“At the very beginning of the month,” says Josh Dean of this February, “I was waiting to pick up my fiancée. She got off in a couple hours, and in the meantime I wrote three songs and threw them on the internet. I didn’t post them under my name, and no one knew who it was, and it got a great response.”
And so, quite unexpectedly, began Long Lake, the album Dean made and released in 28 days under the name River Water. The story he tells on the phone is the one that kicks off the record: “Just to pass the time I said I’d write a song or two until I drive her home,” he sings under scratchy vocals and sloppy electric guitar. Those who caught any of Dean’s handful of solo performances over the past year—at In the Dead of Winter, opening a Sunday matinee for Tanya Davis and Don Brownrigg—will notice a marked difference in the music, which has flipped from earnest, delicately sung folk to scuzzy, ethereal sonic experimentation.
“It’s not as clean, it’s a lot dirtier sounding,” says Dean of the LP’s 11 songs. “It’s poorly recorded using pretty bad equipment, all on my computer, that’s basically it. I did all the instruments myself, all the drums and the sounds.”
He chose the name River Water for “two reasons. One of my friends, a lot of times he’s just said, ‘When I listen to your music, it reminds me of a river flowing.’ And that’s the aesthetic of it, I wanted it to flow. There’s a lot of mistakes on the CD, it just kinda flows.”
Dean has no plans to officially launch Long Lake (you can buy it from him here and he’ll mail it, or deliver it to you “depending on distance and the weather”), or to tour behind it; he’s busy and happy to see where his DIY sales plan takes him. And don’t expect a new one soon.
“I’ve since sat down with a guitar and I don’t care to write any songs. I’m emptied of all the songs,” he says. “Four of the first of five songs were recorded in one night. It was very fast, I don’t know why. It was just in between hanging out with people, meals and work. I wouldn’t be able to do it in April. I’m just gonna wait for the next good month.”
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2009.
his shirt can barely contain him…