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EMAIL: russstedman@gmail.com

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Love, Calvin
Short Trip To Oblivion

DOWNLOAD @ ARCHIVE.ORG

When Scott Johnson sings things like "We all have friends. Some live in cages," it hits you somewhere unexpected. This album of Love, Calvin's final recordings is a collection of raw songs, raw emotion, raw humor. Lots of things on the edge inhabit this place. The people in these songs are not so much people you know, but people someone else knows. People in Scott's head. They're like the people you know reflected back in funhouse mirrors. The song titles read like extras in a Felini movie. Bumblebee, Robyn Hitchcock and Some Other Guy, Living In South Dakota, Cheerleaders On Dope, James, Dream of the One-Armed Psychopath, Caine in Boxers, Pink Pussy, Relapse, Killer's Greeting Card and the title song -- Short Trip is a misnomer. It's a long trip. (Russ Stedman has archived all of Love, Calvin's recordings for free download at the lovecalvin.com website).

Reviewed by Bryan Baker 8/2/2010.

GAJOOB SHORT-TAKE
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Interview by Bryan Baker on 8/2/2010

Can you give some background on putting together this album?
Scott Johnson was doing what would turn out to be his final recordings in 2003. Every so often I would get an e-mail from him with an MP3 of his latest song attached. All total he ended up sending me probably around 20 songs over the course of the year. The twelve songs on the album were the ones that I thought seemed like they were ready to be released. The others seemed to have less thought behind them...more like sketches or even just attempts at learning how to use the new digital equipment he was just getting used to. In 2009, about a year or so after Scott passed away, I started thinking about thisÊ folder of his songs I had sitting around, and decided to put them together as a final Love,Calvin album, mostly because I was pretty sure that I was the only person that had ever even heard most of them, much less still had copies of all of them. I thought it would be cool if Scott's friends, and even more so his two daughters, had a chance to hear the songs. That's how I decided to put the disc together. The files I had were of varied quality, and it took some wrangling in Pro Tools; just basically mastering them and doing a bit of EQ work. I'm happy with how it came out. It was one of my first Pro Tools excursions, and I used the opportunity to learn a lot about how to use the platform.

Do you have any details on the recording of these songs?
These were Scott's first recordings in 10 years. His previous cassette, KGOD, had come out in 1993. After KGOD, Scott had some very rough times, personally and financially. Over the next couple of years he got divorced, came out of the closet, and sold all of his musical equipment due to financial hardship. His personal struggles with manic depression eventually led him to quit working and go on disability. By 2003, he was living alone in a small basement apartment in a town about 50 miles North of me. Things seemed to take an upswing. We were back in contact more regularly thanks to e-mail, and one day he informed me that he had just bought a new digital 8-track, keyboard, drum machine, acoustic guitar, bass guitar, and microphone and was ready to get back in the recording game. He was having some trouble getting used to the new digital recording method, and asked me over to see if I could make heads or tails of it. That first day we ended up recording his first new song together, "Relapse" (which I played bass on). He continued to experiment with the digital 8-track, but soon confided in me that it just wasn't the same as the trusty old Tascam Portaone 4-track we had both started on. I'm not sure exactly why he stopped recording again later that year, but I do know that he just wasn't having as much fun recording digitally and dealing with the inevitable decline of the cassette. Most of the new equipment was gone again by the next year and that was that.

What is it about Love, Calvin music?
It was the honest testimony of a man who lived a lot of his life in his own personal hell, and it was backed by some of the most amazing pop gem music ever created. It is some of the realest music I have ever heard. Scott was an amazing singer/songwriter...if he would have come along ten years earlier and in a more populous area, i have no doubt in my mind that he would have been revered as another Lou Reed or David Bowie. His music is really that good.

What was it like making music with Scott?
It was always a good time. Scott was very into finding out what other people could add to his songs. If you listen to his entire body of work, every tape always had at least a couple of collaborators.

Tell me about a favorite Scott Johnson memory.
So many. My fondest memories of hanging out with Scott involve driving deserted South Dakota gravel roads late at night with plenty of beer and cigarettes, listening to each others latest tunes and whatever else we were getting into musically at the time. This exact scenario was played out countless times between 1986 and 1993. I'm amazed and thankful we never got in a car accident or arrested.

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