WAXING POETICS: Against The Law Against The Odds
by Randy Holmes
Cast your mind back to 1990; I don't know what you were doing, but I was on the road with Waxing Poetics. A friend and fan of the band for years (starting with the pre-Poetic band The Probe), I gave up an idyllic life-pause in the wilds of North Carolina for a job I was ultimately unsuited for - rock and roll road manager. The job seemed simple - get the boys to the gigs, make sure everything was right and ready for each evening’s show, settle up with the managers of the venues for the night's money, procure sleeping arrangements, wake them and get us all on the road for the next gig, send part of the take-home to manager Carol Taylor, and keep a bit for gas and eats on the road to more rock and roll. I say I was ultimately unsuited for the job because I was decidedly not ‘street’ enough to read sketchy people or situations. Like the club manager that told me he’d ‘send us a check.’ I believed him, and only let the perturbed-at-the-news band know we’d not been paid for the gig until on the road and far away from the establishment. Or the manager for a headliner that told us we ‘didn’t have a contract,’ for the nights’ opening spot, resulting in us schlepping all of our equipment back to the van, now in low spirits because we wouldn’t be playing that night… only to find it was basically some kind of alpha-dog ruse to see if I was smart enough to see past his BS. So, we re-schlepped all our equipment back and played that night. *Sigh*
Everything else I accomplished pretty well, I suppose, rescuing a gig by calling up Not Shakespeare’s soundman to provide us with a sound system a club owner had neglected to provide, arranging for a much-needed brake job on the van on a rare day off on the road, bringing down a drunken frat boy who was heading full speed under the influence of alcohol and gravity right at Paul’s guitar rack, and smoothing out of other minor irritations of the road. I was a timid driver, though; the boys preferring high speed and hotel rest to slow and steady in the van. I really just wasn’t cut out for the touring life. Maybe I’m reading it all wrong; I look back on that time fondly, and the boys in the band are all still great friends of mine.
Anyhoo, I said all that to say this: during those nightly gigs, as we flitted about the USA in our leased white van, from NYC to DC to Florida to Brookings, South Dakota, and everywhere in between, I got to listen to my favorite band play for at least an hour or so every night. Yes, I had to fetch a brew or two... yes, I had to deal with hotel arrangements and club owners and some unusual characters along the way… yes, I had to track down AWOL band members now and again… but the memories of that time on the road with the boys (and for a leg of the tour, Carol) I’d not trade for anything.
“Bed Time Story” had just come out, and I was treated to muscular workouts of many of the songs on that final Emergo album, along with ‘hits’ like “Baby Jane,” “Sushi,” “Blue-Eyed Soul,” “Where Your Name Is,” and more. All in all, a pretty good time. Dave would still change up the set every night, even opening gigs with “Besame Mucho” (Cha Cha BOOM!) for a time. A new song that crept into the set was an unrecorded “Everything You Want’s Against The Law,” a song that I just loved; it was quintessential Poetics: a catchy, thought-provoking refrain, with verses just mysterious and just grounded enough to stick with you long after the song was over, with the unique accompaniment of the band, all displaying less raw rock power than tasteful, understated, fully-meshing parts. It’s always been one of my favorites. My clearest memory of that song live was one sticky hot night in Florida, in a club that had a glassed-in second-story band ready-room that looked down over the stage. I don’t remember the name of the joint, but I remember the night's pay was in an envelope marked “Wax Poets.” We were opening for The Connells during a Florida/Midwest tour, and they were up top in the skybox watching the Poetics’ set. During “Law,” Dave’s vocal mic slipped from its stand. I was standing up near the stage in the press of bodies, since stage space was limited (I’d usually be in the wings behind the amps, but there just wasn’t room). An eighty-pound-lighter-than-present me sprung into action, climbing quickly onto the stage, grabbing the misbehaving mic, and settling it firmly back into its clamp before Dave began the next verse of the song. I rolled off the stage, high-fiving an audience member on the way back down into the scrum, and the rest of the night went off without a hitch.
Time went by, and soon after that with-the-Connells tour I left the road managing duties to the capable and adept Marc Yevlove, and the Poetics rolled on. A Warner Brothers record deal didn’t come to fruition (a tale for another time), and in 1992 the band decided to call it quits. I finally got a recording of “Law” in the form of the “Never Were Never There” live CD that the band put together a few years after going their separate ways. Dedicated to Carol, with liner notes by Rickey Wright (both Rickey and Carol were early champions of the band and gone from us way too soon), the recordings captured the strength of the band live. Except for the recording of “Law.” No one’s fault, really… the tapes “NWNT” was assembled from were off-the-cuff affairs, with no eye towards commercial release envisioned when they were recorded. Wharton Tiers did a masterful job getting those tapes to sound great, but there just wasn’t enough of “Law” there to do much with. It sounds like one of the last songs of the night, the crowd trying to clap along, Dave a little raspy on his vocals, the rhythm section of Billy and Jeff is barely there on the tape, and there’s the usual pitchiness and a mis-chord or two along the way… in other words, your typical raw, vocal-heavy live board mix. Ah, well. At least I had a recording of the song.
In between my stint with the band and their ending in 1992, Dave, Paul, Billy, and Jeff were working in their storied practice space on Hampton Blvd, part of a strip of nondescript no-longer-storefronts near the gone-but-not-forgotten Dominic’s, the cradle of so many Norfolk bands, it was the space Poetics used to flesh out new material for performance and recording. This night (no one quite knows exactly when) they rolled a four-track recorder and committed “Law” to tape. They listened to it, and promptly forgot about it. With no forthcoming record deals, it became just another tune that would survive only in memory, and as the aforementioned “Never Were, Never There” live track.
The band has entrusted me with maintaining the archives of the band for lo, these many years. Memorabilia, Carol’s obsessive press clippings, photos, videos, fan mail, promo photos, and the like. Lots of that is available at waxingpoetics.net. They’ve also given me recordings. So many recordings. Pre-production work from “Manakin Moon,” early demos of songs that never made official release, studio tracks that didn’t make the cut, live material, solo efforts, and more. Lots of these are available on Soundcloud, and we tacked “Happy Days'' and “Jimmy Carter’s Head” onto the remastered digital release of “Hermitage” as bonus tracks.
Fast-forward to May, 2020. Like many of you, COVID-19 has put a whole new spin on life. With my girls home and most days free, I’ve had time to pursue a few projects that I’ve had good intentions toward, but poor execution.
I was going through a box of tapes that Dave provided me with a few years back, popping tapes in and out of my trusty 20+-year-old Portastudio when (among many other discoveries) to my excitement and amazement, there was the “Law” four-track. My excitement was quickly tempered by the condition of the tape. Some odd ‘chipmunk’ sounds had crept into the intro, the usual tape hiss was there (likely exacerbated by 25+ years in cassette box stir), and while it was a four-track source, every track had Dave’s vocal mixed in. *Sigh*
“Wait,” I said… “I can conquer this.” Technology has come a looong way in the past few years, and software exists that can slice and dice audio into its component parts. So, that’s just what I did. Using the tools of audio software surgery, I split the parts from the whole, fixing tape dropouts and noise, eliminating sibilance and pops, shooed the ‘chipmunks’ away, and then recombined the whole shebang, balancing instrument levels, adding just enough enhancement (a light touch of reverb, a little pull-it-all-together mastering) and then driving around listening to many slightly different mixes of the song, returning home to tweak this or that, burning another CD, driving around some more, fixing some more, burning, driving, fixing… then finally testing my ultimate result on earbuds, headphones, Bluetooth speakers, and sound systems big and small. Band members gave it a thumbs up when I surprised them with it a coupla weeks ago. It is now reborn; a solid track worthy of addition to the Waxing Poetics canon of recorded songs.
If you’re only familiar with the live take from “Never Were, Never There,” this track will be a revelation. Jeff’s bass part is intricate and commanding, Billy’s clockwork percussion locks in with Jeff on the spooky groove, Dave is in great voice and ringing acoustic, and Paul’s tremulous guitar part spreads itself around and through the track like a shimmering fog. If you don’t know the song at all or were never fortunate enough to hear it live, I envy you this discovery.
Ladies and gentlemen, a song from 30 years ago that could have been written yesterday, “Everything You Want’s Against The Law.”