Gaucho Gil the patron saint for this country band
By Anonymous Saturday, December 02, 2006, 12:41 AM EST
GAUCHO GIL
Uh-huh.
Except the funny thing is, Robin Hood does live on here. At least in spirit. So when Jerry Giddens was looking for a patron saint to guide his newest musical project, a CD full of country tunes, he found his own Robin Hood in the guise of an Argentine folk hero.
"We wanted the music to sell itself, and not only sell itself, but be itself," Giddens said. "The songs were the important thing, and we didn't want to put them out there with our faces in front of them, so we found a great patron saint not only to bless us, but to front for us."
Giddens, a longtime Los Angeles songwriter and the former frontman for Walking Wounded, is talking about his newest endeavor, Gaucho Gil. Giddens said he first heard about the legend of Gaucho Gil during an NPR broadcast in 2004.
"Gaucho Gil was a conscientious objector and a peace advocate, a miracle worker, a forgiving person," Giddens explained. "We liked all those attributes, and he was somewhat of an outlaw, too, so he seemed perfect. ... Someone asked me why we called the band Gaucho Gil, and I said because we couldn't call it Mother Teresa."
Gaucho Gil's first album, "The Ballad of Gaucho Gil," recently released on Sputnik Records, recounts some of the hero's exploits in the song of the same name.
Giddens said he was able to piece together the gaucho's story through the NPR report and various Spanish-language Web sites. The song, a heartfelt country ballad filled with shuffling drums a la "Folsom Prison Blues" and surfy guitar strumming, recounts the lost prayers to the saint in lyrics such as ...
"On the wind-swept Pay Ubre / At a crossroads near Paso de Los Libra / A young senorita stands in the doorway / Torn from her lover by the winds of hate / She cried Gaucho Gil / Think of me / A moment before God / That is my plea / Go in God's hands, she prayed / He said, 'Your prayers serve as comfort, / 'For I'm an innocent man.'"
On "The Sky Shook Blue," a collaboration between Giddens and longtime musical partner Michael Packard, the lyrics tell the story of a real estate developer in Ventura County who was "fleeced by evangelical Christians," said Giddens, who got his start singing gospel music in the Baptist church when he was 6.
"That song was the start of something important," Giddens said. "That's when I realized it wasn't about who was singing the song, but what the song was saying. I was so tired of confessional poetry. I'm tired of hearing about how everyone feels. Everybody's beat up, everybody's lonely. Let's talk about our community, let's tell stories."
As Giddens said, "We may have celebrated the individual in American art to the point that he's through."
After recording "The Sky Shook Blue," Giddens said he discovered a prayer card for Gaucho Gil that had a blue background that looked like "the sky was shaking around him."
"By then, we were all going, 'That's too much,'" Giddens said.
The CD, recorded in Burbank at Mad Dog Studios under the direction of producer Dusty Wakeman, features 10 songs that were rehearsed for more than a year before they were committed to tape. During that year, the musicians on the album - including Giddens, vocalist/guitarist/mandolinist Packard, drummer Dale Daniels, pedal steel guitarist Chris Lawrence and bassist Luis Muiz - met weekly for "music club" sessions, where they would work out arrangements and discuss what was working and what wasn't.
"It was a real open forum," Lawrence recalled. "People would say, 'Hey, let's do this,' or, 'Why not try this slow?' or 'Let's see how it feels this way.' That gave us the chance to experiment and try different parts."
Though it might strike some listeners as odd not to record a country album in Nashville, Lawrence said the scene has always been active in Los Angeles. The Bakersfield sound of the 1950s and '60s gave rise to the country/folk singer-songwriter movement in the 1970s and '80s, and people such as Buck Owens and Merle Haggard helped create the Hollywood cowboy image, Lawrence noted.
"There are a lot of country traditionalists here in L.A.," he said. "There's always been a pretty strong scene."
Giddens credits Lawrence with kicking things up a notch.
"Bringing in Chris was just like bringing in a ringer on a basketball court," Giddens said. "He just came in and tied all the songs together."
Once the band was rehearsed and ready to go, "We recorded it literally in a month," Giddens said. "We did it very quickly, almost live. But we knew exactly what we wanted to do. The arrangements were very precise, so it was easy."
Musicians often claim that there's always something in each recording session that makes it different from any other they've done. The recording of "The Ballad of Gaucho Gil" was no different.
"The rain was pounding on the roof as we were recording," Lawrence said. "Every now and then, we'd take a break and step outside, where it was damp and kind of gloomy. In Southern California, it doesn't often get that way."
One moment in particular stands out for Giddens.
"I think when we did the end of 'Wrapped in the Rain,' and Chris did that (mouths guitar sound), you could have heard a pin drop in that room," he said. "All you could hear was the rain, and I think there was about five seconds when nobody said a thing, and then I thought, 'Yeah, this is righteous, this is good.'"
For Lawrence, who's logged thousands of miles and a few decades crossing the country to perform professionally, the end result was well worth the year spent rehearsing.
"I've done other records and a lot of times, there's like two or three songs that I think are cool, but the rest are throwaways," he said. "But this time, there's no throwaways. I feel like I'm playing on a real album by real musicians."
