One night in 2004, I played a show in Ann Arbor, Michigan at a spot called The Blind Pig. In attendance that night was John Herndon of the band Tortoise. He was visiting the area from Chicago because his parents or his wife’s parents lived there. After the show we had a chat and he said something like, “if you ever need a drummer…”. I said, “Are you serious?!” He said, “yeah, man”.
I really liked the 1996 Tortoise album Millions Now Living Will Never Die and I LOVED the 1998 album, TNT. So I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to work with one of the guys in the band. John and I exchanged info and I got in touch a short time later, asking when we could make it happen. After looking at his calendar, he said he had some free time in a few weeks and that after that, it could be a while. So we sprang into action. He invited me to Chicago to work at his house and at Soma, Tortoise’s studio. A few weeks later, I was there and I had no ideas. It all happened so fast. I hadn’t been planning on recording at the time and I had no songs written. All five members of the band were on hand and we just started throwing ideas at the wall.
Looking back, I guess it’s pretty cool that I recorded an album with a legendary band like Tortoise. But just because I was a fan of their music doesn’t mean collaborating was good idea. I know I’m starting to sound like a broken record but I wish I had just kept doing what I did best - making hip hop records by myself.
When I listen to the Secret House Against The World album now, all I really hear are the incredible performances of the guys from Tortoise - in particular, John McEntire’s drumming on “Drawing Curtains” and John Herndon’s drumming on “Le 65isme”. Holy shit. Blows my mind. I can still vividly picture John Herndon playing. It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. So athletic. Everything you hear in that song is a real performance by him. No loops. No editing. It’s astounding. What the hell is that beat?! Even his bandmates were blown away in the studio. High fives all around.
D-Styles is the greatest scratch DJ in the world. He did some cool stuff on the record. Chilly Gonzales’ playing on the piano version of “Devil’s Eyes” is amazing. That guy’s a genius. And y’all remember Claire? She contributed vocals to a bunch of songs on the album and toured with me. We were a couple back then. We’re still close. Her birthday was last week. She’s super-famous in France now. She’s written a bunch of best-selling books. Here she is on French TV a few years ago, talking about one of them:
What kills the record is me. It would probably be a better album without my vocals! I wasn’t well prepared and I’m just not sure the whole thing was a good idea. I was getting further and further away from myself. Reviews of the album were pretty terrible across the board. It just seemed to confuse people and I understand that. From where I stand now, it confuses me too.
In the previous post on Talkin’ Honky Blues, I wrote about how my instinct going into my deal with Warner was that making a fully sample-based record on a major label would be a problem. With my next album - Situation - I found out the hard way that my instinct was right. We’ll get into it.
Until then…
