let us make a record

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 (or a folk-gospel 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 Keneep on drums, Alyssa Brandon on bass, Lauren DuBois on vocals and keys, Mitch Cavanaugh on electric guitar, Matt Varney on electric guitar) 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 band hails from Lancaster, Ohio, and have played or are playing in local worship bands.  Their history of playing and writing worship music informs the stirring musical push and pull that the band excels at—the propulsive rising toward crescendo, toward salvation, toward something, anything that can make sense of this feeling of brokenness inside. The songs here are a reach toward the mysterious, a belief—even if that belief is threadbare—that rescue is inevitable. 

You can find the album on most streaming platforms, or support them directly thorough their bandcamp page here.