Blind Willies – “Needle, Feather, and a Rope” album0
Posted by - In Music
Alexei Wajchman is the front-runner of the band, Blind Willies, that started out as a duo, covering American folk songs. After the band released 2 albums (“The Unkindness of Ravens” in 2007, and “Everybody’s Looking for a Meal” in 2008) with all-original songs, Alexei assembled a band. In it now are Alexei Wajchman (vocals, guitar, harmonica), Misha Khalikulov (cello), Daniel Riera (bass), Max Miller-Loran (keys, trumpet), and Adam Coopersmith (drums).
The San Francisco band recently released their 3rd album, “Needle, Feather, and a Rope“, that has a hearty mix of blues, rock, and folk, with hints of jazz. And it was recorded at John Vanderslice‘s all-analog studio in San Francisco’s Mission District, in less than a week.
Alexei explains, “The band all together in the studio, live to 2” analog tape, with minimal overdubs. We felt this approach not only gives the album superior sonics, but is a more honest representation of our musicianship and soul. We punched it out in 4 days, 10 hours each day, and I think you can hear the pleasure of the experience and the fun we had.”
The album is comprised of 11 songs, where Alexei tells stories of life in San Francisco and everything seen outside of his bedroom window. He sings about the lives and worlds of different people found out on the streets — weaving between what goes on at night in dark alleys (prostitutes and pimps, gambling your life, etc), to sadness and desperation of troubled individuals, circus performers, lunatics, and much more. It’s a well-written, beautiful album. I was/am pleasently surprised and pleased to have received a song of theirs in my email, as well as a link their Bandcamp page where you can stream or purchase all of their albums.
Paired with the touching tales that Alexei sings about, I absolutely love his raw, jagged vocals on every song. Each song holds so much passion, emotion, and sincerity And, of course, all the live instrumentation is incredible. The horn sections, the harmonica solos, the savory cello and other string instruments, the keys… I loved it all.
Grab two free downloads… the blue-collar worker song, “Soon My Work Will Be Over”, and “Lord Thought He’d Make a Man”. Then listen to the album in its entirety below.
FREE DOWNLOADS:
“Soon My Work Will Be Over”
“Lord Thought He’d Make A Man”
In April 2009 I watched a Frontline documentary, The Released, about what happens to mentally ill inmates after they’re paroled. A psychiatrist questioned a man who had spent 21 years in prison for murder and had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He heard voices. The doctor asked him what the voices were saying. They were hungry, he said, they wanted to be fed and they were afraid. God beat them. “So they start crying. They got a needle. They got a needle and they got a feather and they got a rope. God give it to them, a needle, a feather, and a rope.” I laughed. But the words stayed with me over the next few days, and a needle, a feather, and a rope became everything we have, everything we don’t have, ourfates and temptations, what we do with what we’re given, what we don’t do, who we become because of what we do or don’t do with what we’re given.
Needle, feather, and rope are knitting terms, stitches and tools. I thought about all the other images those words conjure. Later I read a paragraph in Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions that I understood well. “The prostitutes worked for a pimp now. He was splendid and cruel. He was a god to them. He took their free will away from them, which was perfectly all right. They didn’t want it anyway. It was as though they had surrendered themselves to Jesus, for instance, so they could live unselfishly and trustingly–except that they had surrendered to a pimp instead.” I grew up on a street in San Francisco where prostitutes and pimps bought and sold themselves daily. The scene under my bedroom window was a circus, a market, a world. There was a church on the corner, an elementary school, community centers, a music school. I’m telling you this so that you know some of my reference points, how the song grew, where the album came from.
Between August 2009 and the end of the year, I began playing my songs with Misha, Max, Daniel, and Adam. We’re proud of the music we recorded. It’s dedicated to Vic Chesnutt.
