ginger

Ginger was almost in my mid-life crisis heavy metal band instead of Rose, but we went with Rose and Ginger ended up with the Impalas, which was probably all for the best for her. At some point I started having her sing a few tunes. She could get that nice, simple, breathy thing I liked, and you can hear it particularly on the A Man She Once Knew below. As you can tell from my notes I was spotty about finishing this stuff, which is odd because I put a lot of work into horn charts and such. It's also a bit strange that I used horns on almost all the Ginger stuff but Jeff (the trumpet player) never even met Ginger.

Venezuela
(lyrics)
I think this was the first tune I finished with Ginger. Not sure where this came from, slightly predated my interest in Spanish. When I wrote it I had no idea exactly where Venezuela was or if they might or might not have had a part in the Colombian drug trade. But it's a nice tale, kinda metaphoric for a phase of life I was leaving behind I think. Yeah, I'm deep like that. I love the trumpet on the tail-out, sounds like a guy sitting on a packing case in a smoky bar noodling at closing time.

Costa Replacemen
(lyrics)
I'd written and recorded a version of this with Erin years before, but I now reshot it as kinda a reggae thing with Ginger singing. Yes, you too can turn a bad pun into an entire song. Nice tune though, more great trumpet from Jeff Helgesen, sax from Peter Roubal.

Let Go
(lyrics)
A kinda party tune I did with Ginger, a really nice track. I never mixed it at the time but dug it out again in the 90s and tidied it up. I was listening to the bass and thinking "wow, I was smokin" but then as I pondered it a bit more, I realized that wasn't me, that was Vic Serbe. I think Brian Wilke played guitar.

A Man She Once Knew
(lyrics)
Wow, I didn't find this until Dec 2013. I was going old tapes and saw the song name and wondered what it was. I put it up and was thrilled (again) to find a pert-near finished song, with jazzy horns and a great vocal. I had only the vaguest recollection of trying to use a drum machine on a jazz tune and feeling like it hadn't gone well, but I really had no idea I'd ever put this amount of work into the tune. Now the drum machine sounds pretty darn good to me, and the horn chart obviously took some effort. Pretty deep lyrics for me (remember I'm the guy who wrote Callipygean "she's got such a cute little butt"). More great trumpet from Jeff Helgesen, sax from peter Roubal, and again, sorry, no one remembers the 'bone player.

Sometimes You Have to Leave
Given my recent luck spelunking for old tunes I recalled this one and thought maybe I'd find it in decent shape. But it's not quite done. Still fun to listen to. I believe this was the first thing I tried with Ginger. I really liked this song and went on to do it with two different singers, Dawna, and Maryann. This was the first shot though. I suppose it was Josh Quirk on drums, not sure though. I went back and tried to clean this up a tiny bit. Removed some raucous laughter on the vocal tracks, added me doing an auto-tune thing to try to fill out the bridge. Likely Keith Harden playing lead because there's some slide and I never do that.



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