“Our Trains Keep A-Comin’” and “Every Child Is Born To Be The Child Of Dawn” are here substituted for the ‘Colors Changing Color’ Tracks with Vocal and as Instrumental.
The whole Audio may be more suitable for Download—around 16 minutes instead of 33. As always, I hope that you ENJOY
Just before we started to record ‘Colors Changing Color’, I said to DPRAM’s guests Louis Michot and Andre Michot: ‘This piece is kind of about traveling across Louisiana—as least southern Louisiana—and arriving at Ancestor Worship.”
0-00—4:45
“Here, in the fourth part of A-Threading through LOUISIANA STORIES, we feature ’Colors Changing Color’, 14 minutes even, with Vocal and then as Instrumental, recorded in one Take and with no rehearsal, by the DPRAM of Roger Lewis, Kirk Joseph, Don Vappie, and Alexey Marti, with Louis Michot on Violin and André Michot on Accordion. It was early on the July 31st hot afternoon in Acadiana’s town of Maurice, about 20 miles south of Lafayette toward the Gulf of the Indigena, within the welcome spaces and well-placed iso-booths of Dockside Studio, seated next to the silkily brown Vermilion River, with Justin Tocket as our expert Engineer.
“Dang!” Louis Michot said when the Voice-and-Music ended with Don Vappie reprising his intro on Banjo to ‘Colors Changing Color’. “Magic! Dang!”
Later, as we talked about the Track in the Dockside Studio control-room with Jason Tocket, Louie said:
“It got to where I didn’t know who was playing what.”
It was beautiful, we all agreed. “You can’t improve perfection,” Roger said. “I tried to be the rain.” Andre said about his Accordion. Kirk said about Alexey on the Congas: “And this man held down the Pulse, all the way through.” Kirk said about the whole: “The blending, the feeling, it was just something of collective improvisation.” Jason said: “I was just levitating.”
So, ‘Colors Changing Color’, first written by me about Louisiana in 1977 while I was a roughneck and staying in the Hotel Royale of Morgan City between my Hitches offshore with Diamond M Drilling.
Then it was more of a prosaic document.
It grew more appreciative of Louisianans’ generosity and more mystical and radical in 2024. The ‘Angels winking in branches’ and the presence of Ancestors in our Here and Now became integral.
Now, I think, the piece carries a consciousness that can be revolutionary for our Present. If we suppose that man-made ’Winking’ of lights (such as in the Oaks of New Orleans’ City Park, strung in the Trees voluntarily by a Park Superintendent simply so that people might more enjoy their Christmas-time scene, as pictured on the front-cover of LOUISIANA STORIES) … If we suppose, as I was saying, those winking lights may represent ‘Thousands thousands angels’ signifying to us, we have, well, bounty for our consciousness.
If we suppose further that those angelic winking lights represent our ancestors (‘It is your mother with you now. It is your father with you now’), well, we have a whole new—or old— ball-game. Those lights and their voices may speak like trains, may arc like Cranes, may drum like trains. And they represent and sound far more than A.I. and robots ever can achieve (much as A.I. and robots must be best endowed to aspire) Robots can never cry and laugh with Shakespeare. A.I. can never FEEL and CREATE as we human beings can. No A.I. can lead to our real home of caring for one another … Like those DREAMERS and BELIEVERS with their shouting, stomping, cheering fans and Angels in the Outfield on the Field of Miracles.
Let me add special appreciation to Don Vappie for the great playing and structure that he brought to ‘Colors Changing Color’.
And now on to Kirk and I with Michael Dominici over WWOZ on February 6 of this year.”
4:45—5:16
Don: “We wanted to bridge between Acadiana and New Orleans at the least and the Michot brothers recorded with us five Tracks in Dockside Studio last July.”
Kirk: “Nothing was set in stone, Everything was kind of based on the poetry, but we also had the freedom to do the sounds and the rhythms. We was able to collectively come together. It was the brothers—we had never performed or discussed anything. And it just happened. It was wonderful.”
5:18—11:57 “Our Trains Keep A-Comin’”
11:58—12:25
That was “Our Trains Keep A-Comin’”, Track 11 from LOUISIANA STORIES and again it was Complete Improvisation, recorded in our first Take. Marvelous collaboration among the musicians! “Dang! Magic!”
Track 12, “Every Child Is Born To Be The Light Of Dawn” was edited from that first Take to be more of its own thing and a separate-but connected closing for the Album.
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