I recently co-produced my friend Robert Schilling's debut studio album Ashton Odyssey, which showed up on streaming platforms last Friday. As its release approached, I happily jumped at the opportunity to write the album's liner notes, which accompany the physical copy. I'm proud of my writing, which imitates the crazed writing of Peter Stampfel’s Broadside column and the autobiographical fabrications that Bob Dylan sometimes indulges in. I also took comedic inspiration from character improvisations by John Mulaney, who thrives in throwing out obscure cultural references that are sidesplitting for the few that understand them. Some of the sources for my rhapsodizing can be tracked down with a simple google search; other musical references will probably impossible to track down unless you already have excellent taste; the leftovers are jokes only those at the sessions will understand. Most of the notes will be entertaining regardless. A lot of factual information is as improbable as the inventions so don’t assume it’s all bullshit. Anyway, here are the notes:
Robert has been a songwriter for as long as I’ve known him. Seriously! Our sisters set us up because we were two Bob Dylan fans without anyone to share our fandom. I excitedly met him not too far away from the 96th stop on the Wabash Cannonball, but instead of getting into the weeds of our favorite verses on “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream,” he takes out his songwriting book and tells me he’s fixin’ to pen lyrics like John Mellencamp and sing like Bono. I was Fixin’ to Die from disappointment but when I finally caught a gig with him, I knew what he meant. He was going to be a sensation, much like Huey Long or Jane Austen or Frank Lloyd Wright. His lyrics captured the humanity of Joe Strummer, the folk idiom of Woody Guthrie, and the word slinging of John Fahey. His stage presence was reminiscent of Tom Verlaine, his guitar rattled like Son House, and his singing, well, actually he didn’t really sound like anyone else. Not even Bono.
Robert’s primary instrument is guitar. He’s a classic strummer but he can write solos and play lead guitar if the sun is setting and the humidity is just right. He plays all the guitar parts on the album. He also plays the harmonica, a few select drums fills, a bit of Rhodes, all of the shakers, and all the castanets on the album. He’s a gifted multi-instrumentalist if you ask me. He even plays the quills like Henry Thomas in his free time but he’ll usually deny it if you ask him in person.
Session one for Ashton Odyssey took place on February 11, 2024, the day of the Super Bowl. It was the perfect day to blow the record label’s big advance! We had booked the place for 10 hours and hoped to record all the instrumental parts for our eight songs. Andrew was playing honky tonk piano like Jerry Lee Lewis and Bryan was grooving like Tina Weymouth but then things started going haywire! Our drummer vanished on a smoke break and our engineer kept getting distracted by some drifter claiming to be an academic advisor. Academic advisor of what, we asked. He gave a long rambly answer that actually made sense but it’s too long to reprint here. We only finished two songs before we had to send everyone home.
Session two was much more productive and we got four more tracks done before the power went out and thwarted our progress. The next day we found out the cause of the outage on the newspapers’ front page: “Automation Hits Shoe Industry, Nationwide Strikes”!
Session three we completed the final two songs with a new drummer and at a new studio. This studio had carpet everywhere, including the ceilings. Andrew told me the bathroom had carpet everywhere too. Bryan told me that the amp closet had the biggest collection of novelty cereal boxes he’d ever laid eyes on. I stayed with Robert and met our engineer who told us he wanted to make Robert the next Jackson C. Frank. It was a weird scene. Nevertheless, spirits were high: Robert sang into the same microphone that Roger Waters used to record “Comfortably Numb”—albeit The Lockdown Sessions version—and we ordered pizza for the band at lunchtime. We even asked the engineer to sign Robert’s castanets when we wrapped up.
The rest of the sessions were done with just me and Robert. We spent a lot of time perfecting the vocals, adding overdubs, mixing the damn thing, and trying to get the perfect acoustic renditions of “Louie Louie” and “Jole Blon” for the album’s Deluxe Edition (coming out on March 27th, 2066—physical copy exclusive!). The record company wasn’t too pleased with our time wasting but that’s just how it goes. You can do what you want when you’re a Big Star. You don’t even need a driver’s license.
