Harry

Immer just said “I’m playing bass on this one” and held out an acoustic guitar for Millard. Millard took the guitar, walked into Immy’s booth and spent the rest of the day just abusing Immy’s poor 1963 Goya Classical Guitar. He beat the shit out of the poor sad thing. Now it refuses to play anything but whiny ballads (which... we have plenty of). Young David Arthur Immerglück brought this song infrom our friend Coby. I knew Coby because his brother Matt directed the indie film Ropewalk and we recorded some songs for it a few years back. I didn’t realize Immy even knew Coby but he claims they’ve played together for the past 4yrs (could be true - Immy’s very mysterious that way...like if Rasputin loved sushi & playedguitar). I always dug Coby’s writing but “Hospital” floored me. When Iheard it (and when we recorded it as well) I was in the worst part of 7 months of horrific drug withdrawals as I weaned myself off a number of prescription psychiatric meds. There’s no drug problem; it was just some medications prescribed me that the docs no longer wanted me to take. Nonetheless, there were a lot of them, some were very powerful and, as it turned out, rather unpleasantly addictive.During the worst of it, in June 2011, we were in the studio and I couldn’t stop twitching & shaking. I shook so much I pulled a muscle in my shoulder. I was insanely focused and did some of the best arrangements of my life (see this song and “Like Teenage Gravity”) but you can freaking hear me physically vibrating around the room, especially on (of all songs) this one with the line “There’s somepills that I shouldn’t take” (cue dry hacking laughter). It’s probably best summed up by Immy, writing to me with some comments on all the mixes: “My favorite trip on the whole batch? Your insane natural vibrato on the word “TREA-EA-EA-EATMENT” in “Hospital” -absolutely freaky...”

“Meet On The Ledge? I’ve been playing this song one way or another since the mid 80’s. Fairport Convention was amythical band from the dim past that a lot of bands in the vibrant San Francisco underground of the 80’s viewed with awed reverence. I believe Mick Freeman (drummer for contemporary scenestersX-tal) passed me my first copy of Fairport’s classic Liege And Lief, with a conspiratorial “you oughta check these guys out”. I dove deep and subsequently often found myself sitting in with fellow music freakDuritz’ preCrows band on a raucous version of “Matty Groves”, arrangement lifted shamelessly from the very same album. Bizarrely, a couple of years later, I found myself label mates with a later incarnation of Fairport Convention. They’d been signed to Rough Trade Records, where I was ensconced with both The Ophelias and Monks Of Doom, and tangentially Camper Van Beethoven. One fine day the fabledFairport came to play a rare show at SF’s Great American Music Hall. Jonathan Segel (Camper’s violinist) and I went on a double date with a couple of hotties from the Rough Trade office to go meet the legends in their natural environs. We got to the club and were quickly ushered downstairs to the backstage rooms, which by this time had been converted to a proper “bucket o’ blood” backwoods Britishpub – bottles flying everywhere, fiddle tunes echoing around the stairwell, a couple of guys fighting in the hall…these guys were SERIOUSLY drinking and carousing like it was the last night on earth. We spotted the bass player Dave Pegg through the smoke and rushed over likefawning teenyboppers to pick his brain about classic Fairport records, but the balding and jovial Pegg just wanted to offer usdrinks and talk about our long hair (Jonathan and I both had waist length manes at the time) -- “I LOVE your hair!!! I used to have THAT!!! I wish I still could…” -- and regale us with death-defying tales of touring with Led Zeppelin. Needless to say, we weren’t complaining! Finally they got on stage and played an extremely inebriated set that threatened to capsize at any moment but was saved...