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This next song in this series in which I’m discussing songs I’m re-releasing doesn’t quite fall into the category, as this is not a Clementine Moss song that I wrote the lyrics to, but a song from short-lived band The Solid, that I played drums in and that I helped write the music for. This song is “The Rich Girl and the Ranch Hand.”
The Solid was formed after guitarist Justin Caucutt and I met. I was playing in Zepparella and had just finished my first solo album and felt like I should have a third project to round things out in which I was playing original material on drums.
Justin is a great storehouse of riffs, and we started to get the music together by jamming a lot. He invited in bassist Greg Randolph from the Stonerrock band Greenhouse Effect, and the songs started to gel. Then Justin had the idea to bring in a singer from Denver, Brian Hagman. We flew him in and recorded a five-song EP, Arrivals and Departures, 2009.
Brian is a real rock and roll front person. When you meet a real front person of a band, you know it instantly. I’ll describe the energy like this.
Brian had the idea that Justin and I were going to stand on either side of him in the studio and sing backups into his mic while he was singing. Justin was bewildered by this since he’s never sung, but I figured I could handle it okay. We lined up, the track started, I opened my mouth. Suddenly, this great burst of energy took off between Justin and me, this sort of rocket ship or firework that was so overwhelming no sound came from either of us.
It was remarkable. I guess that’s what they talk about in martial arts, about energy being so focused it can crack the bricks or repel the attacker. We tried to sing a few more times, but each time this ridiculous current of energy overtook us as Brian went to sing. We gave it up.
The strange thing was how everything was normal until this instant electrical shock. That is how Brian is, a great conversationalist, curious, thoughtful, funny, really soft-hearted, and then he gets on stage and is a firework. This is what I mean when I say, when you meet a front person, a real rock and roll front person, you know it because of how they will set you off-kilter by this incredible ability to channel energy.
I’ve read that a great front person channels the energy of the crowd, that they can be enigmatic because to hold that energy they must both hollow out and stand strong. I guess all great musicians do this in a sense, but the person at the front of the stage has that close connection with the audience that can transport them. That is a great deal to manage. I think of my favorite front people and the way they can make a stadium feel intimate. I think of the stories of front people who are difficult to be around or to know.
There’s a distinction between a great singer and a great front person. There are those lucky few who are both. Plant, Mercury. I put Zepparella singer Anna Kristina in that category.
I think about Mick Jagger. Great front person, indeed. Great singer? I love his voice, I love the way he sings, it is perfection for what he does. But could he sing anything other than the Stones? What makes a great singer? I think of transcendent opera performances, of Whitney singing “I Will Always Love You.” Great singers.
Are they as transfixing on stage as some of the great front people? Maybe. Maybe the talent is what we’re drawn to. But there’s something else.
I refuse to take any stand here, except to say, there is a difference, and both are magical, moving and exciting but in different ways. It was so exciting to feel this front person energy close up. Some people just have it, like a gift. It’s like trying to explain why some people have charisma. So tangible when you’re near it, but so undefinable.
As a drummer I am constantly working to get out of the way of the music moving through me. I feel the energy of the audience and how they want to be carried by the drums, how the drums speak and connect to the waveforms of energy responding. At the end of the show or at the end of the drum solo when the audience is clapping, it feels not attached to Clem as much as it is applause for the whole thing, for the drums and the connection and the desire for transcendence that we are all sharing in the moment.
I think it would be helpful for people who have stage-fright to realize that for the most part, an audience of people want you to succeed. They paid to get in the door and want you to lift them up. They put their attention on you and that attention is like a ground of positive energy that can lift you to be who they want you to be, play how they want you to play. When we get out of our way, set the ego aside and allow the energies of the music and the energies of the room to flow through us, then everything conspires to create that transportive magic.
Anyway, The Solid was a really fun project. We went on a short tour, laughed a lot, made some pretty fun songs. Then I got interested in writing lyrics and singing again, and it got expensive to have a band member out of town when a band is just getting off the ground, so we shelved it. It was fun while it lasted. I’ll always remember those moments in the studio with Brian and his kung-fu master channeling of the song. You don’t forget a lightning bolt when you’re had the privilege of standing next to it.
