The making of jamboree by beat happening - featuring calvin johnson, heather lewis, bret lunsford, steve fisk and gary lee conner

Intro:

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim. 

Beat Happening formed in Olympia, Washington in 1983 by Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis and Bret Lunsford. The three of them had met while attending the Evergreen State College in Olympia and by this point, Calvin had already started his label, K. They released the “Our Secret” single in 1984 with two cassette EPs following later that year. Their self-titled debut album was released in 1985. In 1987, Beat Happening recorded a joint EP with Screaming Trees before turning their attention to their second album. Jamboree was eventually released in 1988. 

In this episode, for the 35th anniversary, Calvin Johnson, Heather Lewis, Bret Lunsford and producers, Steve Fisk and Gary Lee Conner, reflect on how the album came together. This is the making of Jamboree. 

Heather Lewis: I'm Heather and I am a member of Beat Happening. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, just a sort of side note, but I've never considered myself a musician. And so when people now talk to me like, “Well, you're a musician,” and “oh, do you miss playing the drums?” And I'm like, “No, I am not a musician in any way.” But at no time was I like, “I want to work to be a better drummer” (laughs). And you know, like I listen to our songs now and I mean, I appreciate our music, but I don't listen to our music and I've never listened to our music and I don't listen to bands that sound like us (laughs). You know what I mean? Like, musically, it's not what I was doing. I think what, well now in retrospect, it's like, it was like this little revolution. We were banging on a door, you know what I mean? Like every show was banging on a door. It was very hard until, pretty much until the very end. Then people were like opening the door. But in the beginning it was always banging on the door. And I think that when we got to, you know, doing Jamboree, it was like, “Okay, people are hearing the knocking.” You know what I mean? “Okay so maybe we should keep banging.”

Bret Lunsford: My name is Bret Lunsford and I'm excited to talk about this Beat Happening album, Jamboree. 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah. I'm Calvin Johnson and like Heather and Bret, I'm a member of Beat Happening.

Bret Lunsford: One of the things, when I think about that period between ‘84 and ‘87 was there was a lot of space in time between the first album and the second album. And the second album through to the rest of the albums were like a different chapter in the band. And the first record and those years around that first record were a prelude to that active phase that began with Jamboree. 

Heather Lewis: At first we didn't know what we were, right? We were like starting a band and we put out a record and then it was like, “Oh okay, well now we're out there.” Like, because before we put out the first record, no one really knew who we were. 

Bret Lunsford: And yes, we had been very active, the three of us, in 1987 in live shows. But it was interesting and I guess somewhat prompted by Rough Trade US having an interest in releasing the next record. There's a way in which I feel like Jamboree was a reinvention of the band from the recording sessions, the very recording sessions for the first record. 

Calvin Johnson: Well, the album was recorded in the summer of ‘87. We had been doing shows that year. We started the year in January doing a bunch, a series of shows with Girl Trouble and Screaming Trees around the Northwest. Steve Fisk was living in Ellensburg and he was working at the studio and he said, “Why don't you guys come record here?” I'd gone there a couple times to record other things, to mix tapes, and he also was duplicating on my tapes for K.  So I'd already had a relationship with the studio and had visited it, but then it was like, “Oh, we should record there.”

Bret Lunsford: In the other recordings we'd done, it had the feeling of, “Well, let's try to stretch this afternoon and get as much as we can accomplish in this one afternoon.” And that was a recording session. So to have a multi-day opportunity where we were like, “Oh, well we've got all of this time.” It seemed like, well, it was, you know, ten times as much, five times as much time to devote to it, and we weren't in a hurry to get onto something else. We were kind of, I guess, keeping our creative minds open for this extended period of time and living where we were working for that piece of time. So that was a, I think it provided some real opportunities to explore things at a different pace and a different depth than the prior sessions. 

Heather Lewis: It was also the first time that we could see free videos. Because the Conners worked at the video stores, going over there meant that we could like go into the video store and pick out whatever movie we wanted for free and then all hang around and watch it, which was what we would do after we finished. I feel like we watched a lot of Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. You know, like to be able to watch a movie without going to a movie theater and paying money. That was a big deal. 

Calvin Johnson: Another thing that was different between this recording session, which was in August in Ellensburg and other sessions for the first album, which were not in August, was that the studio was nice. It was a nice place to be, it was a nice environment, it was clean. But it was not freezing cold. I think that's the important factor. The Greg Sage sessions were both in places that didn't really have heat and they were done in the fall or winter where it was cold. And so not being cold while recording was, I think, an important factor. I don’t know if you guys remember that or you agree or whatever, but that seemed pretty, that seemed very significant to me. That difference. 

Heather Lewis: I think it was part of the whole package, like going into that place was like, “Oh my God, wow, this is like this recording studio and it has a place to sleep and we get to go stay, look at free videos!” You know, like everything was like magical about it and comfortable. 

Calvin Johnson: When we worked with Greg, we did all the vocals afterwards and that was a problem because, for instance, the song, “Our Secret” was really all about half as long as it was supposed to be. Because it's basically the same music all the way through, it doesn't change. It's the same three notes over and over again, all the way through. And so they were like, “Okay, let us know when it's long enough.” And I hadn't really done that before and I was like, “Oh that seems long enough.” But it wasn't, it was like half as long as it was supposed to be. So I felt like we should do the vocals at the same time, it would be better. And it was possible because when we worked with Greg, we were in very primitive situations where there wasn't more than one room at the Velvetone studio, there were various rooms. We had things set up in different rooms. And I was able to sing most of the songs from a separate booth. I can't remember exactly, but I think a lot of the takes from the original recordings were used on the album. 

Heather Lewis: I got excited that we were like, cause it was like rock and roll and you know, so I think that was when that was like emerging. Like, Oh wow, we can…” What I mean is it was kind of like, we were kind of a band then.

Steve Fisk: My name is Steve Fisk and I recorded the Jamboree record. Calvin and I were both volunteers. At KAOS Radio in Olympia, Washington, which was a community access radio station that was on the campus of the Evergreen State College. Having a 15 year old DJ at the station was a big deal for us because we went out of our way to service the entire Olympia community. So Calvin was kind of legendary at the station, and I was warned that he was a weirdo, but he was a nice guy and I just had to get past it. After I graduated, I went to San Francisco and joined Pell Mell, and when Pell Mell broke up, I moved to Ellensburg and I started recording the Screaming Trees. And at this point, the K record company was up and running and they actually were instrumental in helping us distribute the first cassette that the Screaming Trees put out, Other Worlds. And oddly enough, Calvin knew the Screaming Trees because he had lived in Ellensburg when he was younger. So when I mentioned Calvin Johnson, there was this little glimmer of recognition from Lanegan and Van. “You mean that little guy that used to crash his bicycle into the bike racks in front of the record store?” And I went, “What?” And he said they had chicken fights apparently when Calvin was like 10 or 11, where people would charge at each other on stingray bikes or something like that. But they couldn't believe that he was grown up and had a band. I said, “Oh yeah, no, he’s got a band, he's got a voice, he's got a sound.” And then obviously they went on to make that wonderful record together and they played shows together and played together in Ellensburg and other cities. 

Gary Lee Conner: This is Gary Lee Conner and I used to be in the Screaming Trees and I co-produced the Jamboree album. 1985 when we had done our Other Worlds cassette. Steve's like, “Oh, I know this guy. You know, Calvin is K Cassettes in Olympia and he can help you guys. You know, he didn't put it on K, but he helped us distribute it. So that was the first I heard him and I was like, “Boy, I remember that name. That's weird. I remember this guy in junior high named Calvin Johnson.” It was this little guy who, the only thing I remember was that he had pulled a fire alarm, like a fake fire drill, and everyone had to leave the building one time. It was like seventh grade or something like that. He lived in Ellensburg like in seventh and eighth grade, and then he moved off to Olympia. But then in the summer in 1986, we did our first show in Olympia and he helped set it up so he was there and I was like, “Whoa, it is, it's the same guy!” (laughs). And so, you know, so we kind of hit it off right away because of that. And then I mean we had, you know, really two years, ‘86, ‘87 and probably ‘88 too. We had a lot in common with Beat Happening. We played a lot of shows with them. We did shows, several shows with Girl Trouble, Beat Happening and us in kind of more like Bellingham, Anacortes, but you know, outside of Seattle. And it was like, cause that the whole thing was like with Beat Happening and even bands like Nirvana and the Melvins and all those bands, they were all outside of Seattle, but outside of Seattle there was a whole other music scene, you know, and Beat Happening was a big part of that. And we became part of that too, being like outsiders. And then eventually we got together and did that Screaming Trees Beat Happening EP and they came over to Ellensburg one night, we stayed there all night long. That was a lot of fun. We stayed up till 6:30 in the morning and finished it. 

Calvin Johnson: We recorded the Screaming Trees record in July of that year. But it was not at, it was not at Velvetone. It was at the Screaming Trees practice space. 

Bret Lunsford: Well, Steve wasn't a part of the recording of the Beat Happening Screaming Trees EP as I recall. That was just kind of like a get together in the back room of a video store where Screaming Trees had their practice space set up and hangout space. And we did the recording there, just the bands working on it. Who would you say it was who engineered? Cause I certainly know I had nothing to do with the recording. 

Calvin Johsnon: Well, it was Lee. Lee Conner was engineer. He had a cassette recording machine. I think it was a cassette 4-track that we used. 

Heather Lewis: And I think we did it, didn’t we do it in one night? Day? 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah. 

Heather Lewis: Well, now that you say that the Screaming Trees thing was before, it seems like one thing was that we were like a band and we knew them from playing shows, you know, like we were starting to have relationships with other bands. 

Steve Fisk: And yeah, that all happened by themselves. I couldn't believe it happened, frankly. It speaks to how worldly the Screaming Trees were at the time, where they could see a record could happen between this set of people. And yeah even cranky old Mark Lanegan, you know, that just disappeared. You know, he did beautiful work with Beat Happening and vice versa. 

Gary Lee Conner: You know, our earlier music probably had a lot more in common than later. I mean, it seems later, you know, like in the nineties stuff with all the drug addled hard rock and Seattle grunge, all that stuff. It does seem kind of weird, but you know, we were totally, you know, kindred spirits. Like just, it was the whole do it yourself attitude thing, you know. And we would've never got into being a real band if we hadn't have realized that you could do it yourself. I read an article right before we went down to record Other Worlds by Geza X. It was in Spin Magazine about like, “Don't wait around for a major label if you're a band, just do it yourself.” And we took that to heart and you know, they were the same way. So we were definitely similar in that respect. 

Steve Fisk: And I don't know how the Screaming Trees ended up co-producing Jamboree, but considering all of the fights and shit we went through making Screaming Trees records, it was very easy to work with Mark and Lee on this. Those two guys worked great together as Beat Happening producers. I'm trying to think about what ideas they had, if any. I think they were there more to approve things. As someone who's produced many records, having somebody that the artist trusts and says, “No, that's a good take.”

Gary Lee Conner: I think they just thought, “We were coming to Ellensburg to do it, so it'd be cool to have you guys be around and just kind of advise and stuff.” And yeah I don't remember what we did too much except standing around playing a few things, you know. That was like, kind of being around, kind of changed the vibe of the whole thing, you know, cause we were all friends and stuff and just having a good time.

Heather Lewis: Yeah I mean, what I do remember is just having other voices in the room, you know, opinions and input. 

Bret Lunsford: They created a space of reverence for the whole project and the value of what we were doing. They were willing to be there, investing time in it. Like, “Gosh, they must care because they're hanging out here. Maybe they don't have anything else better to do.”

Calvin Johnson: That's possible.

Bret Lunsford: (laughs) They were there and they cared and that always meant something to me. And I don't remember any suggestions on their part.

Calvin Johnson: Oh. But he also, Lee also did a lot with the guitars, just adjusting the amps and things for different songs. I remember that he would come out and just sort of do his magic a little bit. 

Bret Lunsford: Yeah and always in a really considerate way. Like he would never be the condescending sound guy, guitar tech. Really just helpful suggestions in a very friendly way and not meaning to, like always willing for us to say, “Oh, we don't want to do it that way.” You know, just really humble suggestions and quite often really good ones. 

Calvin Johnson: Because he'd seen us play the songs a lot, so he had ideas what he thought would be best for that song. 

Bret Lunsford: I do remember maybe that there was some back and forth arguing between Steve and Lee and Mark, but I always just interpret that as like, just for the fun of it, more than substantive problems.

Calvin Johnson: At that point, Lee and Mark and Steve, it was more like sibling rivalry or something. They were just bickering about stupid stuff all the time. But yeah, that first day when we were doing all the basic tracks on this, like “Bewitched” and “Crashing Through” and stuff and just looking up in the booth and seeing Steve and Mark and Lee and Steve and I just remember after “Bewitched” and both Mark and Lee were just laughing and just, it was like, “Yeah, you did it!” It was kind of exciting. They were like, “That was it. You did it.”

“Bewitched” 

Bret Lunsford: I was listening to the record yesterday and it made me wonder what guitar we were using. Calvin, did we still have the Silvertone? Did we record this with the Silvertone? 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah. Yeah that was there. But I think, I have a vague memory that we didn't do a lot of recording with our own guitar. I think we, in both sessions, we used other guitars. But we might have, I feel like we used, maybe Lee brought a guitar that we used mostly. 

Bret Lunsford: This is so funny and it's illustrative of how much we are music tech people. Calvin certainly has technical ability, but I'm often baffled by the way that people develop, say a guitar sound, consciously. We had one pedal, one effect that was a distortion pedal, and I don't even remember what brand it was. I remember the color of this basic pedal, which seemingly just had an on and off button, and it was kind of a butterscotch color. Calvin, do you remember what that, what that was? 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah, that was my brother's MXR distortion pedal that Streator lent us for several years, and then finally he wanted it back, so I had to give it back to him. And then I tried to find one. I think I eventually did find one, but you ended up using that, if you remember. But we toured with a band called Heavenly at one point and Peter Momtchiloff from Heavenly had, when he got to the United States, he bought this little compressor pedal for his tour. And at the end of the tour he was like, “Do you guys want this?” And Bret had been using it on tour and he really liked it cause it made a distortion sound. So we used that as our distortion pedal after that. But that was after Jamboree. 

Heather Lewis: I didn't even know we had a distortion pedal. 

Calvin Johnson: Well we didn't, Streator had one. 

Heather Lewis: The yellow thing sounds familiar though, but I guess I'd never really thought about it. I don't think I ever used it. 

Gary Lee Conner: You know, nowadays it makes me laugh. Like people are asking about all these, like “What did you use on this?” And it was like, you know, what we used was what was there or what's cheap or what, you know it wasn't like, “I'm looking for all these like pedals and amps that cost like $50,000 and I'll choose this one.” It wasn't that at all. It's like, you know, whatever you could get at a pawn shop or at a music store for cheap and you know, so as far as that goes, you know, we were definitely similar. 

Calvin Johnson: But I feel like that song was more like, Heather had a guitar part on a song called “I Love You,” that was really rock and roll. And I always really appreciated how simple it was, yet it sounded very powerful. And so that song, her playing on that song inspired me a lot to try to make a song like that, but I never was able to because it's so unique and perfect. 

Heather Lewis: I loved that song, “I Love You.” 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah. Worked out really well. 

Heather Lewis: I really love Calvin's rock and roll songs, and I always really liked that song, I don't know why we chose to put it first. 

Calvin Johnson: My brother had that guitar pedal that I borrowed, and so I think I was just playing around with that. And then Bret had been working at this place called Gesco in Olympia. It was like a venue and a performance space and a meeting space. They had lots of different events there, but Bret and one of the people, he and Denise and another friend of theirs started that space. And I remember just standing at that space, watching artists, people perform music. And that song, just the words sort of started to develop just from standing around Gesco and watching other artists play music. I think I remembered just thinking, “That would be a good song.”

“In Between”

Steve Fisk: I understood that they were making a heavier record than what they'd done before. By not having a bass player, you could turn the kick drum up as loud as you wanted to, and that became part of the Beat Happening sound immediately. So there was a gigantic kick drum in this not very aggressive music. They were pretend casual because it really wasn't casual, everybody really, really cared about what they were doing and kind of brought their A game. They weren't, you know, lackadaisical college students or anything like that. People don't know about the Supreme Cool Beings, and that was a very good band in Olympia, Washington that predates the Cool Rays. And Heather played drums in that band and she played normal rock drums. And everybody gets all, you know, whatever about the Beat Happening drum sound and all the repetition and, “Oh, my kid could play that.” You know, things where they don't really understand that playing something simple for three minutes or five minutes is hard to do. And being steady and simple is very hard to do. Just wanted to say, while I've got the ear of the Beat Happening world. Heather was a great drummer before she was ever in Beat Happening. She wasn't learning how to play drums in Beat Happening. She knew what she was doing and she would tell you she wasn't and that she didn't know what she was doing. But she really, the Supreme Cool Beings rocked and there's a cassette. It might still be in print on K of the Supreme Cool Beings and its a live set. And you can hear Heather with a full drum kit just banging, you know. She sounds really good. Full confession. I did not listen to the yellow record that much, the first record. I mean, I had it, it was in the studio, I thought it was really cool. But for me, that was in context of the Cool Rays. It was just another Calvin record. It wasn't the beginnings of Beat Happening. There was more Heather all over it. That's what I keep remembering was that the Heather presence, her vocal was, I don't know if there were more songs, but that was one of the things I liked about the record was hearing kind of her voice be a bigger piece of this. 

Heather Lewis: I love Calvin's songs and I think Calvin's a fabulous songwriter. 

Calvin Johnson: Thank you. 

Heather Lewis: But I've never, so any song that I've ever like pulled up out of me was very difficult. And that's why there's not many of them (laughs). 

I would say that I was never excited. I would say that I was always the one that was the reluctant, had to be convinced to keep going, person. Songwriting, I felt like I was obligated to produce something to justify my existence at that time. Like that was the only way I knew how to justify my existence in the world. It was like something that maybe like the first time that I felt seen, so it was like, “Okay,” and it seemed like, “I'm gonna go with this.”

It's interesting cause now my parents are both gone and I still think about when they met, you know what I mean? Like somehow you have this sense of your ancestry, you carry your ancestral story. You know, it really just, to me, it sounds a lot like where my head was at at that time. I mean, I was profoundly lost. Between childhood and adulthood. Just really lost  in this place, you know, that's what it's about.

Gary Lee Conner: Beat Happening, like their whole sound was like an innocent thing with a little bit of, there was every once in a while it was a little bit of weird, like adult stuff (laughs). You know, it wasn't really kids, but they always reminded me of like, you know, Peanuts or something. Like if the Peanuts guys had like, when they were teenagers, had a band, they would've been Beat Happening. I could always see that, or the part in the Christmas special when they're all dancing, that always just reminds me of Beat Happening so much, you know. Because that was a vibe. It was like, you know, this really cool, innocent music thing and it was nothing, you know, nobody was really, at that point, nobody was really on drugs. You know, people probably smoked pot once in a while or something, but there was no heavy drugs or anything like that. It was just pretty innocent. We were all pretty young.

“Indian Summer”

Calvin Johnson: There was a version of “Indian Summer” that was written on the bus that was probably three years earlier, and then I was walking home and I forgot the whole song by the time I got home, except the title. But then a couple years later, in fact, I know exactly what day it was because there's a poster here. Let me look here. We played a show with the Screaming Trees and Girl Trouble at the Capitol Lake Park in Olympia. And that was on August 8th, 1987. So that was after we had recorded the Beat Happening Screaming Trees record like two weeks after. But a couple days before that, on Tuesday or Wednesday of that week is when that song, I just woke up and I suddenly just, “Oh, that, oh, okay, Indian Summer, okay.” And it just came out. And then I was like, “Okay, well that song's been pretty good.” So I had a rule that if I write a good song, I don't have to do anything else that day. So I went swimming. And then on Friday when we got together to practice for the show, the next day, the show in the park, I said, “Oh, here's this new song. I don't really know the music for it, but here, just play these two notes over and over again and that'll be fine for the show tomorrow and then we can figure out this music later.” But then two weeks later, we recorded the song for the album and it was just, that was it. 

Bret Lunsford: I remember it being new, feeling very new in the studio that we had been playing a number of shows earlier in the year. So I feel like some of the songs we'd had a chance to work out live, which is always, you know, things can, are more, a little more developed then. And this one was just completely fresh, which is also a nice approach sometimes to have in the studio where we, where you're getting the feeling of the song's invention while it's being recorded and that excitement comes through.

Was it an electric 12 string that the Trees had over at the studio?  

Calvin Johnson: Maybe. I don't remember. 

Heather Lewis: I didn't have my electric 12 string or whatever. It's all part of the mystery. 

Steve Fisk: I had an old Moserite 12 string that I used to use on a lot of Trees stuff. But that thing, there's no way it could have sounded like that, cause that it was like one of those, like, you could hardly play it, it was so hard to play. Like you gotta fight the guitar to play it type of thing. 

Steve Fisk: I had possession of Bill Owen's guitars. Bill Owen was the guitar player in Pell Mell. And the old Pell Mell sound is based on Moserites. And a Moserite guitar, that's the sound of the Ventures and other notable places, it’s not like a Fender or a Gibson. It's kind of a weird off brand and Pell Mell barely used the 12 string cause it was so hard to to tune and it was always falling out of tune. The guitar was kind of in crappy shape, so when Beat Happening, picked it up and wanted to use it, I was like, first off, like, “Wow, this'll be cool.” And then second off, “Indian Summer” doesn't really change. It only plays in one chord all the way through. So it wasn't hard to make the guitar work if it was only gonna play one chord. And yeah, the minute that sound happened, it sounded gigantic. It sounded huge. It was like, “Wow, this does not sound like the rest of the record.” Is that the most melodic song on the record? It might be. 

Gary Lee Conner: That's probably one of my favorite songs ever. And it doesn't say on the record that I play, I played the acoustic guitar part. And so every time I hear it I'm like, “I can't believe I played on that, cause it's like one of the coolest songs ever.” It was so easy too (sings melody) “da da da,” over and over again. It is really hypnotic. 

Calvin Johnson: What I like about it is that it's the same three notes as “Our Secret.” And basically they're both songs where the music never changes and it just goes on and on. And I like that. I like that. “Bewitched” is the same. Just the same three notes over and over again. No change. 

Heather Lewis: I mean, I always loved the song. Because I'm not a guitar player, it was always a little bit hard for me to like make sure I didn't miss those two notes, you know, and get through the song. But yeah, I always loved the song. I never quite saw it like why that's the song that like so many people would like associate with Beat Happening. 

Bret Lunsford: I remember just the simple drumming, the hypnotic guitar and the way that Calvin's lyrics told such an evocative story that really had a timelessness from the start. And I think that's what appeals to people.

Gary Lee Conner: I think it's just a great song. And the part about Martin Way, which is a street in Olympia. That's the first street you come to, Martin Way, when you're coming from Seattle or Ellensburg. And it really captures the idea of what everything was like in the music scene back then. That was like what it was, you know, if you want to like get an idea of what the whole Beat Happening/Olympia scene was like that's it in a, you know, just this innocent, beautiful time when people are just having fun and not caring about viruses (laughs) or wars or anything like that, right? You know, I mean that's a lot of, when you're young, that's a lot of the way people experience being young. But that was, you know, for us, it included music, which was really cool. And that song really kind of just like brings back that memory for me, I think.

Gary Lee Conner: They always had that, you know, it's like this innocent thing, but wait, you're not innocent. It's like the loss, suddenly it's not quite as innocent as you thought. He's always got this evil side too, in all the lyrics. You know, there's this, it's like the kids singing and then suddenly something about Satan or you know, like sexual references or something like that that come up.

“Hangman” 

Bret Lunsford: It wasn't too often that we went over and over and over different versions of the songs. I think that, personally speaking, I just loved the freshness of a great take and the enthusiasm we had for it and, and maybe historically looking back at it, you say, well, maybe we could have rerecorded this and tried this or that. And I think we had more of a sense of that option in later sessions. But to get to something that caught the spirit of it. In the Jamboree sessions, we would feel like, “Okay, we got a good take and let's go on to the next one.” 

Heather Lewis: I mean, I think that it wasn't like, “Oh wait, let's try that again or I think I can do it better” (laughs). 

Calvin Johnson: Well, that's certainly true about this particular song. We've only played this song live maybe two or three times, and it never really worked. And I think the problem was that, I wasn't able to sing, what they say, “on key.” And somehow the song, we did it one time and it worked and that was it, and it happened to be recorded and that was amazing. And it was like, “We're not gonna do it again because there's no way we're gonna be able to do this again.” I think we tried to play it on tour after that, but it just didn't work like maybe once or twice. But I couldn't quite get into the place where the song was and it sort of fell apart live. So fortunately, Steve was able to capture that.

Bret Lunsford: The issue with the string getting caught on a pickup screw happened on “Hangman” and being inordinately proud of my ability to, while playing the song, get the string off the screw was the lasting memory, for no good reason. But you can still hear that in the song. Again, you know, you can hear a lot of use of the distortion pedal (laughs). It's another Calvin song in terms of both the lyrics and the guitar part. 

Calvin Johnson: That song in particular, when I lived in Ellensburg as a child, I used to be really into comic books and there was a Marvel Comics, there was a couple series like Where Monsters Dwell and Journey Into Fear, a couple other ones, I can't remember. But they were comic books that were reprints of fifties comic books. So they had all these stories from the fifties, and one of them was this story about a hangman who had been in a long line of hangmen. His father and his grandfather had been hangmen. And then he was just like, “You know what, I don't want to be the hangman anymore.” And he decided he wanted to quit and do something else with his life and he just didn't want his kid to become the hangman. And so he quit. But somehow, I can't remember the story exactly, but the king was really upset that he quit. So he ended up getting arrested and all this, and I can't remember if he'd done something bad or I don't remember, but in the end, he ended up having to get executed for his crimes. And his execution was the first execution of the new hangman who happened to be his son. And that story, it was like, “Oh, that's a great story.” So that's what I based that song on.

See there's some irony there. He wanted to make it so that his son wouldn't be the hangman, so he quit. But then in doing so, he ended up causing his son to be, not only be the hangman, but to kill him. 

Heather Lewis: (laughs) It’s deep. 

“Jamboree” 

Steve Fisk: “Jamboree,” that was their idea. They went out on the balcony cause there was a second floor balcony of the studio. And then they were like, “Hey Steve, we wanna do this one on the balcony.”

Calvin Johnson: He preferred that we were not in the same area as him because we had some pretty extreme body odor that he objected to.

Bret Lunsford: I don't remember that at all, Calvin. 

Heather Lewis: No one wanted to say anything, Bret, but…

Bret Lunsford: But it should be said that Calvin and Steve were old friends, so this might be an inside joke of theirs that he's wanting to rekindle. 

Steve Fisk: You know, it was Calvin. There weren't a lot of surprises with Calvin at this point. I think that's the record where he ate green peppers and had a lamb hat on the whole time. It was like a character he adopted. I'm pretty sure this was the record, but it was a gray hat and it had like flaps to predict your ears, but the whole thing was colored like a sheep and he would periodically go, “baa.” Which Calvin can really do a good sheep with that crazy voice of his. And he ate green peppers, which was the only thing that stank was the control room stank of Calvin eating these raw green peppers.

Calvin Johnson: Bret and Heather and I, we went outside onto the balcony. There was a, I guess it was, maybe it was a fire escape from the studio. And the thing is that it's in Ellensburg. It's in a place that's like the industrial part of Ellensburg. Ellensburg is a town of maybe 12 or 15,000 people, but it does have an industrial district. There's a Shockey's slaughter yard, you know, cattle yard. There's several agricultural processing plants there. Lanegan talks about working at the carrot processing plant and…

Heather Lewis: The blood running down the streets. 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah, just blood running down the streets. So we were out there in the evening. It was, you know, probably 10 o'clock at night, but it was still, these carrot processing plants run 24 hours so they were going. So that's what you hear in the background is this industrial hum of agricultural processing. 

Gary Lee Conner: The studio was down by the train station at the end of Third Street. It was, you know, a pretty deserted area. There was like, Twin City Foods, there might have been some background noise of like Twin City Foods too, because it's like they process, you know, vegetables and stuff like that they bring up from the fields. And there's also always some kind of like whining noise in the background, especially at night. It's kind of creepy, you know, and there's not very many people around.

He's a great performer. You know, I mean, he can get out there and just his voice has this real power to it, even though it's kind of like not quite in tune, kind of like, you know weird, but it is just like he's got this power to back up whatever he is doing. Even if it's slightly dissonant at times, you know, and it's just his thing and it's really cool. A lot of people couldn't pull off to a cappella. 

Bret Lunsford: One of the approaches of the band, I believe, is wanting what's best for the song and also being open to simple approaches that less is more. Sometimes a song doesn't need embellishment to be its best form. And so I think that being conscious of not adding things just to add them was in my mind about our creative process. And I love the bravery that is a part of the a cappella songs. That was very impressive to me, at a point especially that I wasn't singing in any form and afraid of the thought of singing. That the ability that Calvin and Heather had the courage to have just their voices be what an audience was hearing was a powerful moment whenever it happened.

“Ask Me”

Heather Lewis: Well, I remember it's very difficult to perform live (laughs).  I mean, for me, singing a cappella live was really difficult. So I don't think we did it very much. I don't think I sang this song very often. Yeah I don't know what to say about it, but I mean, I wrote it and we recorded it and then it kind of went out of my head cause we didn't play it much. Where did Rich (Jensen) record it?

Bret Lunsford: Corvallis, wasn't it at the Olde World Deli? Which is a college town restaurant. 

Heather Lewis: Right. Right. 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah. Corvallis, Oregon. Yep. 

Heather Lewis: Did we ever play it again?

Calvin Johnson: Yeah. We've played it many times.

Heather Lewis: (laughs). All right. 

Bret Lunsford: I would say that a lot of the touring that we did had a feeling of a family vacation. When people think about a rock and roll tour, they might jump to illusions about music venues that weren't a part of the early experiences of a lot of what we did, which seemed like it was offbeat venues and galleries and house parties. Really improvised settings a lot of times. And our trips were, we were looking to have fun along the way and you know, meeting the people that were gonna be hosting the show and the other bands and lots of fun on the road experiences that the band management or label aspects of it were really almost nonexistent in these years. 

Heather Lewis: Yeah, it was kind of like, let's go spend a weekend somewhere and hang out with these people and, and watch Schwarzenegger movies if we can (laughs). Our shows just really varied, you know, like when we would get to the East Coast, we would be supported, had more audience support than we did here in the Northwest. We had a lot of like, the really sort of challenging and difficult shows would be the ones where people just didn't know what to think of us at all. And you know, including like the other bands cause you're on tour and a lot of times you're just playing with some band. It's like we didn't have a drum kit, you know, and then I'm like the girl that doesn't have the drum kit asking if I can borrow the drum kit. There were nice things about being kind of the only girl around. And then it was also really hard to be the only girl around. 

Steve Fisk: I can hear Heather’s influence on female performers all through the nineties. There are people that took a lot of inspiration from Heather. She took so much shit because she was a woman and because, you know, she sang pitchy and all of that. Calvin caught his share of shit, but Heather had a lot of guts. 

Heather Lewis: I think that singing a cappella was confrontational. Pretty much. You know, at shows so it's wrought with, you know, sort of a certain amount of like aggression, but also a certain amount of fear because you're being reacted to by your behavior, but you're in the middle of it and you gotta keep going and see it through. When you're just singing up there, bare, essentially, there's just a lot of, there's a lot of emotion going on in the room.

“Crashing Through” 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah “Crashing Through.” This is one of the songs Bret was talking about where we had a chance to play this song quite a few times before we recorded it. Cause all year we had been playing these shows around the Northwest, but we had actually recorded it earlier. We had done a session like a year earlier with Patrick Maley and rerecorded it, so we already had recorded it. So we had a pretty good feel for how the song would look and feel and stuff. But also having played the song a lot, this is one of the songs that Lee and and Mark were like, had knew well from our live shows. This was one of the songs they were expecting that we were gonna record. This and “Bewitched” were songs that they seemed interested in working on.

Bret Lunsford: I kind of have a recollection of finding a sheet of metal and kicking it outside on that stairwell for added crash, but I don't know if I'm remembering accurately. 

Steve Fisk: That's a sampler. Everybody thinks Beat Happening are troglodytes, you know? But I had an ancient, one sample at a time, sampler and Akai S612 for those of you keeping track. And I had a sample of somebody slamming the dumpster downstairs. And so I remember Bret trying to make something happen with some sheet metal. And I don't even know if we ended up keeping any of that. But that brought to the idea of using the sampler. So on their second record, they were using a sampler (laughs). So there's our cave people Beat Happening, you know. And who played it? Heather played it. Well, and not only that, but the way the old samplers work is you'd sample it once and that sound would be spread off over the whole keyboard. So if you've got the sound of a dumpster lid being crashed, you play it 12 steps down and it's slower and weirder and more lo-fi, you play it 24 steps down, which is easy to do on a keyboard, and it’s Godzilla. So I forget what kind of chord she was playing, but it wasn't just one key down “Crashing Through,” It was something that she'd work out on the keyboard. Intuitively on the spot, go Evergreen (laughs), that's how we'd do it, you know? I was trying to remember which song had the sampler on it, of course it’s “Crashing Through.”

Calvin Johnson: Hello? Can you guys hear me? That was strange. I was somewhere where you guys, none of you moved, it was like you were just frozen in time. And I was blathering on and on about “Crashing Through” and you guys, it was almost as if you could care less.

“Cat Walk” 

Calvin Johnson: What was the song you said was recorded by Pat Maley? 

Bret Lunsford: “Cat Walk.” 

Calvin Johnson: Oh, “Catwalk.” Oh, okay. It says it on Jamboree? I don't remember. 

Bret Lunsford: Yeah, it's after “Crashing Through” and it has a diamond next to it that says, “produced by Patrick Maley.”  

Calvin Johnson: Oh, okay. So that must have been from that session from when we did “Crashing Through” and “Look Around” and “Cat Walk” and some other songs. Yeah in ‘86 we recorded at Yo-Yo. 

Bret Lunsford: I don't think we played that live too much, “Cat Walk.”

Calvin Johnson: Some. I like the percussion. Heather's playing the claves. It's cool. 

Heather Lewis: Oh yeah. I like claves. 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah I had those claves for a long time. I just lost them a few years ago. I stole those from Jan Brock. Or maybe she gave them to me, I can't remember. Or maybe I borrowed them and they just never got back to her. I don't remember. But she had a band called Twin Diet where they played the claves and I always thought they were really, it was really cool that they had the claves. So I think I might still have one clave, but it's like, you know, it's difficult because it's almost the one clave is like the sound of one hand clapping.

Heather Lewis: (laughs) I know that. I very much was, I imagined very happy to be playing the claves. Cause I like the claves. 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah. Well I think maybe the only other song that might've had claves would've been “Jamboree.” I don't know if there are claves on “Jamboree.” 

Heather Lewis: Yeah, I don't know.

Calvin Johnson: I think that Heather had made a comment once that I always thought was very appropriate in terms of an observation about recording. Cause there's an instrument, a percussion instrument called the vibraslap. And she said that every album should have one song with a vibraslap, but no album should have more than one song with the vibraslap. And I think that's probably true of the claves too. And I think there's a vibraslap on Jamboree but I don’t remember where. But maybe I’m wrong. 

Heather Lewis: I do like, okay, I like vibraslaps and claves.

Calvin Johnson: Yeah. But I don't think we put claves in more than one song per record.

Heather Lewis: I also really like those frog instruments, but we never had one of those.

Calvin Johnson: (makes noisy rummaging sound)

Bret Lunsford: This is, we're hearing Calvin rummaging around. Kind of like Oscar the Grouch in his garbage can when he dives inside and comes back. There you go. 

Calvin Johnson: What? What happened? 

Bret Lunsford: You're back! What were you digging for? 

Calvin Johnson: I was just trying to find the clave. I thought I had one left, but I couldn't find it.

“Drive Car Girl” 

Heather Lewis: I can't even remember what that song sounds like (laughs). How's it go? 

Calvin Johnson: It was just a song that was like a song. 

Heather Lewis: Mm-hmm. 

Calvin Johnson: Oh, this is a good song. Oh, this is pretty good. But I don't know. It was like, we may not have played it live a lot. I think some, maybe more than the other song, but generally it wasn't really like our favorite song. I didn't really understand this concept of being on key for a long time, and I think I realized that with something like “Hangman,” if we just practiced that song, we could have done it, but we never did. You know, “What if we just spent the whole one afternoon, let's just do ‘Hangman.’ Let's just get it. Let's just get it done.” We could have done that, but it never occurred to us to do that, or even to want to. Later Bret was able to arrange for us to borrow a practice space from a different band, and we were able to use their space and they had a PA and stuff, so that was good. But at the point of Jamboree, we were practicing in like apartments and stuff, pretty much. Wasn't that right? I can't remember. 

Bret Lunsford: Yeah, I think that was right. And then that's why the value of the live experience added so much to the development of a song. Because we didn't do the rehearsal room development of a song. Beyond, just kinda like, “Oh yeah, that sounds good. Now we're ready to play live.”

Steve Fisk: These records sound harmless in 2022. In 1987, 1988, 1990, because there was no bass player, because the vocals were out of tune, because the guitars were out of tune. Certain people, not everybody, not 50% of the people, but certain people just could not even be in the room with it. And by the way, it's always guys, I never ran into a woman that had probably Beat Happening. But there's some guys that just because Beat Happening broke all the rules, they can't stand it. I mean, it's not that they dislike it, they can't stand it.

Gary Lee Conner: On stage, man, he was confrontational for sure. In fact, you know, he would like probably get, I don't know if he ever got mad at people in the audience, but you know, he was like, “I'm what I am and fuck you” (laughs). Because I remember when we, one time we had a show with them, I think it might have been when we played at the studio, at Velvetone. It was, you know, there weren't that many people there, 20 or 30 people. This one guy who was a little older, probably wasn't that much older, he was probably like 30, 35 (laughs) and you know, but probably like a seventies rock kind of guy. And he saw Calvin, when he saw Calvin perform, he was just, “I can't believe how stupid that is.” He was going off about it and stuff and I was like,” Okay…we thought it was really cool, but you know.” 

Steve Fisk: And then imagine you've booked Beat Happening, you've heard the record and, Beat Happening is in the middle of a national tour in a Toyota with a few guitars and a snare drum in the backseat, and they wanna borrow amplifiers. That's how Beat Happening showed up at gigs. So just one further assault on the rock tradition and how things are supposed to happen. But that's how they made their whole thing work. But between like ‘89 and ‘93, I recorded the best singers ever. You know, Mark Lanegan, Carla Bozulich from the Geraldine Fibbers, Kurt Cobain, Chris Cornell. And by the way, when I talk about this, when I try to make this point, I always include Calvin, because I do think Calvin's one of the best singers I've ever recorded. And kids these days, they're going, “Calvin Johnson, give me a break. He sings out of tune!” Like “you feeble little dinosaurs, you're crawling out of your pond and you're judging things on whether they're in tune or not. That's cause your music is devoid of meaning. That's because the music you listen to is gutless and strange and leaves you unsatisfied. And so you run around trying to figure out what makes things good or bad. And when you learn what intonation is, you think you've accomplished something.” You know, not understanding that Kurt Cobain bends flat on purpose. Carla Bozulich can make you cry by hitting notes that are quote out of tune because when she blats a note, it's for a reason and then it's usually got some kind of resonance with rock history and the vocals that have come before and all of that. So I know that sounds posey and all of this, but man pitch is overrated, you know, it really is. And Calvin Johnson is the argument.

“Midnight a Go-Go”

Steve Fisk: “Midnight a Go-Go” totally could have been a Cool Rays song. That was just him working schtick. You know, working genre.

Calvin Johnson: Yeah that was a song we played a lot. And that's one where Lee plays guitar on that recording, Lee Conner and he played live with us a couple times when we were doing shows with them. And that was always really exciting because having Bret and Lee both playing guitar together, it's just really powerful, really fun. 

Bret Lunsford: Yeah and I think, was there a bongo track on “Midnight a Go-Go” too? 

Calvin Johnson: Well, what does it say on the record? Do you have a copy of the record? 

Bret Lunsford: Yeah we recorded it in Ellensburg.

Calvin Johnson: Yeah, totally. 

Bret Lunsford: But I think that we, maybe we did try the bongo track in the background at Patrick's and then liked it enough to bring it, but it was, it's mixed pretty far back. But it's, I think it's there. 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah. What does it say, does it say anything about anyone playing on that song besides Lee?

Bret Lunsford: It says Lee Conner plays guitar on “Midnight a Go-Go.” And that's all it says. I would assume that maybe Heather played the bongos. 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah probably Heather. Seems likely. 

Heather Lewis: I mean, it sounds like it would've been nice to play bongos on those songs. So maybe I did.

Gary Lee Conner: I don't think I played just those two songs, “Indian Summer” and “Midnight a Go-Go” and I was listening to that and I can't remember if it's just the solo in the middle or I'm not sure. Cause they might have been using my guitar setup like for some stuff too you know. 

“This Many Boyfriends Club” 

Gary Lee Conner: What other stuff? I mean “This Many Boyfriends Club,” I remember seeing it, watching that. That's recorded live in Ellensburg. I couldn't remember when I was listening to it. I go, “Oh wait, is that me playing?” It wasn't me playing, it was Bret playing through my amp. And that horrible (makes feedback sound). Like in between every song, the Screaming Trees, like early shows, you can hear like that horrible whining feedback, but that became the whole song (laughs). 

Bret Lunsford: I have a recollection of being in Calvin's apartment at The Martin, hearing the song and considering what guitar part might go along with the lyrics, and it seemed to me that the rawness of the song would benefit from just some feedback as the guitar part, and so a cappella in a sense, with piercing feedback. Was there ever a different guitar part as you were writing it, Calvin? 

Calvin Johnson: No, no, but there was a different version though, version from Corvallis, from that same show that “Ask Me.” That version's really good and it was like, “One of these two for the record,” but the Corvallis one ended up being on the “Crashing Through” single we put out last year. But the Ellensburg version was on the album mostly cause it was recorded in Ellensburg. I mean, they're both really good versions. They're both different. They have different emphasis I think. But we played at the Hal Holmes Center with Screaming Trees and Girl Trouble earlier that year, and Steve recorded the show from the sound booth and that's what we ended up using.

Steve Fisk: That song was part of a full set that was recorded in Ellensburg at the Hal Holmes Center and it was a rec room tied to the library in Ellensburg, Washington where anybody, I mean, anybody could put on a show. So if a 15 year old kid wanted to put on a show with Screaming Trees and Beat Happening, he'd go to a clipboard and fill in the date and what they wanted to do and the city would provide, you know, some kind of security guard and you would have a show. And then it was up to the kid to hire a PA system and a guy to run it or something like that. But that's why we had so many amazing shows in Ellensburg, Washington because there was no impediment. So we took some of our early digital equipment down to the Hal Holmes Center and set it up and ended up with a Beat Happening set and a Screaming Trees set. And the Screaming Trees just sounded terrible, just cause it was the wrong way to record, you know, a big, loud psychedelic band was, you know, a couple of microphones in a Grange Hall basically, but Beat Happening because they had less shit going on, their stuff sounded really good. And Calvin, yeah, he's just being as obstinate and kind of in your face as he can. He's popping all his P’s, the S sounds are all sputtering. So he's just making the microphone just hurt (laughs). 

Bret Lunsford: If we were playing with other bands who were more recognizable as rock and roll bands, then the ways that Beat Happening would go into kind of unusual territory, off script for what the audience had expected. There might be audience reaction and Calvin and Heather both were really good at I think feeding off of that. So it could be that somebody would spontaneously be picking up on something from this strange song they were hearing on stage and becoming a part of it. 

Calvin Johnson: It was a well attended show. Lots of teenagers I think, cause Screaming Trees had a good local falling at that point. So a lot of local teens were there to see them. 

Gary Lee Conner: It was our big show in Ellensburg and people were like, cause we put out Clairvoyance and I guess it was in the fall of ‘86 and people in town were like, “Who the heck are these people?” This was even before we were on SST, but Ellensburg was kind of like, you know, “A band with an album in Ellensburg!” And you know, we had like reviews in the college paper that were kind of like, “I don't know if this is very good.” You know, kind of negative reviews. And a lot of people were like, “Those guys suck.” But a lot of people came to see us, you know, probably slightly younger people in the crowd were probably like high school cause it was an all ages place. 

Steve Fisk: The screaming and yelling audience in the front row is Laurie Birdsong. So the idea that, first off, I don't think Beat Happening got that kind of screaming, yelling response in other cities. So I think it was, Calvin was being the proper showman. He was, “All right, the front row's gonna go nuts. I'm gonna play to the front row.” Did he know who Laurie Birdsong was at the time? I'm not sure. Laurie would go on to mary Van Conner and they would have kids, and me and Laurie are still in touch, but there are three or four screaming girls making it sound like a bad Beatles recording or something like that. And it's primarily because he's singing to Laurie. 

Heather Lewis: I imagine when it was live, he dropped the mic and walked off stage. I'm not sure, but that was a common finale. 

Well, I think we were at a good place at that time as a band. We were spending more time together, a lot of time together at that point, and we were having a lot of fun together, I think at that point.

Bret Lunsford: Yeah when did we go to Europe? Shortly after this was released, I seemed to think. 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah it was like four months after the US release. 

Bret Lunsford: It was a great opportunity to meet people in Europe who were interested in coming to the shows, but also the bands that we met, you know, from the Vaselines to the McTells to the Pastels to the Bats and lots of others. 

Calvin Johnson: Yeah we toured with the Bats in Germany and Europe. That was fun. 

Heather Lewis: Did it come out before we went to Europe? 

Calvin Johnson: It came out on Rough Trade in America before we went to Europe. It didn't come out in Europe until the day of our last show. In Scotland because of, you know, just production delays, blah blah blah. It was supposed to have come out months earlier, but you know, that's just the way it goes sometimes. 

Heather Lewis: Well I'm just thinking cause you know, that tour in Europe, like it was touring in Europe was completely different from touring in America. And it was all planned out and we were treated really well, you know, and people came to the shows and liked us and you know, so there was like a lot of positive reinforcement at that time. At least in Europe, I would say, like to go there and just have these, lots of people come to our shows. It was nice. 

Bret Lunsford: And Calvin did so much work on behalf of the band in conjunction with, you know, the K Records effort in touring and recording. I had the luxury of being along for the ride for a lot of that. The detail work of the coordination with other labels and with the tours that was so much of Calvin's work that benefited the band.

Well, I hold it in my hand and I think that Heather's artwork is, it's a good visual package and the combination of Heather's artwork and the photo by Ann Culbertson. 

Calvin Johson: Ann Culbertson. 

Bret Lunsford: It captured a part of who we were visually, that I think it, so that package has always felt good. And in my reflection on it, as I stated earlier, I think that the band's future could easily have just passed into history with the first album. And in 1987, there started to be more momentum for future projects. And that Jamboree was a reinvention of the band as, you know, it was kind of the start of the next series of albums in my mind.

Heather Lewis: Well, I think that that's Bret’s description, you know, his feeling about it was accurate. And yeah, I mean, I think it's true that it, it's kind of like after Jamboree, there was a different band, you know, it was just a little bit more, It's more like we really were a band. Maybe we really were musicians.

Calvin Johnson: Yeah I feel like when we started playing in Olympia with like Young Pioneers was a band that we worked with a lot, and you know, we recorded our first sessions in their studio and used their instruments. But just, they were very encouraging to us and they were very helpful in a lot of ways. But by that point that we made Jamboree, they had stopped playing as a band together and I'd felt like I wasn't really even in touch with them anymore, but I still felt that their influence on me was pretty profound in terms of their rock and roll. They were very rock and roll, they were very punk, but also they were just so friendly and supportive. That was a really important part. Yeah, Jamboree seems very optimistic.

Heather Lewis: Yeah I mean, I think that optimistic is a good description of it. 

Bret Lunsford: We believed in what we were doing and it shows and other people were too. We had a sense of being a part of a music community, that we would go on tours with other bands who were friends and enjoy their music while we played ours and, and go out to dinner, or go out to the record stores. Whatever we were doing, it was fun. And I think that's a good description, optimistic. 

Calvin Johnson: Just the music and the cover art and stuff just feels very optimistic to me. Maybe there is a point to living after all. 

Outro:

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Beat Happening. You’ll also find a full transcript of this episode and a link to purchase Jamboree. Thanks for listening.

Credits:

“Bewitched”

"In Between"

"Indian Summer"

"Hangman"

"Jamboree"

"Ask Me"

"Crashing Through"

"Cat Walk"

"Drive Car Girl"

"Midnight a Go-Go"

"The This Many Boyfriends Club"

All songs written by Beat Happening

© 1988 K Publishing

℗ 1988 Rough Trade Records

Produced by Steve Fisk with Gary Lee Conner and Mark Lanegan.

“Ask Me” preserved for posterity by Rich Jensen.

“Cat Walk” produced by Patrick Malley.

Lee Conner plays guitar on “Indian Summer” and “Midnight a Go-Go”

Jamboree was recorded at Albright Productions (Velvetone), Yo-Yo Studio, Hal Holmes Center and the Olde World Deli.

Episode Credits:

Intro/Outro Music:

“Won’t Go Back” by The Yellow Dress from the album, Humblebees.

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam