Mobjack recently rocked out with the Uncle Todd and the Captain at Tangled Roots on WHUS in Storrs, CT. You can hear the entire, wide ranging interview and performance here or truck over to our Music Page to download just the musical performances for a paltry $3.
The interview below is broken into 13 files of which are denoted below and which can be located using the left and right arrows once the player is activated.
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Track 1 – Intro & Matter of Fact
Track 2 – Video talk, Genesis, Roots Rock You Say?
Track 3 – In the Dark
Track 4 – The Mobjack Treatment, Keller’s Writing Process, Tracking
Track 5 – Dandelions
Track 6 – Gigs, Hitched, Influences, Niles Doesn’t Like Jazz… or Gram Parsons
Track 7 – Northern Town
Track 8 – Downloads CD’s & Vinyl, The New Age, Writing Walked Away Too Fast
Track 9 – Walked Away too Fast
Track 10 – Eggs in a Basket, Working for the Man, Perplexed Jazz Cats, Demographics
Track 11 – Come Around
Track 12 – Gigs, Hartford’s Music Scene
Track 13 – Running Backwards, Sign Off
Beyond all my thoughts are strings of cacti lined along a vanish line / streaking past periphery, they blur into the mile-marker signs / but we are bristling with youth and hurtling towards tragedy and scars / as the desert air surrounds and we recount aloud how we each received ours / we’ll meet the horizon where the sun goes down / and deify the turnpike’s twisting lines / no thunderclap or man could remove our kingly crowns / and we are drinking dandelions / beyond all I know is a serenity of houses farms and wives / and everlasting souls arranged in pairs and moving through each other’s lives / we may not be men but we are armored, we are shielded, we have pride / we race around concentric circles burning all the homes where we reside.
Clean Slate, Mobjack’s first nearly-full-length release is available for preorder and will be release on September 1st, 2010.
%20 OFF!!! Use the code “cleanslate” when you check out and we’ll knock %20 off the purchase price. This code is only valid for preorders, however, so get it in gear and reserve your disk.
Here’s some verbage about the record from Soundcloud:
Clean Slate is a series of tracks which were gleaned from monthly singles that Mobjack released from August of 2009 to June of 2010, at which time all of the tracks were remixed and remastered for CD. This record captures the band in a prenatal state as the group transitioned from a recording project between David Stillman and Keller Glass and gradually morphed into a gigging band. In fact, with the exception of songwriter Keller Glass, none of the musicians on these initial recordings would be in the lineup by the time the songs were released on the band’s website.
The recordings are true to the band’s sound, however, largely due to Glass’ keen sense of the band’s sound and hands-on approach to the recording process. Local musicians Dan Matchett, Niles Krieger and Will Violet were tapped to fill out Stillman & Glass’ initial recordings and the results exhibit maturity well beyond the years of the players.
Alternating between slight indie distortion and melodic folk-rock, Clean Slate explores themes of loss and broken relationships, described in hazy vignettes and framed in a quintessentially American sound. The cover image of the abandoned Longwood mansion reinforces these themes of decay as the physical embodiment of the South’s last gasp of opulence.
