The Songs of Split Pan Soup

1. Split Pan Soup

Title Cut. I discovered that the pans sounded like crap on just one channel.  That is because steel pans are hard to record. Unlike a voice or a drum, they are not a direct "in your face" signal. There was no projection. It was Dave Lapio who gave me the idea of spreading the pan sound over more than one track.       I used four overdubs of the melody, fattening the sound. Then one take of the solo was put on four tracks at the same time. (My machine can do this.) Finally, I put channels three and four to the left, five and six to the right, thus increasing the stereo quality. Split Pans.

2. Phoenix Durango

You have to read "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand. Phoenix Durango was a very successful railroad that wound up having to close down because of pressure from the state. There was a certain hopelessness, even lethargy, in that part of the story, which I tried to capture in the chord structure, while keeping the tempo at a fast Bossa. This song has had the most radio air play.

3. Herb Garden

This has nothing to do with botany. The "Herb" is Herb Alpert, one of my favorite trumpet players of all time. I was especially taken with his unique use of double trumpet harmonies and that haunting chord structure on some of the ballads, even in songs he had not written. The pans effectively try to mimic the two trumpets. And the chord structure almost comes directly from some of Alpert's darkest compositions. (Almost, for the benefit of BMI and ASCAP.)

4. Cesar Augusto

My wife and I went on a cruise a couple of years ago. We had the pleasure of the company of Cesar Augusto, a very fascinating multi-lingual tourguide who showed us the Mayan ruins of Tuluum. On the last day of the cruise, this melody wouldn't leave my head, so I grabbed some boat stationery and wrote it out, not even knowing what I'd call it.       When I got it in the studio, I imagined a new Soca beat, a la David Rudder. And then during the solos, I added a strummed acoustic guitar. All of a sudden, the rhythm took on a Mexican flavor, almost Tejano in nature. The acoustic guitar solo against that strummed acoustic guitar background almost brought up the Gipsy Kings, and voila! Cesar Augusto popped in my head.

5. Toledo Blade

Has nothing to do with Toledo Ohio. And it was written before the creation of Toledo Blade Productions. Toledo Blade is a long road that goes through Port Charlotte and North Port Florida. This was written at a very depressing time of my life.       Around the early Nineties, I was selling timeshare at Club Orlando, (obviously in Orlando, FL). It was a very seedy place and it was right in the middle of a very dangerous ghetto neighborhood. The weeks were pretty cheap and people were buying. They would sit in the sales lounge (formerly the Americana Village Show Room) and look at a swimming pool, where the water was a deep green from a DYE some folks had decided to put in it, rather than just fix the pump and us the chlorine. It was depressing.       During that time, a couple of songs popped in my head, and while waiting for another tour (and some other poor sucker to sell this awful place to) I wrote down two songs. Toledo Blade originally had a faster tempo, sort of like "Overnight Sleeper" (by Acoustic Alchemy). It was originally designed to be played on guitar, and was actually a real pain in the ass to play on pans. The only reason I included it on the CD (besides the fact I didn't have a lot of songs at the time) was because a local newspaper wanted me to put out a CD based on my impressions of Charlotte County, and they would then give me all kinds of free press. Well, I did, but they didn't.       The new version of Toledo Blade is a slower tempo, more like an early Pat Metheny work.

6. The Airslot

This was Song Number Two, written at that seedy Club Orlando, while waiting to take another hapless couple on a timeshare tour. The Airslot refers to a boat that Wellcraft used to make in the Seventies. My brother bought a 19 foot Wellcraft Airslot and we had some of the best times of our lives tooling around the Charlotte Harbor and outer islands on that thing. At Club Orlando, my mind started to wander. This melody came up, complete with the rhythm, and even that instrumental sound.       It wasn't that much of a stretch to add the steel pans. Like "Split Pan Soup" and   "Phoenix Durango" the pans were part of the ensemble in the melody, rather than being the only melody instrument. Also, this is the only song where the pan did not take a solo.       In any case, it is also a Charlotte County song.

7. Tikimon

This is the newest composition, written almost at the last minute. TIKIs is a haberdashery in Punta Gorda that features Tommy Bahama apparel. (in other words, too rich for my blood) I've played for that store during a couple of Gallery of Artist Walk(s) on some Thursdays. Matt, the owner sometimes would call himself the Tiki Man. During a party for the Punta Gorda Chamber of Commerce, he actually wore a name tag with Tiki Man on it.       Rather than make another world beat extravaganza, or another Pat Metheny cover, I decided to go with the decor of the store. It was more along the lines of ParrotHeads, the Jimmy Buffett Crowd. The beat is like Margaritaville, but with a lot more chord changes, and so far a lot less radio play.

8. Barbecue Bill

The oldest composition in the stack. I wrote this back in 1979, during the day, in a lounge at a Ramada Inn in Knoxville, Tenn. In the dead of winter. Missing Florida. Missing Charlotte County. The original song had lyrics and was a piano piece along the lines of Billy Joel's "Piano Man."       There is such a person as Barbecue Bill. Back in the Seventies when my band first performed in Punta Gorda, there was a barbecue restaurant up the street in Charlotte Harbor, called Charlie's Po Boy Barbecue. Bill was a cook there. We got to be very good friends with him over the years. A drummer gave him the name "Barbecue Bill" which to this day he claims has stuck with him, even though Charlie's Po Boy is no longer there. Bill is in seafood now.       This is also the only song that doesn't have a full rhythm section. There is actually another version of it done in a jazz waltz tempo, where the lead instrument is a muted trumpet, a la Miles Davis. That's a pretty hip version, but swing doesn't work too well with pans. Something about the ring in the pan notes against a different feel of slow swing. A long time ago, I was advised to keep pan songs in 16th-note patterns, and in Caribbean feels. There won't be a Country and Western pan album coming out, just in case you were wondering.       Don't know what inspired that electric guitar, other than a great admiration for Pat Metheny.