Mudhouse

When Bob Dylan heard Jimi Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower”, Wikipedia, that most trusted of sources, describes his reaction as such: “It overwhelmed me, really…he could find things inside a song and vigorously develop them. He found things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there”, and that, when Hendrix died, Dylan would only play the Hendrix version thereafter.

Now, I am not Bob Dylan, nor will I ever be, and I will stand on my coffee table and say that. But as someone who has written a folk song and had it sonically, emotionally, spiritually reinterpreted, I think I can grasp, if just a little, the revelation that our man Mr. Zimmerman experienced.

I’m thinking of a song that I wrote many years ago called “Sinking Ship”, which sits at the start of Mudhouse Music’s new full length, “Good Omens”. Michael Giacomoni and his shipmates (Tyler Kenepp, Alyssa Brandon, Lauren DuBois, Mitch Cavanaugh, and Matt Varney) start the song just as mournful, just as aware of the inevitable crash before them, that I did many years beforehand; but when the waves start rising, when the sea starts roiling, the band reacts in kind, taking the song to new ethereal heights. The ensuing album charts these same waters. Booming vocals, broken whispers, pounding harmonies, silent prayers, grandiose laments. Ebbing, flowing.

The songs here are a reach toward the mysterious, a belief—even if that belief is threadbare—that rescue is inevitable. - Josh Compton