Dave tells a great story about one of our friends, Jay Bennett. It made me think of the day when we were helping Jay move the studio (Pieholden) from Chicago to downstate Illinois.
We all arrived pretty early that day, Jay showed up a little later. Soon we all began deliberating about how to accomplish such a monumental task. There was literally tons and tons of gear and instruments crammed into every corner of the loft space.
After we had all paced around smoking cigarettes and throwing out ideas for nearly three hours, Jay exclaimed that he had the plan. The “Two-Pile Plan” to be exact. Everything in the studio would be put into one of two piles. Pile #1 would go to Champaign and pile #2…. would be tossed out the window into the dumpster below.
This plan was both hilarious and an effective. We put our our cigarettes and started hauling some of the best (and by best I mean heaviest) analog recoding equipment down three flights of stairs.
Later that day, due to a faulty freight elevator, we all narrowly escaped being trapped in the dankest, darkest, creepiest basement in the Midwest. A whole other story indeed.
The muscles in my lower back still seize up when I think about that day, but it was one of the best of my life.
Here is a recent video of Bobby Bare Jr and Dave at Schubas on New Years Eve.
Quite a good time, with Dan Duffy working the tap! This video also features the infamous Mr. Jimmy that David speaks about in this interview. Mr. Jimmy is playing keys, percussion (on a beer bottle) and singing.
We are all excited to hear what these dudes are working on down in Nashville. I’m sure I’ll have a post about it sometime soon.
By now you’ve likely heard that Champaign County Coroner Duane Northrup has issued an autopsy report that concludes that Jay Bennett’s death was the result of an accidental overdose of pain medication. As I watched this news spread around the internet, I was fairly astonished by how under-reported, and at times downright misleading, the coverage was. So let’s get a few facts straight:
Jay had a long history of chronic hip pain. Jay’s health insurance would not cover his hip injury. From the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette: “The coroner said toxicology tests confirm that Mr. Bennett died from Fentanyl intoxication. Fentanyl is a pain killer found in Duragesic patches. Mr. Bennett had one of those patches on his back when found, Northrup said.” The Duragesic patch has a somewhat unbelievable history — In 2004, it was recalledtwice. In 2006, according to the New York Times, a court held patch-maker Johnson & Johnson responsible for the death of a Texas woman who died (of an accidental overdose) from a Duragesic patch that leaked. And again in another case in 2007. And yet again in 2008! 2008 also saw another recall of the patch. In 2007, the Food and Drug Administration issued a Public Health Advisory that stated “Despite issuing an advisory in July 2005 that emphasized the safe use of the fentanyl patch, FDA continues to receive reports of death and life-threatening side effects in patients who use the fentanyl patch.”
I have no idea whether Jay had a defective patch. But I do know two things, the first related to journalism, the second to health care:
1) Jay wasn’t just another rockstar who OD’d. I was stunned to see this stated outright in an article in E Online. And was hugely hugely disappointed to see it implied in Jim DeRogatis’ story. I like DeRogatis, but that piece borders on irresponsibility. Coverage around the net was a bit better, but generally I’d see huge OVERDOSE headlines, with little mention of the controversy surrounding the Duragesic patch.
2) Jay would be alive today if enormous pharmaceutical and insurance corporations were not controlling our health care industry. There are plenty of people better informed and more articulate than I who are writing and organizing around this issue and I intend to get better informed. But in the meantime, the folks at the really terrific Future of Music Coalition have collected a bunch of really helpful resources for musicians who need health insurance.
But let’s on a warmer note. Rob Roberge, at Caught in the Carousel recently published a very kind remembrance. And this performance, from the film “Man In The Sand” about the making of Mermaid Avenue takes on new heartbreaking meanings:
The living best honor those passed by living. It’s been a hard weird couple weeks around here, sometimes feeling hollow, sometimes ecstatic to realize how many lives our friend touched. I’ve spent a lot of time talking with Casey and had the chance to catch up with Matt DeWine, which was amazing. Our good friends Brother Truck went down to Pieholden to record this weekend; not only did Jay leave us with a bunch of great music but also with the resources to continue to make our own. A brilliant good man…
And so we live. Last night I had a terrific reminder of how Chicago can be astonishingly cool sometimes. Grabbed the train downtown afterwork and got to see my pals Paul and Angel performing with their band Allá on the huge outdoor Gehry-designed stage at Millennium Park. It was pretty amazing; they were great. But I couldn’t stay for St. Vincent, ‘cos I was meeting Whitney around the corner for a MusicNow concert featuring members of the CSO. The first piece was Composer-in-Residence Osvaldo Golijov’s Mariel (for marimba and cello). And it was mind-blowing. So beautiful, so sad, so well-made and so brilliantly performed. The CSO has a hidden treasure in their percussionist Cynthia Yeh, she is truly a genius.
The piece resonated with what’s been happening:
“I wrote the original version of Mariel, for cello and marimba, when I learned of the death in an accident of my friend Mariel Stubrin,” Golijov explains. “I attempted to capture that short instant before grief, in which one learns of the sudden death of a friend who was full of life: a single moment frozen forever in one’s memory, and which reverberates through the piece, in the waves and echoes of the Brazilian music that Mariel loved.”
This is a version recorded by WNYC, of a performance at Alice Tully Hall in February 2009; Maya Beiser - cello, Tomoya Aomori - marimba.
Our good friend Jay Walter Bennett left us this weekend. As news hits the wires so instantaneously these days, we thought it was important to share some thoughts about our friend and brother before any rumors got out of hand.
First, let it be known that Jay was in a really good place these past few years. He had returned to the area he loved—the “Twin Cities,” Champaign-Urbana—and resurrected his studio, Pieholden Suite Sound, with the assistance of many dear friends and allies.
Jay had also been busy making music. He recently had released an intimate record entitled Whatever Happened I Apologize, and he was looking forward to wrapping up his new work, Kicking at the Perfumed Air. Proud of finishing a trilogy of records, including Bigger Than Blue, The Beloved Enemy, and The Magnificent Defeat, Jay loved the balanced yet ironic album titles.
He was also looking forward to engineering and releasing Titanic Love Affair’s previously unreleased record, as well as starting work on The Palace at 4 a.m. Part II, the follow-up to his post-Wilco debut with Edward Burch. “Jay the Academic” had also reemerged, pursuing his umpteenth degree at the University of Illinois, and he was thrilled to be taking graduate classes again.
As many of you may be aware, Jay had finally found the courage to put his Wilco issues out into the public forum. After a long, four-year process (and therefore very much unrelated to his impending hip surgery), formal filings against Wilco were finally initiated. This task was very emotional for Jay. He was a “lover,” and this confrontation was not easy for him.
With the exception of his final period in Wilco, Jay looked back on his time in the band with great fondness and pride. While he was dismayed that some people may have formed a narrow perception of him via the “documentary,” all who truly knew him understood that with most entertainment media, editing is usually constructed for dramatic effect and presents only a small part of a larger, more complex reality.
So, please spend some time this week engaging in Jay’s favorite passions: listen to a Nick Lowe album, watch some Mythbusters on Discovery, play Warren Zevon’s “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” rent Pay It Forward (one of his favorite movies), write a song with the TV on and the sound off, and focus on how Jay always concluded his communications: “Love, Jay.”
My most vivid memory of Jay is absurd, bittersweet and powerful, and somehow in its ridiculousness, exemplifies, for me, the qualities that made him a remarkable man. I held Jay Bennett while he wept in a Home Depot. This was about four or five years ago and my band had recently finished making a record at Jay’s Pieholden Suite Sounds when the studio was located in Chicago. I think we made one of last recordings there before Jay and Matt DeWine moved the studio down to the Champaign-Urbana area. Matt is an old friend and I had come by to lend a hand packing up equipment. It was an unreal scene. It will likely come as no surprise to learn that Jay was a pack-rat. There was gear everywhere—broken amps, loose cables, tape machines, crates of records, boxes of reels, compressors, all manner of musical ephemera…
Moving a studio 150 miles is a difficult task, moving Jay Bennett’s studio nears impossibility. But we were making good progress until Jay remembered the basement. With flashlights we discovered what was essentially another studio’s-worth of gear in the dank underground. Jay and I hustled over to Home Depot to buy a bunch of large containers to pack all that stuff in, and when, at first, we couldn’t find lids that fit, Jay lost it and began to weep. He hadn’t slept for days trying to get everything ready for the move and was just completely overwhelmed. I put my arm around his shoulders and as he pulled himself together, he kept saying “I gotta keep moving, keep going, just gotta keep moving”. And I realized that we weren’t just packing a studio. I was watching a man start a new life, trying, through so many hardships, to continue to do what he knew best and what he loved—making and sharing music.
The studio was moved, and I’ve been fortunate in the time since to have had the chance to record there. And Jay kept going, making terrific music and serving as a kind of older brother to a bunch of my friends and our bands. I can say with certainty, that I would have never had the chance to make the music I have made, if it wasn’t for Jay’s generosity. He and Matt offered their studio and Jay’s amazing collection of equipment up for astonishingly low rates and his supportive creative energy permeated that space and has imprinted every record made there, including my own.
I don’t know what happens now. And my heart goes out Jay’s family and his close friends. Jay and I were never more than acquaintances, but now I desperately wish I had told him how much his generosity affected my life, and how that spirit I glimpsed on moving day has informed my own decisions. When Jay said “keep moving”, what I heard and what I saw from him after, was “keep making”. I promise I will try. Goodbye friend, may you rest in peace.
I’m incredibly lucky to have known Jay. Like most folks, I was introduced to the man through his incredible arrangements and the “break your heart” movie.
I was shocked to get a huge, hearty, family-style hug from him when I volunteered to untangle cables at his peter-pan club house studio. It became my root temple, Pieholden Suite Sound.
Since then, I have come to know Jay as one of the most compassionate and empathetic people I have ever met. No rock star, no posture, pure love, pure art. Time and time again I waited to see this hard “fall-guy” portrayed in the movie, but that Jay never appeared.
What did appear was a brand new way of thinking about writing and recording music. Jay showed us a way to capture sound AND moment. He sculpted production techniques based on what could be vs. what has been.
I never heard him mention a bitter word toward any former band.
The news of Jay’s death comes at an unexpected time. I’d been speaking with him all Saturday afternoon about many projects.
Farewell my friend, you now pass into legend, your work echoes though the cosmos forever, your life has been troubled yet your mark has been made. Your love is endless, your gaze is steadfast and true, I told you yesterday and I still love you!!!
Kickstarter is this really brilliant new website that allows individuals to pledge small amounts of money to help see a creative project realized. Though the site is only two weeks old, there are already a bunch of cool projects (go here to see what I’m funding).
And we’re unbelievably pleased to announce our own Kickstarter project—an effort to raise funds to get Jay Bennett’s Whatever Happened I Apologize on vinyl. You’ve downloaded Jay’s record right? And you know how great it sounds? And just perhaps you can imagine how lovely it would be warm and crackling off wax?
Well, toss $15 in the hat, and if we raise enough dough, we’ll send it to you! Or we have a bunch of other fun incentives for our backers: posters, postcards, even a visit to Jay’s studio!
So pop over to Kickstarter and put a couple fins in the bucket.
From the broken instruments and archaic recording equipment deep within the rural confines of Pieholden Suite Sound recording studio, comes the Notes & Scratches 2nd release To the Other Side. This six song cycle about memory and moving on is the first installment of seven releases the Notes have planned for 2009. And it’s a hoot.
If you are in Chicago, please do come out to the Whistler on April 30th for the Notes & Scratches release show celebrating this EP as well as a new 7” from Whistler Records.
We are pleased to announce the launch of our second featured release. Jitney’s new album “86-300” is now available for free download. Get it here!
If you happen to be near Chicago, Jitney will be playing a free show at the Empty Bottle on Monday Feb 9th.
Some info about 86-300:
These songs were written while driving a taxi in Chicago. Meehan drove the night shift for two years to finance the record. The name of the album, 86-300, refers to Meehan’s chauffeur’s license. He is the 86,300th cab driver to be licensed in Cook County; the Jitney moniker is also taken from taxicab terminology.
Other than the late-night, cityscape imagery of streetlights, gasoline and drifters, this album explores the element of chance. There were many setbacks for this musician in recent years, including nearly loosing his leg necessitating many difficult months of recovery. This material explores dealing with forces beyond ones control; the song “Fin” may be interpreted as a brief commentary on the struggling music industry.
This album was recorded at Jay Bennett’s Pieholden Suite Sound on the same equipment used for Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
This record, produced by Meehan’s long time friend Matt DeWine, was one of the first albums recorded at the studio after its transplant from Chicago’s West side to downstate Illinois. Meehan helped with the construction of this studio. Additional recording was done by Kris Poulin at Chicago’s Electrical Studios and Semaphore. —————
We also have a few more great records on deck. Andy Wagner’s “Those Who Forgive” will be launching with Where The Moon Came From with David Vandervelde’s “Psychedelic Saturday” both will be available on February 23rd. Notes and Scratches’ “To the Other Side” will be out March 30th.
Last month we were very excited to find a wonderful remix of one of Jay Bennett’s songs, check it out here. Jay’s song “I’ll Decorate My Love” was originally released on “Whatever Happened I Apologize” (Rock Proper, 2008). We are grateful for Fabakis’ great work on the remix, this is precisely the kind of projects that the new Creative Commons’ copyright laws make possible.
