Prologue to Birdman

Recently, there was a consumer and media backlash against the retailer Urban Outfitters. Their website had briefly promoted a Kent State garment that appeared to be blood-splattered, an apparently morbid reference to the massacre of student protesters at the university by the National Guard in 1970. The retailer feigned ignorance, saying it was a misunderstanding. The shirt was vintage and fading, they said. This was all a trick of the eye. Sure it was. They took the item down, and only one question was left behind: Who would buy such a thing, let alone wear it?

Wayne Bird would.

Wayne has always had a sense of humor all his own, with the driving idea behind it being that if it’s uncomfortable for you, it’s funny for him. This is not sadism. Wayne’s actually a sensitive, compassionate guy. He simply believes in confronting and challenging that which keeps us… In society’s neat little box. Bird questions everything, and he tries real hard to have a laugh over it, no matter how bad things get. Laughter, after all, is the best drug.

Wayne knows a thing or two about drugs.

Maybe I’m being unfair.

I met the Birdman back in 2005(?) when he was attending the University of Cincinnati and interning for the pop culture website I See Sound, which I also worked for. We had a lot in common besides our mutual passion for writing:  indie rock, comic books, music, friends, and The Power of Myth. We were fast friends. I loved the guy like a brother. I’m so glad he never wrote about me.

See, Wayne wrote about his life through the lens of the pop culture that he loved, and these writings took him through a very difficult year. He wrote some of the most fucked up stories I’ve ever read. Stories that still disturb me when I think of them nearly a decade after I read them.

When I caught up with him on Facebook recently, I told him this. This elated the man, but he told me that his story was never published in completion. I See Sound had gone defunct before his last two submissions could run. He saw Tales of the Birdman as a book with a beginning, middle, and an end, but the conclusion never saw the Internet’s soft glowing light. His faithful readers were left dangling. This still bums him out.

So, I told him I would republish it here.

Listen, before you go any further, you should know that Tales of the Birdman is intended for mature audiences only. The views expressed within do not reflect the views of WordPress, Shiny Red Nothing, or myself. Read at your own risk and enjoy. Life’s too short to be offended.

Tales of the Birdman is episodic, with every three stories working together as a trilogy and all of those trilogies working torwards a grander narrative. The point here being that you don’t have to read the whole manual in order to use the machine.

So, without further ado…

Monseiur Moncrieff Speaks: An Interview With Jason Wells

You’ve been releasing albums as For Algernon (starting with Orange Watches and Lost loves, if I remember correctly) since… What? 2002? 2003?How many have there been?

2003. There are 7 for algernon albums out there.

Why isn’t this a For Algernon album? What does M. Moncrieff mean? Is this a character you wanted to play, a new personal direction, or something else?

It’s not a for algernon record because for algernon has evolved into a band with multiple personalities. We were nearly 50-60% complete on a new record at the time of the wreck and then we all sort of went through some life changing events. Deaths, births, wrecks… The album was left in limbo. As I began writing, I kept fleshing out these new songs on my own, without the bands input, and that’s not what I wanted the next algernon record to be. We all had worked too hard and too long to just skip it,  move on and come back to it. The name comes from (1/2 of where for algernon came from) Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance if Being Earnest.” One of the lead characters is Monsieur Algernon Moncrieff.

The M. Moncrieff album liner notes talk about a car crash and a move to the country. What happened? Why were these such life altering events?

Driving home, a car pulled out in front of me, and as I swerved to avoid it, I lost control and hit a parked car.  It was a pretty serious wreck. I cracked my sternum and broke 3 ribs, burns from the airbags, concussion and my passenger was injured severely too. The wreck still plays out in my mind, in nightmares, when I’m driving… I just keep thinking of how close I came to dying or killing someone. I blacked out after the impact to the head, so I can’t remember anything up until after I woke up, and that makes it worse. A near death experience will rattle you. It’s how you deal with it that makes or breaks you, and it broke me. After about a month or two, a series of events lead me to a move 75 minutes east of Cincinnati. The closest store is 35 minutes away. It was a huge adjustment from what I knew. It’s taught me to prioritize and the beauty of silence. Often I would go a day or two without speaking a word. Finally, I began writing as a way to heal.

Will you play shows as Monsieur Moncrieff or will For Algernon perform these songs?

I’ve been playing Moncrieff stuff when I play solo. I doubt algernon will play them. It’s not out of the picture, but it wasn’t developed for that.

It seems to me that this album is a transition into adulthood for you. Is this a correct observation? Did this happen in your life and music at the same time?

I’ve been slowly adjusting to adulthood these past few years, and I don’t think I was really comfortable with where I was at till a year after the move. I didn’t plan on these songs to be that per say, but I guess it kind of is. The first song really sums it up for me these days. I’ve had some rough times, good times, I love music, I love writing & singing about it,  I may get lost in it, I love my friends but what I really love most is coming home to someone at the end of it all and I don’t care how lame that may sound. I guess that’s an “adult” thing?

All but two of your albums have been self recorded, and they all have a lo-fi vibe. This one’s no different, but it feels even more raw and performance oriented than some of your others. Was this intentional? What kind of a sound were you going for? How does this sound differ from what you would have done if this were a set of For Algernon recordings?

That’s funny you say that because I was doing a lot of lo-fi tricks, but this album was huge. The biggest undertaking I’ve done. I used various recording methods, studied different ways to capture vocals, found that it’s fun to slow things down on a reel to reel, and played more things than I ever have. I really took my time on it.  Not that it sounds like a big studio record but that was intentional. I only recorded vocals when I was in the mood of the song, and I would try them drunk, sober, half asleep, with strep throat… I would record the song in different tempos and melodies and build on the one that captured the essence of the song the most.  I wanted it to be a very organic but warm sounding record, and the songs to work just as well acoustic or with full instrumentation as on the record.

Compared to what the forthcoming algernon record is, it’s not even close. Jon Williams is producing it, and he is a wizard. Had this been recorded as for algernon today, it would be a very different album. I doubt the same songs would even be on it. Even if it was pre-Jon, I still would’ve had other people play parts. I guess the beauty/fault of me doing it on my own is that I hear what I want, but struggle to actually get it out, so I think you hear the struggle in the music. The guitar solo in “arrow” took me 3 painful hours to do because I doubled it on acoustic and electric and couldn’t remember the notes, and i think that comes across in the recording. Had this been for algernon, I would’ve said, “Hey, Jon. What do you think goes here?”

What bands/artists were you listening to while writing/recording “At the Lake, Just After Dark?”

Primarily, I was obsessed with Ólafur Arnalds and Max Richter, but there was a little Woodpigeon, Sparklehorse, Tom Waits, The Antlers,  Ape The Ghost, Adam Green & Binki Shapiro, Lee Hazlewood, Lucinda Williams and Dean Martin

The liner notes also talk about the possibility of you abandoning making music altogether. Knowing you as I do, this sounds impossible. Why would you consider leaving your recording gear behind you? Are you still considering it?

Yeah. Music is so personal to me. It gets tougher and tougher to go out and play. You do so much work and hustling to get a show together and then two people show up and tell you to keep it down so they can hear each other talk. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter, and you’re doing this because you love it, but I can love it just as much sitting in my studio and not go through all the heartbreak of a terrible gig. But then, you get that great show and I eat all my words.

You’ve written hundreds of songs. Which is your favorite and why?

Seriously? I can’t pick one. It’s like picking your favorite child.

(Buy the new M. Moncrieff album for a mere five bucks here: Http://www.monsieurmoncrieff.bandcamp.com)

But the album: http://www.monsieurmoncrieff.bandcamp.com

The Not So Sad Bastard

If you’re an avid music fan, you may know that the Cincinnati area has had a firm finger in the piano lid of rock and roll history for a long time. If you’re kind of obsessed with indie music in particular, you’ll probably name-drop the phenomenal Heartless Bastards or the fucking awful Afghan Whigs. Maybe you’re obsessed. Perhaps you own a Wussy t-shirt or know where Coltrane Motion used to eat chili. In that case, Jason Wells is probably your hero.

Believe it or not, this is the least douchey photo I could find on Jason’s Facebook page.

I met Wells ages ago. We were at an open mic, and he was pacing back and forth in a hall perpendicular to the bar, an electric guitar hanging on his back. He was a tortured soul, looking (oh-wee-oh) just like Buddy Holly. I don’t recall what broke the ice, but I taught him how to play “About A Girl” by Nirvana that night, and it wasn’t long after that that we started a band called “The Drunken Monkeys” with Rich Lewis, later of The Lewis Brothers. This was 2001. A Jason Wells solo record, called Public Diary, came along shortly after, and a parade of excellent, self-produced/released albums under the name For Algernon marched on through the years afterwards.

This album is about an escaped prisoner with a hook for a hand.

Calling For Algernon a “band” is a loose descriptor. See, the members have consisted of Wells and whoever else was able, willing, patient, and available within Wells’ notoriously ever-changing parameters. There have been a diverse troupe of talented players involved in the decade-plus existence of the group, but the thing to know here is that it was always Wells’ show, and Wells’ show was mostly an insular, obsessively crafted, recorded one. “Public Diary” was the most apt of names for his first record. All of the assemblies of recordings to come have been public diaries as well, with each being a little better than the last. The hook was always Wells’ impeccable pop craft, his ability to casually shake off a melody that lodged itself in the crevice where your brain meets your heart, where we take comfort in the companionship of shared human suffering. It was only relatively recently that Wells seemed to have settled on, more or less, a live band line up. Like many past incarnations, they were a dynamic emotional force. Unlike the past line-ups, this one was pretty tight.

Every one of these guys has a third nipple.

Then Wells crashed his car. Again. Then he moved. Again (this time to “the country”). The charismatic Mr. Wells found himself at the elbow of his personal trajectory.

Enter M. Moncrieff, Wells’ first album under this alternative moniker. “Near the Lake, Just After Dark,” continues the tradition established with the For Algernon code name. The songs are self-recorded, lo-fi ditties that sit you on the floor next to Wells’ production desk while he pours his heart out to you with a cheap but drinkable bottle of scotch. The striking difference here; the element that sets it apart from his previous work, is the contentment it expresses. My favorite track is the opener, “An Ounce Of Honey,” an ode to coming home to the one you love and forming lasting, resentment free bonds.

This is not the sad bastard output of a youthful artist. “Near the Lake” finds Wells settling into himself as a confident adult, somewhat at ease, with the dramatic hinge of the album being the struggle to accept the transformation. The track “Hard Heart,” easily the album’s most accessible and catchy tune, is a great example of this evolution. The titular hard heart of this song has hurt our narrator, but instead of pacing the dark halls of his broken heart, Wells stands proud to say that he’s had enough of her shit. A similar sentiment is given in the scathing admonishment called “Board Games,” where some poor fool is eviscerated in a fashion that’d make Bob Dylan proud.This newfound confidence could, perhaps, be a fitting enough reason to change one’s name.

It’s difficult for me to place M. Moncrieff musically. I’ve been listening to For Algernon for so long that it is it’s own beast to me. Upon the first listen, it sounds like a For Algernon album. Cool, but whatever, man. Then I listen again… And again… You may site Elliot Smith as an influence, as folks often might, if you’d please. Maybe Grandaddy. I would, however, put this record in the hall of heroes with the Velvet Underground circa Loaded, early Belle and Sebastian, and Lou Barlow with dry eyes. It doesn’t sound like those bands exactly, but they’d all get along fine at the dinner party as long as that scotch was drinkable enough.

The production value is best described as homemade. Homemade with a weary passion, a trait that really stands out the most in the sleepy vocals of “4 Seasons,” one of those tracks that exists like a contented sigh from an alright dude with a less than alright half-full bottle of…

…Well, the scotch is probably gone by now, but I bet there’s some Jameson around here somewhere. There’s a pot of grandpa’s chili on the stove too. Help yourself. Cheers. Here’s to history.

(Buy the album for a mere five bucks here: Http://www.monsieurmoncrieff.bandcamp.com)

But the album: http://www.monsieurmoncrieff.bandcamp.com