A long time ago in a bizarre land far, far away called Hollywood, I played bass in a band called Santí — Latin rock with a blend of Spanish and English lyrics. The band was fronted by actor-turned-singer Santiago Douglas (a.k.a. Santí). Santí got us a lot of fun gigs in LA nightclubs and a couple on television. He even landed one of our tunes in a movie, Freezerburn. I don’t know if the movie was good (pretty sure it wasn’t) — Santi and I skipped out of the premiere after about a half-hour, but we stayed long enough to hear the tune, which was playing on a transistor radio in a scene taking place in a short-order kitchen. Now that’s what I call making it to the big time!

To prepare for my participation in this band, my musical mentor, jazz/rock/funk/Celtic guitarist Patrick Butler, led me through a crash course in Latin folk music. I learned some of the basic chord structures and scales, and Butler took me on a field trip to see legendary conguero and bandleader Pancho Sanchez perform.

During this time, I composed three songs with the hope of getting my goods onto the Santí setlist. I did not succeed in this grande goal, but one of these tunes, which had the working title “El Canción,” always seemed to have potential to me. My girlfriend at the time (now my wife) thought the main Gypsy Kingesque lick was pretty slick and I liked the lyrics. A mere sixteen or seventeen years after I composed the initial version of the song, I brought the tune to my band, The Möbius Trip, and we knocked it out, complete with the new title, “El Velo.” I made the controversial decision to sing lead on this one. We could have gone with Aaron Baker, the band’s vocally gifted singer, but I thought it was finally time to dazzle the world with my .75 octave range. Aaron generously sang harmony, adding the multidimensional mellifluicity our fans have come to expect over the years. 

I have written before about a powerful musical portal called the Space Station. It has been described, by me, as a “euphoria factory” producing “psychedelic, frenetic, angelic exhalations.” As you might remember, Butler loaned this pedal to me years ago. I supposedly “abused” said pedal while it was in my custody — so much so that the expression pedal produced an irritating squeak whenever it was depressed. Well, as destiny would have it, Butler’s abused Space Station is now my Space Station, squeaks and all. The first thing I did when we were reunited was lay down a couple tracks on “El Velo.” 

. . . 

In the early 1980s, music fans hungered for a video from rock legends Van Halen. Finally, the band released its first offering for the MTV generation with “Jump.” Fans were not disappointed. The Möbius Trip found itself in exactly the same situation and decided we need to join the modern times (of the 1980s at least). (Yes, I am comparing us to Van Halen. Tune in next week when I’ll be comparing us to The Beatles.)  For this momentous creation, we called in our children to co-star in the video and enlisted Aaron’s wife, and my friend, Noel, to be our cinematographer.

So, here she is, folks. We hope you enjoy “El Velo.”

STUDIO LOG: Notes about “One Day,” a tune I produced for my friend, B.T.S. Agnomen (nom de plume of Brent Taylor Stenhouse) . . .

I’d produced two songs for Brent at this point in our collaboration, “He’s a Cowboy” and “Love with a Love,” and we both were pleased with how they turned out.

We were working in my home studio, which was a back porch operation. The porch had been walled in years before, and other than the floor’s slight downward tilt toward the ocean, it was adequate for our musical needs. We didn’t quite have the highest end gear–I was working with a now defunct laptop, a Line 6 Guitar Port, a Target-purchased Yamaha keyboard, and an AKG C1000S mic. On this particular cut, I used a borrowed Hofner Beatle bass knock-off made by Rogue. The intonation was so far off, I had to play the bassline in two parts–one take with notes below the 10th fret and one take with notes above the 10th fret–because the bass had to be re-tuned depending on which fret the notes were being played. It was still worth it to go with this bass over my P-Bass to get that particularly pleasing punchy tone only the Hofner style bass (knock-off or not) produces.

On all of the tunes we’ve worked on together over the years, Brent sings and plays piano; I play guitar and bass. (The one exception is “He’s a Cowboy,” in which Brent plays acoustic rhythm guitar–my man nailed his scratch track, so we kept it!) On our first two collaborations, I put the drums together literally one piece at a time. I had a CD given to me by a friend that had all of the individual sounds a drum kit can make. It wasn’t MIDI; these were actual sound recordings of a kick, snare, closed hi-hat, open hi-hat, choked hi-hat, ride, couple crashes, couple toms. I’m not saying I didn’t copy and paste a bit here and there once I started constructing the beat, but this method, even with a few shortcuts, took forever.

So, on “One Day,” we had an idea… Let’s have Brent’s drummer friend, Tony,  play on the track. Unfortunately, we couldn’t have him play a full kit in my tiny studio. Plus, I only had the one AKG mic, so unless we were gonna go for that 50’s every instrument in the room with one overhead mic vibe, that wasn’t an option. So, we asked Tony to recreate a drum kit sound using a cajon and a hi-hat. And he did exactly that. Did the cajon in one take and the hi-hat in another. Then overdubbed tambourine and hand claps. Boom–an authentic acoustic rhythm section!

I hope you enjoy the song. Brent’s melody and harmonies are rich, and as always, there are layers in his lyrics which offer greater satisfaction the deeper you dig. So dig…

Click here for more music by B.T.S. Agnomen.

One of my great joys is writing and recording music with the band, The Möbius Trip. You can check out our recordings here.

I recorded a piece of music years ago, but I never liked the lyrics or vocal melody. It was called “Why?” If you heard this original recording, you’d think “Why?” was short for “Why did you record this?”

Though the song was missing something in the vocal melody department, I thought the underlying music had potential. I took it to my fellow Möbius Tripper, Aaron, and asked if he could breathe fresh life into it. He took the raw instrumental tracks and began constructing a completely new vocal melody. This new melody was what the instrumental music had been waiting for all these years.

Next steps: Split up the lyrics, track the vox, and bam! Here you go . . . I hope you enjoy “You Give Much More Than You Take.”

You Give Much More Than You Take

Gazing out at the world through your window
Wondering what you’re wondering about
I can show you what I have learned
While you show me what I forgot

I gave you life and now you show me living
You never cease from giving
You bring me joy and laughter, tears and heartache
But you give much more than you take

Staring at stars on your ceiling
Music bending into our ears
You say “Daddy, why are we here?”
We’re here to love

Got to give it all – our love

© 2018 Words & Music by Sean Coons and Aaron Baker