twain is a modern folk-opera of indefinite length consisting of songs and images from the life of mt. davidson, a self-caricature of the musician and writer Matthew Davidson.
There is nothing remarkable about my life that is necessary to know in order to appreciate the songs. Some of the songs deal with the experience of male-ness, but it isn’t necessary to identify as male or female to understand them. A lot of the music comes out of depressive or ecstatic states, but it is not necessary to have experienced those feelings in order to appreciate the music. The offering is supposed to be a very naked voice which the listener can commune with. If it were up to me, I would share this music with people who don’t know a single fact about my self, my name, my story. I make music in order to take a break from those things, and I hope the music I make offers others a chance to take a break from their own selves, names, stories…
The songs are a balancing exercise between soul-fantasy and self-scrutiny. They try to sit in the liminal state between the spirit’s ambition for itself and the often harsh truth of the present. The hope is to erode the barrier between those two places. Sometimes the facts of life make dreams difficult to protect. twain is my effort to reconcile those two states… to forget that they could ever exist in opposition
This year i am proud to announce the release of a new twain album, “noon”, on Keeled Scales.
(one)
Noon is where I am, more-or-less, in my natural life span and in my creative life span.
I picture noon being at the very bottom of a bowl
…the resting point of a pendulum…
… not the apex of an arc, or the crest of a hill…
Looking back from this point in my life, I can see all of the hurt and confusion I’ve helped create on the way to my own noon. To borrow a phrase from Elena Ferrante: I don’t have any sympathy for the person I was then.
Arriving at noon for the first time in my life, I sense everything reversing and the possibility to change and cure and heal is real for the first time. This album is a prayer from noon for the rest of the day.
The song “The Magician” is about that. The song “The Priestess” is about an agent who helps with that.
(two)
i look at the way other people create and am jealous
my way is not very efficient and it sure involves a lot of struggle and a lot of waiting around
i dream of a way of creating that’s more like breathing. This is a central feeling on the album but i don’t know that it really comes up in the lyrics
sometimes i remember that the difference between dreaming about doing something and actually doing it can be very slight
that is to say, sometimes i get a hold of the dream and actually do the dream
even if its only once every year or so it’s really enough to put gas in the tank
the fact that the music i’ve made has put literal gas in the literal tank is a fact that i never take for granted
it feels like magic to me, the closest thing i’ve figured out to practicing magic
(three)
some of the songs are old and some were written during recording, which took place in a span of nine days in October ’20 and February ’21.
this is the first album that doesn’t feature Peter Pezzimenti on drums and mallet percussion. some of the songs on the album are about him. no one has had more creative impact on me than Peter. it’s strange to make recordings without him.
the drums* were played by Austin Vaughn. i asked him to come record with us because i look up to him
the bass was played by Ken Woodward, an angel
the music was recorded by Adrian Olsen at Montrose Recording. he’s the person who encouraged me to take recording seriously. The albums Love is All Around, Adventure, New Miami Sound e.p. and parts of Rare Feeling were all recorded by him