It was kind of a running joke in the San Jose music community that a dictionary was required to fully appreciate a Valdoria tune. My bass teacher, whose counsel I also seek about general musical matters proximal to his particular expertise, recently remarked about my writing, "You don't need to be so esoteric all the time."
He was actually referring to my tendency to avoid writing hooks, but the comment could easily apply to my verbiage. I like unusual words! Esoteric even.
I'm especially partial to synonyms for "gloomy." Morose, woebegone, tenebrous, funereal. I think my favorite one is lugubrious, but using it twice in a song could be tiresome if I found it remarkable that Zelda Fitzgerald peppered it a handful of times in her 200+ page novel, Save Me the Waltz.
At any rate, the dictionary joke came flooding back to me when Jordan, the producer/engineer for this track, was labeling the first draft and asked after the word saturnine. He'd never heard it before.
"You've heard of 'mercurial'?" I responded.
"Yes," he said.
"It's the character of a different god."
The title is deliciously alliterative. I knew in my gut nothing else could suit the context.
The arrangement, on the other hand, has had multiple incarnations, since I wrote it from a sick bed in the summer of '22. In March of '23, I recorded a version of it with André Pacheco as part of the Pearl Sky recordings. Brett Warren played electric upright, and while I enjoyed the process and the resulting track, I didn't feel like it fit thematically with Pearl Sky and opted to save it for a different collection.
After moving to the Pacific Northwest and starting to record more at home, it became apparent that André and Brett's recording would not fit the developing aesthetic of my new recorded work, either. By the end of the summer of '24, I was mourning the failure of what had originally seemed to be a promising remote collaboration and starting online bass lessons trying to maintain some kind of momentum. I made an entirely self-produced recording layering in my own bass composition after a month or so of lessons. It wasn't the worst, but it still wasn't what I wanted in an object recording.
By the beginning of this year, I leaned so hard into playing the bass that it consumed my aesthetic. It's still somewhat peculiar to me that the bass is the instrument with which I have the least over-all experience but lately the most recognition. I don't think 2022 Valdoria would have guessed I'd be using it as my primary support instrument.
Neither would she anticipate that I would experience such fluency with enthusiastically experimental collaborators. One of my favorite things about Jordan and Lindsey Plotner is their almost painterly, textural approach to making music.
I'm not sure if it's just that our sensibilities naturally align, or experience having taught me what I truly value in collaborative environments or what, but it was a unique pleasure to work with them on this track, and I'm pretty happy with the end result. I think it goes very well with the spirit of the original composition. I'm looking forward to developing the rest of the album, and looking forward to eventually sharing it with all of you.
Happy Halloween! Please enjoy this recording of "Saturnine Saturday!"
And come out to Havalina tonight if you can! Etta & the Ghost are opening for me and are a spooky great southern rock duo!
