I always liked reading liner notes on old LP albums when I was younger, so now that Sound Cloud has done its first CD I thought it would be cool to write some of my own. (Kids, ask your folks what an LP album is.)

Sound Cloud plays a majority of cover tunes, but we have a large number of original songs as well. Some of these have been around a long time, and some are new in the last few years. With one exception all of this music was written by Martin or myself.  I sing the songs I composed, as does Martin his. Maynard sings the one cover song here.

In addition to notes about the songs I will be adding information about the guitar gear I used because as a guitarist I always wonder what gear other guitar players use when I listen to music. In the past when recording I pretty much used my 1960 Strat and stereo Bassman rig because that was all I had, but when we started this recording I had accumulated several different guitars and amplifiers and wanted to use as many of them as I could. Except for some of the guitars all my gear is vintage.
Regis Coyne - October 2007

To open a new page with the lyrics click here.                   


Down To The Sea
Into The Water
Written by our keyboardist/singer Martin Dowdey, he has  a number of different historical characters interacting with water of some kind: Sigmund Freud going fishing, Marilyn Monroe and a glacier, even Elvis walking on water!!! Martin really hit a home run with this one. The imagery in the lyrics is just terrific, and the music has great melody, I especially love the voice leading chords in the chorus. 

My Leslie 16 is prominent in this tune, driven by my Strat through a BF Bassman head combo. It really adds a spice to the song that it wouldn't have otherwise.
Left and right rhythm guitars are the Strat > modded Bassman 100 > JBL D130, and the solo is the Strat > Boss SD-1 overdrive > Boss DD-3 delay > Boss CE-5 stereo chorus > Kay 720 and Fender Pro Reverb.


Dreams Come Calling
Coming from a heavy rock and blues background as I do, this song is quite different from anything I've ever written before. It's also certainly the shortest song I've ever written.
I often open a beer, plug in a guitar, and play by myself, jamming on nothing in particular. The opening chords of this song came about while doing just that. I remember I was playing through my Bandmaster with the tremolo running and thought it was a cool riff. As I worked out the basic chords and was searching for lyrical hook the line "When dreams come calling in the night" popped into my head. They flowed really well with the music and I had the start of a song.
Being a fan of songs about (and a victim of) unrequited love, I thought it would be interesting to write about women I had known with contrasting opinions of me. (No dearth of them!) The first verse is about a young girl I knew years ago that had a huge crush on me. I wasn't interested and told her so again and again, and I'm sure she was sorely disappointed. The second verse is about a bartender I had a crush on, a very large one. (He shakes is head and sighs...) She wasn't interested and told me so again and again. Saying I was sorely disappointed is decidedly putting it mildly.
I've never thought of myself as a great lyricist or songwriter for that matter, but this tune came together well. That's me singing backup as well as doing the lead vocal.

Rhythm guitar was played on the Strat through a BF Bandmaster head driving a JBL D130, once again doubled. The lead solo was done on my Partscaster Tele through the SD-1 driving my Pro Reverb. The Leslie driven by my BF Bassman shows up again here also. I originally was going to use the Bandmaster with the tremolo going for a third rhythm track, and actually recorded a track with it, but just didn't sound right. I tried the Strat into the Leslie, it sounded great, and I kept it.


Rain On The Wire
Another relationship song by Martin with great lyrics. This song had been around a long time before I joined the band, Martin and Maynard have been playing it for years. It is a great live number; it has what I call that "anthem" or "production number" quality. I love the imagery of two people talking on the telephone (Believe it or not there was a time when people talked on phones connected with wires!!!) with the rain pouring down on the telephone poles, the cables that connect them, and onto the emotions of the two people talking. Martin does a great job singing this, and that's me helping on the background vocals.

The Strat again on the rhythm guitars, into a Bassman head through my 4x12, doubled left and right. The lead solo is my Stellar Les Paul copy > Boss SD-1 > Kay 720.


Kabul
When my old pal Tony heard this song, he remarked, "What's that, punk rock for middle aged guys?" Our drummer Steve comes from a punk rock background, I'm sure he gives the song that kind of edge.
This one is an Oldie But Goodie written by Martin back when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan. Martin says he was drawn to the comparison of the U.S. leaving Viet Nam vs. the U.S.S.R leaving Afghanistan. It's about a Russian soldier trying to figure out a way to get back home during the withdrawal. Things sure have changed since then, huh? Ok, you wouldn't think such a serious topic would be funny, but the lyrics of this song make me laugh out loud.
"The girls, they treat me nice, but you know they're paid to be that way..."
"She talked all night but I didn't know what she was saying..."
I'm sorry, that's damn funny. I suppose if this song was actually heard in Kabul, there would be video on CNN of young Muslim youths rioting in the streets, burning American flags, and firing AK-47's into the air.
Another great live number, Kabul is a lot of fun to play for me, for both the rhythm and  lead guitar parts. We arranged the keyboards during the verses to have a "Volga Boatmen" type of tone, I thought it contributed a Russian dirge feel to the song that added to the humor. I do backup vocals on each chorus, and that caterwauling at the end is Martin and myself, otherwise know as the Doraville Howling Dogs Community Choir.
The final bit of ironic humor: When we were mixing this song Martin told me that years after he wrote this song he found out that there were no trains in Afghanistan.

I used the Strat through my Kay 720, doubled left and right for the clean rhythm guitars. For the solo I split the guitar signal and ran it into both the Kay 720 and my Pro Reverb, and cranked them both. Into them I played my new Stellar ES-335 copy through a Bad Monkey and a Boss DD-3 delay. Both amps were dimed, I got a great tone.


Rocket 88
We wanted to put a track on this CD that Maynard sang, and since we currently don't have one he has written that he sings, we chose Rocket 88, an old 50's rocker written by Ike Turner. We originally did it as a rock song, but over time it evolved into the jazzy blues number you get here. 

Pretty simple guitar setup, just the Stellar 335 into my 68 Pro Reverb. 


Making Time
Martin wrote this song about not having enough time in a busy, fast moving world. We've been playing it for a few years now; It's percussive, Steely Dan-like quality is fun to play. When Martin brings in songs for the band to learn he usually just has the basic arrangement and allows us to adapt and polish our own parts. It was a little nebulous at first but as we developed our parts and pepped it up some it came into its own. Maynard and I came up with a counterpoint for Martin's keyboard part in the second half of the verses that is very cool. Regarding the Steely Dan comparison, my old friend Tony D. remarked that Martins vocal style resembles Donald Fagin's, and I agree.

I used my old Stratocaster on this, playing through my heavily modified Bassman 100 driving a JBL D130 doubled and panned left and right for the rhythm guitars, and used a Boss SD-1 through an old Voice of Music Hi Fi amp I rebuilt into a Tweed Champ circuit for the lead solo. That amp wasn't tweaked quite right when I recorded that solo and I should have rerecorded it after the amp was finished, but there it is.
 

Down To The Sea
This isn't the oldest song I've ever written, but it's certainly the oldest one I still play. I wrote this song in 1972, at age 16. I was coming of age as a guitarist, and I was learning more complex chords on my guitar and wanted to use them. I was soaking up all the musical influences I could get. Bands like Yes, King Crimson, and Jethro Tull were emerging,  writing long, complex musical pieces that were radically different from the blues rock and psychedelic of the time. We called it Art Rock back then instead of the modern term Progressive Rock. It was also a time of long, drawn out jams for bands like The Allman Brothers, Mountain, and Cream. My high school would get great bands for our high school dances and I remember one of them was a band called "Proud Flesh", from Ann Arbor. They were a two guitar rock band that played only original songs, and their songs were unlike the usual blues rock stuff that other bands played. It was Art Rock, played on rock guitars. I wanted to emulate that, and went home and came up with DTTS. It had complicated chords (At least for me, for the time), mystical, mysterious lyrics, and a long guitar solo. My first garage band with Tony D. and Bob C. played it for years.
I've since dredged it up a few times through the years and did so for Sound Cloud. The guys embraced it with enthusiasm and play it very well. The arrangement is essentially the same as it was all those years ago except for a chromatic climb down near the end.
I originally meant to record  this live in the studio with no overdubs, and we did that during the initial sessions. Later we decided to replace the keyboard part and lead vocal, but the guitar, bass, and drums are from the first take. 

I've always played this on a Stratocaster, and this is the only song on the CD where I used my stereo live rig: The Strat > EP-3 Echoplex > Boss SD-1 overdrive > Boss CE-3 stereo chorus > two cranked Traynor YBA1-A heads > Stereo 4x12. The SD-1 gets kicked in only in the beginning, and during the solo jam.
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