Okay.It’s no secret that since the death of Johnny Cash, everybody and their brother is going out of their way to claim how much they “looooove” Johnny Cash. And everybody probably already knows that if you want to aim for “the coolest” you lay claim to having ALWAYS loved Johnny Cash.. “you know! For-EVER, I have liked him for like E-Verrr.” I have watched some very respectable people turn into that thirteen year old kid who on the day after Christmas when three other kids showed up in a pair of Vans, sat there explaining ‘till they were blue in the face the intricate details of how far back their knowledge/dedication/loyalty to the art of skateboarding went.
However, it is late here, everybody is thinking of sleep, and we have just finished watching Walk the Line. So, I feel that something must be said. Over the past couple of years with the surge of Johnny Cash Memorials, Awards, Honors, and Tributes it has become the most obvious thing in the world to Everyone and Anybody that Johnny Cash is not only the Man in Black but he is absolutely and completely THE MAN of ALL MUSIC of ALL TIME.
Perhaps the frustration here is not that everybody else is saying it too, but that ,..well.. that everybody else is saying it too.
And yet,…. after we sat through Walk the Line for the second time tonight we thought that we should add our little bit to the grand echoing chorus, regardless of how many times we have heard it this year (or last, or the one before) or how many times we will inevitably hear it again and again. The truth is Johnny Cash can Bring it. Big Time. And so,.. here it goes…“I love Johnny Cash most!! I do ! I do! The first, the last, the least the most! I do! I do ! It’s true! I do!”

And we do.

The car stereo in our car is not great. pretty standard really (or less) if we can tell what song is playing, and generally who is singing we are well satisfied. however, if you ever get the chance to listen to the faces "nod is good as a wink..." on a really swank stereo, do not miss the opportunity. I was lucky enough to be "borrowing" a lexus from a friend recently, to drive to the store, and this record was in the player. Gloriously (and i mean this word) however, i didn't even know the car stereo was on when i turned the ignition, and i was a good ten feet out of the driveway before my borrowed vehicle went from total silence to the heavens opening up and the song "debris" blaring slow and massive out of each side of the car's interior. wow. "maybe people have this experience all the time i thought." it was unforgettable. i've never appreciated glyn johns more...

by the way - for anyone wondering about the "songs of america project", we found out today that the record will be coming out in jan. 07 accompanied by a massive concert at the Ford Theater in Washington DC. It will be recorded for a pbs broadcast, dvd, etc.

For anyone who's never heard of this project it is a record featuring the songs of american history from 1620 - present covered (or "interpreted") by several different artists including the flaming lips, sufjan stevens, thad cockrell (fronting the Mavericks -- they cover the song "Dixie" !), and many others. We here at roman candle were assigned the song "Get Together" (made famous by the youngbloods & the easy rider soundtrack), by the producers, and recently recorded a version of the song for this record, which we hope to host for a day on myspace in the coming weeks. so look out below.

(1929-2006) Before he ran the show at Hee Haw, Buck Owens ran the show in general. He was an unbelievable singer and songwriter. He is one of many knock-out artists that will fall into a newly developing genre (coined here for the first time), called "Man, they were one Rick-Rubin-produced-project away from blowing peoples' minds (again) in their old age.*** God rest his soul. I was first introduced to him (like most kids i guess) by watching hee-haw at my grandparents house. As you might imagine Hee-Haw turned many wheels in my brain, and i saw my fair share, but it didn't cause me to run out in my tender youth and buy Buck Owens records (this was truly my loss). I didn't actually start +listening+ to Buck Owens until a few years ago when we started spending a bunch of time with Thad Cockrell (quick aside - Thad Cockrell by the way, as an artist, should be seen in the same context as Buck Owens or Willie Nelson. The kind of luke warm comparisons he always gets to contemporary folks like Ryan Adams don't do justice to Thad in the least -- or Ryan Adams for that matter). Instead of rambling here any further - i'm going to suggest you listen to this verison of Buck Owen's covering Chuck Berry in England.

by the way, if you've ever seen Thad in concert, his live show might make more a little more sense in this context.

*** I'm not suggesting that these amazing artists (from a past generation, i.e. Everly Brothers, Bill Withers) would be in any way dependent on rick rubin, as good as he is, to turn heads, etc. I am suggesting that if they made an album of voice and acoustic guitar/ piano or otherwise minmal instrumentation, and were given the media attention that accompanied R. Rubin's recent collaboration with Neil Diamond, hipsters, housewives, et al. would be sporting two front teeth over a bottom lip while listening to their inevitablly hot tracks.
Last but not least - Bill Withers, or Don and Phil, if you are reading this, we here at roman candle would love to offer our production services to you in any shape or fashion...

hmm sleep. what's that? one time i heard on a "behind the music" about 90's country music singer Aaron Tippen (known for "There ain't nothing wrong with the radio" and several patriotic hits), that while he was struggling to get noticed in nashville, he was able to keep up his songwriting, playing several live shows per month, and a die-hard weightlifting schedule, all while keeping a full-time job. If you kept up with Mr. Tippen in the mid-90's, you'll know it all paid off for him. If you keep up with roman candle, you might guess that our weightlifting isn't what it used to be

Hmm. a nice night at the house watching BET. we have almost finsished our album artwork. The picture here is us in skip and timshel's apartment shooting photos for the inside of the album booklet. As seen here, Jude was the chief art director in both vision and execution. In this photo he was barking directions left and right like a mini A. Hitchcock. The truth however is that Jude stole all of his idea for the artistic vision from nick, and being the rascal that he is, managed somehow to get all the credit.
by the way - we are currently booking shows for april/may/june and will be adding them to our website as they get confirmed.

ghost story for the kiddies:
Thanks to all who have written in asking questions about our UK trip. sorry we don't have time to answer all of them with the detail they deserve, so we've decided to post the occasional anecdote or photo on our blog. (looking at photots may require you, the reader to venture out into our official blog). There is a pretty wild and apparntly true ghost story associated with the house, Burton Agnes, where we stayed in february. It tickled us while we were there because everyone was so commonplace about it. ("here is where we do laundry, here is the red drawing room, there is the ghost's bedroom...")

(quick aside) if you ever get the chance to visit east yorkshire - and it's pretty out of the way - it is completely worth it. Go to the Burton Agnes House/gardens, and undoubtably go to either Scarborough, or Whitby, or both. The drive alone is pretty fantastic. With great zeal we reccomend eating fish and chips at Mother Hubbard's in Scarborough if you get the chance. They are the official reataurant of roman candle in yorkshire (a very coveted title). Everyone that writes a travel book reccomends the Magpie Cafe in Whitby (which we tried, twice, and it is great) but the stone truth is Mother Hubbards is where it's at.

back to the ghost story as it was told to us: in 1620, one of the three daughters of the gentleman who built the house Burton Agnes (in 1598) was mugged/attacked/robbed while riding her horse in the countryside near the house (in the above, photo the one on the far right - and the only one wearing black). she was brought back to the home in terrible shape and died a few days later. This daughter had always been in love with the house as a child and a teenager (maybe in a nutty way?), saying she thought the house was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen, and how she never wanted to leave the house, etc. You get the idea. After she was mugged, and laying on what would be her deathbed, going in and out of consciousness and/or sanity, she pleaded with her sisters to take her skull, when she died and put it in the walls of the house. yikes. The sisters agreed to this, to soothe their ailing sister, but when she died, they buried her in the churchyard, with her head attached to her body. Apparently she haunted the house in a loud and nasty way, until the sisters consulted the vicar (taking David Brent's perpetual advice), dug up her body, removed her head and put it into a wall within the house. The haunting stopped. a hundred or so years later, while the descendants' family were remodeling things, someody discovered an old skull planted in the walls. Very sensibly, they chucked it in the trash. The haunting apparently cranked back up until the skull was found and put back. This happened again about a hundred years later, during another remodel only this time they (very sensibly) buried the skull in the garden. This was also a mistake. After this third haunting, they permanently put the lady's skull into a wall in the house. Things since then have been generally at peace in the house according to the owners, except for the dogs occasionally refuse to go into the what was the ghost's bedroom. Which, having been in the room, is a pretty weird, cold place. We were told it continully smells like lilac, even though there is no lilac in the room or near it. I'm not sure what lilac has to do with ghosts, but there you have it.

"I'm gonna name this track 'feedback'..."

Ello. We are up in Woo Town hitting the licks with Nick, the Monster, Jeager on git-arghhhhhh. It's crazy cool. Much like any other TLC-type record that we have done in the past. No rules. No limits.
By tomorrow night we should have a finished song but for now we are just sweating it out in the basement with some cups of tea (All Mathenys gave up coffee for Lent), Logs and Timshel are I-chatting one another across the room like a bunch of dorks "o hilarity, hilarity!" and Skip,..well Skip is twirling to Nick's spaced out guitar licks because, honestly, what else can you do to the song "Get together."

Hello everybody.. we are all home..and safe after six weeks of England and one night of down right spankadelics at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Welcome home peeps. Skip, Timshel, and Jude spent the past six weeks touring England, Jude on upright bass. We played a few acoustic shows in York, Leeds, and Burton Agnes. We stayed for the last four weeks of our trip up in East Yorkshire at an old manor house called Burton Agnes where we took part in their "artist in residence" program. This means we took lots of country walks, ate lots of Yorkshire pudding, and wrote a load of new music. We will be heading into the studio this weekend to work on a cover song for the "Songs for America" compilation. Very exciting. This will be a collaboration of artists doing their own interpretation of songs from American history. We were assigned the song "get together.' So wish us luck on that one. Above we have included one of the paintings (called Futility) in the Burton agnes gallery, right up next to the Cezanne.