Pulse

Beautiful Thing

William Carlos Williams' Paterson: Episode 17 ("beat hell out of it, beautiful thing") is the inspiration for the title. However, my composition is really inspired by the small upstate town of Hudson, New York.

This little town on the banks of the Hudson River about a two hour train ride from New York City, is presently at 7000 people, but despite its small size Hudson has led a very out-sized life. From it's founding by Quakers in the late 17th century, a center of whaling activity, almost becoming the capitol of New York State (missed it by one vote), the 8th largest city in the US by 1790 (the 4th largest in NY as late as 1820), and famous in the late 19th and first half of the 20th century, as THE notorious center of vice, especially gambling and prostitution, in the Northeast. Described very colorfully in Bruce Edward Hall's book, Diamond Street: The Story of the Little Town with the Big Red Light District, those rackets were mostly broken up in 1951 after surprise raids of Hudson whorehouses by then-Attorney General Thomas Dewey and the State Police netted many people including several local policemen. After a serious decline in the 60s and 70s, Hudson, which boasts the "finest dictionary of American architecture in New York State," underwent a major revival with the renovation of many houses and buildings and now boasts a wonderfully active arts scene, many antique shops, art galleries, and restaurants.

Beautiful thing (she has no actual name, just this honorific), the protagonist of the William Carlos Williams' poem, is a woman "first beat up then molested in the course of a three-day drunken debauch." Despite her difficult life, she does possess a spirit which cannot be taken away from her and while reading the poem, I thought of many similarities between "Beautiful Thing" and an imagined prostitute early in Hudson's history. Proposing the idea to Joy, we worked together on a possible "story" of a young woman without many opportunities or choices, who despite having to sell herself is "waiting for a wonderful moment" that will lead her to her dream of the "great glittering world down the mighty river."

Joe

Pulse Composers Name Joy Askew Singer-Songwriter of the Year

    When Pulse first started to bandy about the idea of doing something with a singer songwriter I knew it was time to get professional help. I'm not talking about therapy- that will probably come later. No, I got in touch with my old friend and bandmate Lincoln Schleiffer; bass player and producer extraordinaire. He mentioned Joy right off the bat and said she would be wonderful if we could get her interested in the project. After checking out some of Joy's recorded music and also seeing her work with her own band it was clear that she is a great talent and would bring a lot to the collaboration. After the initial introductions we were all amazed when Joy showed up at one of our first meetings with reams of fabulous lyric ideas. Clearly, she was serious and had come to play.
    Now fast forward almost a year later and we are all putting the final touches on a new batch of music which I am very proud of. We (as in Joe) have put together a fantastic band and the rehearsals have been a treat as well as a great learning process. I'm looking forward to our first hit at Barbes on Friday and also excited about sending these pieces out into the world.

Water Paddle Criss-Cross

At our initial meeting with Joy Askew for the "Scenes From the Hudson" project I felt an easy and relaxed vibe from Joy; turns out we had a very similar musical tastes including a mutual interest in the iconic late-60's rock band Cream - she was a charter member of a fan club for the band while growing up in England and I (15 years after the fact) a Clapton wanna-be guitar player in growing up in Connecticut. 

As the instrumentation for our pulse project was finalized and a cello was on the final roster I thought about interesting rock music and cello tunes (aside from Eleanor Rigby) I knew of and thought about "As You Said" from Cream's final recording entitled "Wheels of Fire."  Even as a kid I always dug the cello under Jack Bruce's soaring vocal and cryptic lyrics ("Let's go back to where it's clean, to see what time it might have been" - what the F*&^ does that mean?)  I figured that in some form I'd draw on that sound for our pulse project.

As Joy and I met in May 2008 to start our collaboration we were focused on creating a back story to a character/mood she offered at the initial pulse meeting - a story of a "loner" Native American from the 17th century infatuated with the water and his canoe on the Hudson.  This to me sounded similar to Richard Bach's 1970 classic book Jonathan Livingston Seagull about a seagull ostracized by his flock for his desire to be different etc... (it was a nice book/story and served me well until Kenny Werner's Effortless Mastery came along!)  I began to think of our pulse project as Jonathan Livingston Native-American.

Our song came together quickly, we basically had the whole thing done in 90 minutes in terms of raw material.  Somehow we ended up with a 2-section Bossa Nova groove and chord changes straight out of the Jobim songbook!  Never know how things will turn out...

My primary role in the project was then to create an arrangement for the song; it was such a simple piece that I didn't want to get too crazy with it, but it needed to have a distinct shape and flow so as not to be just a "head-solos-head" tune. I was able to incorporate the "vocal-over-cello-thing" mentioned earlier along with Joy's ability to loop tracks of her voice in a solo section of the piece and kinda' went backwards from there, always cognizant of keeping the tune as "the tune" and not getting in thw way of its inherent simplicity.  Hope you like it!

Songs from the Hudson River

Songs from the Hudson River is our latest project and will have its debut performance on Friday February 13th from 8:00pm to 9:00pm at Barbes in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Barbes is a great place to have a beer (if that's your thing) and hear some great music; and if you know Barbes, you better get there early if you want a seat!

In honor of the Hudson River Quadricentennial Celebration going on throughout 2009, Songs from the Hudson River is a collaboration with the wonderful singer-songwriter Joy Askew.

Joy is an accomplished singer-songwriter who has performed with Peter Gabriel, Laurie Anderson, Joe Jackson, Jack Bruce and others. We are very excited to have Joy with us for this project.

All the compositions are inspired by historical, fictional, and contemporary life and communities on and around the Hudson River. From the Indian Point Nuclear Plant near Peekskill to the small upstate town, Hudson, formerly known as the "vice capital of the Northeast" to Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" each composer met with Joy individually to discuss the concept for their piece and various musical ideas. Then over a period of a few months Joy went to work crafting lyrics that the composers worked with to create their piece.

In addition to Barbes on February 13th, we will be performing a slightly expanded version of the project, with additional songs Joy wrote that are inspired by the Hudson River in SoHo at Roulette on Sunday March 22nd at 8:30pm and 2 hours north of NYC at the Hudson Opera House in Hudson, New York on Saturday May 30th at 8:00pm.

All the performances are with Joy and a 6-person Pulse ensemble featuring the outstanding musicians Dan Willis (woodwinds), Lis Rubard (horn), Julianne Carney (violin), Will Martina (cello), Dan Loomis (bass), and Diana Herold (percussion) in a dynamic melding of singer-songwriter and contemporary chamber music sensibilities.

We hope to see you at one (or more than one!) of the performances.

Joe