Alma Drake met John, Jake and Slim (aka Kodiak Flats) at the Stone City General Store in 2011. Within weeks, they were gigging together, and about a year later, the idea for this record was conceived. High energy, euphoric, original music is best played with good friends. Enjoy!
Alma Drake: fiddle, DADGAD guitar, vocals
John Waite: lead guitar, backing vocals
Jake Niederhauser: rhythm guitar, djembe
Jim Leland: bass
Dustin Busch: slide guitar, mandolin
Pete Becker: backing vocals, All The Other Things
Every once in a while, you find a piece of the world-puzzle that allows you to make sense of an entire swath of being. Something miraculous happens and magic becomes. For me, meeting John, Jake and Slim–and soon after that meeting Pete and Dustin–was that puzzle piece. Things happened at warp speed, and like molasses, but everything that happened was right. We made this record. We became a family.
This record opens with a track that may raise a few eyebrows. Let me tell you the story. It was the last track we recorded, at the end of a euphorically grueling day, recording all the rhythm tracks for the seven songs that the entire band plays on. We were punch-drunk, and exhaustion–as it so often does–turned into giddiness. 100 Miles, which we saved for last because it was the one we always breezed through effortlessly every rehearsal, was giving us the first real trouble of the entire day. Nothing went right. Eyes played tricks with the charts – which were, admittedly, incredibly complicated. I wrote the tune in DADGAD, but John and Jake were playing it in standard, John capo’d at the fifth fret, playing out of C, and Jake at the third fret playing out of D. Slim dropped the E on his bass to a D, meaning he had to mentally adjust to a different tuning than what he was used to. The recording you’re hearing as you listen to this record is the last take of the entire day. Take after take, we lost it, and we were all starting to feel like it was never going to end. Oh well, time for one more try. And John’s fingers tangled in on themselves for the intro, and yes, he swore at himself, and we all laughed. But then, something clicked, and magic happened. Flawless, perfect, raw, wild magic. What you hear at the end of the track is us blowing off all the steam of the day, nearly falling over laughing, relieved, thrilled. It was meant to be a fade out, be we couldn’t bear to lose that moment. The lead vocal you are hearing is the scratch vocal I sang a few minutes later, almost as an afterthought, but again, the moment was so right, it stuck.
Never had any of us experienced such a moment, and we had it captured. What you get to hear is one of the definitive Auntie and Nephews moments of all time. The laughter, the joy, the bliss and frustration and the highest euphoria possible, that’s your average gig with this band. So welcome to my world. These are my Nephews. Stick around and you might just end up one of the family, too.
Bright blessings,
Aunt G
“….and I’m going to need a lot of bowing in the key of C.”
We sat down in a living room scene with our instruments ready. Alma handed out charts to Jake, John, and me. Capos in different places, discussions on rhythm, and questions of patterns filled many evenings. Notes started falling into place. Notes were scrawled on paper. Whiskey-soaked orchestrations were becoming music under the kind direction of our Auntie. Soon, we were having conversations without words across the room from one another. It was time to put this on wax.
Wires connected us to the sound board. Pete gave us a thumbs up, and Alma counted off. Nope. Try it again. A lot of takes, a few keepers, and mounting frustration were abound, but we pressed on. “Did we get it?” “Yes!” Yeah, we got it. This record has been an education for me. It’s been a joy and a headache. It’s a work of art, it is. Pure and simple. You get to hear a bit of genius and a woman’s soul.
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