Golden Smog, that side band with the constantly rotating lineup and silly sense of humor, has just released the pun-y titled CD Blood on the Slacks. This unique unit counts high profile folks like Gary Louris of The Jayhawks and Dan Murphy of Soul Asylum as regular members, and has also made room for Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy at times. Upon first glance, you might assume its latest disc is an elaborate answer CD to Bob Dylan’s pivotal Blood on the Tracks classic. But the truth is not nearly so intellectual, nor conceptual. “I think somebody just said it one day and it sounded funny,” longtime Golden Smog member Kraig Jarret Johnson explains over the phone. This album title discovery left the band red with laughter, rather than tangled up in blue.
Some of disc’s tracks are leftovers from the group’s most recent studio recording, Another Fine Day, while others were recorded when the band was creating soundtrack music for an independent film called California Stars. “It (the film) was done by a friend of ours who lives in L.A. now, named Barbara McCowen,” says Johnson. “It’s just a short film about the musician hotel that’s, like, a hotel in L.A. with these people who are going through different things in their lives. Through a mutual friend she asked, ‘Do you think those guys would be interested in doing it?’ So we just got together and didn’t even look at the film, but just started putting down instrumental ideas for, like, a day and a half.”
Just because this group’s moniker was inspired by crooner Mel Torme’s nickname (The Golden Fog), doesn’t mean it can’t also be serious sometimes. For instance, they cover David Bowie’s “Starman,” which has always been an eerily thoughtful song. Former Jayhawks lead vocalist Gary Louris voices it, and like everything else he sings, it grabs your heart and won’t let go. “That was for the short, independent soundtrack,” Johnson explains. “The director wanted to use that for the end credits or something. And we were, like, ‘Oh, we love that song. We’d love to do it.’ And we had that left over and we were, like, ‘We should put this on there [the new disc]. We love the recording of it.’”
Much like “Starman,” another album song predates Soul Asylum, Run Westy Run, The Jayhawks, and any other group that spawned Golden Smog. It’s an original called “Insecure” and is sung by Dan Murphy. Says Johnson, “I think we were sitting around one day and we were, like, ‘What was one of the first songs you wrote?’ And we all kept playing all these really silly songs - (written) when you were fifteen and got a guitar and you were going to sit down and write a song. Danny pulled that one out and we all dropped to the floor laughing because, once again, if you read or listen to the lyrics, you can’t take that too seriously. ‘I like the clothes you wear/I wanna take them off/I wanna make you feel insecure.’ That’s why it’s a hidden track, I think. I love it. I mean, I have a great time playing it. When we play it live, everybody in the band would have big smiles on their faces. That’s why we recorded, too. It’s like, here we’re getting together and we’re playing a song Danny wrote when he was fifteen years old. This is kind of cool.”
Eight years lapsed between Weird Tales and Another Fine Day. So the release of Blood on the Slacks, just a mere year after its predecessor, is an extremely short break by Golden Smog standards. “We always manage to get together,” Johnson assures. “But it’s not, like, ‘We’ve gotta do this. Let’s get on it.’ It just kind of happens when it happens, which is the beauty about it.”
--Dan MacIntosh
Photo: Maria Chavez
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