by Brooke Palmer
THE BRIEF STORY OF MONKEY-SIZED PREY (FOLLOWED BY THREE SONG TRACKS BELOW):
Mike Apinyakul and I met in college as we lived in the same dorm building. Over the years, a friendship grew, and eventually became a music partnership that lasts to this day.
It started when I learned an old Bessie Smith tune (Empty Bed Blues) and Mike offered to play the guitar part while I sang at one of his live coffee-shop performances (in Columbia, Missouri, BTW). Then we learned an old Alice in Chains song together. Then we began writing songs together.
In the summer of the year 2000, Mike decided to up and move to Missoula, Montana, a small college town in the mountains, for a new view and new inspiration, to focus on music and writing. That summer, just after my first and last year teaching high-school, I joined Mike on his adventure: a road trip from Missouri to Montana, shared space in a one-room apartment (plus a bathroom, so two rooms I guess), and an amazing two months spent poor, happy, and musically-enthralled.
We immediatly began recording a CD together, on Mike's 4-track (of which he was a recording God, able to mix and edit to make beautiful quality sounds). We'd sleep til 1 or 2pm each day, wander around town looking for inspiration and watching the sunset over the river or over the traintrack, and then buy some cheap food and cheap wine or beer, and hole up in the "room" (the Studio) and write and record songs together. I had wanted to bring my keyboard for the effort but there simply was not enough room in his car. So he played the guitar, harmonica, and tambourine, and I sang. I wrote lyrics, he wrote lyrics, he wrote music, we improvised, etc.
Then at night (okay, so this story isn't so brief after all), we'd take our newly-polished tunes and perform at various open-mic nights around town. Some of them were more mellow, others loaded us with free drinks (Jay's Upstairs...), and during these nights we cut loose, met other musicians, and had a grand ol' time.
Then we'd ride home on Mike's bike (me balanced gracefully...after learning how...on his handlebars) back to the Room, and we'd turn on late-night PBS while Mike threw together some noodles. We'd eat and philosophize until 3 or 4 in the morning. Then start the same routine the next day.
After having several songs prepared together, we were able to book our own show at Jay's Upstairs. But we needed a "band" name. So one night, while eating sandwiches and watching a show on PBS about eagles, we discovered that these raptors eat "monkey-sized prey." This description humored us so much that we decided to use the term as our name for our first show. Well, it stuck.
The night before I left that magical place (and that enchanting summer), we sat in the Studio, drunk on Spire pear cider, and decided to improvise a last song with which to end the album. So he played a guitar track, recording as he went, and I sang along, trying to emulate the vocals and instruments that had inspired me that summer. Then we built one more guitar and one more vocal track. This, our title song (Monkey-Sized Prey), for me, encompasses the wonder and magic of that summer in Missoula making music with Mike. It is the third track below.
I left Montana and a few weeks later received the mixed CD of our work in the mail. Then I got busy doing a cut-and-paste job of creating the album cover. Then we burned several copies and sold a few and gave away many more. Today the CD makes its way around still, and Mike and I play MSP reunions from time to time (our last show was at a house concert, at my house, on my birthday, June 13th).
The first track below, Hold Your Hands, is the first track we recorded in Missoula. It is a song Mike had already written and I learned the lyrics and melocy and we harmonized the versus. It seems to be a track on the album that many people love.
The second track below has a long story all its own, which I will not go into right now, but email me for the details if you wish. It started with a word, Labno, spelled out in rocks on the face of one of the mountains, and is inspired by the extreme forest fires that raged all around us that summer, as well as by a visit from the Hell's Angels.
I hope you enjoy these three tracks. You are free to download them. The entire album, MONTANA, contains seven original tracks, and can be purchased (CHEAPLY!!!!) by me. Email me if interested.
|
