Thank Your Demons

photo by Alex Mastoon

In the summer of 2019, my wife and I reluctantly left California to build what we imagined as a home base in upstate New York. From my first studio in Hudson where Ceremony and much of Dakou was written - and into the deep Catskill mountains where explorations continued during the height of the pandemic - early incarnations of this new material were always intended together as an album.

But everything changes, doesn’t it? So the cliché goes, if you want to hear God laugh, tell Her your plans.

The momentum of pure chaos swelled in every respect as the present took shape and, as we moved from the mountains to heal by the ocean, it fractured a singular statement into many: singles, an EP, a film, mixes, the beginnings of an album, and an overarching aesthetic devoted to the psychedelic experience of society collapsing all around us. 

Death - and the allure of our material life - as a sensual art object.  

Madelynn Von Ritz in her home in Los Angeles, 2019

We lived down the street from Madelynn Von Ritz in Los Angeles, and she became a dear friend. In the sixties, she recorded with Lee Hazlewood as Lynn Castle, and was known as the Lady Barber, creating coiffures for such iconic musicians as Jim Morrison of the Doors, Neil Young, and the Byrds - even Ray Bradbury got his haircut with her!

Anyhow, one day, we were chatting in her backyard after she gave little old me a haircut, and she was telling me how we have to thank our demons: after all, it is they that pull us down into a pain so true that we can only be transformed and catapulted phoenix-like from flames upwards into clouds. Angels masquerade as demons in this sense - everything is one after all, despite how we try and pretend the contrary. 

This phrase has had such resonance with me, and I owe the title of this recording to her. 

Thank you Madelynn.