JJ Schultz
talks about
"Traveling Songs"
by Johanna J. Bodde
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JJ SCHULTZ talks about "Traveling Songs" (Last Stop Records)  Traveling songs...
When I went into the studio to
record "Traveling Songs", I told the engineer that if we came out with a
recording of just me and my guitar, that would be fine. I was looking to put
together a sparse recording of my new songs, and I wasn't hearing a lot of drums
and other stuff on the album. This is a bit dicey politically when one has a 4
piece band ready to go and excited to do an album, but I think it all worked out
in the end. One other unique thing about this album is I recorded most of my
parts of the songs live - I played my guitar and sang at the same time, much as
I would do when playing a solo show. I did this to preserve the 'live' pacing
of the songs that can get lost when one tracks all the parts. Here's some notes
on the particular songs.
FIND ME
This is the first song that I've
recorded that I don't play any guitar... I first recorded this song as I did
most of the others - I played it on my guitar and sang at the same time and all
that, and then we added some lead guitar and some piano. It seemed to me that
the song was getting too cluttered with all those bits going on, and once we
dropped out my parts, it felt real good. So we just dumped my guitar and
re-recorded my vocals. I'm not too sure what this song is about - guy misses
his girlfriend or something. Looks for her in crowds. I'm sure a therapist
could explain it all better than I can.
WILLOW BAY
This is one of those songs that took
me a long time to write. Some songs come quite quickly, and it's very exciting
when that happens - the ol' bolt of lightning. Ahh, but as we all know,
lighting is unpredictable, and so sometimes when a song needs to get out, it
takes a bit of work. This is your run of the mill guy/alcoholic girlfriend
song, but when I wrote it, I actually wrote it from the girl's point of view. I
liked how John Prine did "Angel From Montgomery", and I wanted to try my hand at
writing from the other point of view. (So it's actually your run of the mill
girl/alcoholic boyfriend song). Either way works I think. One of my band
members pointed out that I might be subconsciously be fearing marriage in that
Willow Bay can easily be transposed to "will obey", which is a common part of
most marriage vows. I told him he was ridiculous and then laughed
uncomfortably. Listen to Frank's harmonies on this song - really great. The
spooky sound is a result of tripping his harmony tracks - we recorded them three
times and then just stock them on top of each other. I stole this idea from the
Beach Boys.
ACROSS THE BAY
I
tend to think of this song as the related somehow to "Willow Bay". They both
have bays, they're about similar subject matter, I wrote them kind of close
together. The lyrics don't 100% match up, but I don't let that bother me. My
bass player, Craig Koozer, did some excellent bow work on this song - he gave it
that spooky sound by bowing harmonics on his big upright
bass.
GREYHOUND BUS
This is the first song that I wrote
for the album, and I think it's a text-book JJ Schultz song, if I may be
forgiven for using the 3rd person. It’s got the little pull-off deal on a G
chord that I like to do - it's about moving on. Its all very similar to
"Bustin' Outa Town", which I always think of as my signature song. This is the
first song that features Sonya Cotton's backing vocals... doesn't she sound
lovely? One of few regrets with this album is I didn't turn her vocals up a bit
more in the final mix. In retrospect, they’re a bit too far in the background.
One other thing I like about this song is the build with the bass and lead
guitar right before the bridge - I think that all came together very
well.
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 TUMBLEWEED
This is the last song that I wrote
for the album - I wrote it in the studio as Craig was laying down his bass
parts. This one features some excellent telecaster playing by Frank Rathbone -
it's loose and aggressive and just about perfect in my opinion. This is also
the only track on the album with drums. This lack of drums is mostly by design
and partly a result of the way I laid down the initial tracks - I laid
everything down live with just me and my guitar, and that makes it really hard
to a beat after the fact. I intentionally didn't play to a click, and its
really hard to add one later. This is all fine with me - drums are for
parades.
THE CLOUDS UNDER THE
MOON
Two of my good friends
out here in San Francisco play in a duo called "Bramble and Briar", and I always
admired their songwriting - its so whimsical and personal and so I really wanted
to try and write a song in the style of Bramble and Briar, and this is that
song. I usually make up stories when I write songs, but not this one - this
one's all true and personal.
EASTBOUND TRAIN
This song here is another song about
North Dakota - I initially started writing about an unemployed grain elevator
worker and luckily, that's what I ended up with. This is one of the songs where
I can really picture the guy in my head - I know just what he looks like and
what kind of car he drives and which buttons are missing on his flannel shirt.
I'd describe it all to you, but I'd rather you have your own image.
COME ON, COME ON
This one is kind of a true story as
well - it's specifically about a car breaking down in the desert (which has
happened to me) (not fun), and it's also about the demise of a relationship all
that. I thought the parallelism worked out pretty well in this
one.
TRAVELING SONG
I
wrote this one on an airplane coming back from a week in North Dakota. I was
taking a nap, and I woke up and wrote this song and it all came pretty quick.
This is one of my favorites to perform live - I really like the imagery and way
it builds and all that. This is also kind of a personal song - in that it's a
song about me and not some made up characters. I could break it down and tell
you the origin of each verse, but I think that would take some of the fun out of
it all, but I will tell you this: the cure for head lice is to shave your
head.
COUNTY BACKROAD
This is a recycle from my "Bustin'
Outa Town" album. "County Backroad" is one of my favorite songs that I've
written, and I really like the way it sounds before a live audience. I can hear
some of my friends in the background - and just prior to the song, somebody
shouts out "Something to me!" (the title track from my previous album). You can
hear all of my live recordings here: http://theutah.org/artist
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