Martin and Brian, last April along the San Juan River during a tour to the Southwest. The photo was used for the Red or Blue album.
The arrival of August signals the start of the release of Switchback’s album Red or Blue. With that comes a lot of driving around the Midwest in order to get the album release shows off the ground. It is more than merely driving to a destination. When an album like Red or Blue is finished, it is the culmination of more than three years of work. During that time, songs are recorded, mixed, mastered and put together into a compilation. But they are not necessarily played during that time. In fact, it is really once an album gets to the point of release that the idea of performing them live has to be addressed. This gets complicated because we have to perform the studio version of the song live. They are not alike. A studio version of a song is where a lot of instrumentation is added. Like any sort of art studio, the artist can approach the work, in this case a song, much like a painting. Is it going to have a lot of layers and textures? In our case with Red or Blue, we went from the notion of having a very sparse album to having a complex one. Mainly because the songs demanded it. A song like “Good Trouble” needed something a bit more martial and bigger to portray the sense of the movement that was led by the late senator and civil rights activist John Lewis. A release concert is a chance to bring in musicians to help portray the album more in alignment with what was recorded at the studio. However, as Switchback does a lot of performing as a duo, it also means that we have to create a song arrangement that serves two musicians, yet also offers a sense of what was portrayed on the album. Some songs, like “Marybelle” and “What I Know Now” are fairly easy to do as a duo. “Last Chance” or even “Camouflage” are a challenge. This is not only related to the Red or Blue album, but other Switchback songs as well. The song “Rope as I’m Riding” from Kanoka is a very complicated song to pull off as a duo. That’s why we tend to shy away from it. However, it is important to play those songs, or at least offer them to the public in a style that resembles what was created in the studio.
That is why full band release concerts are important. They are an art piece unto themselves. Once the release concert is over, the chance of putting together a large ensemble to present the songs is fairly remote. It takes a lot of rehearsal, a lot of driving on the road to make them happen, not only for Switchback but for the musicians themselves. And it is expensive.
The point is that a full band release concert is a thing worth driving to participate in as an audience. This coming week, we will have a trio performing in Michigan and Canada. The following week, we will have a four-piece band in Iowa with the Perry Miller band opening as well. For the national release a five-piece band, with poet Marc Smith and singer-songwriter Scott Momenthy. It will be an event that once done is gone forever. And all the traveling to get to that moment won’t mean a thing without your presence to witness and celebrate that moment.
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