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The RIDE Report

This has been a fun stretch for RIDE. Last Tuesday, Songshooter.com made “Take It On The Chin” its Song of Day and it was downloaded 6,998 times. That evening the six man posse took the

stage for the record release show at The Living Room, NYC, performing a RIDE set plus encore to a SRO crowd. On Thursday, Mike and I were interviewed about RIDE on Fearless Radio. On July 17^th, Stormy Lewis said about RIDE, on Roughstock.com, “Turns the ordinary into the iconic…..an epic novel of an album that offers a haunting insight into the heart of a nation…. RIDE is the album of the Modern American West.” Yesterday, Jayvee, writing for TheRoundTable.com, said, “Reads like a love

letter to the American West…..brims with pure

plucky-folk that the likes of The Civil Wars, The Lumineers, and even Noah Jones are bringing

to the forefront of popular music….a sad reminder of simpler times that most modern Americans will never experience nor appreciate…..one part Springsteen and one part Dylan, but with pure charisma that is all Berger”.

The Art of Ride #6 – Home to the Ancients

I’ve been reading about Chaco Culture National Historical Park since we began work on “Heavenly Ancients”. The National Park Service recommends the access

route from the north, but I’ll be coming from the south. The ride from Gallup, NM to Crownpoint is uneventful, but the turnoff to Chaco Canyon is another story. The dirt road, Highway 57, is the ultimate washboard road and the PT Cruiser I’ve rented is about to have it’s suspension put to the test. During the drive I stop and get out of the car a few times to make sure I still have all my fillings and nothing’s fallen off the car. I call Marc to give him some idea of my excellent adventure and we start laughing when we realize we’re about to lose cell phone reception, not because I’m in a desolate, uninhabited area, but because he’s approaching New Jersey!

The road is only twenty miles, but the drive takes over an hour and a half. I arrive at Chaco and start walking through the Anasazi ruins until I come to a large common area where I stop to consider what I’m seeing. Most of these ruins are on top of several others, evidence this place has been settled more than once. From the looks of things, I wouldn’t think this was a prime piece of real estate and can only imagine what it must have been like living here in 1050 A.D. Giant roads can be seen from the air that lead to and from this settlement, but I can’t make them out from anywhere within the canyon. I shoot nonstop but the only image that will make

the album is a petroglyph. Sunset approaches and I follow a trail to the top of a canyon wall overlooking Pueblo Bonito in Chaco Park for the

final photos of the day. I decide to try the “recommended” northern access road for the return trip. Unfortunately the GPS doesn’t work so well out here and after twenty minutes of driving in total darkness, I realize I don’t know where I am.

But that’s another story. – Mike Ricciardi

Marc Berger / My Hobby Is Music Too

A while back, some kid named “Marc Berger” LIKE’d my Facebook page. I thought it was interesting/weird,

checked out his page and saw tha

t he was from Germany. I friended him. Then, a short time later, I got the following email via this website:

From:
Marc Berger
marc-lorch@—

Message:
Hallo Marc,
my name is Marc Berger I

come from
Germany and online slotmaschinen I`am 8 years old.My hobby is music too and I play piano since 3
yearsI have write a song. Can I send my songtoo you on a CD. I hope you can
understand
my english.

I`m happy if you send my a e-mail.

Marc Berger

I encouraged the lad to send it over and forgot about the whole thing. A couple of
weeks ago the DVD arrived from Germany. I put it on and saw this little manchild
at the piano playing his lovely composition. Confused, I went back to FB and
checked out my Deutsche friend, “Marc Berger” and noticed he had an
“Employer”. This wasnʼt the same dude! So even though things were getting a bit
Malkovich, Malkovich, I responded enthusiastically to mini-Marc and urged him to
press on and

to send me any future gems heʼd like me to hear. Check my soulful
German boy genius namesakeʼs video out!

The Art of Ride #5 – The Spider Woman

In the early morning hours, I leave my motel in Mexican Hat, UT and travel south through Monument Valley one last time. I turn onto route 191 and pass through Chilchinbito, Rough Rock, Many Farms, and Chinle, finally arriving at the visitor center. The ranger tells me I should work my way down the south rim and try to arrive at Spider Rock about 5 p.m. to take full advantage of the light conditions at that time of year. Having just the one day, there isn’t time for a hike so it looks like this will be a drive-by. I start out, stopping at each overlook. It’s getting colder and really windy, but the sun is shining and the view of the canyon is spectacular. One of the interesting things about this place is that, although it’s part of the National Park system, 40 Navajo families still call the canyon home and rely on it for a great deal of their income. At just about every pull-off, they’re trying to sell me jewelry or souvenirs.

I spend a good deal of

time shooting crooked and deformed trees that seem to be reaching skyward, along with panoramic shots of the canyon itself, but no images from this location will make the album. By sunset I’m at Spider Rock, home of Spider Woman. According to the Navajo, Spider Woman possessed supernatural power at the time of creation when the Dine (Navajo)

emerged from the third world into this fourth where monsters roamed the land, killing many. Because she loved the people, Spider Woman gave power to Monster-Slayer and Child-Born-of-Water to search for the Sun-God, who showed them how to destroy the monsters. In recognition of her saving their people, the Dine established Spider Woman among their most important and honored Deities. According to legend, it was she who taught Dine ancestors the art of weaving and down through the generations, the Dine have always been accomplished weavers. As an aid to parents, Dine children heard warnings that if they did not behave themselves Spider Woman would let down her woven ladder, carry them back up and devour them. It was said that the white layers atop Spider Rock were the dried bones of misbehaving children. – Mike Ricciardi

“What Is It?” on Open Tunings

“You take a song like that into a practice room with a band how do they approach

it?” That’s the excellent question I was asked after performing “The Buffalo Song” on Scott Regan’s NPR radio show “Open Tunings” last month. Excellent because I don’

t read music , don’t talk “musician”. “I’m trying to communicate this feeling you might get if you were at Yellowstone Park’s Firehole River at dusk (Scott’s laughing), and you see the head of a buffalo in the distance chewing on the grass and a fumarole shooting steam up into the air, and you would look at that scene and say nothing about this has changed in a million years. So that’s what we’re trying to do and we have to figure out how to use musical instruments to paint that.”

That in a nutshell was what made making RIDE so challenging. Mike and I weren’t engineers and we had to figure out how to use music recording equipment to make the movie out of the song.

And we didn’t know how, and so we had to learn how. And that meant mixing tracks over and over to get them to where they “looked” the way we wanted them to. And when we were frustrated and it just didn’t seem right, Mike invented what came to be called “The Ricciardi Test”, which required us to answer the question “What Is It?”, which is essentially Scott’s interview question. When you play the song, when you record and mix the song, you better know what it “is” or what you get at the end is just not gonna’ be that clear.

The Art of Ride #4 – Night in the Desert

We still have to get down without breaking my camera gear and the moon is providing just enough light to vaguely sense where the rock ledge ends. Herb gets to the bottom of the climb and yells to me to throw the camera bag down to him, but I can’t see him. Strapping on the bag, I grab the rope and start backward over the ledge and immediately lose my balance. My feet fly out from under me and I hit the rock wall, protecting

the camera with my face while Herb holds the rope steady. At the bottom of the climb, we check the gear for shifting and head down the mesa. We walk about a half mile back to the truck and continue to a few more locations. The desert is eerily quiet except for the wind and we sit in silence. “RIDE” doesn’t really lend itself to nighttime shots, so I figure anything I get out here now is going into the private stash. After attempting to get some long exposures of the silhouetted rock formations in the moonlight, I notice some interesting patterns in the sand. The moon is at an angle that makes the waves prominent and different than what I’d see during the day. We get into the truck and head back, the monuments behind me blandly indifferent to my

trespass into their sanctuary. -Mike Ricciardi

Blackstone and Songwriting

I wrote my first songs while in law school. Still don’t know why. What happens a few weeks before

starting law school is unlike any of your prior pre-school (not the kiddy deal) experiences. One day in August, you make a trip to your mailbox and find a large envelope. It’s been sent courtesy of your new law school. You open it up and find reading assignments numbering in the hundreds of pages, actually court opinions, which are to be “read” prior to the first class in each of your courses. What makes this doubly interesting (singly being that school hasn’t even started), is that the step where you learn how to read a case has been wholly omitted.

Thus begins the process which prompts law school newbies to seriously contemplate suicide a la The Paper Chase. Over the course of the next three years, the skills needed to extract the few essential kernels of legal significance out of a veritable ocean of verbosity are acquired. So while by the time I graduated, certain I didn’t want to spend the rest of life on the phone with my fellow students, it may surprise you to hear that this songwriter absolutely loved the rigors of a legal education. In fact, he saw its positive effects on his songwriting. It somehow translated to an approach to writing song lyrics which prized succinctness, cogent narrative progression and an intense aversion to verse matter that repeated any thought previously articulated.

Those first songs were really bad, but by the time I graduated, I’d written a few that I thought didn’t suck and brought them to music publishers who, to my amazement, offered me contracts. So while I’m not sure I’d urge fledging songwriters to sign up for law school prep courses, for me it’d be easy to defend the argument that the study of law made me a better songwriter.

The Art of Ride #3 – Fluteman

order cialis

024.jpg” alt=”" width=”354″ height=”421″ />I meet my guide Herb. He tells me, “I know just where to take you. Some really cool places. And there”s a rope climb.” Herb”s genuinely disarming and turns out to be a really cool guy. He grew up and is raising a family here. This landscape is an integral part of his life and, after recently losing his job as a local laborer, it”s become his livelihood. Everywhere he takes me holds special meaning for him.

The first place we go is called “Submarine Rock” for its periscope-like view. Looking through I see the buttes I saw from the road earlier in the day. This set of images will be chosen for use on the record. After several other stops, we arrive at a rock wall covered with petroglyph images (these will be used later on as well). I stand there transfixed. These things always capture my imagination. As I”m looking at them, I get a little lost in a dream world, trying to imagine the ancients carving these things and out of nowhere, I start hearing a flute. It kind of freaked me out so I turn around to ask Herb if he hears it and there he is, the Fluteman.

As we get in the truck, he turns to me and says, “See that casino online holland over there? We”ll drive over there and walk the rest of the way. I”m taking you to Hunt”s Mesa. There”s a rope climb.”

The drive is captivating. No matter how many times I see them, the formations strike me as alien and I wonder how the plant life survives such a hostile environment. We park the truck and walk about a half mile through the sand and brush before we get to the base of Hunt”s Mesa. Climbing about halfway up we find the rope climb and after a brief struggle with camera gear, continue working our way to the top. We stay about an hour when Herb suggests we get going, mainly because we”re

running out of light. By the time we get to the rope, it”s almost completely dark except for the full moon that”s starting to rise. – Mike Ricciardi

It was the last in a series of unforgettable late summer Glacier Park hikes. I figured I had to leave the peak by 6PM to get down the six mile trail by dark and begin the drive to Spokane, where I would be picking up my then girlfriend the next morning. It was five now, and the last of them had finally and thankfully departed the tiny summit, an area so small one had no choice but to be sociable. This, I figured, left me about an hour to inhale the mind blowing view of Lake McDonald snaking toward the Western horizon, while listening to the icy falls cascading from the glacier behind me. I moved over to the edge, letting my feet dangle over the 4500 foot drop and soon heard footsteps coming from the direction of the trail behind me. Dreading the thought of having to share all this

with another friendly homo sapiens, I turned and couldn’t help but notice a mature mountain goat, back hunched, entering upon the crest. In an attempt to improve the worst case scenario odds of being gored silly as opposed to getting butted off the peak, I slid back and wedged my body between two rocks. My newly arrived summit-mate ignored me and walked over to the cliff edge about fifteen feet to my left. He turned and looked in my direction. I, of course, looked away. After a few minutes passed, I turned back in his direction to find him looking at me. And he turned away. We did this dance back and forth for I couldn’t say how long, when he suddenly strolled toward me and stopped about five feet from my ear, both of us partaking of the jaw dropping scene spread before us while still pretending to be unaware of each other.

After another ten minutes or so, he sauntered over and plunked himself down beside me. An eagle flew over ahead. We hung out thusly in Valhalla for some indeterminate period of earth time. Suddenly the unthinkable occurred to me: I needed to start down or risk completing miles of trail in darkness. In anguish, I stood up. My amigo looked at me quizzically. I actually told him I had to go and headed across the small rocky mountaintop. A few yards down the trail I turned to see him, goat horns silhouetted against the clouds, looking down at me online casino as if to say, “Dude, we were hangin’! “

The RIDE Report

The Art of Ride #6 – Home to the Ancients

Marc Berger / My Hobby Is Music Too

The Art of Ride #5 – The Spider Woman

“What Is It?” on Open Tunings

The Art of Ride #4 – Night in the Desert

Blackstone and Songwriting

The Art of Ride #3 – Fluteman

The Art of Ride #2 – The Drive-By

We're Only In It For The Money

Primer Mi Carucha

The Art of Ride #1 – On Location in a Navajo Tribal Park

Glacier National Park, Lake McDonald & Goat Horns

Spaghetti Western Ethical Business Dilemma

SAM PECKINPAH's Movie, THE WILD BUNCH/RIDE