Daniel Ledbetter

Floodwaters

I knew Daniel as that guy in middle school that won the talent show by spinning a bo staff and liked a lot of girls. Mutual friends of friends, we didn't talk a whole lot until high school. I remember impressing him by playing a Tool song on a guitar at a party in the ninth grade. We were both in JROTC, playing violent renditions of basketball (with amended rules encouraging full contact) and competing on the Raider team together. Daniel started playing guitar, using his thumb on his left hand, primarily. We both have a soft spot for so-called 90's alternative, me more Alice in Chains and Tool, he more Staind and Stone Sour. He liked the bands I liked, I didn't really like the ones he did. On our many rides in my pickup, he'd try to pop in a Hurt cd or something like that, I'd curse at him and yell at traffic and put in Trout Mask Replica. Very patiently, Ledbetter listened intently to everything I showed him, from avant-garde to jazz to no-wave. He appreciated all of it, but offered honest analysis and conclusions. When I dropped him off, he went inside and did not put on Captain Beefheart.

I began recording Ledbetter before I recorded anyone else. His music was jarring to me; his songs were long, he sang low, and his songs were painfully painfully heartfelt. I couldn't reconcile that with my "punk" aesthetics and fought him every step of the way. I tried my goddamnedest to sneak in weird ambient shit or echo experiments, and he excitedly agreed. That's where I fucked up. I was trying to get

Ledbetter to be less accessible and more raw on the surface, for what? These songs are fucking raw. Yeah, they're catchy and listenable and poppy and are totally genuine. Thomas Yates, who played the same open mic nights as Ledbetter, told me, "He's loves what he does and he's really good at it. I respect him for that." I got it. I was being a shit and Daniel was being a real musician.

So we recorded. We recorded a lot. On one of my sleepless tweaks, I profusely promised to record his album on a computer. We recorded for months and months and never finished it before I moved to Detroit. But in that time, he honed his craft, loosing a lot of the Aaron Lewis darkness he was comfortable with as a blanket and fluidly melding Southern rock with his post-grunge sensibilities. The addition of Brandon Wilson, some kind of evil country-riff genius with fifteen music degrees (or something like that, it's hard to keep up when he talks), was one of the best things to ever happen to him. Daniel's way with words and composition and charisma matched with Brandon's virtuoso combusted into well oiled, bar banding machine. Yeah they play a lot of covers, people in bars like covers, but on their best nights, probably upwards of 50% of their material is original (aside: Ledbetter is one of the only musicians I know personally that has neither recorded a cover nor had any ambition of doing so).

So these songs are a collection of songs, started in 2008 to songs that he plays today in 2013. We recorded these in my parents' basement, in my home in the country in Ceder Hill, in my house near downtown Clarksville, a shed in Palmyra, and finally, finishing them up in my parents' basement. Daniel Ledbetter is one of my best friends. I was the best man at his wedding. He came to my rescue when my brother destroyed my bathroom on Cinco de Mayo. Daniel has worked hard all his life and doesn't bitch about it (more than one is entitled to). His love, patience, and devotion to his family and close friends in unrivalled. He's married to the love of his life (who appears on this collection) and has a baby on the way. And he appears to have zero interest in ever changing his art or his integrity, which is bullheaded and punk as fuck.

 

Listen to it right here for free. 

Daniel Ledbetter- guitar, vocals, percussion, keys on track 7

Kristen Ledbetter- vocals on track 7

Brandon Wilson- guitar, piano, and percussion on tracks 2 and 6

Nicholas Riley- bass, banjo, hammer guitar, electric guitar on track 9, percussion, Kaoss pad

All songs written by Daniel Ledbetter and recorded by Nicholas Riley between 2008-2012 in Clarksville, Palmyra, and Cedar Hill, TN. 

Deadbetter

This year, Daniel approached me with an idea for a quick, easy to record EP. I was all about easy to record because or our tendency of doing a lot of work and, curiously, getting nothing done. So, we sat down and in one night knocked out four gritty Southern-ass songs for his side-project, Deadbetter. This is a real accomplishment for us. There's not a whole lot else to say other than it's crunchy and sounds old and it's kind of weird...for both of us. Enjoy.  

Download it here, also for free.

Daniel Ledbetter- guitar, vocals, percussion, bass

Nicholas Riley- other stuff

All songs written by Daniel Ledbetter

All songs recorded in Clarksville, TN in the spring of 2013

 

Jacob Bailey

I've talked extensively about recording with Jacob Bailey. As far as mass quantity, I've put in more recording hours with Jacob than anyone else. After recording the No-Nothins, Jacob had me record his solo songs in the spring/summer of 2008. This is when Jacob was at his self-described "creative peak." He was cranking out paintings, drawings, and songs in prolific quantities. All of it good.

We sat about recording in my "studio" I built in my parents' garage, as per usual for 2008. Most of the songs were just Jacob and one of his acoustic guitars, me doing overdubs of ambience (with a hammer as a slide on a guitar or delayed cheap keyboards because I was trying my goddamnedest to be Brian Eno) or whatever else. I had an exceptionally hard time doing overdubs because Jacob plays notoriously out of time, which, admittedly, yields interesting and irreplicable results, but ultimately is a pain in the ass. This lead us to simplifying these songs, such drone and almost inaudible percussion in Log Cabin, no double tracked vocals, and minimal overdubs. Thick atmosphere became crucial to these recordings, leaving in incidental sounds like in American Dream. And in the intro to his rendition of Singin' in the Rain, we left the garage door opened and sat in silence as we recorded a summer storm. Jacob recorded a guitar piece that may have well fallen out of the clouds with the rain.

The writing on this collection is still political largely, albiet here slightly more veiled than with the No-Nothins. The writing is bleeding heart-on-the-sleeve emotional and beautiful and honest; it's the logical extension of his contribution to the No-Nothins.  American Dream makes me homesick, Bluebird is hopeful and reassuring, Memphis Blackfoot gives you wanderlust, and Drac and Wolfman, an allegorical take on homosexuality, contains one of my favorite and most empowering lyrics ever written by anyone:

"No god no book can tell you who to be, 

you've got one life to live so, honey, 

live it and be free."

Just like I've said before, it's young, it's naive, and it's absolutely perfect. A glass of water is a glass of water, but goddamn is it refreshing when it's hot out.

These recordings can be downloaded here for nothing in return.

Jacob Bailey- vocals, guitar

Nicholas Riley- bass, mandolin, percussion, drone 

Skrawny- bass

All songs written by Jacob Bailey except Singin' in the Rain, which was written by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown.

All songs recorded by Nicholas Riley in 2008 in Clarksville, TN except The Mothership Awaits, which was recorded by Jacob Bailey in Palmyra, TN.

Thomas Yates

 

These are five of tapes that Thomas Yates made around 2008 that he sold or gave away at his shows. They all had extremely limited runs, like 3 or 4 a piece. These weren't custom cut, nicely fitting tapes. Thomas recycled old learn to speak French tapes and Queen cassettes, stuffed toilet paper in the tab slots, and spray painted them. Sometimes they would play, sometimes they wouldn't. He pulled the art from Google and printed it on spray painted paper. There's more tapes and CDs, but this is all I could find. Maybe some more will turn up. If they do, I'll put them up on the Bandcamp page with the rest. Follow the links. Everything is free.

 

Black Templar/Black Harvest

 

This is the first one I heard. It's dark and menacing dronescapes that twist and shrivel and prostrate. It's surprisingly quiet; the live performances were always painful loud. Listening to Black Templar/Black Harvest always gave me the creeps at night, like somebody is behind you the whole time. Zachery Koch also performs on this tape. At the time they were circuit bending tape players that had Beastie Boys tapes in them and running delay pedal loops through headphone splitters stolen from Zachery's elementary school. 

Black Templar/Black Harvest

 

BOO! Trick or Treat! Trick or Treat!

 

I had never heard or seen this tape before I started this project. It's one of the the most organic and fluid of these tapes, like it has more in common with free jazz and expressionism than drone or something concept based, although it's probably the most concept based. I did give my parents one of his CDs to play on Halloween one year...it was too scary so they took it off.

BOO! Trick or Treat! Trick or Treat! 

 

Crowd Scalper-No Safety

Thomas started making noise under names other than his own. Crowd Scalper, as you would expect from the name and song titles, is by far the most brutal thing he created. It's a sheer wall of noise and pain. It drones, but not in the way drone music does that puts you to sleep. No Safety keeps all of your molecules anxious and hurts the body. It's like listening to a boulder roll over farm animals for twenty minutes inside a tornado. 

No Safety 

 

Violent Insanity-Violent Insanity 1

Another pseudonym, I remember seeing the art and thinking, "yeah, violent insanity." Thomas understood how to get reactions and how violent imagery and words create emotions. Thomas told me stories about going to punk shows in Nashville, coming home bloody and battered. That spirit with infused with dada confrontation is exemplified here and also his live shows. Even at metalcore shows, when the bros would "mosh" and circle pit and flail like sexually repressed birds trying to attract mates, Thomas would throw trash cans [once accidentally hitting a pregnant lady that went to a metalcore show for some reason, causing her to go into labor, (she and her baby are fine, by the way, making Thomas something of a midwife) legend has it] and punch people in the face and generally make a room full of macho assholes look like pussies. Violent Insanity.

Violent Insanity 1 

 

Faces of Fractals, Tri-Lacerations

 

This is Thomas's magnum opus as far as his noise material is concerned. It's the perfect fusion of the eerie ambient drone of Black Templar/Black Harvest and Violent Insanity and the grumbling molecule instability of Crowd Scalper. The first half, Melting Tombs, is a twenty minute noise dirge that scrapes the surface of the Earth like lava. Beneath Nails and Severed Crown are standard harsh noise pieces that bridge the first half to the real gem of these recordings, Live Intesseraction. The climax is a live recording, the only one I know to exist of his early material. You can hear him howl and cry over what sounds like wind from the most evil and blasphemous storm to batter a living being. At somepoint during the show, Thomas burned an American flag. It was Memorial Day. (I asked him about this later and he said, "as long as our government tortures people, I'm going to burn flags.") A bell tolls at the end, signalling a stark end. Just close your eyes and try to picture it while you listen. No one in that audience could possibly be the same. How could they? Just listen.

Faces of Fractals, Tri-Lacerations 

 

Graphic Tease-S/T

I met Nashville DIY stalwart Maddy Madeira on the internet when I was still in high school. She was playing in a folk punk band with her sister Kate called Ronald and the Rayguns, that I became aware of through the aforementioned No-Nothins, as they were playing the legendary "Folk the World" festival together. I was far less interested in the Rayguns than I was her solo recording experiments under Capers Ave., a weird bedroomcore sonic experiment of lo-fi guitar and vocals with hi-fi sounds of paper crinkling over-dubbed. Some of these recording were infuriating to listen to: the good parts quiet and fuzzy with all the background noise in the forefront, which is I guess is what made them more intriguing. We began keeping correspondence; I sent her a batch of SeBADoh's b-sides and 7" that I thought she'd benefit from. Then I moved out to the country, had no internet for three years and totally lost contact with her.

While I was living in the dark ages, Maddy formed the incredible How Cozy!, with the fearsome Rachel Durnin. How Cozy! for years was an unrivalled rock and roll band in Nashville, evolving from a more folk base by Nashville metalcore into the introspective heart-on-the-sleeve high energy performers that they became known for. Maddy's lyrics were thoughtful, intense, and sincere, complimented by dissonant indie chord structures and bends that harken to SeBADoh and Polvo, twisting with
Rachel's thunderous, impassioned drumming. How Cozy! was one of few bands that you could see live and know with certainty that they were not performing for entertainment's sake, but as genuine communication pulled from the vibrational ether to bestow upon the audience. Watching Rachel drum, hair flying, unable to commit herself to her drum stool, she said as much with her kit as Maddy did with her words. No self-righteousness, total humility, true art.

After learning that MySpace was no longer a thing, I began digging for Maddy, which wasn't terribly difficult. I found out about How Cozy! and offered to record them, but I'm glad I didn't. Evil supergenius Shibby Poole recorded their EP, masterfully filling out their bassless sound to a thick, beautiful collection of songs, albeit short. In the summer of 2012, Maddy invited me to a How Cozy! show that she had arranged at her home. I nervously attended alone, knowing none of the drunk Nashvillites that I was surrounded by. I apologized to everyone I met for my stumbling and inability to communicate, blaming it on being alone. I finally found Maddy, identifying her by the faded green in her hair. I immediately felt at ease speaking with her for the first time in person, no longer alone. She didn't have much time to talk though, as she was running the show but promised we'd catch up later. I agreed and returned to my nervous mingling and chain-smoking. After the show we talked for a while about mutual friends and music, finding out the music I turned her onto half a decade ago actually had a massive impact on her.

We decided to stay in contact this time. We began talking on a regular basis and found ourselves to have similar philosophies and sense of humor, leading us to declare ourselves siblings. Often I'd come down to Nashville to see How Cozy! or other incredible bands like Altar of Complaints and Yautja (and then wind up drunk on her porch, chainsmoking and bitching about my life). These shows actually salvaged my dying relationship with metal and showed me that real metalcore wasn't the same as buttcore and not only existed, but was mindblowing.

At this time How Cozy! was at their peak. They added Caleb Gregory to their lineup
on bass. Caleb's bass lines filled out their sound, providing contrast to Maddy's treble heavy Danelectro. Caleb was careful not to smear his ego over the existing songs, rather enhancing them. How Cozy! began composing new songs that were some of the most emotionally intense songs to date. Everytime How Cozy! played, it seemed like they were lifting a weight from their collective heart, sets ending with Maddy on bass and Caleb on guitar, playing one of his explosive compositions. The last time I saw them I had to adjourn from the performance space to their back porch where I proceeded to cry my fucking eyes out, not out of sadness, not even out of joy, but out of the sheer expulsion of raw emotion, first poured from the band and then from myself.

Maybe I'm biased towards How Cozy! because Maddy's one of my best friends, maybe because they're from Nashville, and maybe because when I really started to listen to them I was able to draw parallels between my life and the lyrics, but isn't that what a real songwriter is supposed to do? Isn't the purpose of a true artist to be able to draw in the observer and make them believe the piece is about themselves? Anyhow fuck all that, How Cozy! is one of the best bands to come out of Nashville and it's a shame they're gone.

But now Maddy's moving on. We talked forever about making music together and so she became a part of Black Christ. It was my attempt at honest and upfront songwriting regarding a carpetbagger I was falling for. I nervously asked Maddy to add her voice to the songs because I was actually drawing direct inspiration from How Cozy! for the songs. She not only agreed to but wanted to be a part of the blackmetal/shoegaze vision.

A few months later, she excitedly text me that Graphic Tease is the best name for a band ever (which I guess it probably is) and soon after she came up to Clarksville and recorded 6 of the 7 songs for a Graphic Tease EP. A tour was planned with aforementioned carpetbagger and we ordered 100 tapes, 50 for Graphic Tease, 50 for Nurse (BADTAPES004 and BADTAPES003 respectively). We played Clarksville, St. Louis (where the 7th song of the EP was recorded), Kansas City, Memphis, and Nashville, Claire and I playing a Nurse set, then the three of us playing a Graphic Tease set.

Maddy's still doing Graphic Tease and Black Christ, building contact mics and playing mini-tours with Mannequin Hollowcaust, when she isn't busy travelling and busking.

S/T can be downloaded here for WHATEVER DAGUM PRICE YOU WANT

badtapes004
Released 18 July 2013

Maddy Madeira- vocals, guitar, noise
Nicholas Riley- noise, percussion, bass
Claire Cirocco- noise

All songs written by Graphic Tease and recorded at Zebra's house in Clarksville, TN in the spring of 2013 by Nicholas Riley except for track 7 which was recorded live in St. Louis.

New American Camels

"Are you guys really a hardcore band or are you just fucking around?"
"No, we're for real."

We weren't.

John Grimes and Jacob Bailey of The No-Nothings got together with me in the summer of 2009 in my parents basement. I had just had a drunken falling out with my ex-girlfriend and quit college and Jacob and John were being harassed by a bunch of assholes, so naturally we decided to form a punk band. We got together and recorded twice and then we stopped talking about it. I guess we got less angry. We never played any shows or practiced; we just recorded some songs about fire and smoking and the South and Hiroshima.  We named the band after the brands of cigarettes we were smoking at the time. We all sang, but John and I switched off on the leads. I did guitar dubs later. I threw on some extra unfinished songs for the fuck of it, so here it is:

Download New American Camels here for goddamn free.

John Grimes- guitar, vocals
Jacob Bailey- bass, vocals
Nicholas Riley- drums, vocals, guitar
All songs written and recorded by New American Camels in Clarksville, TN in the summer of 2009.

TEETH

I formed TEETH my senior year in high school with a freshman named Devin Tyrrell. We wanted to make music as ridiculous and brutal as possible. Inspired mostly by grindcore and noise, we recorded this 10 song, 9 minute album the first time we got together. All of the songs were about eating or being eaten. I think we had one practice one time and played a shitload of shows.

After we recorded, we set about looking for a place to play. We knew Thomas Yates threw house shows, so we asked him. Naturally he was down. The night before we made a bunch of CDs and buttons and hand-drew every one of them. We were planning on selling the CD for a buck, so on the inside we wrote, "You could have bought a coke with that dollar."

We crammed into Thomas's cramped basement filled to the brim with people, where we proceeded to play dozens of three or four second songs, separated by made up names or "1-2-FUCK-YOU!", bite people, and play guitar with rocks, like actual physical rocks. We sold every goddamned CD and most of the buttons. We played every chance we could. Sometimes the Coup would make the mistake of booking us with metal bands. Metal kids fucking hated us. At one show, we began playing to about a dozen people, I looked down at my pedals for a second, looked back up and there was one guy left in the room. He was a drummer in a different band that we borrowed a cymbal from. He stayed because he feared for the safety of his cymbal. I destroyed a guitar at our last show, the only time I ever did that. It was more or less on accident but whatever.

Anyhow, we never recorded anything else and we just stopped playing shows all of a sudden. But this was for sure one of the funnest live bands I was ever in.

You can download TEETH here for free.

Nicholas Riley- guitar, vocals
Devan Tyrrell- drums
All songs written and recorded by TEETH in Clarksville, TN in 2008

Johnny No-Nothin and the Goodwill Snaredrum featuring The Mountain Pirates

The No-Nothins were an important part of the Clarksville music scene in the late 2000's. They were guys I went to high school with, all a year younger than me. They played many of the Thomas Yates house shows and organized a few of their own. The No-Nothins played that anarchist folk punk all them kids liked so much a few years ago here in town and in one or a few of Nashville's now legendary Folk the World shows and probably the first band around here to cover Wagon Wheel.

This is one of the first recordings I ever did outside my own. In 2007(8?) these four, long haired, barefoot, smelly teenagers (because deodorant gives you Alzheimers) from the other side of the river showed up at my conservative parents' suburban home. My folks seemed somewhat curious, but not wary. I recall them buying the No-Nothins cheese pizza on one occasion, acquiescing to my friends' vegetarian morals.

The actual sessions, of which there were two, were lighthearted and enjoyable. It was probably what made me love recording other people so much. The tracks themselves were simple, folk chords, inconsistent tempo, at times playing in two different time signatures. Their lyrics were stark at times, funny at others, these kids had a good sense of humour. I remember being made uncomfortable by Take to the Streets, I was also fairly conservative at the time. The writing comes across as being pretty high school, but that's because it was. These seven songs were a thoughtful look at their relationships, the war, their peers, and themselves. It's honest and I'd go as far to say innocent, but not juvenile. I still think Frozen in Time, which was written by the Goodwill Snaredrum, is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. We never got a full take on it, and it ends starkly and abruptly, just like relationships, just like friendships, just like life. It seemed fitting.

Anyhow, I'm proud for these guys to have been one of the first bands I ever recorded. If you dig it, they have more stuff here, which also has a full version of Frozen in Time.

You can download John-E No-Nothin and the Goodwill Snaredrum featuring the Mountain Pirates here for fucking free.

John-E No-Nothin- vocals, guitar
The Goodwill Snaredrum- percussion, vocals, banjo
The Mountain Pirates- percussion, train whistle, harmonica, vocals, screams, piano
Recorded by Nicholas Riley in 2008(9?) in Clarksville, TN
All songs written by the No-Nothins except:
   Low:  Tramar Dillard, Faheem Najm
   Wagon Wheel: Bob Dylan, Ketch Secor

PS I don't remember if their name had a g or not in it. Sorry if it does.

Dead Billy-Dead Billy EP

You ever get bummed that the last Big Black record was released in 1987? Well, dry your tears friends, because now we have Dead Billy.

Cody Jarman, aka Jiggy, asked me to record his EP in 2009-2010. I agreed under the condition that he try to smoke a cigarette, mostly because I'm a bastard. On the way to my home out in the country, Cody put the cigarette up to his lips and drew deep. Through his fit of coughing I pitied his ineptitude and confiscated the cigarette for myself. Over the next few months (years?) we recorded his first EP, which became the first official badtapes release.

His influence is obvious, as Dead Billy is a Big Black song. Cody also likes Rush a little too much. All of the bass and drum parts are performed by a classic Nintendo Gameboy with a program called LSDJ. Cody then throws his wonkyass guitar on top of it and weaves his overly-theatrical vocals through the mayhem. The lyrics are satisfying, chalk full of literary references to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and A Clockwork Orange and at other times, delving into a stark, more personal realm.

Cody has put the first EP up on Bandcamp (linked below). He's also in Vash the Stampede, a weird roots rock band that likes Rush a little too much. He's recording with both Vash and Dead Billy; a Dead Billy/Sam Gray split cassette is expected in the near future.

Here's his Facebook and his Soundcloud.

The Dead Billy EP can be downloaded for any or no price you want here.

All sounds by Cody Jarman.
Recorded by Nicholas Riley in Ceder Hill/Clarksville, TN somewhere around 2009-2010.

All songs written by Cody Jarman.