Photos by Tom's brother, Steve Hudson, taken at Crazy Horse, all ages club, in Boise, ID likely around 1993
From the click of the drummer's sticks to the last fade out, music is about discovery, joy, energy, and commitment. This period of making music as Raspberry taught me this. It was in the practice space that I spent so many hours with Tom and Shawn, crafting songs and learning how to let the music take us someplace. The chords and melodies taught us how to bring our individual ideas together. We learned to communicate and compromise. Shawn and I had to share the mic. We both had to trust Tom to drum us to the end. We had to tell each other why we thought something worked or didn't.
This song, Gallery, embodies all these things. I remember when Shawn presented this to us. I had thought at the time that it needed a fourth chord during the verses -- that the three chords alone sounded too ambiguous or unresolved. But through patience and commitment, and when presented with the crack of Tom's snare and the clean strum of the guitar, it began to breathe. It started to swallow itself just before starting over and that is a lovely thing with music. I also love Shawn's melody and I admire his ability to capture the mood with his lyrics. (I think this is also one of the things I love about his paintings).
Do me a favor: put some nice headphones on, hit play, and just listen to this song. Hear the tone of the guitar, the crack of that snare drum, and listen to Shawn paint you a picture as he strains and reaches for those beautiful high notes. This was Raspberry at its finest. We sweated it out in a hot practice space, learned to communicate and rock with emotion.
Thanks again to Warren Gardiner for mastering this track. Please seek him out at www.gardineraudio.com for all your mixing and mastering needs. And thanks to Sean Lennon for the DAT transfer.