Remembering Pollyanna Loves Cassandra after 20 years:

Around the turn of this century – a couple dozen years ago – I experienced one of my most prolific songwriting stretches. I was in my mid-30’s, enjoying a confluence of skill, passion, and discipline. (Such is common for people at that age. The New-Agers, mystics, and other knowers-of-things call it “Saturn-Returning.”)

Also, I was blessed with enthusiastically talented collaborators who somehow believed that working with me was a good idea. With dozens of new original songs emerging, I got infected by the wacky idea of making an enormous double album – independently. How wacky was this idea back then? Well (if you’re old enough to remember) in those days, it was considered impractical for non-famous acts to make feature-length albums at all. It was a naive waste of money. What most bands did instead, was make a 3-4 song demo to shop around to record labels, hoping to “get signed.” In other words, the recording project you did on your own was basically an “audition” to do a recording project for someone else. (For kicks & giggles, you might release your demo as an EP, so you had something to peddle at your sparsely-attended shows.)

I had already self-released a respectable 12-song album in 1998 (Sudden and Merciless Joy, for which I took out a bank loan), so I was feeling pretty mavericky and empowered. But this next thing would take a few years, during which time, I had neither a full band, nor a resource pathway to the goal.

The turning point came one fateful day at Art and the Vineyard in Eugene after my temporary Acoustic Trio finished a set. Amateur recording engineer Bryan Nelson approached us, drink in hand; “You guys have a great sound. I’d love to record you… for free.”

Bryan and I became friends, but we didn’t get around to recording for quite awhile, not until I finally landed a rhythm section in the form of Jerry-Groove Abelin and Dyson (Aaron). And not until late 2001, when the world went 9/11 wonky, and we had to get off the road for a minute.

At first, the project was only going to be a... yes, just a “Demo.” But an intense thing in me caught hold and wouldn’t let go. This phrase “Pollyanna Loves Cassandra” kept bouncing around in my head, obsessively, as some sort of Jungian archetypical state of being in my personal psyche. It was as though I needed to build a project underneath it, to manifest and justify the declaration. (See my letter to cover artist Claire Flint about the title.)

“Let’s just keep going,” I said, “until we’ve recorded all of the songs in our repertoire.”

The touring rhythm section, back in the studio; Jerry-Groove & Dyson

Professionally, it was difficult to justify the project. Negatives: 1) The work and time it would take out of us. 2) It wasn’t as though we had a huge fan base waiting for it. 3) It might be too big of a bite for the Biz to chew on. 4) The quality might be diluted. 5) It kept us away from gigging so much that we needed day jobs. (Fun side story: both Dyson & I ended up working for Bryan’s emergency supply company.) So, I spent a lot energy explaining to myself and others “WHY!?”

What tipped us over into believing in it? The Beatles’ White Album. Yes, there was a Beatlesque precedent for what we were trying to do. A double-album whose near-schizophrenic diversity would be its strength, if not its glory. It would cover every musical genre and musical ethos that ever influenced us. Everything on the spectrum from concise tunesmithing to exploratory experimental psychedelic etouffee. There would be nods to Americana, Hippie-Jam, Punk, Grunge, Pop, Latin, Blues, Poetry, Electronica, Funk, Swing, Almost-Metal, Ballads, Soul, even Rap & Hip Hop. And we would have guests -- any colleague willing to pay a visit to the studio.

The White Album functioned a bit like a song clearance. It was only incidentally ambitious. Like Polly & Cassie, it didn’t try to live up to any responsibility to be new and groundbreaking (as Sgt. Pepper had been). It only had to be abundant.

Ehren Ebbage doing what he’s best — listening, thinking, feeling.

It took more than a year, during which time a 4th official band member joined up: Jessica Kennedy-Orr on keyboards, vocals and flute. (I regret to this day not quite making full prominent use of her talents. She was the new-kid, not yet fully absorbed. But she was an assuring presence in the quartet, which we called “Shipeshifters.” A kind of sonic-glue injected into our power trio to stabilize us and make us seem even tighter than we had become.)

Guest horny guy Tim McLaughlin doing what he does best — making it weird

The truth is, technically speaking, as “jammers,” we were not a super talented bunch. But we worked really, really hard, over a couple hundred gigs to become our best. Especially Dyson. Through 30 songs, Dyson had to nail down so many different types of grooves. He had just come out of the University of Oregon Music School, wanting to play like Carter Beauford from Dave Matthews Band – sort of messy and unformed. But loaded with determination, in short order, he made himself one of the best band members I’ve ever known. Not only did he hammer all those rhythmicalisms into their deep pockets, he took charge of the vocal arrangements, as if we really trying to emulate Beatles, or Eagles, or Fleetwood Mac, or Queen, etc.

The “pocket” into which Dyson hammers those rhythms belongs to Jerry-Groove. Jerry is the metronome. But it’s not a “tick-tick-tick” metronome. It’s a “thump-thump-thump” metronome. He doesn’t like to play gobbledy-gook up the neck. He keeps it solidly close to the floor. I don’t know where my jagged, unkempt guitar-playing would have been without him.

A part-time member, Ehren Ebbage, figures so much into the mix, that I really should have listed him as an official Shipeshifter. Tons of guitaring and singing. But just as important was his production and arrangement sensibility. (These days, he is a successful producer of famous stuff.) The whole time, I suspected that he was dubious of what we were trying to accomplish. But E-dog never, ever takes any music less than totally seriously. He goes deep into the story of a song, and renders it with as much pathos as possible. Listening back, I hear the enthusiasm in his parts, and I recall the smile on his face.

Going back to thoughts about “justifying” this inflated beast of a project: I have a theory that how we listen to music is partly contaminated by an impulse to evaluate or assess what we think the artist is “up to” professionally. Meaning, we’re not always receiving the art as a fully emotionally lived experience in the moment. But instead, as an indication of what that artist seems to think they ought to be doing to become more successful, as if each piece of art is a professional choice rather than an act of expression or simply story being told in a certain way. We can’t help but judge the work against the “state of the art,” with the question in mind, “Will this work make this artist more famous?”

I’m not saying that the Shipeshifters were surrounded by nay sayers. But, as the recording year went by, and rough mixes trickled out, we could feel the questions. (Like: “Why doesn’t Shipe just pick a genre and stick with it?” Or “Wouldn’t this be better it were just the 10 best songs?”) Even when folks excitedly supported the venture, they spoke in terms of our mavericky courage: “Hey, more power to y’all for taking this on.” I felt this to be an absurd, because the individual songs themselves were, for the most part, quite accessible. Even the “experimental” soundscape stuff was meant to be sensible, listenable, and not a challenge to the ear. Even when I “rapped,” (if you can call it that), it was more of a Shipe version of rhythmic talking than me trying to behave a real hip-hopping rapper. Each song on Pollyanna Loves Cassandra has a clear, normal reason for being born into the world. I mean, some of it is straight up commercially pop, and there’s even a sweet lullaby love ballad (featuring the amazing Stephanie Schneiderman.)

The only unusual thing about these songs is that there are 31 of them in the same package.

Remembering Pollyanna Loves Cassandra - 20 years later