Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

philly music

Song of the Day: “If You Harden On The Inside” by Hezekiah Jones

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This post makes me absolutely giddy with joy: I’m debuting a song by my favorite band in Philly, who I also interviewed for this post, and if you buy it all the proceeds go straight to Women’s Law Project.

The song is “If You Harden On The Inside,” the first new tune from Hezekiah Jones since after their 2016 EP Har Har Har and a track on December’s Vilomahed project curated by Michele Lynn. You can get it for as little as $1, although I encourage you to donate more!

Hezekiah Jones is the folk collective formed by and around Philly-based songwriter Raphael Cutrufello. He pulls a peculiar double-duty while fronting the band, acting the entire time as Hezekiah, with each one of the band’s rotating cast of musicians presenting themselves as another fictional member of the Jones clan.

(My favorite: Dow Jones.)

That little touch of mythology goes a long way to contextualizing Cutrufello’s songwriting. When you hear Hezekiah Jones’ music, you have the profound sense that a weird band of back-country geniuses have briefly descended from their cloistered home on a hill to play for you, like a roving band of thespians in Shakespeare.

(It may be a hill in an alternate timeline.)

The songs are full of piercing observations on the human condition, always tinged with optimism. There’s also a smattering of details that place them in a vaguely post-apocalyptic landscape full of endless roiling wars and the Mississippi river expanded out to a sea.

Hezekiah Jones, photographed by Lisa Schaffer.

Hezekiah Jones, photographed by Lisa Schaffer.

“If You Harden On The Inside” could easily be a handclaps-and-harmony 60s pop song if it was dressed up with a full band arrangement. Instead, a whimsical chorus of Hezekiahs sings “blah blah blah” as backing to the track, later joined by a swell of electric pianos. As the song whirrs to life with its halting rhythm it gives serious vibes of Dirty Projectors.

Cutrufello AKA Jones plays everything on this track save for drums by Daniel Bower (AKA Roy G. Biv Jones) and bass by Philip D’Agostino (AKA Pepe Jones), a Philly music scene legend and touring member of Get The Led Out.

Half your saints
Are playing video games
Or they’re out doing meth
Or too depressed to get out of bed

All these bodies
What a delicate make
If you harden on the inside
You’ll be easy to break

If someone
Gave into love
Their guard would be down
We could steal all their stuff

That is the paradox of our human fragility in three stanzas, each repeated to make sure the message sinks in. [Read more…] about Song of the Day: “If You Harden On The Inside” by Hezekiah Jones

Filmstar at the NorthStar

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Waiting to go on with Filmstar at NorthStar Bar.

 

Since taking this photo we’ve begun watching the so-far awesome The Way Home, who played with Filmstar long before my joining two years ago. Three and four part harmony, awesome keyboard vibes, acoustic/electric mashup – pushing pretty much all my buttons.

We’re playing next, followed by our esteemed colleagues in Venice Sunlight.

break it and build it again

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I wasn’t allowed to sing for two weeks. It’s a story I’ll get around to telling once it stops freaking me out quite so much.

That meant no Arcati Crisis rehearsals. My singing is much less central to Filmstar, so we kept rehearsing sans my mic stand.

Right now we’re in pre- pre-production for our next recording. For our last one we started with recording drums to click tracks, and even if is taking me forever and ever to mix them into something listenable it was certainly worth the effort. Being able to steal sounds from any take and blend them together seamlessly was totally worth the tempo wrangling. Plus, everything is nice and consistent!

An outtake from our recent Filmstar photo shoot.

Unless you are playing the most obvious 1-2-3-4 rhythm on the planet, when you play to a click it is like the musical world you are creating from within has had its gravitational value altered. Songs feel too slow when you play them quietly and deliberately, but too fast at full blast. Syncopation puts your emphasis off-click, which feels like swimming against tide. You discover parts where you subtly speed up or slow down, and the seconds of discontinuity give you musical vertigo.

To that imbalance, this week we have returned my singing to the equation, but it’s different, too. Yes, I am more cautious of my high notes, but it’s more than that. My voice doesn’t have that worn-in groove that it usually has, where I can settle in and belt. I have to actually think about where I am placing my notes, and how I will support them.

Add to that a new set of strings on my bass and a handful of new effects pedals, and it really feels like I am playing these songs again for the first time, relearning my parts piece by piece.

What makes that so interesting is that these are the songs we learned after I joined the band. The pieces are mine. The parts came from my brain. Instead of fiddling with someone else’s bass line that doesn’t quite fit me to begin with, I am rebuilding each song from components of my own design.

It is totally different. I get to ask questions about my own musical logic. I am tearing down old rhythms and fingering for things that are more efficient or intricate, or both.

I know it is the same band of the same four people and these are songs I have been playing for a long time – two years, for some of them – but I can’t help it: it feels new to me.

The next Filmstar show is on Sunday, August 5th at NorthStar Bar, where we will have the pleasure of sharing the bill with the darling boys of Venice Sunlight.

You should come.

Photo Shoot with Filmstar

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Editor’s Note: This post was drafted on this date but not finished or published. I believe that at the time I was waiting for one of the photos from the shoot to add to it. I’ve retroactively published it as one of my last written accounts of Filmstar prior to the band dissolving in September of the same year.

Being in a band involves a lot of activities other than playing music – organizing cables, sending emails, promoting shows, and posing for photos, among many other administrative and hard labor tasks.

You might assume photo shoots are the most fun of all the non-music-playing options. I mean, who can argue with being glamorous and having a photographer follow you around for a day?

I’ll admit, that part is pretty fun. But as someone who occasionally manages photo shoots for a living, I know it’s not all lipgloss and striking a pose. There is a lot of organization that goes into a good photo shoot, and when it is lacking it the quality of your photos can become a matter of chance.

That whole diatribe is for another time.

On Saturday all of Filmstar convened at new drummer Brad’s house in Northern Liberties, along with longtime fan Jake (not Arcati Crisis Jake), who was our photographer for the day. I’ve resisted in appearing in band photos since I joined, as I’m still technically a contracted player and not a band member, but with half of the band from the prior photos gone I had to submit to finally stepping in front of the camera.

We started out in an underpass. I know – bands and their brick walls, fences, and urban decay. So tiresome. Except, this particular underpass was rife with colorful, artful graffiti – some of which was dedicated to the recently deceased artist Moebius. So, not your typical graffiti. We also lugged a massive old monitor cabinet with us from Brad’s house to sit on and pose around. A great shot can be just a single prop away.

After the underpass we were intent on finding some other picturesque NoLibs locations to shoot. We had a few favorite bars in mind, but hadn’t had a chance to call ahead and ask for permission.

We walked towards Girard Avenue, debating the best approaches to springing a photo shoot on an unexpecting bartender, when we passed a fantastical wonderland of vintage lighting. It was a lighting fixture warehouse, whose massive load-in ramp was marked with a felled art deco lighting fixture that was flanked with high-backed chairs bearing decommissioned chandeliers.

Glam Decay. The perfect playground for Filmstar.

It turned out that the shop’s owner was a former owner of JC Dobbs from its 80s heyday. You find these sorts of connections all around Philly. He regaled us with stories of a young Kurt Cobain and renting light fixtures to Angelina Jolie movies while we scouted his shop for interesting photos. Well, I mean, the whole place was interesting photos, but we were trying to find one that we would look good standing in.

Feeling quite ingenious and victorious after our impromptu location, we headed into the bars and did what any intrepid band of beer-appreciators would do in that situation – we turned our photo shoot into a bar crawl. In an effort to not have to ask awkward questions about photography, we simply ordered a round of beers at each one.

This had the added bonus of loosening us up a bit. Not that we weren’t loose and gorgeous in our pictures already.

she’s gone home

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Tonight we held our second Filmstar rehearsal sans drums, as we are now without Zina aside from a few wrap up recordings and gigs.

It is weird. This is the first time I’ve ever been a party to a change in band members. I keep thinking of all these little things, like friends of ours who never got to see us with Zina, or the fun riff we do together in “Weight of the World.”

Would a new drummer do the riff just like Zina does it? I made sure to do all of the old bass player’s riffs verbatim until I had a chance to ask about changing them, or feel that they could change.

I really like that riff, though.

I joined Filmstar as a unit of Glenn, Elise, and Zina, and I purposefully held myself apart from the unit. It was Filmstar, with Peter on bass. I didn’t want to be billed any higher than that, I tried not to vote on any official band business, and I fought to avoid appearing in photos. It was their band – I was just a hired gun.

I don’t know what I am now. Tonight Glenn and E talked about things that make us worth drumming with, and things we’re looking for in a drummer. At this point “I” am implicit in the “we.” I mean, am I really going to hold myself apart form having a say in my new partner in the rhythm section?

Ultimately it’s Glenn’s band and E’s voice, and whether I get a permanent vote on anything or not I’m there to support that and to try to help them execute their vision. That’s what I would want a supporting member of Arcati Crisis to do for me and Gina.

I don’t know if I would understand how to lead Arcati Crisis as a band without being a follower in Filmstar. I wouldn’t be as good of a contributor to Filmstar if I didn’t have the experience of needing others to contribute to my and Gina’s vision for Arcati Crisis.

I think somewhere in the midst of all that I stopped being able to claim that I don’t have a clue about what it takes to be in a rock band.

Do you know any good drummers?