I'll never forget where I was when my good friend, Todd Bragg, sent me his band's first cd. I was living in Vail, Colorado in a house with 20 other guys. By week's end, everyone was wearing out this folksy cd by the group with the funny name. Caedmon's Call was something unexpected, even for me. Todd has always been a great guy and a wonderful musician, but even I wondered if his band would be any good. Turns out they were great, and have stood the test of time in a very strange and flighty industry.
Several years back, one of the band's co-frontmen, Derek Webb, left the band. Derek was a bit of a tortured genius. His voice was raspy and haunting, his lyrics were equally raspy and haunting, and he was fun and quirky to watch. The chemistry between he and other co-frontman, Cliff Young, was always entertaining, and really quite magical. When Derek left, things definitely changed.
Caedmon's Call made their best album ever after Derek's departure (Share the Well), but it met with very limited success. Derek has developed a large college and young adult following, but he's still a bit on the fringes. Together again, perhaps the magic of the original Caedmon's Call will return. Their new album, Overdressed, will hit stores in late August. Derek wrote and recorded on this project.
However this turns out, these folks are some of the nicest, coolest, most real people you'll ever meet. I wish them well.
4 comments:
Dear Steve,
How can Caedmon's ever be what they once were without touring 100 shows a year? Aren't they all past the age at which they would want to do that?
I don't care what they do. I'm still looking forward to the next CD.
Much luf, brother.
Denny
Right on. I am eager to hear there new project. They are super-nice people.
I remember this one night in Burma. The band and I had just finished a month-long slog through the rainforest ministering to the natives and cataloging their instrument-building craft for use on our next album. We were dead tired and Josh had a nasty bug that we were hoping wasn't malaria. We had come in on alpacas to a tiny bush village that had an honest English pub - a throwback from colonial days - with gas lights and a suspenders-and-fedora-clad barkeep named Billings. We hired the only three rooms in the inn then met Billings at the bar.
There were four other locals there, all of them probably wasting a week's pay on their pints but looking hot and haggard enough that you couldn't blame them. Andrew didn’t miss a beat. I’ll never forget how he stepped right up to the bar between two of those men, put on his best Brit voice, and said, “Billings. A pint of best, please. One for each of me blokes and a half for the lady.” (Danielle was with us.) He turned to the locals on either side and said, “And will you gentlemen be joining us then?” and then to Billings, “And can I get yours?”
That did it. Instant acceptance from the locals for about 30 kyat, and the open of one of the finest evenings of music, mirth and stale beer on record.
Two of the men we met that night are now full time missionaries to Arkansas. Last I heard, Billings was in a Thai hospital being treated for malaria.
Hey, is that Ted the Unabomber in the back row or Todd Bragg?
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