Well technically it ain’t summer, but to me June is summer. School’s out – party on!
Thing #1. Jeff Parkhust’s debut LP Dark and Deep, 12 years in the making. Most people know Jeff as a skilled drummer, but here he makes his recording debut as a singer, a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, with nine varied songs that somehow all pull their oars together.
In 2022, Jeff approached me about pulling together a group of songs that he had been chipping away at for years, all in various states of completion. We got to work.
We took 10 year-old piano tracks and added groovin’ drums. We pulled up the late beat poet Charles Adler and added space-jazz guitarist Joe Mailhot plus Oly jazz bass master Steve Luceno to take it to another level. We descended through the seventeen layers of Dante’s Hell with John Ridgway’s cheerless accordion (Dante’s originally only came up with nine, you’ll have to ask Jeff about the extra eight). Jeff took his ancient iPad to a school portable building to record singerBetsy Perkins. I added little guitar bits when requested
Some songs are autobiographical. “Woods Are Dark and Deep” is Robert Frost put to music, fifty years after his death (copyrights expired!).
In addition to this limited-edition debut LP, there is an even more-limited 25-copy edition in a special hand-built multi-faceted box created especially for the project by his wife Randi, a well known Olympia paper, book and box artist who creates works from all natural PNW plant sources.
There will be a record release show Friday, June 21 at the Olympia Eagles Club (4th and Plum) from 7 to 11. Eagles is a private club, so guests and members only. If you want to be a guest, just reply to this email and let me know YOU WANNA GO. Ps. I think I am in the band.
TD blabs about Jeff:
My relationship with Jeff goes back a couple years. I first met him in the spring of 2022 when I recorded street band the Artesian Rumble Arkestra out in my driveway for use in “Let’s Have A Parade” on my Olympia album. Jeff gave me a single by his 1982 band, Linear Decent, recorded by Pat Hewitt at Triangle Recording in Ballard – the same dude who did some of my earliest recordings, also at Triangle in ‘82. Never heard of Jeff. Triangle (later to become grunge-haven Reciprocal Recording) was a busy place back then.
Jeff seemed like a pretty fine drummer out in my driveway. In June, I finished recording Olympia. On a Monday, Michael Stein, the drummer for the whole album, told me he didn’t want to do shows. On Tuesday, Jeff was the new drummer and he played our four shows to wrap up the year. In that six months, he told me about an album project he had been working on for years – his songs, with him singing them. When January rolled around, I said wot the hell and we started working on completing them.
Jeff had the songs that make Dark and Deep all started in various states of completion, on various harddrives scattered here and there, going back at least ten years. Some needed drums, some needed guitar, some needed a yet to be decided element The task was to pull all these disparate pieces into a unified whole. That’s what we did over the course of 2023. We recorded new drums onto songs that were cut without a click track – what the heck – Jeff has good internal time. Recorded lead vocals, guitars, accordion and what not. Slowly, the songs came together and I was able to pull all the bits together into a unified whole. This project is really like none other I have worked on. I think it came out great and you should check it out!
Next month we are going to do something a little different – completely FREE, we are releasing Ze Whiz Kids – Live at the Paramount 1971, recorded off KISW by Howie in 1971. We don’t own any rights to these recordings and simply present them free to the public as a historical document. Anyone owning the rights to this material may request we take it down at any time and we will comply. Enjoy!
Well, it is official! There will be a new Green Pajamas album this summer, “When Fever Let Me Dream”. All new material! A CD will be released this August which will likely be followed by a small run vinyl version next year. More news to follow!
Bonnie and Laura
The Capping Day anthology is moving forward. All tracks have been baked and transferred to digital and have been sent off to Jack Endino for mastering. We are planning to release that in October.
My Irish Tour 2024 album is moving along as well with a planned October release.
That’s it for June.
td
Ps. Our old GMR pal the unstoppable Al Bloch has two new releases out. Dig ’em! A Time to Refrain From Embracing | Al Bloch (bandcamp.com) Sleepwalk | ULTRABLOCHS | Al Bloch (bandcamp.com)