Since leaving the forever road the Radiators were on since the 1980s, Ed Volker, the band’s leader and principal songwriter, has released an incredible amount of new material and has dug deep into his archives to rework old songs. His latest collection, One Red Spiral, goes back to his youth mining poetry and songs he wrote between 1969 and 1973. It’s available here.
For fishheads this is fascinating material. Here’s Volker’s own take on the genesis of this new project, “In 1977 I surveyed all the lyrics I‘d written up to that point (that winds and roads hadn’t purloined) and compiled the most memorable in a large spiral notebook with a red plastic cover.”
The songs on One Red Spiral began as poetry and some were never recorded in any form. Delving deep into his memory banks and with assistance from his sisters, Volker has reclaimed the music and recently recorded the tunes in his home studio.
Much of the music exposes his early influences, which have been well documented over the years and the songs will sound familiar to fans of the Radiators. Blues-based piano is in the driver’s seat with changes that parallel songs he would write for the Radiators and 1950s-era New Orleans R&B.
Yet, there is a sense of melancholy in many of the tunes that is also reflected in the lyrics. This was clearly a time of great growth in the early years of an artist who had no way of knowing how his work would develop and change.
Several of the motifs that eventually emerged as touchstones for his lyrics are present—wine, dancing, mortality, card games. One line from “I’m Having Trouble with the Law” could have been written today, “The old man hears the thunder, the young man feels the rain.” There’s a character named Mona, a reference to gravity, and the snippet, “let the river flow.”
The tunes were written during a period of upheaval in America that mirrors our own. The war in Vietnam was raging, race relations were unsettled, and cracks were being exposed in the idealistic promise of the 1960s. Though the times are referenced in vague ways, these songs are intimate and his concerns were interpersonal.
As Volker continues to dig deep into his archives he says, “I can get to know some of the other songs I once was and I’m looking forward to sharing more of these twisty back roads in the future.” I, for one, am looking forward too.
