New series, sort of. How about I post some relevant links on the ten-year anniversaries of Mojo Wire history? Personally I think that's an awesome idea. So here you go, two bits from the first Mojo Wire album, released December 15, 1997.
First albums, by anyone, are almost always momentous and fun: some bands stick their toes in the water, working their way up to greatness and competence on later records; some jump in head first, splashing their pent-up talent (or lack thereof) all over everything. Committing the creative impulse to posterity for the first time often results in outpourings of good, bad, and ugly originality, but it's rarely unmemorable for everyone involved. Some debuts seem to come out of nowhere with surprising freshness, and some crawl out of the distant artistic past via long-ignored or discarded stylistic roots (and routes). Some are labors of love, some are by-blows made to avoid boredom, some come from improvised chaos, and some are complete accidents. All of this can be said about the Mojo Wire's debut album Battery Acid Blues. More...
A sparse pool of gigs provide two more live albums that catch Honey White presenting their tentative, then fully-formed baroque phase.
Moody studio rock epics usually don't go over well live, at least not without a killer stage presentation and plenty of smoke, mirrors, and playback. Forcing a live stage show to duplicate the intricate vagaries of a band run amok in the studio has often meant career suicide for countless rock bands, famous or otherwise. In Honey White’s case, however, the gaping hole where the idea of "career" was unceremoniously filled by "fun but expensive hobby" continued to let the music speak for itself even as practicality and logistics finally eclipsed the group's gig and rehearsal time. Their third and fourth live discs take up the baton where the first two left off, blotting indie-rock posterity with songs from the extended victory lap of live shows that supported their How Far Is The Fall studio album. The tentative muddiness ofSaturated Songsand the casual confidence of Deluge And Drought marked a complete progression of creativity from start to finish, informally presenting Honey White’s most adventurous music with ease.
As the band’s sonic vocabulary grew, their setlists shrank, often dramatically so. New material was road-tested immediately in early 2004, and Honey White dropped almost all of the covers and Mojo Wire songs to make room. Time-devouring monsters like "Keep Moving" and "Famous Last Words" anchored many gigs on a wobbly foundation of effects, but older bursts of energy like "Unprofessional" still kept listeners on their toes. The 2005 performances achieved a more ideal dynamic, while still keeping the shows at around the one-hour mark. Sets ebbed and flowed so that more mid-tempo tunes like "Island Fever" and "Mercy Rule" met the audience halfway between the longer, slower songs and harder, faster stuff like "Bottlerocket" and "Nightfall." This sort of pacing became beneficial as Honey White's bookings changed both in size and space, with multiple gigs at theater-sized venues on their home turf in Santa Barbara and club-level appearances farther away in Ventura and Los Angeles.
Saturated Songs documents the beginning of the process, finding Bryn, Brian, Keir and Billy in Honey White Mark II, shaking off dust and working out the kinks of their recently-reassembled musical identity. This was easier to accomplish on familiar stages like Giovanni's and the Wildcat Lounge, but the relatively cramped conditions at those places and the general sonic uncertainty of the band collectively contributed to the overall murky feel of Honey White's third live disc. Fresh tunes like "Let Go" and the jumpy instrumental "Sean Goes To Africa" pumped some new energy around the album, but it's ultimately dominated by Honey White's most massive leviathans: "Sweet Oblivion," "Keep Moving," "Famous Last Words," and an extended run at Neil Young's "Dead Man" theme. The My Band Rocks-era material that rounds out the compilation- "Unprofessional," "Wayfaring Stranger," a muted "Sandman" and Bryn's solo take of "Lightning Rod"- seems to barely hold its own in comparison. Released in June 2004 as half the band moved away from Santa Barbara and they all geared up for a series of demanding recording sessions in San Francisco, Saturated Songs arguably stands as Honey White's weakest self-produced live album.
The central idea that Saturated Songs hinted at- a focused revitalization based on Keir & Billy's fused rhythm section topped off by the twin forces of Brian's guitar and Bryn's voice- was still a good one, so the band refined it while tracking How Far Is The Fall in the studio. The fact that eight of that album's final ten songs had already been solidified onstage was a key component of its successful completion; the bulk of the studio material was tracked live, so the basics were already there and the band was free to stretch each song to its own creative limit when overdubbing and mixing. Many bands discover with surprise that recording is a universe away from playing live, but Honey White was able to translate their onstage cohesiveness to the studio and enhance each new song in that setting; if every song began its life as an organic, performance-based entity, it would always be able to work well onstage, no matter what it sounded like on record. The group's frequent initial rehearsals back in 2002 were still paying off, and would continue to do so as they resumed playing live.
Everything fell into place at the gigs captured on Deluge And Drought, Honey White's fourth live album. The 2005-2006 dates themselves were infrequent by this point, since the band was now hampered by the realities of time, space, and the 40-hour work week, but that rarity only drew bigger crowds when showtime finally rolled around. The higher-profile venues and their better acoustics also helped Keir's trusty Roland VS-890 pick up clearer, punchier takes (and fully-formed, assured performances) of not only the tunes underserved by Saturated Songs, but also strong debuts of "Island Fever," "Blacking Out," and "Nightfall." Drastically different remakes of "Lightning Rod" and "One Last Hallelujah" also made the cut. Generally, the guitarists were able to re-create their studio effects on the spot, embellishing everything from Bryn's crunchy tremolo in "Let Go" and E-bow in "Famous Last Words" to Brian's myriad liquid textures on "Blacking Out" and stratospheric solos on "Island Fever" and "Sweet Oblivion." The rhythm boys got to shine too; Keir's minimalist bass oozed with swagger, and a new snare drum of Bill's punctuated everything with gunshot-like power.
As a step up in composition, performance, and recording quality, and also as a balance to the group’s diminishing number of gigs, Deluge And Drought was the first Honey White live album to get wide exposure. In addition to the usual 50-copy limited-edition run received by its three predecessors, it joined Honey White's two studio albums on web-based music stores. The oft-delayed Deluge also dubiously became the first Honey White disc of previously-available material; by the time it was finally released in July 2007, more than a year after the band's last show, rough mixes of many Honey White shows had already shown up on the web.
At that point, though, the band was already deep into a second, prolonged stretch of hiatus-like downtime. This flip side of their achievements in the studio and on stage was induced by the same old logistics, but exacerbated by a glancing encounter with the precipitous "next level" of the music business. Lop-sided, pay-to-play gig contracts, ramped-up promotional requirements, and a galaxy of other stressful decisions unrelated to musical creativity all seemed to be right around the corner. Nobody in the band was too interested in exploring anything like that after enduring the logistical hurdles of 2004-2005. However, if and when Honey White does start up their epic noise machine again, the accomplished arc of music captured on these two live albums demonstrates that they have a ready-made template for how to do it well.
New series, sort of. How about I post some relevant links on the ten-year anniversaries of Mojo Wire history? Personally I think that's an awesome idea. So here you go, two bits from the first Mojo Wire album, released December 15, 1997.
