up Exhibition with her, but we didn't talk. She had emptied so much emotion into that song. I thought about the lyrics. "Did the anonymous Christ walk among us? In using his name, did we reveal that we did not know or recognize him?" There were many implications in what Rickie has just "written." And more depth was to come...

Should we try this approach again? I didn't want to impose this on Rickie, but we all agreed to record another track. Peter and I picked some music we thought would work, and waited. "How about the chapter on prayer," I suggested when Rickie had returned (physically and emotionally). She read a few pages from the book, then put the headphones on. The door rolled shut and Bernie hit command "R" on the laptop. The cursor began tracking along the timeline. Again, Rickie was hearing the song for the very first time. "I wanted to pray," she sang, and followed, "How do you pray in world like this? You know I see the people on TV and they close their eyes and they bow their heads and they say, 'Let us pray,' and it feels so cold and meaningless..."

Five minutes later there was only silence. The first two songs, Nobody Knows My Name and Where I Like it Best were finished. We never did go back and change one note of these tracks, all the way through to mastering. The melody and lyrics remained exactly as they were captured that afternoon and evening, beneath the dusty skylight of the cluttered studio on Exposition Boulevard. Instead of a literal reading from the book, Rickie was guided to say what she felt in her spirit, to answer without thinking, to seek without implying that she knew, or could know, the answers.

It is recorded that Jesus once told his followers not to be "like the religious" who repeated (memorized) prayers over and over, thinking that God would hear them because of their repetition. Rickie's decision to improvise, in that moment, forced us away from stereotype or dogma.

"You wake up one morning and you're someone else," Rickie sings in I'll Be True.

We were blessed to have some great musical company with us from the start. Jay Bellerose brought in his misshapen European drum kit and proceeded to caress and sound canon shots. Joey Maramba bowed his electric bass, at times creating an orchestra of one. Joey Warronker also played drums, as we were finishing the record in Hollywood. Jonathon Stearns coxed his trumpet to sound very old and heraldic. Rob Schnapf and his engineer Doug Boehm finished the work that Bernie had begun, with Rob overseeing the completion of the record. Through it all, I believe, Rickie managed to stay true to that original moment, imploring, and then making room for, the spirit to speak through her voice and words.

postscript
It's an early Friday morning in September, and the night sky was paling. The stars overhead were beginning to fade. In a few hours, Alan Yoshida would be mastering The Sermon in the all analog room at Ocean Way. Doug Boehm, our engineer, and I are listening to a track that will hopefully make the final New West CD. It's an autobiographical improvisation called I Was There. My heart skipped a bit. I had been there, too, participating in, and witnessing this experiment. Suddenly, I felt so lucky. The Words had been written in new words, and had spoken to us. Rickie had been the first to recognize this, and we had willingly, gratefully, and gleefully followed.*

I was reminded, during the making of the record, of something W. H. Auden once said. He was talking about the spirit of creativity and likened it to the Holy Spirit. He said he knew when the Holy Spirit was speaking to him, because the idea was always new, something he had never thought before, and it always demanded something of him. I think we would all agree that this happened to us during the months that we engaged ourselves with The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard. Each of us heard and felt something new, and, in turn, we were challenged to act on what was expressed. There is truth in these songs, lightness, and lack of artifice. May they "catch you in its ray."

LEE CANTELON
Hollywood

* Rickie sings these words in one of the most beautiful lyric improvisations on the record, It Hurts.

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© Copyright 2006 by Lee Cantelon