When a third of the music you listen to is instrumental you are constantly on the search for something new. At least I know I am. I might listen to Tangerine Dream one day, Miles Davis the next, and finish strong with some Dysrhythmia. I don’t discriminate by genre, age, or popularity. As long as there are basically no vocals I’m in, but I’m always hungry for more. I don’t quite remember how I first came across ambient country, probably a Bandcamp genre tag. But I knew right away that this would be a perfect fit. Ambient country is like the soundtrack to an idealized western. Over-saturated hazy wanderings that take their sweet time lazily observing scenes unfold with the patience of a bygone era.
In all honesty country is actually one of the genres I listen to the least. Other than the outlaw country of Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash. On occasion Kris Kristofferson might stop by for a song or two. But for the most part modern country is a pretty hard pass for me. Ambient country however takes away the silly whining about how your dog got run over when your wife left and retains all of the sweet instrumentation. Lap steel guitar, banjo, mandolin, and myriad other unique instruments create vivid soundscapes that are released from overshadowing vocals and allowed to take center stage.
Aux Meadows are an ambient country band from Oakland, California. I was able to speak with Steve Dawson (dobro and lap steel), Joe Imwalle (synth and piano), and Chris Royalty (guitar and bass) about their origins, influences, and more. Gaining some technical insight into their writing and recording process along the way. Speaking of their humble beginnings they have just about the cutest dang origin story I’ve ever heard.
Joe: ‘Originally, all three of us had had children at the same cooperative preschool in Oakland, and we played together in different configurations during that time. Chris and I had a free-form recording project called Dropped Gloves, and Steve and Chris were members of a family sing-along cover band that played some preschool events. But what really catalyzed this project was an open jam during Chris’s birthday in 2021, post-vaccination as people were just starting to get together again. During the jam, there was a moment when it was just the sound of the dobro and synth. We laughed out of delight having lucked into such a cool sound palette. We started getting together regularly as a trio to explore this weaving of sounds.’
Steve: ‘On my birthday during the height of the pandemic, I just couldn’t bring myself to ‘go to work’ by logging on at my improvised desk in the bedroom. Instead, I found myself watching videos of Willy Tea Taylor (Willy plays tenor guitar and I’ll die on the hill that he’s America’s best songwriter). In one particular video, he was being accompanied by Mike Witcher on dobro and I was immediately hooked. THAT is the lonesome sound I wanted to make. So I stalked Mike online and discovered he gives lessons. I tracked down a dobro, and with the credit card receipt still warm, I called Mike from the store parking lot to set up a lesson. Fast forward a few months: I took the dobro and my one or two fresh dobro moves to Chris’s birthday jam in the shed in his backyard. Joe was there with his weird-ass synth, and the seeds of the band were in place.’
There you have it! A post-covid preschool country birthday party jamboree. Adorable.
“Big Rig Slowdown”, the first track off Aux Meadows debut self-titled album, starts off jaunty as all hell. In what is about as close to pop country as they get melodic lines bounce along with a bit of snappy percussion. But less than a minute in everything swirls outward as the slowdown hits. The track dissolves from there. Synths rise in the background and notes begin to echo. Aux Meadows speed up and slow down over the course of a song with the organic subtleness of a winding river, a recurring theme throughout their work. Sometimes rushing forward quickly and other times crawling along while tension pools up and releases.
Aux Meadows‘ sound draws from a wide range of genre spaces pulling as much from Brian Eno as country and western. Classic rock of course; but also classical, cinematic scores, and more experimental sources as well. I had a feeling that examples of their influences would be a wide blunderbuss of scattershot hitting marks all over the place and they definitely delivered on that expectation.
Chris: ‘For this project, Jim O’Rourke’s Bad Timing is a major influence in terms of using Americana/folk tropes as the basis for creative exploration. Terry Allen is also a tremendous inspiration. Dollar Country mixtapes. Henry Flynt. Albums where a rock artist ‘goes country’ – Jerry Lee Lewis’s Another Place, Another Time, Ringo [Starr]’s Beaucoup of Blues, Cat Power’s The Greatest, Link Wray’s early 70s solo albums. In terms of instrumental music, I was listening to Marisa Anderson’s Into the Light and Nathan Salsburg’s Landwerk series a lot right as the project began.’
Joe: ‘Neil Young is frequently referenced in rehearsals. Same with Brian Eno. Television’s Marquee Moon is big. We draw inspiration from our contemporaries as well: Bitchin Bajas, Bill Orcutt, Natural Information Society, Jeffrey Silverstein, Cole Pulice, Chuck Johnson, Luke Schneider, Michael James Tapscott, North Americans and more. Personally, I’d list as influences…Stereolab, Björk, Eno, CAN, early [Pink] Floyd, Terry Riley, Philip Glass, Sea of Bliss by Don Slepian, Jon Hassell, Pauline Oliveros, Mingus Plays Piano by Charles Mingus. Promises by Floating Points / Pharoah Sanders is important.’
Steve: ‘On the country/folk side, Willy Tea Taylor for sure. And there’s an awful lot of outlaw country that my dad played on eight-track (and I hated as a kid) that now I’ve fully come around to – think the Highwaymen ‘Live at Nassau’. Also include Townes Van Zandt and Blaze Foley, and our song “Dublin Goodnight” is a direct descendant of Guy Clark‘s “Dublin Blues”. On the drone-y side, I’ve followed Low closely since I Could Live in Hope, and what’s incredible to me is how their music has evolved without ever losing its essential core, despite making music for something like three decades – enough time for a full adult life to bloom and take shape, with its joys and with its incredible losses. The other true joy of this project has been in playing with bands who immediately go into heavy rotation in my house: Go By Ocean, Donald Beaman, Luke Schneider, Michael James Tapscott, and John Francis Flynn are all examples. Super humbling company to keep.’
“Rooms Without End”, the second track on Aux Meadows newest album Draw Near, opens with a loud synth loop with a deep resonant bass to it. Quickly joined by a muted guitar riff that almost sounds like hard rock in slow motion. Layered over top all of this is a meandering synth line. This song is a great example of how Aux Meadows layer elements within their lush compositions.
On Draw Near Aux Meadows manages to capture a very authentic live ‘in the room’ sound. “By the Lantern” has this wandering guitar line that is sweet as molasses. A relatively short track as of a passageway or an interlude between scenes. The song has a playful joyful mood that kind of bumps up against “No Cash on Premises”, the next track on the album. “No Cash” opens with ocean sounds and heavy distortion. Not in the heavy metal or punk rock sense, but more so in being otherworldly. What was the writing and recording process like for Draw Near?
Chris: ‘Compared to our debut tape (which was put together before we had ever played a single show), Draw Near is a much more extroverted album. It was put together during a period when we were gigging really steadily in the Bay Area. We were using our weekly rehearsals to write new songs, try them out live, and document the process, which meant the writing and recording processes were really intertwined. On Draw Near, there’s a handful of songs that were totally composed prior to recording. (“By the Lantern,” “Fire Under Ash,” “Permanent (For Now)”) Other songs were on-the-spot jams we liked. (“Grove,” “Stepping Stones,” and “Clear a Path” are excerpts from longer improvisations, and “Something Creature” was recorded on the fly and tightened up in editing.) In particular, with “Rooms Without End,” the first half was always solid, but we struggled to figure out the ending. So it was through editing and overdubbing that we finalized what is now our live blueprint. Overall, I’d like to think this approach means the composed songs on the LP retain a loose off-the-cuff sensibility, while the jams are never too long or aimless.’
‘On the technical side, nearly all of the basic tracking was done to a Tascam 488 cassette recorder in my apartment. I’d often hit ‘record’ with just rough levels set and minimal separation between instruments. Joe’s synth was always played through an amp and mic-ed up, which I think is essential to maintaining an organic feel even with his otherworldly sounds. The two songs with live drums feature our friend Raphi Gottesman and were recorded in his garage—we ran through a few takes, just one or two mics on the kit, and with even less separation between the instruments than usual. From the Tascam, I’d dump the good takes to digital to overdub bass, percussion, and additional textures. There’s a lot of EQ-ing and volume automation, but no digital reverb or post-production effects as far as I recall. Chuck Johnson mixed from my roughs, and he did a tremendous job bringing out more low end and adding glue. As he did on our EP Dust Kingdom, Brian Tester mastered and gave it all a gentle squeeze.’
“Modern Nostalgia” is a relatively long track for Aux Meadows at almost nine minutes. It has this chiptune opening which is one the most fun and inviting of all their tunes. As they tend to do the track goes wide from here slowing down and expanding from this lively beginning. As a band they seem to be in constant communication jamming and riffing along which is especially noticeable here in this longer form. The guitar and synths are in dialogue as if hashing out the day’s events over the campfire. At about the midpoint a cymbal joins the conversation and has this steady rhythmic cadence to it that all the other instruments reverberate against.
Without lyrics or vocal stylings to analyze and be distracted by, my focus instead shifted to an interest in the equipment Aux Meadows utilizes. I’m not exactly a gear head myself, but since their instruments are essentially the voice of the band I was pretty curious about some of the intricacies of their setup which facilitate and define their sound.
Chris: ‘Our earliest recordings were very shaped by the sound of Steve’s dobro, Joe’s Organelle M, and the beat-up 1940’s Gibson acoustic that I inherited from a relative. In addition to those instruments, much of the early sound was shaped by the realities of practicing inside an apartment and keeping to a living room volume. As a live act, we use lap steel and electric guitar more than acoustic instruments these days—but those still tend towards a clean tone and minimal effects, to maintain a natural sound and intimacy.’
Steve: ‘Steel guitar comes with the strange limitation that it’s kind of like you’re playing a standard guitar, but you only get to use one finger. And you’re normally tuned to an open chord, so you find yourself at moments in a song where you’re like: damn, the song calls for a minor chord, how am I going to voice that? Well the voicing might be possible, in which case your only option might be some unexpected inversion. Or maybe the voicing isn’t possible at all, in which case maybe you drop the third and just outline the chord—and then it’s beautifully ambiguous! Another thing that happens is you end up incorporating open strings that end up providing these beautiful drones. That said, sometimes I look over at Chris and I’m jealous that he gets to use his whole left hand.’
Joe: ‘I fell in love with the simple and compact synths made by Critter & Guitari. I have an Organelle M that I use for nearly everything. “Continuous Still” uses a Korg Volca Micro-Modular Synth. I only play synths small enough to fit in my lap (Steve recently joked that we play a genre called “Lap Gaze”). My pedal board has a Boss Waza Craft analog delay that gets used a lot, in addition to a couple EarthQuaker pedals, a tremolo, and a distortion pedal Chris made himself.’
“Permanent (for Now)” opens with this like drum machine beat which actually has a lot of attitude for a band mostly on the mellower end of the spectrum. The guitar riff that dominates the track has a similar sort of meatier edge to it. Together they form a driving building tension, like gathering up the posse and riding towards dangers unknown. Speaking of riding off into the sunset, the central imagery Aux Meadows invokes is western scenery. So how does locality and geography factor into their sound?
Chris: ‘Two of us are West Coast natives and the other from the rural South/East Coast—so for some of us, ‘California’ or the West is deeply home, and for others ‘California’ is still this weird foreign place. Same for the idea of the rural South and roots of country/folk/blues. When you mix in the remnants of Northern California new age/hippie culture, it’s a big blend of the imagined and the actual that does show up in the music.’
Steve: ‘I grew up in Southern California and we were often in the desert. So the Mythic West informs our imagery for sure. But the older I get, the less it’s Clint Eastwood and the more it’s the far more complicated place of Wallace Stegner or the eastern Sierras – think Manzanar and Owens Valley and water wars.’
Joe: ‘My family is from California on both sides for multiple generations. My mom had quite the collection of CDs she’d pick up at shops that also sold geodes. I’d say the New Age music popular with yoga practicing Californians like my mother in the 80’s and 90’s has factored into our sound in an indirect way. And I went to Colorado College which had a huge bluegrass scene.’
When I listen to Aux Meadows I hear the sounds of a Cormac McCarthy novel come to life. I see Old West comic covers and Clint Eastwood movie scenes. What are some of the non-musical sources they are drawing from?
Joe: ‘Chris regularly shares anecdotes from the non-fiction books he’s reading. Such as Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition, which inspired some song titles and ideas. Or music biographies like Hank Williams, Tom Petty, and Harry Smith. Steve and I read Butcher’s Crossing by John Williams at the same time, and we admired the cinematic descriptions of the Wild West and the slow tension building narrative. I’m also a poet and translator of Spanish poetry. Poetry can induce a state of mind at ease with uncertainties and ambiguities. Improvisation is about embracing this same mind state.’
Steve: ‘My dad read Robert Service poems to me as a kid and now I’m doing the same. Much of Robert Service‘s poetry originated in his experiences as an ambulance driver in World War I and as a gold miner in the Yukon during the Klondike Gold Rush. The ‘draw’ in Draw Near comes from one of his lines that I love: ‘On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw…‘’
What’s next for Aux Meadows?
Joe: ‘Currently we’re playing a lot of shows in the Bay Area, to promote Draw Near. But we’d love to find a block of days this summer for a mini-tour, whether down to southern California, or up to the Pacific Northwest. Matching up our calendars can be challenging, but with patience we’ll make it happen. At our album release show in February, we were lucky enough to collaborate with Indianna Hale, Luke Schneider, and a couple others on a few songs. So, we’d love to do more collaborative recordings with our peers or act as backing band to another songwriter.’
Aux Meadows is…
Steve Dawson – dobro and lap steel
Joe Imwalle – synth and piano
Chris Royalty – guitar and bass
Stream Draw Near now on Bandcamp. Their label Eiderdown Records still has a few copies on wax if you like what you hear and want to give it a spin. Be sure to give Aux Meadows a follow on Facebook and Instagram.
