samuel saint thomas: on the music:

Late one night I walked down the street and into a pub for the first time. I ordered a pint of black and tan. That was 1990. The band was playing Neil Young's "Hurricane." It’d been only a case of beer since I'd been a brother in a Franciscan monastery. Brown habit, prayer book and all. The music that I’d considered the devil's drug for many years was an erotic high.  I wanted to be inside this thing of rock and roll.

In 1994 I recorded an 8 track demo in a windowless one car garage in NJ with Tim Carbone. The unintended result was the soundtrack for mir in my sky: mystic journey for peace to Yugoslavia (1994), a documentary of a war-ravaged country that I produced, directed, edited, and marketed. The first production run sold out quickly.  Before the second run could go to press, the war was over.  The William Morris Agency in LA turned it down, as the US Government had no official position on the war.

Early in 1996, I recorded the hick-pop saweeet CD with the then fifteen year old Krista Long, the late Cesar Diaz (Bob Dylan), Timothy Carbone (Railroad Earth, Phil Lesh), and members of Solution A.D. who were then signed to Atlantic Records.  After her CD release, several sold out shows, and unsolicited college airplay, Krista left town.  Not long after, nearly all her stock of discs was stolen and ended up on the black market.  Krista still remains at large, although there has been an unexplainable surge of iTune sales for our remake of Melanie’s 70s hit “Brand New Key.”

Late in '96 I assembled a stellar cast of players for the solo project unfortunate adventures of a naked mystic. I wanted to record the classic sounds of Marshalls, Les Pauls, Gibson 335's in elevator shafts, toilets, hallways.  With no preproduction, drummer Jeff Barg of Kings in Disguise and upright bassist Kevin McConnell of the Larry McKenna jazz quartet, and I recorded the rhythm tracks in five days. I put down my guitar and vocals from the control room, all the while punching play and record.

For reasons unknown, my hands often cramped up, but we pushed right on.  Over the next weeks, Tim Carbone, who went on to play with Railroad Earth and Phil Lesh, laid violin tracks deep into the night. The late blue guitarist Cesar Diaz, who’d been with Bob Dylan, and alt-country guitarist Neil Casal, who’d played with Lucinda Williams and Ryan Adams and released several discs as a songwriter, came by.  One by one, guitarist Gary "G.D." Dillon, Len Mooney, and Texas punk polka star Ray Symczyk added their colors and threads.

I wanted each cut to have original color and texture. As we recorded, the tracks started to live on their own, a musical feast, each player adding their interpretations. After two hundred hours of mixing and mastering, the self-produced and engineered sounds and surprises of unfortunate adventures of a naked mystic was released in 1997. Sometimes it seemed like overkill to have so many great players in the room. Now I'm beginning to think we created a classic piece of work.