Refinery Appendices
2021.08.27
Appendix A: On Why I Might Feel Terrible
As you may have heard, our record comes out today.
My first instinct is to try to explain it away as I often do when some big change happens in my life… when I cut my hair or when I start wearing a new hat or when I create a fantasy football league. “I contain multitudes!” I’m like Dylan!
I think I’ll just follow that instinct. This is the process of life. Plan a thing, do not hesitate, do the thing, don’t think until it’s done, watch it fly by, explain why it happened.
Before I get too far down a rabbit hole, I should absolve Blake Robicheaux of whatever I’m about to say here. Everyone else who helped me with this is also absolved (more on all of these people later). I was the ringleader, but Blake made this thing as much as I did. He didn’t contribute lyrics so maybe he avoids the risk of personal embarrassment but he made at least half of the music. He did the brunt of the production. Because we made this thing together, Blake probably knows me better than anyone. I am so grateful to be his friend.
Back to the process of life (as mentioned above)… I find the hardest thing about being a songwriter is the waiting. Nothing else in my life involves so much waiting as being a songwriter. First, the wait for inspiration. Yesterday, I wrote lyrics I think are worth singing for the first time in six months. So you use the inspiration and you make a song. But it’s not recorded.
So then you wait for a reason to record it, but reason might not be the best word, maybe a mission. Writing a song is easy compared to attaching that song to a mission. Anyone doing music as a semi-serious hobby knows the feeling of getting home from your ‘day job’ and needing every ounce of pure will to be able to do anything besides eat, shower, and sleep. The mission is what makes you actually do it. The point. The worth. There are songs that seemingly were created with no mission at all. Maybe gaining attention was the only mission. That’s certainly what the Christians were/are doing on their missions. I digress.
Then once it makes any sense at all to move forward with recording, you record. Recording is full of waiting. Sometimes you stop recording just to wait for a day when recording ‘feels right.’ It’s fucking exhausting. You wait for time to record, you wait for your roommate to leave, you wait for a good take of the part of the song you’re recording. You wait to listen back to what you did. It sucks. You wait to try again because you’re dreading it. Eventually, hopefully, you do the best you could.
You mix the songs. Sure it has some waiting but there’s actually a lot of agency in mixing. Blake and I waited for his new monitors (speakers) to ship to his house so we could do a better job. After you mix them, you meet the final boss of waiting, mastering. You send the songs to someone else and wait for them to come back to you apparently better than they were before they left. At least they’re at the correct volume now. For some reason, the population of people who can make songs be the volume that they’re supposed to be is phenomenally small.
Here’s the part where you decide how much more to wait. You could just share the songs. But that’s not how you be a part of the industry. What you do is send the record to record labels and wait to see if they want it. If they do, you wait to share it until they are ready to share it. If they don’t, they’ll never let you know. You have to just stop waiting and choose a day in the future at which point you think you will have gathered enough potential listeners to release your recordings. Happy release day, everyone.
Now, the reason I had to explain all that is to say that I’ve been stunted by waiting. I don’t know what today looks like because I’ve grown accustomed to waiting for it but not preparing for it. “I can’t wait for it to come out.” I guess that’s been a lie every time I’ve said it. Turns out, I could wait.
But I won’t any longer. Here it is! I’m at a loss sharing it. All I’m going to do for the next week is wait for someone to say it meant something to them (more on this later).
Truly, I am in the weirdest fucking headspace over this. I cried the night the first single premiered because I did not know what was happening. It premiered in the morning and I just sat in confusion all day until I listened to the song around 11pm and decided, “it actually is good enough to release.”
There’s a large chance that that sentiment is my issue right now. I’m now PROUD of this shit. I truly cannot believe I had any part in making it. I LIKE listening to it. Before it’s released, it belongs to the very few people who have heard it; it’s about to belong to so many people who have the ability to feel indifferent towards it.
I listen to music all day long some days. Usually I listen to entire records that I’ve never heard. If I start a record and the first song isn’t working for me, I just turn it off. It’s not for me. I get that. It’s when I get 7 songs in on a 10 song album and turn it off when I know I’ve felt pure indifference. I thought it had something to give me, but I already got all I needed from it. Thank you, sir, for your attempt at what I wanted to hear.
I’ll never listen again.
I’m afraid in admitting that I can dish it out but I can NOT take it!
Appendix B: Going Through With It
If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably not indifferent to my art. Thank you so much. I mean that. I want to explain how much I mean that by telling you the history of my being in this process. I hope that when you hear how long this has all been going and how much coordination it’s taken, you might understand the sincerity of my gratitude. First, have a break if you want. Here is one of my favorite songs.
The Inspiration:
The content of the record covers a lot of things that happened in my life between summer 2016 and fall 2019 that happen to adult people. In sequence, break up, loss of faith, new relationship, break up, move home, loss of faith, pockets of restored faith, new relationship, loss of faith, break up. It’s not uncommon what happened. But during that period, I became obsessed with the long form song. I was listening to a lot of albums that were unapologetic about including a couple of 6 minuters, 7 minuters, 8 minuters, 9 minuters. And the sequence of events in my life (as listed above) felt so linear. One thing responding to the last over and over again. So when the lyrics came about as they often do for people who go through something and write, I just started to make them feel like those moments and like the songs I was listening to. It was all very natural.
As for the themes, I think Blake told me something years ago that I can’t get out of my head. He said that folk hero and Anton Chigurh look-alike Jeff Mangum once said that everything he has ever written is true. I think Blake doesn’t remember telling me that and I don’t know how I would have made it up, but that premise stuck with me. Writing fantastical lyrics about true things that happened is ok because the world is pretty often fantastical. Refinery is full of that. ‘Montserrat’ is Saint Ignatius historically leaving his sword at the base of a statue of the virgin Mary. ‘Refinery’ touches on the British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. ‘Deathbed’ is largely about my driving I-10 alone from Phoenix to New Orleans. I don’t think any of the songs sound like they’re about any of those things so explicitly, and I’m very proud of that if it’s true. The themes are simply built around actual things that happened in the places I’ve lived and visited.
The Mission (or whatever you call it)
In 2016 I released a record called The Tall and Strong White Oaks with no real mission. I did it simply for attention and to have something to do. I was developing my songwriting. I wanted to create. Sometime after releasing that, a person named Cam told me that record was their favorite record of that year.
That was life changing in two ways. One, I realized I could affect someone with music. Two, I felt gross because I didn’t like the record so much. It felt like I gave the world a lemon. I was proud to have accomplished the task of record making. But when it was over, it was not something I wanted to listen to; it was not like things I wanted to listen to. The night I finished tracking, I brought it to some friends’ house and said “will you listen to this with me?” and they said yes and as soon as I put it on, I did not want to listen to it.
That’s what informed this record: taking my time to make sure it was something I liked and that it sounded like things I like. I hope people who liked the earlier stuff like this one. Again, for better or for worse, for some terrible reason, all I’m going to do for the next week is wait for someone to say it meant something to them.
Someone once told me I ‘changed’ when I started making folk-inspired music but that they’d always like that earlier White Oaks record.
Maybe I did. I promise it was for the better, jackass.
Recording
Whatever we just did, it came out perfect to my ears. I’ll go to sleep tonight knowing the way we recorded these songs is the best way we could have recorded these songs.
I enjoy listening to it. I had to make it that way.
The day we recorded the harmonies for Evangeline was terrible. It was so piecemeal. Same with my guitars on Subaquatic Heartbroke Alien. We re-tracked so many guitars. One day, Blake did studio magic on a 10 second drum fill for 45 minutes. We spent hours recording stuff that sounded like shit intentionally for style points. We scrapped it when we realized we were making the record more high fidelity. We recorded it all in probably 20 different rooms. It’s hard to keep track. One track samples a field recording of me punching a tipped over train car. The last sound on the record is a tea kettle whistling. We started recording in November 2019 and stopped recording in January 2021. I was so focused. It was an incredible time in my life.
I regret nothing. I am so proud of it.
We mixed it ourselves throughout the recording process and then re-mixed it a couple of times at the end. Blake mostly. We hired a professional engineer who mastered some of my favorite records to master it. It was daunting to work with him. We talked to him over email only. He did great. His name is Carl Saff.
The End
By the time I started sending Refinery to labels I respect, we were well into the pandemic. Those of you who also put out records from time to time may have noticed there isn’t much in the way of signing going on these days. That’s what I’ve told myself and others anyway. Two labels (of maybe twenty) responded with a resounding ‘no thank you, good luck’ and my idea of releasing a record on vinyl was postponed to some future date. I think this record would have sounded great on vinyl, but that’s not the reason I wanted it on vinyl. I just wanted to present it well with visual accompaniment. Now, instead, this essay is serving as part of that accompaniment.
I chose self-release. In lieu of vinyl, I found a great cassette manufacturing company to make my presentation dreams a reality. They are called Cryptic Carousel for some reason. The cassettes look wonderful. I love the artifact. I’ll be honest. I haven’t listened to it yet on cassette. I don’t know when I will. My player is packed up until I move in a month. Reports from friends say that it sounds good. But again, it’s not about that. It’s more about holding and seeing something I made.
I hired a publicist, a great one, as a gift partially to myself but largely to Blake and to everyone else who played on this thing whose music deserves to be heard on a larger scale. We got some very nice comparisons to The Decemberists, to The Mountain Goats, and mostly to Bright Eyes who I don’t actually like and whose music I will not link… but to whom it is still an honor to be compared. Our publicist is named Lindsey Baker.
So far, a lot of people have heard the singles. I am very very happy with that. It’s my hope that a lot of those people come back for the rest of it. Some of the best parts are on the rest of it!
The Present
I’m imagining you now understand my troubles with letting this thing into the world and also how much my thank you means. A big thing ends today, and some other unknown thing begins.
I hope you can enjoy it. I’ll try to also.
Appendix C: The Cutting Room Floor, The Pile Up,
Better than I ever have before, I have a strategy for the future of the project at the time of release of the current project. Slow Rosary lives! It lives in a few ways.
(1) Promoting Refinery a little more, ya know? Maybe breaking each song down a little bit publicly. Maybe some performance videos or something like it.
(2) Getting out there and playing it. This is, of course, if our failing nation finds a way to beat the coronavirus. The good news is we have a line up of musicians! We played in July when it felt safe. It’s me and Blake, with Zach Lannes and Kate Gauthreaux who are each prominently featured on the record, and with Nick Rosato II and Zach Shoop who are new to the project and a welcome breath of fresh air.
(3) Revisiting the cutting room floor. There were a lot more tracks and pieces of tracks that I wrote while writing the Refinery songs. During quarantine, once we finished tracking this record, I was still in some type of mood for recording. So I decided to turn some of those other tracks into something else. That something else is a very different and very exciting direction for the band. It’s the opposite of Refinery in some ways. It’s a lo-fi record big time and it’s a step away from a personal emotional lyrical approach. If Refinery is concrete, this thing is water. It’s called Free WiFi in the Vatican. The mission is very outward; it is to demonstrate the beauty and hypocrisy of Christianity. We have it tracked entirely. We’ll start mixing it soon and figure out the rest from there. Mid or late 2022 sounds right.
(4) Digging through the pile up. I wrote a whole lot of songs last year. They are worthwhile. They will see release in the far future. I am excited to see what they turn into. I’m going to let reception to whatever else we do between now and recording them affect how they sound. I think the mission will be that they are a gift to anyone still listening. Within that batch are my most and least intricately written songs, my best character studies, and a lot of Michael Stipe influenced one-liners.
Appendix D: The Collaborators! The Plugs!
You heard Refinery by now probably! There’s a lot happening there! It’s full up with people! This section is a longer version of the credits you can find on Bandcamp with descriptions and links to everyone’s other music or endeavors.
The Writers
‘Montserrat’ in particular really came together in live performances by the 2018-2019 version of the live Slow Rosary band. This band consisted of the will-be legendary line up of Zach Lannes, Brad Bartee, Shane Avrard, and Rebecca Gaspelin.
Zach is one of my best friends since high school and is known around for his versatile guitar and bass playing. This guy drops off dessert at my house now and then. I don’t know what I did to deserve this. TVP - Interracial Dinonysus - LLC (coming soon) - Roach Milk (coming eventually)
In New Orleans, Brad may as well have invented the motorik drum beat. He taught it to me and I at least owe him playing it while he plays guitar. Epic Reflexes - The Lemons - SYCH - New Fools
Shane needs no introduction. The former Rajneeshian venue runner, current father, amateur tennis player, everlasting shit-talker himself. I’m still honored he at some point asked to join this band. Kelly Duplex - The Noise Complaints
I met Rebecca in a Craigslist search for a keyboard player and our friendship is simply proof that Craigslist is a good thing for this world. The Looniest Toon
‘Before’ was written and arranged with the idea that it would feature extensive string writing and playing by my cousin Catherine Cerise. She absolutely crushed it. She is a pure talent. I am constantly waiting to see what she does next. Tangled Up In Blue
The song I brought least complete to the first recording sessions is ‘Every Creeping Thing That Creeps’. It was initially much longer and much less direct. The first sessions were in North Carolina. I brought Blake and Lynn Motes there to help me figure out the vision and get started. Lynn and I have been collaborating for years. He is the crown prince of composition. He understands greater artistic vision better than anyone I’ve ever known and applies it so easily to any artistic pursuits. His advice on the record in the early days was critical especially on this track. You know him from Phargo which I’m reluctant to tag and Loro which I’m glad to tag and nowadays you know him as Lynn Pace the writer and illustrator. I’ve also seen him make puppets and ambient music.
I’m not done talking about Zach Lannes because he had this crazy idea for ‘Deathbed’ that it would have a tremolo picking distorted guitar part (“the Deafheaven part”). And he wrote this gorgeous melody for that idea that played so well with the vocal. Then we turned that melody into a choir at the end of the song. Such a great contribution to this song.
And I’m just about done talking about Blake Phillip Robicheaux but not yet. He co-wrote all of these songs. I recently discovered he let me call him Blake Paul Robicheaux for a couple years without correcting me. It’s maybe the most wrong I’ve been about something in my adult life. He’s one of the few people I don’t mind being wrong to. When I hear music he makes on his own, music I make can feel kind of wrong. His is always stunning in a way I hope my music is. The only issue is he never makes enough of it. Angst Machine - Retail Junkie - and he also does a bunch of shit we already talked about above, namely Roach Milk, Loro, and Phargo and at other times Epic Reflexes, The Lemons, SYCH, and New Fools.
The Players
Rene Duplantier: vocals, guitar, piano, keyboard, banjo, programming, additional percussion
Blake Robicheaux: bass, drums, guitar, additional percussion, vocals (2)
Zach Lannes: guitar (1, 8, bonus track)
Rebecca Gaspelin: vocals (1)
Sean ‘Donovan’ Weber: vocals (1), trombone (4, 5)
Sean Donnie is one of the best around. He is so easy to collaborate with. He is so adventurous in his playing. He did some really incredible work on this record. You know him from the jazz world. You also know him from Epic Reflexes, Giraffe House, and Shambles
Emma Klobnak: vocals (1)
My sweet sweet friend and best no pick guitar player you will find. Also was in TVP.
Catherine Cerise: violin (2, 3)
Ken Gowland: guitar (4)
The best boss I could ask for at my day job. He actually understands why I want to do this shit because he’s in the notorious JBK Band.
Miuna Mae: programming (4)
It actually feels strange that Miuna didn’t do more on this record. She is always doing the most in music. It’s phenomenal. Listen to mowmowmow for a bit.
Kate Christian Gauthreaux: vocals (5, 6)
Kate is one of my closest confidants who contributed the most to this thing in affirmation, confidence, and friendship. And I also got some great vocals from them!
Brad Bartee: harmonica (5)
Mike Heitz: vocals (8)
Surely the most left-field feature award goes to my friend Mike who I went to architecture school with. He works as an architectural designer now. I don’t know what to link for him honestly. Just know that he’s a good guy.
Renee Gros: vocals (8)
My dear friend from high school who is back in New Orleans taking the NOLA music world by storm. Actually doing the damn thing. EP coming soon. For now, learn her name.
Adam Vizier: vocals (8)
Grand couyon himself, my property brother, also of Epic Reflexes.
Jesse Morgan: vocals (bonus track)
A vocalist I hired on Fiverr of all places. Maybe the most actually Christian person to play on the record.
Last but certainly not least, the artists.
Zoe Mariana Johnson shot the cover and the press photos.
Blake Bernard shot additional photography for the cassette release.
Devon Geyelin carved a beautiful wooden block and made a print for the cassette release.