This one’s in memory of Robert Harmon, who died in Carrboro on Sunday, July 10^th. Anyone who ever spent any time at the Open Eye Café knew Robert. That seemed to be his second home. I lived in the Music House with my band and best friends around the corner from there in the old Open Eye days ten years ago. Robert would tell us all kinds of stories, including those of his time in the military, for which he earned the affectionate nickname The Colonel. But more often, we’d talk about music. He’d take off his headphones and let you listen to whatever CD or tape he had just picked up at PTA. And he was usually carrying around some new keyboard, guitar, boombox, harmonica, or other instrument that he had also just picked up.

This is a song that I recorded on the fly on my old handheld Sony tape recorder back in those early days of My Dear Ella and the Music House, when we’d hang out for hours at the old Open Eye and when I first met Robert. During a break from band practice, Doug White (on keyboards) and I were still making up some stuff, and during this I remember being struck by a heavy sense of melancholy as bass player Bob Dearborn got up from our sweet gold couch and reached for the door knob to leave the room. Doug must have already been playing these chords, because I pressed record on the handheld and started to sing. I’ve always loved the ethereal quality of this spontaneous song and recording. But like most songs and ideas over the years, for some reason I just let it collect dust. Ten years later, here it is.

– Eric

This is a jam we like to play to open our shows. Based on a simple riff written by Dustin at practice, it usually follows this rough flow but is played differently each time. This version was recorded live at one of our practices.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from the last Minor Stars Vault post (a bombastic 14-minute improvised jam from practice), “Paper Heart” is a short acoustic song by Eric. We promised it all here in the Vault…and I’m doing my best to deliver!

-Eric

Who doesn’t like fourteen-minute one-chord improvised jams? Okay…probably everyone but the band. Three dudes, in this case. Minor Stars recently started recording our practices with these rough motives in mind:

1. Cool stuff can sometimes happen when we let our guard down and remove the pressure to create something defined (which is usually quickly forgotten if not recorded).

2. Maybe the practice jams can be mined for little gems that might turn into songs.

3. Improvising as a band can be fun and its own reward.

4. It provides some possibly interesting material for the Minor Stars Vault. One reason we started The Vault is to give friends and fans an inside look at the band’s creative process, which can be quite different than a live show, and to get that material out there faster than by the usual means of making and releasing records.

Not always pretty or tight, this jam has its cool moments. It sounds better loud, of course (partly because everything does, and partly due to a rough recording of really loud music all in one tiny room, with minimal mixing effort and no mastering), so turn it up! Maybe put it on in the background and take it in for what it is: a snapshot of fourteen minutes in practice before we actually “got down to business” and played the same songs we’ve practiced countless times before. Jams like this can help ignite a band’s creative spark and hack through the mask of a labored-over studio recording or a well-rehearsed live set.

MINOR STARS is an indie psych rock band from Chapel Hill, NC.
Catch us touring in support of our debut LP
The Death of the Sun in the Silver Sea on Summer Secret Records.

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MINOR STARS is an indie psych rock band from Chapel Hill, NC.
Their debut album The Death of the Sun in the Silver Sea has just been released
on Summer Secret Records on CD and 12″ vinyl.

Catch them on tour NOW!
Touring Lineup: Eric Wallen (guitar, vocals), Iain Watt (drums), Robbie Breitweiser (bass).

Here’s a little riff I came up with last week.  Yes, I’m referring to it as “Steady Rollin’ Riff in E” — you should hear some of the stupid working titles I’ve got kicking around.

Having recently replaced all the drum heads on the kit in my home studio (the famous Kuki Kooks’ old drum set), I used this new song idea to test them out.  The room is really small, and I don’t have a ton of experience recording drums, so it was an experiment in trying to get decent drum sounds (and performances) from a subpar room and a subpar drummer (me).  The result: well, the drum sounds aren’t so great, but in the end, I just compressed the hell out of them and went with it.  It’s just a little song idea demo anyway.  I like the riff and the bass part, though, so I’m happy with the overall result.  Enjoy!

– Eric

At that point I was doing all of my own recordings at home on a Fostex R8 reel-to-reel 8-track, but the sheer number of tracks we needed to realize this song called for some creative manipulation.  Bouncing tracks several times to other tracks on one reel can lead to a lot of sonic degradation, so we recorded the eight basic tracks (kick, snare, two overheads, bass (mic & di), and two rhythm guitars) onto one reel of tape, mixed that down to DAT, and then dumped the stereo mix back to a fresh reel of tape, leaving six open tracks on which to finish the song.  Not the craziest thing ever done in an analog studio by any stretch, but it was the first time I had used that technique.  Of course we were then committed to those rhythm tracks once we began overdubbing the two tracks of vocals, additional guitars, Rhodes, mellotron strings, backwards percussion…

Overjoyed at having completed another long psych epic, we proudly submitted it to WXYC for consideration.  A few weeks passed before I was contacted by someone from the station.  The verdict was that it was just too long to be included on the compilation, but that they really liked it and were sorry.  Oh well…My Dear Ella was used to being underdogs who always tried to go over the top, so we weren’t surprised at that outcome.  Maybe expecting such a long song to appear on a 50-minute compilation was just greedy.  So it joined dozens of songs that eventually ended up collecting dust and not being released at all when My Dear Ella called it quits in 2006.

I want to especially thank MDE’s drummer Jeff DeWitte for this track – we worked really hard together on it.  Jeff also co-wrote the lyrics (the ones we didn’t rip off from some book we found in our practice space) and made many of the mixing decisions on it (check out the unusual and extravagant — and awesome!) use of reverb on the kick drum.  And mixing the 8-track tape down to DAT through a Mackie 16-channel board in real time is a unique performance in and of itself.  No digital automation, no recall, and tons of music packed onto eight tracks.  I remember Jeff and I crouched over the board, all hands on the faders and knobs, eyes on our extensive mixing notes, making many frustrating passes of that tape before getting it right. So it has to be nostalgia that makes me think mixing like that was fun…right?

So here it is, Xerox Missive.

Just a few of the things that I’ll remember:

• Our friend and ex-guitarist Chris Gray surprising us with a visit from Denver just for the show. He’s probably the only one that would have been more bummed than I had the show been canceled. After trekking over icy country roads in my van packed with all our gear, who swings open the front door of the 506 but Chris Gray! Unbelievable!
• Our friends Allison and Benito driving in from Boone just for the show. The snow turned an otherwise two and a half hour drive into a five hour one for them, but they made it!
• Our drummer Matt being stuck at his house in the country and having to call a friend with a four-wheel drive truck just to transport him and his drums to the show.  The next day Matt told me about a harrowing cab ride home at the end of the night.
• Watching Chris’s face as I blatantly ripped off each of the guitar solos that he wrote and recorded on the new album.
• Having all four members of Death of the Sun in the house.
• Having part of the LP order shipped UPS three-day just so I had some vinyl for the show. They look so good!  Thanks again to Scott Nurkin for the album cover painting, Mike Triplett for the photo, and Dave Laney for the layout and design.
• Reviving two old My Dear Ella song snippets just for the fun of it: a quiet version of Running Down and the She’s So Heavy homage of The Biggest Secret Yet.
• Having Kuki Kooks at the show with his band Devries. Kuki played drums on most of the songs on the album, and we’re lucky to have had Devries in town from NYC to open the show.  Kooks also treated us to his old joke of busting into the drum intro of Running Down – I miss that, K-bends!
• Unfortunately, Transportation had to cancel due to the snow – Stevie was stuck at his house.  But I was prepared to sit in on guitar on Stormbringer in case Robbie and Benny were there! Sadly (fortunately?), I wasn’t given the opportunity. Ha — next time!
• The list goes on and on.  And of course I’ll remember each and every one of you braving the snow storm to come support us – that meant a lot!

If you haven’t seen it already, John Harrison took this video of Mirror at the show – thanks again, John!

And I want to thank The Independent and The Daily Tar Heel for the great coverage of our debut album and the release party.  In case you missed it…

The Indy – thanks to Bryan Reed & Grayson Currin:

Feature: http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:409283
Review: http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:409287
Side-bar: http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid:409289

The Daily Tar Heel – thanks to Jordan Lawrence & Linnie Greene:

Feature: http://www.dailytarheel.com/content/front-man-band-minor-stars-turns-job-loss-musical-opportunity
Review: http://www.dailytarheel.com/content/minor-stars-rock-hard-uncertain-times
Local Song of the Week: http://www.dailytarheel.com/dive/local-song-week-numbers-dont-lie

Stay tuned for a new vault posting next week.

Thanks!

Eric & Minor Stars

Now and then I think of leaving
Now and then it feels relieving
To have some kind of hope that things will change

Another drop in the bucket
Another chance to say fuck it
I’ll learn to waste my time some other way

Where all these dreams can slowly fall away
I know soon it will be my time to pay

Chin up, chin up, my darling
I’d rather be an average starling
Than some kind of lonely holy fake

Who tells me that the sky is falling
Who tells me to follow my calling
There’s only so much a man can take

I’ll fix myself a nice big dinner
Tell myself that I’m a winner
And take something to help dull the ache

And all these dreams can slowly fall away
My number’s up, now it’s my turn to pay