An album lost to circumstance.

Thank you to Bandcamp for making it possible and enjoyable to release this EP 16 years after its recording!

When I was thinking about what to communicate about this record I thought “wow I could really write a whole essay about this”. So I did.

2004 - I was in a precarious place:

-32 years old.

-Already feeling pushed out of the freelance music world.

-Several original bands that went nowhere ending in disappointment.

-Bad habits on the rise.

But I needed to create.

Dave Johnstone and Jamie Danesh were great players I met recently around other gigs and I trusted them and we could make a good groove together. So in late 2004 I wrote the first collection of songs we would play and we rolled the band out at my birthday party in January 2005. Great night.

I was establishing a pattern of putting together large birthday shows and this was a fun couple years I was doing them at El Cid in Silverlake. The previous year I had Nels Cline (immediately before he joined Wilco) do a solo set and indie country darlings Bartender’s Bible come up from San Diego. It was the Pick Of The Week in the LA WEEKLY!
Keith Morris was there hanging. It was a good time!

For 2004 I got famed session guitarist Rusty Anderson to do a solo set. He’s spent the last 20 years playing for a Liverpoolian songwriter of some stature. My pals Sid (future Running Jumps) and Simon from my favorite local band Minibar played. My bro and former ESS/Bimbo band mate Zac Rae (current Death Cab cutie) did a solo set. Magic all around.

We were christened and out in the world.

So we did what all unknown bands with no budgets did that year - a lot of gigs and tried to record as much as possible.

I was so broke and barely surviving.

We self-recorded an EP early in the year. This was very new to me. I had made a few records by that point but there was usually another foil to work off of. I think I’d done the Plus Side EP by myself and then this first DL EP was the next thing I’d done by myself. All on Luke Adams’ Digi02 in our rehearsal studio. My pal Evan Frankfort mixed those and saved the day.

When it came time to make our second recording I was in a lot of personal turmoil but driven to make a sweeping, modern day masterpiece but the finances were so bad, getting anything done was a struggle. Ruined relationships, unease in the world - this is not a fun bunch of happy-go-lucky tunes.

This is an open wound.

I was getting confident as a songwriter exploring songcraft but had no confidence as a human. It’s not all dark though. Stretching Out Ink is a fav of mine and Promise Season is a psychedelic work out.

Labor Day weekend 2005 my pal Mark Gregory gave me the keys to the recording studio he was managing and set up some mics I might like and for 3 days I made the bulk of the sounds you hear on the Safe And Normal Life ep.

Crown City Recording had a huge, beautifuly boomy live room that had been an AA hall a generation before.

Friday night after work, Dave Johnstone came over and we set up the drums and recorded all the drums, rhythm guitar and extended outro jams live. I still love the out-come so much. A notable favorite moment is the outro of Stretching Out Ink where I’m soloing on my 68 Baldwin Electric 12 string and Dave and I are playing off of each other kinda imaging what Jamie would play.

This really makes the EP feel ALIVE and TOUGH.

From then til Monday afternoon I chiseled away - slept on the couch, woke up to do guitars or vocals, drank a vat of Starbucks and barley ate.

I brought the Mellotron over and had a Univox organ and that’s all the keyboards.

Jamie came over and did his part. Unfortunately I had some leadership things to still learn and he ended up quitting at the session. We worked it out though and did a lot of great music together as Frakküs a few years later.

After this whirlwind weekend I still had a lot to do. Dave and I went all around the valley doing field recording - the Metro at the beginning of the EP, the plane in Greater Good. We had our pal Einar Pederson come over and finish up the bass.

I was obsessed with finding spoken word clips on the internet and peppering bits around the songs. Why not replace a “guitar solo” with a “Dali Lama” solo? How bout juxtaposing the Dali Lama talking about resolving inner struggle with Spalding Gray recounting how his mother would wonder out loud how she would kill herself?

I always feared these bits would keep this recording from wide release.

Few recordings boast T.S Elliot next to G.G. Allin!

Must say a wonderful part of this process was opening a cheery dialogue with noted political scientist Michael Parenti over the use of his clip! HERO.

Amazing guitarist/producer Randy Ray Mitchell mixed it at his home studio.

At the time I never thought I’d be able to mix a recording myself. Even though he did great I’ve always fantasized about remixing it myself, just to toy with the sounds and all the new technology that’s come out.

So we did this and I remember working extremely hard to finish it so we’d have it ready to sell on a tour we were putting together.

I couldn’t afford an artist so I put together a collage with all the things I was preoccupied with.

I envisioned Dead Language to be an art-rock Fugazi - principals and a DIY aesthetic was very important. The Iraq War was happening and it was obviously built on lies, so all the underhanded political crimes we committed through the decades were weighing heavy on my psyche, like how America helped ruin Chile in the 70s and got their progressive leader Salvador Allende murdered as well as wonderful artists like Victor Jara. The rest of the space is occupied with other complicated heroes and my great friend Thomas Britt’s hand after a surgery. Broken beauty.

I bought a CD burner and color printer and made about 200 CDs and printed the covers all myself. READY FOR TOUR. Until these tracks were made available in the Arc Of Noise Digital Library in 2021, this was the only way this music was available.

Dead Language was going to open for my pal and Zack Hexum and then we, DL, would then be Zack’s band. Einar wasn’t available to do the whole thing so our pal/drummer/music genius Rob Ahlers played BASS. Cause he’s a genius.

Being with Rob & Dave was great. It really was us against the world.

What can I say though. The tour was HORRIBLE.

The midwest in the dead of winter. There was a tornado chasing us from city to city.

No money, no real interest in what Dead Language was doing.

As always, it’s the people that come to the shows that make the effort worthwhile so we definitely made some very special connections, and to those people, THANK YOU!

But I got back to LA disgusted with myself and disappointed in people and disenchanted with the music industry which was collapsing before our eyes. I couldn’t imagine ever booking another show. I actually dropped out of music altogether for a spell after this before my “grand renaissance” in 2008.

But there are takeaways.

2005 to me was the year of Dead Language since we spanned from the January BDAY gig to our last show in Manhattan, Kansas in Dec.

I think:

-I got real lucky with Dave & Jamie. They play some of the best drums and bass I’ve ever heard on this EP.

-Corie Woods came to a gig in LA and stayed with me and we had a wonderful time

-internet mapping technology was still new and we wanted to be home so bad after our last gig in Kansas, we left in the snow (-8 degrees) at midnight - mapquest said it was a 21 hour drive to LA and we drove straight with only bathroom and gas station breaks and it took us 26 hours.

-In December after we returned, Zack got to open for his brother in 311 at the Wiltern and that was special for me to play there. Good way to end the year. Oh and SA’s hand was still in a cast from breaking it on Scott Stapp’s face over Thanksgiving.

I write this so you can hopefully understand that there was something rare and precious happening with this music, so getting it out to people is important to me. I could have never continued this concept because it’s too dark for me now. I want to put out a more positive vibe. I want my contribution to be more uplifting, however I do under the impact of “misery loves company” music - I mean I sure do love Elliott Smith. I think the work Dave, Jamie, Einar and myself did here deserves to be heard.

I found my absolution. I got back into creativity with Dave’s help in the Big Believers towards the end of 2007 and released a record in January 2008 and then in April 2008 began studying pedal steel with great fervor and also put together a home recording set up and began scoring films by the end of the year.

I returned to band life in 2012 and ran The Running Jumps for 5 solid years amid many freelance duties. AND...I got on the bus!

Thanks for your support and listenership!

More from the exciting world of Joel Martin:
joelmartinmusic.bandcamp.com/album/lifelong-escapee
astralarc.bandcamp.com
therunningjumpsmusic.bandcamp.com
thebigbelievers.bandcamp.com