Reed Mathis: Vernal Gratitude

I'm a weirdo, and what comes naturally to me might be possibly jarring to other people. The stuff I hear [in my head], I just use whatever tools I can to try and make it come out in the physical world. But, it's not always what people expect.

-Reed Mathis

Photo of Reed Mathis - 06.15.06 by Jake Krolick

What follows are Reed Mathis' observations on each of the tracks on Winterwood, where he offers insights into the compositions, production choices and his own larger history with JFJO.

1. Dove's Army of Love

Reed Mathis by Josh Miller

Dove was the founding guitarist in Jacob Fred, and he left in 2000. He's always been one of my favorite people in the world, just an unreal level of optimism and positivity and a sort of kill-em-with-kindness approach to things. Really just a brilliant guitarist and human. Even though we don't keep in touch very much he's still an icon in my psyche and a source of positivity. So, I was home with about 20 hours of Glenn Gould playing Bach, and I just put it on shuffle and didn't turn it off. So, I had Glenn Gould playing Bach in my living room for a week straight, which nearly drove my wife out of the house. Some of that got into me and came out in the "Dove's Army" melody. I was experiencing writer's block and decided that after a bike ride I was going to sit down and write a song, which I did. Afterwards I checked my email and there was a note from Dove announcing that his wife had just given birth to triplets, three boys. Dove used to be a guitarist and now he does graphic novels, he's an illustrator, and he's all into this superhero trip. So, I looked at this song as the soundtrack to his three sons becoming superheroes and saving the planet from negativity – the sound of overwhelming optimism overcoming the negativity of the world.

2. Song of the Vipers (Armstrong)

Louis Armstrong is one of the greatest musicians I've ever heard, and one of my favorite soloists, whether trumpet or voice. I picked that song because of the title, but I also have a fascination with jazz of the 1920s, before it codified, before right or wrong and it was clearly folk music. In the '20s it was just anything fucking goes! My arrangement for this and "Oklahoma Stomp" were my attempt to draw a parallel between the lawlessness of Oklahoma jazz in the 2000s and the lawlessness of the jazz of the '20s. I also make my banjo debut on "Vipers." One of my favorite things about '20s jazz is how they pass the ball like a basketball team. There's no long solos; people solo for 20 seconds then bam, next instrument. The foreground is constantly changing. Through editing I made that happen. It's a banjo, no wait it's a Rhodes solo, just a constant shuffling of orchestration. I also wanted it to be slight hallucinatory, to slightly drift into the dream world.

3. A Bird

This is a song that's never been played live, and I really hope the new Jacob Fred lineup works it out because it's one of Brian's best melodies. It was one of the last ones we did and Brian played it solo for about ten minutes and then I later tried to distill it down to this jazz nugget. That 'bass' you hear at the beginning is actually Brian playing Rhodes. It just builds up and builds up and then there's this epilogue at the end, which was the improvisation Brian had done at the session. I didn't know what I wanted to do with it but I sat down one day and transcribed exactly what he played, then overdubbed his left hand on the bass guitar and I overdubbed his right hand on the acoustic guitar. Suddenly it sounds like this composed thing, but it begins with something that Brian just came up with.

4. Oklahoma Stomp (Ellington)

Reed Mathis by Ariel Mathis

That's been covered!

5. Goodnight Ollie

I love that song! Ollie is Brian's nephew and that was a little lullaby Brian came up with. That's the most overtly Beatle-y song on the album; you can really get your "Hey Jude" on to that one! As far as I can remember there's no soloing. There's about ten different instruments on there that take turns taking the melody. It was also the last track on Lil Tae and the two versions couldn't be more different.

6. Old Love New Love

The basic track for that one was one-take, a live trio take that didn't get cut up too much but the overdubs a kitchen sink that got real orchestrated. I almost left on a bit of tape at the end where Haas said, "That's the best we've ever played that song." Like much of the record it sounds like there's a bunch of synthesizers but we've never used anything like that. All the keyboard-y sounds you're hearing are either bass or melodica. There's also a sound that makes me think of a sandworm. Brian's girl Audra was making a necklace in the studio and I had her rub the necklace together in front of a microphone and then dropped it down three octaves. That's the sort of creeping, ominous sound in the middle of that song.

7. Crazy Fingers (Garcia)

That was a song a friend of mine, the one who introduced me to the Grateful Dead, always said Jacob Fred should do. Took us a while to get to it but what a gorgeous song. Keep in mind that it starts with Brian's brilliant solo performance and then becomes this.

8. The Slip

One of the best bands I've ever heard in my life. One of the first things that struck me when I first saw The Slip was their ability to turn on a dime. I wrote that song as an attempt to portray that aspect of their playing. It's sort of a mini-epic that goes a lot of different places and a portrait of some of my favorite guys.

9. Twinstar

Reed Mathis by Ariel Mathis

I wrote "Twinstar" for my wife. I got the title from a poem she'd written, and that was the song she marched down the aisle to at our wedding. It was the first song we did when we got to Winterwood Studios, and it was really an attempt to make a piece of classical music in the studio. That one got the most overdubs and it's the mix I'm most proud of on the album.

10. Earl Hines

Hines was a pianist and he and Louis Armstrong created a profound partnership back in the '20s. Earl Hines is the pianist I've always felt Haas most resembles in the jazz canon, just a sort of daredevil, stride thing combined with a classical background combined with this viper stance, and it all comes together. I feel like they're really parallel people. I wrote that song for Brian to highlight that parallel. Since it is a down home, New Orleans-y kind of thing I decided to play banjo instead of guitar, and keeping with the Sgt. Pepper theme, it made it a little more cinematic than guitar.

11. Bumper Crop pf Strange

The title is a reference to what an awesome crop of songs we found ourselves with at this point. We made a list of songs we wanted to play in the studio and when we saw them all written down in a row we were like, "This is the best body of songs we've ever had for a record!" If I got carried away on the production on this record THIS is the song I got carried away on! My production is a little over-the-top, ADD. Brian and Raymer were pumped up about it so I left it totally opulent.

12. Walking Before Daylight (Layton)

It's a song by Sean Layton, the founder of the band. His version is just him on African thumb piano and singing, and I've always wanted to do an instrumental version of one of his tunes; he was such a good songwriter. Covering that song was actually Jason Smart's idea but we never got around to it. I did this track at Winterwood after Brian and Raymer were spent. We'd been tracking all day, really going through the paces. It was like 10 p.m., we'd put in a 12-hour day and they were going to relax and have a glass of wine. I asked the engineer if he had another half hour of steam for me to try something. That song is mostly me except for the drum set. I just love Sean Layton so much. Once I had it together I played it for a few people close to him and moved some of them to tears, so I felt I'd done a good job conjuring up one of the most beautiful souls I've ever met.

13. Autumnal/Vernal Equinox

"Vernal Equinox" is just such a durable little melody that Brian and I kinda came up with together. We came up with "Sean Song" that we wrote for Sean Layton years and years ago, then rewrote it as "Vernal Equinox" with a different chord progression and a very different form. Then, a few years after that, I rewrote it in a different key in half-time and called it "Autumnal Equinox," which ended up the first track on Lil Tae. And then I ended up putting "Vernal" and "Autumnal Equinox" together in a suite, which is what you find on Winterwood. I have to say this is Raymer's outstanding performance on the record. He's playing so fast it sounds sped up, like the Jungle trick where you take a James Brown loop and play it at 45 rpm. Just incredible drumming. A lot of songs in the Jacob Fred catalog have come and gone, but "Vernal Equinox" doesn't really go away. It's always been there and when it needs to take on a new shape it does.

It's a song that's always made my heart swell a bit when we played it. It's a bit sweeping, a bit sentimental and it's got an air of gratitude to it. And that's all the stuff I feel about Jacob Fred. I feel grateful to have been part of it and I feel hopeful to be included in the future and I feel like it's one of the most beautiful things in the world.