LAUREN ASHLEY ERIKSSON

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COVERS

September 2005. I went back home for a few weeks after having spent the summer in Olympia. I still had my music equipment there and hadn't moved all my stuff to Olympia yet, and I had been really anticipating this opportunity to record. I think that one of my goals was to record as much as possible. I had plenty of covers that I had always wanted to do, including songs by the Beach Boys, Beatles, Bert Jansch, Doobie Brothers, and songs of Kenny's. But also there were some originals waiting in the wings. The interesting thing to me about these recordings is that the songs all sound really similarly recorded. They all have the same sort of brightness and live-ness, while also being on the irreverent side, compared to older recordings. Sounds--even loud sounds, that were going on in my parents' house, like talking and knocking on the door, were never too loud to have to record all over again. They seem to function much in the same way as a distorted guitar overdub would work, or a sample, except it was all random and unpremeditated. My favorite is the garage door sound in the beginning of the "What a Fool Believes". It sounds like a weird distorted radio squelch, but actually, it is just the garage door. It was a fun time. I wrote probably my best song, helicopter, in the midst of those covers. It seemed to just spring up from those other songs effortlessly. Tim Leingang has offered to put out a 7" with 4 songs from "Singles & Covers". Coming soon from Funkytonk.

SEASONAL MUSIC

Providence, Rhode Island. My studio/bedroom on the attic level of a three story house. Missing from this picture: smoke, an incredibly loud crackling heater, Kenny, roommates, pet mice, a pile of clothes destroyed by a bucket of paint being knocked over, drums, recording equipment. It mirrored my roommate's room, but somehow our rooms were in every way complete opposites. She painted her room all matte white, including the floor, covered her windows with matte white paper, had white Ikea furniture, a white bed, and white down blanket--she was doing the white thing. And my room was alternatively dark. Dark, dark dark dark. But it didn't feel dark to me. It felt alive and natural.
I loved that little world. The good and the bad.
The story of the baseball rolling down the street: Kenny and I were walking down Rogers Street, two blocks away from my house, and Kenny spots a baseball that apparently has no owner, but somehow is in animation slowly rolling down the side of the street. We decide to follow it, of course! It stops here and there, for a moment, but then continues to move on each time. We can't believe that it doesn't stop. It just keeps going. Down to the bottom of the street and even makes a right turn and goes down the next street. And then there it is. Another baseball. We watch our baseball, still in motion, proceeding towards the other baseball. And it hits it. The two of them move, a little, and they both stop.
The town haunts me a feeling of having unfinished business, but I feel satisfied, also, having completed Seasonal Music. It feels good to complete something, name it, package it up to give to your friends, and close a chapter.

DECARNATION

I had this dream in 2003 that went something like this: There is a beautiful teenager. She is going to die. There is a meeting in the corner of a restaurant where conspirators discuss her death. A sort of contract is made. There is a familiar dream-feeling of doom. Meanwhile, the people of the town all come down a hill in a beautiful procession. It is a funeral. Then I am her and I jump off a cliff into the ocean. I wait under the water (and something happens with the bubbles that I can't remember right now). Then there are small children in the water. They are holding up my body to keep it afloat. I close my eyes and am transported to the top of a tall hill. There is a structure on the top of the hill that looks kind of like a dugout. It is made of cement bricks. There, an old man lives who has a small child. The child is playing with a frisbee that is red with a hole in the middle. Then there's some stuff that happens that I can't quite remember. I think I go up to Seattle and my friends Pat and Kenny are there. I come upon it sort of like Emerald City. Over hills and valleys, then I see it from a distance ..I meet up with an old teacher of mine who is on her own journey and we realize that we have somehow ended up where we started: at home.

Well, the album that I based around those stories was never quite finished, but with a nod to Decarnation, I compiled "DECARNARNATION", when I moved to Olympia and had a new body of work that recycled certain themes from the Decarnation era.