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Twice Shy

by Fred Drake

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1.
2.
3.
Windsong 07:13
4.
I Want You 02:09
5.
Icicle 03:53
6.
Running Home 06:08
7.
8.
9.
Blue Moon 04:32
10.
Home 04:46

about

An Appreciation Twice Removed
By Ted Quinn

The telephone rang early that morning and I stumbled down the unfinished stairs of the loft to answer. The voice on the other end of the call was that of a Spanish speaking woman, but not the one with whom I shared the little cabin in the desert. It was the housekeeper of some of her friends who lived in Malibu. I tried to understand what she was saying. “The terrorists blew up the World Trade Center.” “I know,” I thought. “That was, like, 8 years ago.” Why was she telling me this and why was she hysterical about it now? I remembered that other morning, the one I thought she was talking about, awakening to the news, while staying in the living room of my friend Fred Drake’s apartment in Hollywood.

Before Fred had woken up that day, I had made a painting of an image I had stuck in my head, that I saw on TV, of the tail of a helicopter extending out from the roof of the one of the buildings, making the image a crucifix hanging over the edge. So why was this woman on the phone telling me about it? “No. It was this morning,” she cried. And as I began to come to, after a night of staying up all night writing, I realized what she was telling me. “Two airplanes flew into the Towers...just now.”

I couldn’t help but think of the thousands of people I’d seen there at the World Trade Center a year earlier, streaming out their offices with cell phones to their ears, talking to people that were not walking alongside them. It was a surreal sight to me in 2000 and now it was all I could think of. “What has happened to all those people on their phones?”

(In the Spring of 1989, Fred and I, along with our friend and bandmate, Robert Allan, had gone on to the World Trade Center, tripping on acid, led by a van full of hippies and squatters, showing us Manhattan under a blazing full moon. We stood with our backs to one of the buildings and, looking straight up, imagined it as a giant slide into the galaxy… Fred had been raised in Houston and had visited NASA as a kid, when men were first walking on the moon. The space he explored in his mind led eventually to the sonic worlds of psychedelic music and the extraterrestrial landscape of Joshua Tree.)

The rest of the day is a blur of images. I went to work at the little store in town and put on some music, which Fred had introduced me to, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, and lit some incense. One of my long-haired co-workers ran in, yelling, “Turn off that raghead music. America just got attacked.” I knew then that the world was changed, that America would react with calls for revenge, and that the new President would answer with war. In the evening, Fred and a few of his newer friends, some young Marines from the nearby base in 29 Palms, gathered at the Joshua Tree Saloon to drink shots of Patron tequila and to celebrate the release of Fred’s album, which had been planned for that day, for weeks. The young Marines knew that they would be called away at any moment, to go wherever the new President decided to point the blame for the attack. The many TV’s in the Saloon bore the repeating loop on the 24 hour news channel: the first building covered in smoke as the second plane hit.

That was the day that Fred Drake released to the world, the masterwork he had “moved to the desert to make,” the album, “Twice Shy.” While the world was distracted by the events in New York, in DC and on the ground in Pennsylvania, it missed this thing of beauty. Nine months and nine days later, Fred would succumb to brain cancer at his home in Joshua Tree, surrounded by a few close friends, but the album is a testament to the 9 years he lived there, working on it.

A couple of the 10 tracks pre-date Fred’s move from Hollywood to the desert slightly, at least in part, and Fred recorded many more during that period. Some would turn up on albums by his band, the Earthlings? and on some of the “Desert Sessions” records. More - a collection of his ambient work - would be released posthumously as “The Sky Party.” Another album, “Ride,” was in the works at the time of Fred’s death and there is plenty recorded material for more releases, but “Twice Shy,” on this fifteenth anniversary, has never been heard by enough people, considering Fred’s enormous influence on the music and culture emanating from the village of Joshua Tree.

To me, Fred made the most beautiful and poignant album to come out of Joshua Tree, but his spirit continues to inspire all the music, from made here, from the Music festival, to Pioneertown, and everything in between.

credits

released September 11, 2001

All Songs Written, Recorded, Produced, Mixed and Fixed by Fred Drake
from 1993 to 2001 at Rancho de la Luna, Joshua Tree
Mastered at Capitol Records by Mark Chalecki
Cover Photos by Andrea Bucci
Label: Cholla Records

All songs by Hopscotch (ASCAP)
Copyright © 2001 (Fred Drake)
Except “Blue Moon” (R.Rodgers/L.Hart)
EMI ROBBINS CATALOG (ASCAP)
“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” (H. Williams)
AcuffRose/Rightsong (ASCAP)

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