F&W (197?)

[BPL1-1370] F&W

The title of the second album, F&W, stands for “Funky & Western”. It’s a play on “C&W”, Country & Western… a side of The Deadly Nightshade that Phantom/RCA definitely wanted to downplay on the second album.

It seemed (and still does seem) strange, since RCA had a huge country music division in Nashville. I guess the key word is “division”. The way the mainstream music industry then divided up music was that artists were either one thing or another. Our cross-genre identity, where we wrote (or picked, in the case of covers) songs in several styles—limiting ourselves only by what we/audiences liked, and by whether or not each song’s style was a good fit for us so we played it well-- worked great for us. But it didn’t work at all for the mainstream marketing machine, because an album like that didn’t fit the pre-categorized bins at Sam Goody.

And when it came down to a choice between our crunchy country/bluegrass side and our rock/power pop side, Phantom/RCA wanted the latter. The reason, as it was explained to us, is that country music was a sort of cult music with minimal crossover possibilities. An album perceived as country wouldn’t get played on rock radio or sell to rock/pop buyers, whereas a rock/pop album could cross over to the country charts.

i.e. Phantom/RCA essentially saw rock/pop sort of like  “O positive” blood, the universal donor for everyone. Country was more like A blood—a big category, but one with no way out.

How set in stone was this perception? Well, during a later tour that The Deadly Nightshade opened for Billy Joel, to support “F&W”, we did a gig at the Nashville Civic Center. The thousands of people were definitely there to see Billy, not us. It was the sort of classic situation where the most an unknown opening act can hope for is that the main act's loyal fans will sit on their hands, rather than throw rotten tomatoes. But our set went so well that we got an encore, lit matches, even some pretty wild dancing in front of the stage-- the whole thing.

Now RCA’s Nashville marketing guys had been very skeptical about The Deadly Nightshade before the concert. In fact when we first hit town, they'd taken us out to lunch at a female strip club, to see if they could gross us out. But immediately after the concert, they called RCA’s national office in NY and said they wanted to put more money into promoting The Deadly Nightshade as a C&W act. Note: that was their own money, not the NY office’s money.

RCA said no. i.e. it was pretty clear that if they couldn’t market us as a rock/pop act, they didn’t want us at all.

Frankly, The Deadly Nightshade’s success was not based on trying to fit ourselves into some pre-existing category. We did badly at that. Rather, our success had been based on taking the pulse of the times, then making up our own new category that fit what people seemed to want/need/love—and fit our own strong points, of course. So we still hoped to sneak out a weird fusion album. But we realized that, for marketing purposes, we needed to label the weird fusion.

So “Funky & Western” was our soundbite for a made-up musical style (and an album) that encompasses both a fiddle/washboard song and a cover of the old Motown hit “Dancing in the Streets”. We hoped that the word play-- “funky” almost rhymes with “country” (close enough for a rap artist, anyway)—would make the soundbite sound familiar enough to make the weird mix of styles understandable.

To be honest, the inclusion of the disco song (”Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”) made the album as a whole a bit hard to understand even for us. But we had to include “Mary Hartman” because it was a semi-hit. And it was our own idea to do the song, so we can’t pin that bit of accidental commerciality on the record company. It’s all explained below.

Anyway, the second album was released late, about a year and a half after the first album, mainly because we and RCA/Phantom had a hard time settling on a producer.

The first one we agreed on was Richard Greene, Seatrain’s violin player, who we’d long idolized. We also loved that Richard seemed to favor our most eclectic newly-written songs, particularly one washboard number (called “I Know What I Like”) that we mainly wrote to give me a chance to sing as low as possible; the result was much like Kermit the Frog, had he been a baritone-type bullfrog rather than a tenor. But after several months, it seemed like Richard had too many Seatrain commitments. Phantom/RCA wasn’t as pleased as we were with choices like the frog song, anyway.

Next was Paul Rothschild, who’d produced The Doors and was then starting to work with Bonnie Raitt (another of our idols, and, btw, as wonderful a person as she is a singer and bottleneck guitar player). Paul signed on, and was supposed to do our album after he completed Bonnie’s “Home Plate”. We were psyched. But ‘Home Plate” ran very late, and after another several months, Phantom/RCA got terminally antsy.

Then came a series of other possibilities, including one fellow who insisted on having studio hotshots play for us. (The explanation that particularly endeared him to us: “They’ll sound just like you, only better.”) We and our label finally agreed on Joel Diamond and Charlie Calello.

Joel, who was the name producer, showed up at the studio sometimes, to be Joel Diamond. But otherwise, I don’t think we registered much. (His discography includes two albums, both called “The Deadly Nightshade”; one is on Atlantic, one’s on his own record company Silver Blue. We never recorded for either company.)

Charlie, who was primarily an arranger-- much of it for Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, for whom he’d also played bass briefly-- did the actual producing work.

The studio experience was initially much more positive than the first album. For one thing, though Phantom did insist on instrumentally supplementing the three of us with studio players, Charlie found us three regular players—drummer Allan Schwartzberg, pianist Jon Stroll, and extra electric rhythm guitar player Lance Quinn—who played with us on every cut, rather than album one’s rotating superstar cast of thousands.

Obviously they were not women. We didn’t feel up to fighting that fight again. But they were nice guys, who, before playing, actually listened to the three of us play each song through once, to try to get our feel, instead of jumping in after the second bar and taking the song over.

So laying down the basic tracks went unbelievably fast. We nailed them all (except for one late add, a cover of “Dancing In the Streets’) in two days.

Unfortunately, that encouraged the record company to change our release date from October to September. Admittedly, September is a much better sales month, because of the new school season. So it made marketing sense. But to make the deadline, we’d have to complete the whole rest of the album—one more basic track, all instrumental overdubs, all vocals, mixing, and mastering—in ten days. The two-day basics made a 12-day album seem feasible.

We did make the deadline. But it was, in my opinion, at the expense of many vocals. The harmony parts are as good or better than on the first album. But in terms of vocal quality, our signature blend doesn’t sound as distinctive, or as carefully done, as on the first album.

The difference: On the second album, if someone’s voice was slightly out of tune or scraggly, instead of singing till we got it right, we used a time-saving trick of Charlie’s: We not only doubled and then tripled ourselves, but often also doubled each other’s parts. (I.e. if Anne’s part sometimes sounds like Anne plus Helen and me, it probably is.) When such tripled tracks are blended together, imperfections smooth right out, so the trick works. Still, it is just a trick, not getting it right.

By the twelfth night, everyone was pretty happy, but so exhausted that all those who had lives, including Anne, went home early. Our engineer Kevin stayed with Helen and me to re-mix the previously recorded disco semi-hit “Mary Hartman”, in order to make it sound marginally more like the rest of the album. We finished at 3:00 a.m. and drove out to the 24-hour Clairmont Diner (now, sadly, defunct) in New Jersey.

“Hey, do you know who these women are?” a totally giddy Kevin enthused to our waitress. “They’re two-thirds of The Deadly Nightshade, and they just finished an album.”

The waitress looked us up and down and said, “That’s nothing. Frankie Valli comes here all the time.”

Comin’ Thru    By mid-1976, when this song was written, an awful lot of feminists were starting to feel burnt out— too much thankless envelope stuffing, too few tangible results (believe it or not, “ERA” once meant more than the name of a real estate corporation), too much divisiveness and in-fighting, etc. This song was meant to re-inspire some feelings of mutual support/general warm fuzzies, and to remind the good guys we’re all in it together. Admittedly, it’s a little sappy when you listen to it cold, but at live gigs it worked great, combined with a few beers.   [PRB]

We were inspired by the Pointer Sisters’ “Yes We Can Can” for the a capella vocal arrangement in the middle of this. It is more impressive done live with the three of us than with our million-layered vocal tracks on the album.  [HH]

Show Me the Way Back Home Every band has a whiney on-the-road song bemoaning how lonely it is to be away from home living in hotels like Hollywood’s Continental Hyatt House (nicknamed the Riot House), with only a few dozen groupies, and lots of expensive substances, to console you… And/or to be flying around to so many different cities that you lose track where you are… etc.

We couldn’t, with any accuracy, whine about quite the same road tour experiences because, for instance, we didn’t fly the 900 miles to the next night’s gig. We drove it in our equipment van, so knew not only exactly what city we were in but knew every pothole along the way. Also we didn’t have groupies, and usually couldn’t afford to sleep in hotels.

Once, though, when we did splurge on a room at some generic chain motel, I went out to an all-night greasy spoon and, driving back, ended up at the wrong generic chain motel. As rock tour disorientation goes, it wasn’t quite as spectacular as mistaking Boston for Cleveland. Plus I was only lost and lonely for about 20 minutes. But that was enough to expand into a true-life road song (with just a little truth improvement to kick up the pathos a few notches).   [PRB]

In the studio, we cranked up the slide guitar through a small amp so it would scream for this song.  This was before guitar boxes would do it at a more reasonable volume.  My favorite line in this song, “It’s got magic fingers to do what friends are for”…We tried turning them on once in a motel room, but they didn’t feel as good as they sounded. [HH]

I’m Feelin’ Fine A break-up song.   [PRB]

We were trying for a Todd Rundgren thing here…The arrangement was way too cheery, though.  [HH]

One Day at a Time   Another break-up song. Hmmm. Guess how our personal lives were going, right about then?

We never did this song during gigs, probably because sad, introspective ballads didn’t seem to fit. Nevertheless, it remains one of my favorite songs we ever wrote, particularly because of one tiny part towards the end of the song after the instrumental lead. The lyrics are, “It’s gone wrong, but we can’t go on believing that leaving will make it be right”, and we come in singing them in what, musically, sounds at first like just the middle of a normal verse. But Helen wrote a surprise chord change on “believ-ing”, and again on “leav-ing” that still turns me inside out, really makes me want to cry, every time I hear it.

We’ve been talking about reviving this song and playing it live, now that The Deadly Nightshade is gigging again, because it (along with most of the other songs on the mis-marketed second album) never got the attention it deserves. Of course if excessive tears start falling on my microphone during that last verse I’ll probably get electrocuted… 220 volts right through the lips. But it wouldn’t be the first time.  [PRB]

Murphy’s Bar Murphy’s isn’t one of the holes-in-the-wall that we played. It’s a compilation-- a little foible from each.

For instance: The 12-ounce glasses that only held ten ounces were from a place called The Pub, in Amherst, MA. It looked like you were getting a massive amount of beer, but the whole bottom third of the mug was solid glass.

The big bear/bruiser with no sense of rhythm, who maimed the toes of every female person on the dance floor, will go unnamed.

As for the place whose ladies’ room never had any toilet paper, that’d be just about all of them. Lotsa very, very scary bathrooms in those bars. What great joints. We’d do reunion gigs at any of them in a heartbeat, had the floors doubtless not rotted out 20 years ago from all the spilt drinks.   [PRB]     

I loved playing this because I got to play the violin through an electric Wah-Wah pedal that had touch sensitivity so the harder you played the more it “wahed”, which I thought was so fun.  The song really took us back to all those places we played. [HH]

Little Old Lady from Pasadena Phantom wanted us to do two rock-type cover songs on the album, for commercial reasons. After the relative success of “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman” in what they considered normal rock markets (as opposed to the alternative markets that bought the first album), they wanted the second album to be all rock. Or pop. Just not country, bluegrass, or any other musical style they considered marginal. We’d been working on an arrangement of “Little Old Lady from Pasadena”, anyway, so we were happy to record that.

While the vocal arrangement is exactly as we’d been doing it, though, the beat isn’t. We wanted to keep the same direct straight-eight surfer feel as Jan & Dean’s original, just heavied up and with crunchier instrumental sounds. But Charlie thought this more elusive treatment, with the vaguely Caribbean-lite guitar accents, was hipper.   [PRB]   

Sounds like she needed a tune-up.  [HH]

Dancing In the Streets We chose this second cover mostly because it was at least semi-transitional between the rest of our songs and “Mary Hartman”. We’d been playing it in clubs (not concerts) for years, with pretty much the same vocal arrangement but a totally different instrumental—just a straightforward beat that always got people dancing. Charlie found that feel too simple, though, so he wrote this instrumental arrangement, which he thought more contemporary.

Whatever, Anne didn’t even play on it, and Helen and I were just reading from charts like the studio cats. Personally, I felt more like a drowning cat, because the record company had the fabulous studio bass god Bob Babbitt sitting in the control room, in case I couldn’t cut reading the bass part off the chart. I squeaked through… But geez.

Oh, well. At our most recent gigs, we revived “Dancing in the Streets”, done the simple way. And people jumped right up, as always.   [PRB]

Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (Theme) This anomaly, originally recorded and released between our two albums, was our only Top 100 single, reaching #67 on national charts and Top 10 in a few markets that had never known us from a hole in the wall, like Toledo and Miami. Since it bears no resemblance to anything else we played, ever, people often wonder what’s the story.  

It started as a joke, when Anne broke a guitar string during a Sunday afternoon show at Passim, the legendary coffeehouse in Cambridge, MA. Normally, we could've just taken a short break while she changed the string, but Passim did a radio broadcast of their Sunday shows. Five minutes of dead on-the-air space wasn't an option.

Purely to fill time, I ran off at the mouth about our alleged next recording: a disco version of the theme from "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman". This was clearly ridiculous, what with us being a country/rock trio with no drummer, much less a horn section, strings, etc. But the audience seemed to think it was a swell idea.
So on the drive back to New York that night, we decided to see how far we could push it. On Monday, we went into Phantom's offices and proposed it as a serious recording project to the label's president, Bud Prager. To our surprise, he took it to RCA.

And it turned out that, like, 11 other groups had already submitted disco versions of Mary Hartman's theme! RCA was going to make a decision about which one to release by the end of that week. Still, Bud said we could submit our version, too, if we could manage to do it in two days.

The silliness kept escalating. Michael Mainieri, a famous jazz player whose band we'd played with in Woodstock, said he'd produce. He brought in all the top studio disco players he knew, which were... everybody. He managed to book a good chunk of the string section from the NY Philharmonic, too.

Meanwhile, Helen and I wrote, arranged, orchestrated, and made detailed charts for the thing overnight. This included adding a second half to the TV theme. (The whole B section…”uh-huh, got me every night, etc,”… which is much longer and vocal as well as instrumental-- with layers upon layers of campy lyrics-- is ours. But we weren't credited as co-writers, because the rush to record left no time to negotiate any writers' rights. By the time that came up, it was either sign away all our rights, or the record doesn't get released.)

Whatever. We made the deadline, and RCA picked our version.

Admittedly, it was a little tricky touring to support the record, since the NY Philharmonic did not fit in our van. So for awhile at gigs, there were all these disco fans… And there we were with our washboard.   [PRB]

Oddly enough, this song was the biggest hit we had in the singles market and was top ten in Miami.  It was hard to do live though, as we didn’t play live with a drummer and a cast of studio cats.  In the studio we worked hard on the transition from this song to “No Chicken Today”, with the clinking dishes and other sounds to make it sound like a diner in the background. [HH]

No Chicken Today Whether the lyrics date this song is debatable. In the early days of second-wave feminism, progressive adult females in general were certainly more insistent about being called women, rather than girls, chicks, or other belittling stuff.

As to whether “chick” is still a belittling term today, though… please. Have you ever met a chicken?

Anyway, the vocal harmonies remain impressive.   [PRB]

Recently my 13 year old nephew pronounced a movie he didn’t like to be a “chick-flick”, clearly a belittling term for him. Negative images of women die hard.

We included real people’s names as the waitresses in this song.  Rae Ann ran Passim in Boston with her husband Bob Donlan when we played there; Hazel was our friend’s Dad’s girlfriend. This song is a fun one to play live. We pretend we’re the waitresses. [HH]   

Johnny the Rock & Roll Star… is a composite of all the total asshole male rock musicians we encountered over the years. We met some really terrific male rock musicians, too. But you’ll notice it’s a very long song.   [PRB]

Our experience of ‘rock-n-roll stardom’ was so very different because we were women.  For example, our ‘groupies’ were generally women who were souped up about the ERA and their own liberation.  Also, we always seemed to be scraping along with hardly any money.  A great example of this was the Billy Joel Tour, where the BJ band would fly or take their huge luxury bus to the gig, driven of course by roadies, and have their equipment set up by the roadies for them.  Since we really wanted to do the tour, but had very little tour support from RCA, we had to drive ourselves to the next city on the tour (sometimes a several hour drive) and then set up our own equipment in time to play the next gig. [HH]

Ain’t I A Woman Inspired by the 1851 women’s rights speech made by Sojourner Truth, a former slave who became one of the era’s leading abolitionists as well as suffragists, this song, when we wrote it, wasn’t actually intended for us. We wanted to record it with a guest lead singer— a real gospel belter. But the record company said it was our album so one of us had to sing it.

That’s what happened, though in order to hit the high F on “None but heaven heard me”, I had to run out for an emergency vocal lesson in the middle of the session.

And despite all the years since then, we’ve never stopped hoping for Aretha Franklin to cover this song. Jennifer Hudson could sing the hell out of it, too. Or Melissa Etheridge.   [PRB]

Yes, and with a huge Gospel choir behind them!  [HH]