Boy From Black Mountain began as a way of continuing a trilogy of "Weird American Gothic" albums began in 2006 with Dreamland.  If Dreamland used the mythologies of the American circus as its backdrop, Boy From Black Mountain used Southern Gothic mythos and storytelling, inspired by my father's life growing up as a watermelon farmer in the rural Bible Belt.  As so often happens, what I set out to do was only a small part of what I actually ended up doing.  In December of that year my son was diagnosed with autism.  I stopped writing music for a year.  And over the next 18 months Caroline and I spent our days helping our son overcome many obstacles. 

I.  Clouds Moving In

We saw early symptoms such as stacking and repetition but several trips to so-called "experts" did not yield a diagnosis.  He wasn't talking much at age 2, either, but when he started the temper tantrums when his routine changed, we knew there was a serious problem.  While Caroline was reading every book under the sun about autism, I was writing music in an attempt to release what I was feeling and document the phases of what we went through from diagnosis to recovery.  I'll never forget coming home one Halloween night and seeing all of these happy families walking their kids along the streets.  And then getting home and seeing my son fast asleep, in his Superman cape, and asking Caroline what happened.  They walked less than half a block and he started screaming because he wanted to go a different way.  There was nothing she could do, he was just terrified and upset.  And I just broke down because I wanted him to experience Halloween like other children were experiencing it, but mostly because I knew something was very, very wrong.

II.  The Sound And The Fury

I was distraught and I felt a lot of dread every day coming home to a screaming child who couldn't talk with me, who couldn't explain to me how he was feeling or what he was so terrified of.  I've told Caroline (years later) I remember walking up to the house at night and hearing his screams from outside on the sidewalk, and I would stop at the fence and look up, my briefcase in hand, the street light shining down on me.  And I often felt like Father Merrin in The Exorcist coming home every night.  "Saturn Song" came out of seeing my son getting teased on the playground and wondering why the parents of these snotty, spoiled little Cambridge brats didn't step in to do something.  I was so angry at just about everyone.

III. The Course Of The River

After finally getting the diagnosis of austim in December 2006, we began battling with the public school system to get services.  In 2007 our son moved into an ABA classroom in Cambridge taught by Moira McNabb, who we are convinced is either an angel, some kind of miracle healer, or just one of the best darn preschool teachers for special needs kids around.  She was able to bring out his personality in a way other teachers could not.  She went into his world, and if he was nervous about something she got silly with him to make him laugh.  With Moira's help, an intensive schedule of ABA, and of course one-on-one with Caroline and me, he slowly started talking and making eye contact and he was on his way to recovery.

IV. Boy From Black Mountain

After he overcame many of the obstacles, I was able to write about the experience through some of the songs on this album.  Black Mountain (a mountain and progressive school in North Carolina) became a metaphor for autism.  Today my son is the most gregarious and creative little social butterfly.  He loves to read books and never stops talking about all of his creations and stories and friends.  His repetitive behavior is gone and he never screams anymore.  His friends are very important to him.  "Boy From Black Mountain" is a love song to my son, a boy with a hyper-creative mind whose obstacles disappear in his dreams and whose exceptions provide a unique path to fulfill his dreams.

We'll be doing a few shows this fall with one of our favorite new bands, Blood Warrior, who is touring to release a new CD on Ernest Jenning. Blood Warrior was founded by Greg Jamie of O'Death and features some gorgeous and haunting vocal harmonies by fellow Blood Warrior Kristin Kellas. On these shows we'll be performing some songs from our new album Boy From Black Mountain as well as some brand new songs with a slightly revamped instrumentation (Farfisa organ and electric bass, for starters). We'll be performing on Saturday October 24th at Middle East Upstairs in Cambridge (also with Mr. Sister and Guillermo Sexo), October 25th at Glasslands Gallery in Brooklyn, and November 12th at Union Hall in Brooklyn. More information on the SHOWS page.

In an interview recently discussing his album Berlin, Lou Reed called the concept album "the kiss of death". Berlin was released in 1973. It was Lou Reed's third album, after the very successful Transformer, an upbeat glam-rock record. In comparison, Berlin was seen as a downer, a collection of songs about jealousy, anger, and loss centered around a couple of drug addicts, Jim and Caroline. The album received generally scathing reviews, most infamously from Rolling Stone, calling it "a disaster...his last shot at a once-promising career. Goodbye, Lou." In 2006, Reed revisited Berlin with a series of shows at St. Ann's warehouse. The live concert was filmed and edited with dramatic footage by Julian Schnabel and the result is one of the most emotionally charged concert films in recent memory. It's stunning, a huge production by Bob Ezrin and Hal Willner, with a children's choir, strings, brass, Antony and Sharon Jones singing backup vocals. So why did critics hate this record so much? Because it was heavily arranged? Because somehow big arrangements are contrary to good ol' rock and roll? Because it was a downer? Lou himself is mystified by it, if you compare the story to say, Hamlet, where everyone dies in the end. Or maybe it got the reception it did because it was a concept album. Does a concept album somehow imply to audiences that the songs can't stand up on their own?

I'll go on record here and say this. I'm not at all sure what the point of releasing an album is if there is no concept behind it. An album needs cohesion. Otherwise why not just release independent singles? Especially in this day and age where everything seems to be downloaded anyway. Of course, there are many different ways to provide cohesion between songs. Consistent instrumentation, consistent characters, consistent themes...and some combination of those or all of the above makes a concept.

The albums which have had the biggest impact on my life either emotionally, intellectually, or musically have all been conceptual. John Zorn's The Big Gundown, Tom Waits' The Black Rider, and Henry Threadgill's Too Much Sugar For A Dime all affected my musical mind in a big way, opening up doors in terms of sound, instrumentation, and writing. While not an album, Philip Glass and Robert Wilson's opera Einstein on the Beach was a vastly ambitious concept which paid off. The opera refers to Einstein the historical figure and his breakthroughs through a series of 9 20-minute scenes with textual contributions by Christopher Knowles, an autistic poet with a long-standing collaboration with Wilson. Nick Cave's The Boatman's Call is another album which affected me in a big way and we know those songs are all about Polly Harvey. Funny that Nick Cave has often dismissed this album, too, in interviews: "I was making a big heroic melodrama out of a bog-standard rejection by a woman". Beat Circus alum Alec K. Redfearn released one of the most haunting and beautiful albums I've heard in years, The Blind Spot, a concept album dedicated to love ones lost to drug overdose. I'm not sure it's one of his best-selling albums but it's his best, in my mind. Dirty Projectors have been releasing a string of albums with heavily-loaded concepts behind them, including Rise Above a couple years back, an album of Black Flag covers half-remembered by leader Dave Longstreth. And I really enjoyed his previous album The Getty Address, a "glitch opera" (you have to hear it to understand what that means) about musician Don Henley (I still don't get that part).

There's a reason why musicians shy away from marking their albums as concept albums. How many people shrugged off Berlin without listening critically because they read it was about a couple of drug addicts and ended in a suicide? Or maybe they listened but if they knew the story beforehand, it was always there coloring their experience. And how many people were busy asking Dave about Black Flag after Rise Above was released without remarking on how completely unique the musical vision behind his new album was. Hell, you could barely even call his interpretations covers at all. I'm saying the concept often gets in the way of the songs. It's all about the songs, after all. The concepts are really just frameworks for songwriting and compositions. And if the songs don't hold up, the concept is meaningless.

One could argue that all albums are by their very nature concept albums. And as Eric Penna of Ketman wrote to me recently, long live the album. Who knows how long albums are going to be around for? And if albums are approaching extinction, I guess concept albums must be just about dead and gone by now, right?

-- bc

Thanks to all who came out for our cd release shows last weekend!

Boy From Black Mountain is now available through our store!  You can support us most directly by purchasing the album through our online store HERE.  Boy From Black Mountain is a collection of personal songs about children, fatherhood, dreams, lost love, lust, revenge, and redemption. The songs are inspired by songwriter Brian Carpenter's son, stories handed down from his family in the rural Bible Belt, and the Southern Gothic literature of Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, and Eudora Welty.

Love
us

These are going to be EPIC shows!  We're releasing "Boy From Black Mountain", two years in the making!  Friday night Sept 11 at Middle East Down with Mucca Pazza, Reverend Glasseye, Ketman, and Larkin Grimm.  Saturday night Sept 12 at the new Knitting Factory in Brooklyn with Mucca Pazza and Larkin Grimm.  DON'T MISS IT!

Tune in Saturday night August 29th at 10PM EST to East Village Radio.  I'll be joining host Devon Levins on his show Morricone Youth to play music from Dreamland, Boy From Black Mountain, plus some rarities, and share stories behind the productions.  I'll be playing some of my favorite soundtracks too.  You can listen online.  Here is a link to the show and live stream:

http://www.eastvillageradio.com/shows/nowplaying.aspx?contentid=1284&showid=23610