Machine Simple by Sham

Machine Simple is an album of accumulated songs and sounds over the course of almost 2 years. The first song written was “As The Heat Rises” in summer 2021 at the base of Mount Rainier on the hottest day on record, 114 degrees Fahrenheit, standing in snow watching the river full of silt flow filled with its melt. The songs periodically appeared, along with others that aren’t on this record, throughout the next year and a half or so. The first attempt to record this album was in my old house on Heron Avenue in West Asheville, and bled into my friend Zack’s space down the street when our house was sold and we had to move out, and then when Zack came back from tour I set up a small studio in my friend Gabe’s bedroom while he was away. Gabe’s house had no heat and I remember a night the power was out and it dropped to 10 degrees Fahrenheit, I was so afraid for the tapes but it ended up OK. I had moved a piano into the bedroom and had a drum set in there as well. When Gabe came back I then moved into the shed on that property in Leicester, North Carolina. There were 8 songs about finished, only 3 of which made it onto the final version of Machine Simple.

Sham did our first post covid tour the following month, April 2022, to celebrate the release of Field of Vision Expanded. At some point on that tour (and paired with falling in love with Robert Wyatt), I decided I needed to start the album over, since it was so fragmented between location and energy that winter and spring. Also I wanted to do it on a different machine in a slightly different format than the previous album had been recorded. I bought a totally janky 8 track from someone in town and it took a handful of months to get it working enough to think about recording with it. I had never had any experience with the innards of a tape machine, I found myself stripping screws and replacing belts on the inside of that Tascam. While the tape machine dilemma was occurring, I also was having a really hard time finding a solid place to live & a place to record.

I went to Europe, with the intention of being away for a couple months, and then recording the album upon my return that fall of 2022. The first day I arrived to Europe I got an email for Sham to open for Animal Collective on a 2 week USA tour 2 weeks later. So I came right back, we put together the live band of Mikey, Madeleine, Zoie and J in a few days based on previous incarnations of the live Sham band. Upon returning from that tour, Sham as an entity had sort of shifted, even my perspective of it. Something had solidified, and the desire to be recording these new songs was truly bubbling up from within me. Returning from the tour and Europe trip, and a small period of having covid and sleeping in Madeleine’s car in Tennessee while it rained for days and days, I lived in a 100 year old cabin for a bit where Seth (one of the owners of the cabin, and a friend) helped me with some of this tape machine work. I wrote a couple of the songs for the record (You are Inside, Darkened Wood, Horizontal Comfort) in that cabin, and the tape machine finally came to life. About a month later it was lined up to move into my coworker and friend Rodney’s basement, where the backroom would be the perfect recording space after it received a deep cleaning. I moved all my things there and the day Madeleine and I were going to finally start sleeping there, Rodney unexpectedly passed away. This was really tragic and surprising, and made life quite unstable for a bit.

We did eventually move into the house, surrounded by Rodney’s amazing spirit, and it is there I finally had the space to set up a recording zone and restart the album. The songs had changed and only a few remained the same from the album a year before. I bleached the floors of the backroom in the basement and vacuumed and dusted and probably inhaled decades of dust and toxic materials.

Mikey started coming over every Tuesday and we would work out his parts on new songs or record songs live together. About half the album was done in this classic Sham format where we start the recordings with tracking our guitars live together, and layering up from there. There were also a handful of songs that started with me alone and I worked on those in between the times Mikey would come over. My original intention was to keep this album fairly simple with not too many other people involved, but we started imagining flutes and trumpets and other sonic textures throughout the songs as they grew. J came down around Thanksgiving to record some percussion on a few of the songs. We laid out all my percussive instruments and items from my house and did percussion live together on the floor with two mics. We would take walks on the train tracks in between songs and hung out for a few days. Later, in December or January, Clay White came over and added trumpet to a handful of the songs. Then I drove down to Athens, GA where John Kiran Fernandes played some clarinet on My Revolving Door, getting lost in Don Cherry records afterward. Lauren Bacchus came over a few afternoons to add flutes. Dave Portner came and hummed along with ‘Darkened Wood’, as well as added the textural rhythmic sample in Evaporated River Beds. I flew to Baltimore to record Austyn Wohlers sing harmonies on all the songs, recording with Jordan Romero at Jordan’s house. Madeleine Sis came downstairs and sang harmony on some songs, as well as played some prepared guitars on My Revolving Door. I bopped around to all my different friends pianos throughout Asheville with a hilarious set up of tube preamp and mixer and computer. Mikey added upright bass to some of the songs, in a hectic short period we had borrowed the bass before returning it. As well as his voice and other stringed instruments. Eric Rosario ripped some sax in Baltimore while I was there briefly, upstairs in the squatted house. Zoie added harmony to one final song. Meanwhile I was mixing and recording in between filling space, or leaving space, or doubling vocals, or clarinet, or broken guitars, or percussion, etc. This really became an opportunity to collaborate with people I’ve known for a long time while also collaborating with the new folks I’ve met through playing shows and living in Asheville. The whole process dragged on for months until sometime in March the mixes were done and the album was mastered (later for me to remix and have it remastered again) and Machine Simple was created. The cover is a painting of our living room I made in the same room as all the music. It’s all infused with this unfinished low ceilinged basement room and Rodney’s spirit.

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Thank you to Mikey for being the best collaborator and friend I could ask for. My parents for creation and body. Madeleine for being loving, supporting and spontaneous partner in life. All who played or contributed to the album. Dave Portner for listening and sonic suggestions, as well as inspiration and support. Jordan Romero for helping record in Baltimore. Jeff my cousin who walked quietly and put up with sounds coming in through the vents. Billy Jonas for his piano, Jack Victor for his piano, Michael Basso & Chad Beattie for their piano. Mark Scearce for studio monitors, borrowed microphones, and mixing advice. Landon George & Clay White for the upright basses. Charlie Boss for the photos, vinyl formatting, visual help, support, and spirit. Animal Collective for the touring and support. Madelyn Anderson for connecting some dots and support. Steve Johnson for the continuous support and guiding music along into physical format. Thank you to Feeding Tube Records whose releases I adore. Thank you Seth and Leo for house and help fixing tape machine. All who have played in the live Sham band bringing these songs to life: J Brown, Madeleine Sis, Zoie Reamer, Andy Loebs, Helen Wells, Will Younts, Chad Beattie, Austyn Wohlers, Eric Rosario, Josh Dean, Clay White, Kory Johnson, Steve Everett, Max Heimberger, Gabe Rosen, Piero Pecchi, Freddie from London, and more who I may have forgotten, endless love to you.

songs of Shane Justice McCord + Mikey Powers & other friends.


shanejusticemccord@proton.me

https://linktr.ee/shamtunes