Veggie Music -- the Missing Liner Notes

We have found in live performance that we must be able to create our

instruments on stage, or no one believes that they are really vegetables.

While it is technically possible to create a fingered fife or flute from, say,

a carrot, this is an exacting, tedious and lengthy process – and one

at which we are not atall accomplished. Our solution is to quickly

create musical vegetables by drilling them out as in the

illustration below. These are perfect for creating the

percussive accent tones heard on Old Vegetation,

Rutabaga Blues and onLocation 5. Assembling a

numberof these creates, in effect, a set of pan

pipes (no pun intended,though they are all

ultimately destined for the pan. When playing

the street at a festival we do like to

claim that we are the only musicians

out there guaranteed to go

home to supper).

The tracks;

Side A: In the Raw

Track 1. Hearing is Believing
The Slide Potato (pat.pend.) is Jonathan’s own invention. It is the

most versatile vegetable we play. As heard on this track, it can be made in

half a minute; and it can be played in any key. For you musicologists out there

we pointout that the Slide Potato is perhaps the ultimate melodic idiophone -- in

that it can be made entirely of one entire naturally occurring item with

nothing added or discarded. Carving a mouthpiece,

as heard on this narration, can make the potato

easier to play but is not essential.

Track 2. (Gimme that) Old Vegetation
After he had laid down a lap

steel track for us, we invited Steve Cohen

to play something on banjo. We really did not have

anything specific in mind more than an old-timey song we

could play vegetables with. Something traditional; folk,

mountain gospel ... ‘Gospel?’Steve leaned back and began to

pick and sing and we scurried to find pen and paper. A flurry

of jotting, laughing, picking, and singing ensued and an hour later

we had the foundation track completed. Steve came back later

to add in jaw harp and bass. He wants to let everyone know

that he actually thinks spinach is great; it just takes a fall

here for the sake of comedy. To complete the feel of the

song Dave came in with a washboard and Douglas and

Jonathan play every vegetable mentioned in the song

as it is mentioned, with additional accent notes on

carrot, yam, and broccoliophone.

Track 3. Rutabaga Blues
Eddy Jeff Cahill was the first of our musical

colleagues to get excited about this project and has

generously contributed time, energy, and talent throughout.

He wrote this tune for us and brought it to the studio in March

2004. Elliot’s washtub adds just the right jug band feeling under

Eddy Jeff’s masterful guitar and Doug and Jonathan’s loose jamming

on the veggies. The def Dave plays is a large frame drum. Of all the

root vegetables, the rutabaga does not make the best instrument --at

least not what we have found in the supermarket. It does not have

quite the density or firmness of, say, a carrot or a beet. The rutabaga’s

charm is chiefly in its name. For the sake of art, we did lay in a sparing

rutabaga track. Ya can’t have the Rutabaga Blues without the rutabaga.

Or maybe that’s just why a rutabaga lover has the blues ... or maybe it

is the difficulty in getting a good tone out of one that gives the

rutabagist the blues. It is an open question. No one has

written the lyrics yet.

Track 4: Wyld Interlude
Just our way of letting the listener know.

Track 5: At the Irish Pub
A comic interlude introducing:

Track 6: Whiskey in the Jar (accompanied on Whisky in a Jar)
Our nickname for the band playing this track is

‘The Whiskey Calliope Circus’.The instruments you are

hearing are bouzouki and what we accurately if awkwardly

refer to as the Whiskey-in-the-jar-o-phone. It is a Swanee Whistle

(or Lotus Flute) with the plunger removed and then immersed in Irish

whiskey contained in a jar. Just as the plunger controls the pitch in a slide

whistle, the level of whiskey does so in this instrument. The drunken effect in

the music is due more to the inherent fluidity of the instrument than the

presence of whiskey in the studio (in addition to the position of the whistle in

the jar, the level of the whiskey is affected by the barometric pressure of

the breath in the whistle). As a matter of fact, after a couple of takes it

became apparent that the alcohol in the whiskey was dissolving the

remnant slide lubricant in the whistle and leaching the color out

of the bakelite it is made of. Eyuuck. The whiskey stayed

in the jar. The sipping sound at the

end had to be faked. Final

verse by Jim Hancock.

Track 7: Back at the Pub
A comic interlude introducing:

Track 8: Danny Boy (accompanied on Slide Potato)
A tonic-culinary ironic critique of the inherent relationship

between the forces of agrarian production, the controlof the

techno-militaryinfrastructure through absentee mercantile-imperial

influences and its impact on the family; with overtones of the tragic vein

of cultural self-absorption the arts can sink to representing among any

oppressed or victimized people or peoples. Those potatoes are

crying their eyes out. It’s deep, man.

Side B: Over-Produced Sampler

We’ll have some more

veggies on the

next CD. Meanwhile,

follow us ‘round

the bend.

Track 9: Location 5
This tune is named for the memory location in

the Turtle’s Korg mixing board where the keeper track

at the core of this tune was recorded. The bird-like trilling and

tweeting are the slide potato. The other whistle tones are the yam and

carrot. The rhythmic complexity of Location 5 stretched the actor boys to the

limits; at one point Dave had to teach Jonathan his part by tapping the time out

on his shoulder. Frank Runyon laid down the brilliant guitar work andDave covered

all the percussion. Listen. Enjoy. Bop. Track 10: 24/7 (The Ballad of Grendel)An ode

to a fiend. Grendel is the oldest monster in the English Language.Scourge of

the Geats, he is finally defeated by the great hero, Beowulf. Just remember: No

matter how cool it seems, it’s still bad to be bad. We dedicate this piece to all

actors who have ever played these two roles on stage– and to all fans

of Beowulf -- in the Mud. You know who you are. And Frank
and Steve, you rock.

Track 11: I Don’t Want to Stay
Would you?
Frank again steps to the plate with guitar riffs

styled after one of our eccentric concepts. Dave has a

whole story about this tune ... but you’ll have to wait for the

movie. Justpicture heartbreak, despair, a whiskey bottle,

firearms, shamanic snakevisions, and a clown wandering

out into the desert playing an umbrella.

Track 12: Smoke
A driving western love chant. The

producer really wants it to be ironic, but

it just doesn’t seem to be. So don’t go looking for it.

Really. No really, we

can be serious if we want

to. Just enjoy the song.

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