This week’s #ThisDealInHistory is from our July 2003 show at Beardslee Castle in upstate NY. This tour took place during a break from recording “Gone Gone Gone” and definitely displays our pent-up demand to get out of the studio and play music in front of a living, breathing audience.
It starts with a transition out of what sounds like a 1980’s-style jam with the trigger cue for “Back Off” getting played at 0:22. Dan continues to play the lick w some crazy bass tone until the actual track kicks in via a key change at 1:15.
Around this time i began utilizing a technique called the “Random Patch Generator” - a technique that became (and still is to this day) a major ingredient in tND jams. Basically i pick a random patch on any of my keyboards, start playing it, all the while tweaking the sound to fit whatever mood we happen to be in. The RPG can be heard at at around 2:40 in the “Back Off” jam.
“Ravine” gets cued at 5:22 and we transition into more of a “Ravine” intro, albeit in an ambient style. We eventually land in the key of the tune around 6:15, continuing the ambience until 7:15 when we bash our way into “Ravine”.
This track was named after the hypnotist “Raveen” in honour of the original 1999 downtempo studio recording we had made when we threw some of his slick hypnotist vocals on top. We quickly amped up the sound and speed (and changed the spelling of the title) and never looked back. This was a favourite of ours to play for a long time due to the wide-open nature of the track. “Ravine” prob has the highest number of stylistic and sonic variations out of all the tND songs from that time period.
My guess is that we were in the midst of recording “Episode 7” in the studio and probably wanted to test-drive the track in front of a live audience, hence the mini-version starting around 11:10 and continuing in a loose form until “Back To The Middle” at 16:45.
The BTTM jam takes a big left turn with some downtempo experimentation right out of the main section. As explained in last week’s post, our slower jams were starting to take on greater harmonic and melodic variety in these years. I think i hear myself quoting Jeff Beck’s version of “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” as well as Herbie Hancock’s “Butterfly”, all within the same eight bars! -Jamie
