Mahatma Candy

Mahatma Candy was the first band in which I ever played.  I've told the story before, basically I was doing the Portland hippie thing of hitting hand drums along with a guitarist (Dade, he's awesome) at a barbecue, and he ridiculously asked me to join a band he was starting.  The band was Dade, (guitar/vocals) Lori (vocals), Angry Dave (guitar), and myself (percussion).  We were a folk/rock band, basically playing rock songs on modern folk instruments.  We became like family, closer than I have been to my own family.

I think the thing of which I am proudest is that we wrote songs.  It is relatively easy to pick up some cover songs, and in most cases this is what an audience prefers.  In Texas I have only seen one band that wrote any originals.  If you want to be a working band then top forty songs from the last three decades is the way to go.  But right from the beginning we wrote songs.  It really was "we" writing the songs, a collaborative effort.  Everyone contributed to the lyrics (this was my biggest contribution to the band), Dade and Dave wrote some intricate and beautiful guitar pieces, interweaving their music together so well that it almost sounds like a single musician with other-worldly ability, Lori crafted her own vocal melodies, and I slapped the rhythm down.  It is harder to write songs than copy the work of others, but it feels to me so much more genuine, so much more rewarding.

The band ended over ten years ago ( I don't count the failed and weird attempt to continue the band after the heart and soul left) and while I still consider everyone involved my friend, time, distance and circumstance has moved us apart.  Very recently Dade sent me a link to some of our original songs and I listened to them for the first time in years.  I was expecting a flawed, amateur, but willing result.  There is no-one who can pick out an error like the person responsible for it, but I was enormously pleased to find out I underestimated that band.  Listening to the pieces again I am humbled by the talent of the people I happened to find, and proud of what we achieved.  If you want to know where and why I started playing music, go take a listen.

Writing songs, or good songs, comes from emotion.  That emotion can be almost anything, but I personally think it impossible to write a good song that doesn't come from your own personality.  One of the songs on that list is called Sleep Sighs.  I wrote the lyrics in my usual manner (rhyming couplets a la Shelley) and the actual musicians in the band set it to music.  At least I think that's how it happened, we sometimes wrote music first, and then the lyrics.  I had forgotten that this song even existed until I heard it again.  It speaks to me of what was emerging in me at the time, the beginning of my bipolar experiences.  It speaks of sadness that came to me when I was alone, without any reference point, with no particular cause.  But it also speaks of a knowledge that I was going to feel better, and that pretty soon I would feel full of joy and beauty.  I didn't know it at the time, but my songwriting knew more about me than I did.