Schooldays Over

The koto is a boss of an instrument. Basically, it’s a traditional japanese stringed marvel of engineering that looks like this:

It’s made out of wood and has moveable bridges that you can adjust to change the pitch of the strings.  When plucked or strummed, it sounds punchy and articulate (great for highlighting certain harmonics or notes). It can also sound like a long plane of glass or even take on a romantic quality if bowed. Certain projects I work on deal a lot with textural counterpoint and the colors and timbres the koto is capable of producing are conducive to that type of music.

My use of the koto has been pretty tame in comparison to Miya Masaoka. Miya’s a musical genius and has really plumbed the depths of what this instrument can do.

The reason I bring her up is because she’s been inspiration for me for years and was one of the reasons I became interested in this venerable instrument. Miya’s musical thought process is consistently amazing and in many ways I feel her work gives permission to those of us who have a deep respect for the koto and want to see what it can do outside of a “traditional” framework.

For the project “Schooldays Over,” I’ve talked about using Grant’s vocals as a human and lyric anchor.  Just as Grant was a human anchor point in the music, the koto was used as an instrumental one. I went with the koto because of its “leadership” quality: it can cut through textures or blend in. In “Schooldays” we used it as a signifier of the beginning of a new musical thought.

Throughout the piece, when the listener hears it, I hope it provides a subtle invitation to pick up and move to the next musical space. It served this purpose in a very direct way for the musicians during the recording process; the koto acted as a signal to change to the next event.

Here are a couple examples:

At the start of the piece, you hear the koto ushering in the cellos.

Halfway through the piece, after the big crash of pump organ and gongs and keyboard, the koto comes back (below at about 45 seconds in)and again clears out the space and opens it up to the next event.

GRANT:

"So during vocal tracking (in my bedroom)...

I was working on song #2.  Windows wide open.

Really getting into it.  Dropping on one of those fine vocal layers.  

It was a good take.  I can tell because I'm a record producer.

I was so into it that I didn't realize that it had started clouding up outside.

Surprise weather attack!

Tons of Hail!

And a gust of wind blows in the screen on the window!

And a glass of white wine shatters on the floor!

Rain is pouring in every which way.

All the while.  I'm recording this take of Song #2

It was as if God himself didn't want me to complete the take but, 

turns out to be one of my favorite parts of the record. "

It only took a few sessions to get a sonic vocabulary going for Grant and my version of “Schooldays Over”.  One thing that came out immediately from our writing together was lots of sub-bass.  We wanted sounds that would act as foundational roots and would roll out other frequencies from the bottom up.

Grant turned me on to the amazing Andy Stott’s music,

and some of those vibes can be picked up in our recording.  Obviously what Stott does is totally different from us, but that “cave system” of sound is something we tried to achieve.

That attention to the low end of the spectrum was also inspired by this live recording of The Clancy Brothers doing “Schooldays”.  

I only ever saw Damien Dempsey perform once. The band he was opening for in Minneapolis was the reason my friend bought tickets, but three songs into the set I realized that Dempsey’s musical keening was going to be the big takeaway. He stood like a boxer and sang like he was trying to move mountains. It wasn’t poetry as much as force of will and it stood in stark contrast to a lot of the music I was listening to at the time.

Since that show, I’ve listened to much of his catalog but I keep coming back to two songs.  The first is “Factories” and the second is “Schooldays Over.”

In my mind, “Factories” comes from the same psychological place as his cover of “Schooldays.” Leaving home, change, memory and a certain nostalgia for how hard life can be runs through both.

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“Factories”

Factories, trains, and houses

Playground of my youth

The place that left me mute

Til I threw back my shoulders

Factories, trains, and houses

The place that makes some strong

And hurries you along

Some grow old very quick there

No star ever played the cellar bar

Glass and bottle fights

We saw some crazy nights

But then fights do excite you

I'm awoken by a handbrake turn outside

I knew lads who died, that sound chills me inside still

Howth Junction could take you away

And in the hay fields we'd squander the day

And from the corner of Holywell road

See the sunset over Saint Donaghs

See the sunset over us all

See the sunset over Saint Donaghs

Some boys want to get me

Because I hit one back

I still can hear the crack

Of his head on the concrete

Doin' drugs and drinkin'

Makes you so depressed

And then you think you're blessed

When you're dropping a tablet

Troubled years and fighting

Makes you sad, you know

And Mammy had to go

Sure it's best in the long run

Howth Junction

Could take you away

And in the hay fields

We'd squander the day

And from the corner of Holywell road

See the sunset over Saint Donaghs

See the sunset over us all

See the sunset over Saint Donaghs

See the sunset over the world

Dempsey’s version of “Schooldays” is matter of fact. It’s more Luke Kelly than Mary Black.

Like “Factories” you believe every line he sings (even if it’s about moleskin trousers).

It's 1987 and Mary Black is playing "Schooldays Over" with the Chieftains.  There so many things I dig about this version that I shouldn't.

 Warm synth pads are a dangerous thing, and what I'm going to call the "Amy Grant Christmas" production style can be brutal if you don't have a fireplace and eggnog coursing through your veins.   Somehow though, this version charms.

And really, we’d already started before we even began because it grew organically out of the friendship between Grant and myself. I’ve known Grant for years and we were looking for an excuse to work on a project together.

I’ve always appreciated Grant’s musical vision, even though we come from different parts of the musical ecosystem here in the Twin Cities. I come from the “classical/soundart/experimental” realm and he comes to the table with a more “pop” or singer/songwriter sensibility. We wanted to see what new chemical reaction would occur when you put those two personalities together. The truth is, we didn’t know. Would it be something too strange for people who liked Grant’s other music, or would it not be experimental or crazy enough for people who are more into the type of music I usually work on? We didn’t know if the end result would be obnoxious and unpalatable or if people would take to it.

The project began in earnest—the ping-ponging back and forth of ideas—when we were at SXSW a few years ago. We were there for an innova recordings showcase with Graham Reynolds and Golden Hornet Project, Val-inc, Sxip Shirey, Prester John, Todd Reynolds and so many other creative people. Grant and I wanted to collaborate for the showcase, but we wanted it to be something a bit more than the two of us doing ambient improvisation. We needed it to be grounded, to have a lyrical and melodic anchor.

We came to “Schooldays” intuitively; we were just drawn to it. We tried to draw big highlights around the aspects that drew us in. Some of those dimensions happened to be things that hadn’t been explored before in other versions. We wanted the source material to sink into us. On some level we were hyper aware of the pieces but at a certain point you have to ingest that material and then you open up a spot where you forget.

When we decided to turn that performance into a recording, we wanted to keep that feel of multi-instrumental playing. One player doing many things, or shifting stations from keyboard to percussion to koto, etc. Things that we had put together as two people expanded out concentrically. It felt right to pare down the synthesizers and bring in players on instruments. For strings we enlisted the extremely talented Michelle Kinney and Jacqueline Ultan who are two of my favorite cellists in the Twin Cities. For percussion, we were lucky enough to have Joey Van Phillips agree to play. All these players brought their own angle to the sound, filling it out into something fuller.

As we worked, it became clear that the heart of the tune was more about psychological exploration, almost a diorama or snowglobe to look inside. In a way, all the other versions we listened to along the way worked their way in there, from Luke Kelly’s bouncy, matter-of-fact treatment to Mary Black’s more melancholy, lost pastoral version.

Ultimately we wanted to craft a landscape that the listener could enter into to. We extended certain parts, elongated certain feelings and then always brought it back to the anchor of the words. Out there in this big landscape are these islands, these places that move the narrative forward, where the verses rise up, what we call “Song 1” and “Song 2.”