Co-written by Carolyn McCoy & William Wayland

The music of Physical Suicide Deterrent System Project (or PSDSP for short) is complicated. We could easily plop them into the genre of “grunge," but it’s more than that. The trio, guitarist/singer Eli Carlton-Pearson, drummer Michael Pinkham and bassist Brian Wilkerson pull from jazz and psychedelic genres while adding some hardcore ass-kicking punk for kicks. The songs the band creates often eschew the typical “verse/chorus/bridge” construction to create a river of sound that takes you on a sonic journey with intelligent and poetic lyrics that uphold deep imagery to tell a story of both darkness and hope.
 
The band’s songwriting process is definitely a collaborative effort. “I write all the songs, though several come about from jams, or at least evolved within them,” states Carlton-Pearson. “Michael and Brian contribute a lot in the way of arrangement, rhythmic conception, and what's perhaps the most significant thing, how much fire they cook up playing. That then permeates the whole ‘thing’; it changes the way I sing the lyrics I wrote; it gives the song more real-life meaning. {The song} has to be a living thing, and that happens because of the band.

​PSDSP has just released their latest album, Luddite, on vinyl, an old trend that seems to be resurfacing as a common practice among musicians lately. The album culls from new and old songs that have never been recorded before. Inline with the definition of “Luddite” (one who eschews or is mistrustful of technology when creating), the band decided to record in analog, raising funds via a Kickstarter campaign so that they could make the sound they were looking for.

​The band traveled to New Paltz, NY, to work with Tom Deis at Pineapple Room Studio. “I've known Tom for 16 years now. We've been in bands together and worked together a fair bit, but moreover, we're just really good friends,” says Carlton-Pearson. “Tom worked so fucking hard on this record it's ridiculous. He signed up for one of the gnarliest hazings an engineer could go for, going into a 100% analog recording process from a largely digital workflow and buying several pieces of equipment specifically for Luddite. All the technical limitations we experienced just wound up being the magic on the tape at the end, which is why we chose to do the whole thing as we did.”
 
“I wanted to work with Tom basically because I trusted him. I trusted him musically, and I trusted him personally. He gets it. He gets that music is a spiritual entity you access through the physical world. I guess this whole recording was way more intense and vulnerable than I'd like to admit. I trusted his understanding of how to use technology to capture the spirit of things.”
 
When asked why the band decided on analog, “Because it sounds better,” replies Carlton-Pearson, “It just does.“ 

The songs and what we think of them:
 
Invocation:
 
Carolyn: I love the instrumentals that PSDSP creates. To put this lovely piece at the beginning of an album is the best way to seduce you into wanting more from them. I love how the song builds and explodes like a good orgasm.
 
William: What’s an invocation?  It’s a summoning of the gods or the spirits and that’s exactly what this song feels like.  It’s a slow build to a kind of march and it tells you that this album is going to take you on a journey to a place you haven’t been to or you may not recognize.
 
Guitars:
 
Carolyn: Crunchy and meaty like fried chicken, but tastes like guitars.
 
William: If there’s a hit single on this album then Guitars is it.  Even though I think it’s the most approachable song, I still couldn’t figure out the lyrics in the first hundred listens.  It wasn’t until I finally read them on Bandcamp that I understood that one of the references is to a TV repair shop in Georgia that gets a four-and-a-half star rating on Yelp.  That’s pretty darn good.
 
Shoulder:
 
William: Three songs in is when I feel like this now feels like a grunge album with the ominous guitar build.  I felt echoes of SoundGarden here.  I also feel like we’ve left the commercial realm of “Guitars” and entered a space that’s at once threatening but also hopeful.
 
Carolyn: I love, love, love the wild and crazy time signatures that open this song, then it’s all chaos, hard driving insanity and magnificent poetry., “Sing a hopeful song, to the corpses of fir and pine.”
 
Little Red Satchels Of Tobacco:
 
Carolyn: This song has such a groovy groove. It’s soft yet piercing, crunchy yet smooth, spacey yet grounded. And again, that poetry, “time travel to the gap in the suture, burst through to bear your future name.”
 
William: Again, there’s just so much going on here. I love the synthesizer.  It’s super spacey and psychedelic but in no way campy.  I feel it in my gut like I sometimes do with Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine.”  I realize that’s super unique to me but that’s the only way I can describe it.  So if you ever get that feeling, then maybe you’ll get that feeling
 
Ice Age:

Carolyn: This is one of those songs that, and I quote myself, “fucks you sonically” and takes you on this crazy roller coaster of sound while driving itself directly into your brain.
 
William: This is the one song on the album that I felt would be better live.  When you catch a PSDSP show, the band can go into these long instrumental jams and the entire room moves together as one. That’s what I was reminded of from the count off to this song.
 
Booze, Blues and Bruises
 
William: After “Ice Age;” “Booze, Blues and Bruises” is positively uplifting.  Maybe “Guitars” isn’t my favorite song on the album.  Maybe this is.  It’s another piece that just has so many layers and I appreciate it more with each listen.
 
Carolyn: This is just a lovely song, both musically and lyrically. It says, “forgiveness,” it says, “redemption,” it says “I am trying to find myself.” But that’s just my opinion.
 
Geology:
 
Carolyn: Sometimes I want to get inside Eli’s head and see where his lyrics come from. I want to see the closets, shelves and boxes he stores his ideas and imagery. I want to see them processed through his brain before they become lyrics. That’s how I feel about this song.
 
William: This is a song about Isabel Montañez.  No, no, I’m kidding. I want to mention lyrics and meter here.  You can maybe say this about every song on the album but what’s so interesting is the irregular meter throughout and in “Geology,” listening to the way the band transitions from each of the four stanzas, but they’re not really stanzas - sections? non-stanzas?
 
Luddite:
 
William: I have a tough time with this one.  It’s an interesting piece to listen to but I haven’t yet come to appreciate the spoken word aspect.  Maybe I’ll get there eventually.
 
Carolyn: If surf music took a shit ton of acid and hooked up with a speed freak in order to create a love child of a song, that’s this one. I agree with William on the spoken word part, seems a bit random and my flow with the album got sidetracked with it.
 
A Song To Sing:
 
Carolyn: I think it's brilliant that Eli uses a lot of the natural world in his lyrical imagery. The analogies of his experience in life are often sung in metaphors of forests, hillsides and dirt.
 
William: After a journey of through space and time and riding along with some dark demons, “A Song to Sing” feels like it neatly closes the door and gives the listener a way to feel human because, after all and despite everything, “there's food in the fridge and beer in the song.”
 
Overall Reactions To Luddite:
 
William: I’ve probably played Luddite through at least twenty times already and there’s so much going on, and so many complex layers, that I recommend listening in a dark room with your favorite headphones.  It’s one of those albums that hits you right in the neurons. It’s about the human condition, what it means to be human.  It’s about human relationships with other human beings and our relationship with the universe and everything within the universe and how we’re all organisms living in a container called earth and how our beliefs and actions are affecting the earth and ultimately ourselves.
 
Carolyn: Yeah, what he said!

Check out Carolyn McCoy's photo:

Check out William Wayland's photos:

Check out everything you've every needed to know about PSDSP:
www.psdsp.bandcamp.com
​
Plus check out the amazing video of "Shoulder" by Jenn Chan at Owl Mountain Studio, Inverness, CA

It’s one of those warm, early autumn evenings here in Northern California; the crickets chirp away, the stars sparkle in the sky, and summer begins to drifts off into the past. In the wake of the vast West Coast fires, we now have a respite from smoke and fear, and I breathe in the fresh night air. As I sit and experience all this, Marin County singer/songwriter Jeremy D’Antonio’s new album Spinnin’ Wheels wafts softly from my room, seemingly in conjunction with the multi-faceted songs of local crickets. It’s a fitting venue, the night, to listen to this fantastic EP.

D’Antonio is most known as part of Marin County’s Americana band, San Geronimo. His first solo record is a refreshing breath of fresh air in a time of fires, lockdown, pandemic hell, economic collapse, and political upheaval, yet has nothing to do with any of that. It’s a journey unto itself that helps one forget the woes of the world for a while. For D’Antonio, Spinnin’ Wheels is a detour from San Geronimo’s sound in many ways, taking a healthy dose of Country and mixing it in with D’Antonio’s hard-hitting songwriting. 

“I never intended to write a country song or have a ‘country vibe’. I actually mostly listen to old soul music,” states D’Antonio. “Only recently have I dug into some of the ’60s and 70’s country classics, mostly because people assume I know all that music and request me to play it live. I think any music that is honest is good; you can immediately hear the difference. I grew up in New Mexico and Colorado, and I guess there is something about that landscape or the blue-collar lifestyle that comes out in what I do.”  

“Lyrics stem from feelings more than physical experiences. A feeling can make you experience a thousand different emotions without ever physically doing anything. I think this allows me to write about scenarios that have happened in my head but not in the physical realm,” D’Antonio states on his songwriting. “I know a lot of people write a story and put down the words first, but I usually start with a feeling. I get so deep that it is hard to be around others, and I am able to dive down pretty far and extract what is most honest about whatever “funk” I am in. From this usually comes a melody and the words follow.”​

Most of Spinnin’ Wheels was recorded by John Macy at Mighty Fine Productions in Denver, Colorado, as well as in D’Antonio’s living room in Woodacre, California. It was mixed by legendary producer Malcolm Burn (Emmylou Harris, Bob Dylan). For this album, D’Antonio chose to use analog technology as well as releasing the album on vinyl. 

“Vinyl is a different listening experience. It is tactile, from opening the sleeve and looking at the liner notes, to dropping the needle on the first song. The experience is totally different than signing on to Spotify or Apple Music. I was able to press the records to clear “Coke Bottle Blue” vinyl, and it’s absolutely beautiful. There is a feeling you get when the first note drops, and the record is spinning that you could never get from an mp3 or from a CD for that matter”, states D’Antonio. “The last song “Crawlin’ Out of my Skin” was recorded in my living room on a 388 Tascam ¼” 8 track tape machine. I love how timeless the simple way of 8 track recording sounds. The limitations are golden.”

D’Antonio, an incredible singer and guitarist in his own right, crafted the album using a “who’s who” of country musicians, including drummer Jim Christie (Buck Owens), bassist Lindsey Brown, steel guitarist Jay Dee Maness (Buck Owens), and Eugene Moles (Merle Haggard), as well as local Bay Area players that include drummer Rob Hooper (Carolyn Wonderland), steel guitarist Barry Sless (Dave Nelson Band, Green Leaf Rustlers), bassist Joe Kyle Jr. (Howell Devine), keys players Phil Ferlino (New Monsoon) and backing singers Jessica DeNicola, Jen Korte and San Geronimo cohort, Darren Nelson.​

“I guess the high point of recording this record was sitting in the control room with Jay Dee Maness, who has played on every cool country record ever (including the Byrd’s Sweetheart of the Rodeo) and having him listen through the songs and chart them out for the band. His ear was amazing! He and the band knew my songs better than I did after hearing them once. Truly, a bunch of legends. The way the band worked together in the studio was absolutely next-level. I was pretty intimidated until they said I wrote good country songs. After that, I had a confidence that I previously had not experienced.”

The five-song album opens with “Sad and Blue”, a truly “old school country” kind of song, with stellar steel slide, tinkling keys, and D’Antonio bringing in the twang with his vocals like his Country forefathers. John Prine’s “Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness” was an appropriate choice for a cover, as it fits in with the aesthetic of the album beautifully. The title track “Spinnin’ Wheels” speaks of the feelings of loneliness one can have within a relationship while keeping love alive. “Heaven Knows” is all heartbreak and wishing for something better “The sun goes down, and I get high, and nothing seems to change”. The album ends with “Crawlin’ Out Of My Skin”, a slow groove of a song that lets you feel the deep longing for a lost love.

“Playing solo is harder than doing the San Geronimo thing. San Geronimo was such an easy gig; I’d strap my guitar on, set up my mic, and the rest was autopilot. However, it is definitely easier to steer the ship solo,” states D’Antonio. “The dynamic in a band setting is much more democratic and can be hard to get things done. It is also easy to point the finger in a band setting if things aren’t going the way you’d like them to. When you are solo, you only have you to blame.”​

It’s doubtful that D’Antonio will ever run out of songs or lyrical ideas. “I don’t really feel I have a choice in the matter,” he states. “It is my path. Good or bad. It is what it is” In my opinion, he is a songwriting machine. His songs are magic and filled with emotional rivers that run right through your mind. They make you have an authentic sonic experience that hits the heart in all the right ways. 

Check out the album and more from Jeremy:
http://www.jeremydantonio.com

Plus check out the gorgeous video for "Spinnin' Wheels"

When a musician channels music and brings it into the corporeal world, sometimes there is no rhyme or reason for what kind of music they create. When Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Zephaniah OHora
started his musical career, it was Country music that somehow manifested itself through his being. I am sure Zephaniah will credit his spiritual upbringing as well as the circuitous circumstance and available opportunities to play music in NYC for maneuvering his career towards traditional Country. But whatever fates drove his train, he is now on the fast track towards becoming a star in the Country world. 
 
“I’ve been influenced by so much music because I listen to quite a variety,” states OHora. “But as far as Country music artists, I’ve spent many hours studying Jimmie Rodgers, Ernest Tubb, Lefty Frizzell, Marty Robbins, and more recently Bobby Bare, Don Williams, and Merle Haggard.”
 
OHora has just released his second album, “Listening To The Music”. It upholds classic, old-school Country in the true tradition, but with the flavors of modern New York tossed in for kicks. “Listening To The Music” is a great album not only because of OHora’s songwriting skills, but the album hosts such big-time players as harmonica player Mickey Raphael (Willie Nelson) and guitarist Norm Hamlet (Merle Haggard). 

​The album was produced by the one and only Neal Casal, the last album he worked on before his untimely death last year. “Neal showed up with his long time friend Gary Waldman to my NYC album release show for “This Highway”. We caught up after the show, and he was ecstatic about my songwriting and the presentation of it. That was honestly the highlight of the night, that really gave me the encouragement to continue making records,” states OHora. “Working with Neal in the studio was some of the most fun I’ve ever had. Neal lived for music, so being around someone like that in the studio makes it impossible for it not to be a joyful experience. He also left his ego at the door and was fully dedicated to the song. As a songwriter, that puts you at ease, knowing this person will guide you in the right direction for the moment in time that record is being recorded. Neal and I also spent considerable time talking on the phone and after sessions hanging out talking about so many aspects of life. We talked about a lot of weighty stuff, so I think a genuine friendship was formed. I like to believe that added some magic to the record that wouldn’t be there if we were in a more formal exchange. I think in retrospect, it’s a dedication to Neal and the inspiring life long love of music he had."
 
The basic tracks to “Listening To The Music” were recorded in just 4 days at Bunker Studio in NY. 
 
“I was very fortunate to work with such amazing musicians. There was never a moment I had forgotten that or taken that for granted. I think the fact that Mickey & Norm have played such prominent roles in Country music recording history is profound in and of itself. I suppose that means that my record is part of that continuing thread of recorded country music. And that thread is the spirit of country music, at least in my mind,” states OHora. “Every session is different in its own way. This one was unique because of the combination of musicians and friends involved. There were many high points. The only low point was when the sessions were done, and we looked at each other and said, "Damn! I don’t want this to end, man. We’ve been having so much fun!' ”

Check out more on Zephaniah OHora!
http://www.zephaniahohora.com/

Check out his music!
http://zephaniahohora.bandcamp.com/album/listening-to-the-music