July 15th is a day that goes down in thefamily3 as the most commonly shared birthdate. Celebrating their birthdays today are John Eppard (John The Baker of Instant Asshole), David Parker (Wavis of Weerd Science stuff) and Spider Barbour.
If you click the "Wavis" and "John The Baker" tags you'll see that there's a few articles in the database about the two artists. Spider, on the other hand, has yet to be mentioned, but certainly is not a talent to ignore. His songwriting has served as a tremendous inspiration to the original 3. Instead of writing an intro to Spider's career, we're going to let Jimmy Eppard take care of that. Before the copy/paste, aKt would also like to take this opportunity to welcome the tiniest new additions to thefamily3- Gracie and Julian.
The Curmudgeons
I first heard James 'Spider' Barbour when I was playing with the Crows in the late 80s. I was at Crow's bassman, Mike Dunn's house one day listening to some music when he pulled out a cassette of "Dog's Life". I was completely blown away by this tune. Mike told me that he was a local guy that he had played with a few years back in a group called "Imago". Back in 1968 Spider had a deal with MGM for his band "Chrysalis". The Chrysalis record was being recorded @ Electric Ladyland in NYC. Another band that was also there recording @ the same time was The Mothers of Invention. Spider, being the crazy brainiac biologist that he is, became fast friends with Frank Zappa. They spent hours recording free associative conversations under the lid of the studio's grand piano...'Pigs & ponys don't understand the BIG NOTE!'... Many of these raps became incorporated into Frank's material. I made Mike promise to introduce me to Spider asap. A few weeks later the three of us became the original Curmudgeons.
We would get together twice a week & learn Spider's 'book'. I would chart out the tunes & we would arrange them. Spider has a unique way of voicing chords & the way his melodies flow through them is truly mesmerizing. I can honestly say that going through this process has given me a more complete understanding of music which has carried over into every project I have been involved in since. The greatest thing about Spider's music is that, when it's done right - it sounds completely simple & straightforward. When you try to play along with it, then you'll realise what a completely twisted genius he is!
About a year later I had gotten involved with Michael Birnbaum - a talented, young engineer who wanted to build a recording studio. I had cut some tracks in his home studio when I was singing & playing guitar with the Crows & was very impressed by his drive & focus, in addition to the high quality of his engineering work. Since I had a pretty extensive carpentry background, he asked me to check out an old barn he was thinking about renting with the idea to turn it into a real studio. The place was interesting. A wall would have to come down & a couple more would have to go up. A booth & a control room would need to be built...it could happen...There was no budget, of course, so I opted to do the work in exchange for studio time. Spider had some construction experience as well so between the two of us we got the job done in a few weeks. There were several 24 hour work days involved in making that deadline, but it was basically happy work. Having this opportunity to make a professional recording for our sweat equity motivated us to begin pre - production using Mike's old Tascam 40-4 & Spi's Kelsey mixer @ Mike Dunn's house. As fate would have it, some of these demos turned out better than the 'real' studio!
We cut: 'Dr. Root's Garden', 'Chilicothe Wind', 'Dog's Life', 'Storybook Windows', 'Lime Kiln Road' & '(let me) Hibernate'. These 4 track tapes had a significant effect on my 2 young sons. I swear that they, & all their friends, knew these songs better than we did! This collection of demos really helped inspire them to write their own songs. Today they both have careers in music. Joey is making his 6th record. (1 - solo, 5 with his group '3' ) to be released summer /07 on Metal Blade. Josh, after cranking out 3 certified gold discs for columbia/equalvision records with 'Coheed & Cambria', is finishing up his 2nd 'Weerd Science' hip hop release for EqualVision. This isn't just me being a proud parent, it's a living, breathing, WORKING testimony to the inspirational power of great music. Either one of these guys will tell you that Spider is the MAN!
excerpt from Jimmy Eppard's blog on MySpace, posted on April 20th, 2007.
Spider's official website with MP3s of his 2004 solo session > http://www.spiraclemusic.com/
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