recorded at the house joe rented for many years on mulberry street in athens, georgia, all of the tracks are from february 2022, except for 'bigger bundles', which was recorded in the same setting in may 2021.
that house is gone now, so the reverbation of these sounds is all that physically remains.
the living room was our studio for many great jams, and the front porch was our break area: chilling, drinking, smoking, talking, and regrouping.
it's on that porch that sprocket, female wire hair terrier mix extraordinaire and extremely vocal session manager, inspired 'oh, to be a bee eater' with her relentless attempt to rid the porch area of the carpenter bees flying around.
all of the songs have improv as bed tracks, except for 'taishikicho blues', which i stumbled across while practicing a nine-note japanese taishikicho scale on my guitar. that song, simple as it is, came in half formed.
'bigger bundles' was wisely revived by joe for this project after i rejected it the previous year. not sure why i didn't like it then, but it does illustrate how what we hear and how we respond can change over time.
'come away clean' is an a capella ballad about covid fears, recorded late at night after one of our porch breaks and not intended for public ears--but joe is the producer and he hears something in it, so here it is, despite my fear of being so naked in public.
'hot sludge sunday' is inspired by 'the wild places' by robert macfarlane (thanks to don chambers for knowing what book i needed, just when i needed it), 'the jailer' by sylvia plath, and memories of ill-behaved days on cape cod in the '80s.
'liver & lungs' is a tribute of sorts to thelonious monk and spiritual jazz.
"old wave' is about surviving friends who greatly inspired me and should still be here. those include greg marcum, a musical guide in my early adulthood in huntington, west virginia, plus my athens, georgia triumvirate: laura carter, relentless force of nature in bar-b-q killers and jackonuts, who overlapped me in buzz hungry; bo tompkins, bandmate in eraser-in-law and co-conspirator in many early improv experiments; and dave philips, who replaced me in little debbie and graciously helped shape several memorable jams at the old bad energy ranch practice space.
there are quite a few others, with less direct connections, but craig lieske's verbal prompting for me to get my shit together and just make noise should not go unnoted.
'out into' was, at some point, an attempt to add musical accompaniment to 'come away clean', and while that was a failure, it adds an oddly ambient exit for this batch of songs and the hope of even greater experimentation as time passes and we offer additional glimpses into the world of clangtint.
before he left town on tour, matt stoessel handed me his octave divider pedal and said, 'i think you might like this.' that was quite an understatement, as his was an act of friendship that helped shape this record.
a salute is also in order to derek almstead, who is a crucial piece of our process, with his mastering skills adding balance to the aural puzzles that we hand off to him. he is truly the third wheel in tinting our clang.
and i always give thanks for joe and his musical partnership, but even more so this time as i was incapacitated after being hit by an suv on my bicycle (i'm fine now, but it took a while) and he took control and patiently stitched this group of songs together into a cohesive quilt of sound.
i am lucky to have him as a collaborator for these many (14!) years now.
so please listen, and i hope you find something here. there are quite a few styles but i think the clangtint aesthetic somehow blends it into a singular body of work.
we are, indeed, a project that moves all over the place--but who wants to stand still in a world with so many points of inspiration?
oh, and about the album title? well, it simply refers to the fact that we get together when i travel from philadelphia to athens to work on the house i still own there because athens has been so central to my life. it’s in the same neighborhood where joe’s old mulberry street house stood, which brings us back to the memories of that place.
the joy and creation that happened inside those walls, of two musicians creating small worlds of sound to ripple out into the larger world, is priceless. we’re lucky to have that, and i think this album is worthy evidence.

- marc tissenbaum, june 1, 2023