RedChuck

but i’ll get into that later because kitty was in Guatemala for new years eve her cousin got married in Antigua and the Buena Vista Social Club played the reception because they are exiled in Guatemala and hopefully someone in the wedding party took pictures because she didn’t have a camera but her weekend in Guatemala was incredible the wedding was in the ruins of an old church with votive candles everywhere and a man with a ram’s horn played before the bride entered the chapel and little children from the town kept wandering in and out and a hawk flew into the chapel as well and did I mention the Buena Vista Social Club played the reception and everyone danced and then on new years eve everyone was the roof of an old hotel watching fireworks explode in the sky in the distance was a volcano the next morning there was a small earthquake and kitty flew to and from the country in a private jet where everyone got a copy of the NYTimes and she took a nap on a leather couch and the kids and I had a busy weekend even though it rained for two days straight we went to the Discovery Museum and ate lunch at The Flying Fish and went to see “Night at the Museum” which Harrison said was the greatest movie of all time and we also rented “Ant Bully” and took Lucky to Rocket Park and played Go Fish and made some cards and filled up rubber gloves with water and made rubber glove pets because we were desperate for something to do that day and it was rainy and cold outside and the rubber glove pets took up about 4 hours of our day Harrison made a home for his pet out of an ice bucket and that just goes to show that sometimes you never know what will be entertaining especially since we had such a big Christmas with all kinds of flashing, dinging, chirping electronic toys like iDogs that in actuality are very noisy and annoying but Harrison and Helen loved them and wanted them to go everywhere with us and set them up in front of the speakers of the stereo where they barked and whirred and were louder than the music on the stereo that they were supposedly enjoying and harrison and helen also loved their new plush pokemon toys and the iKea igloo tent that Lucky slept in on Christmas eve with all the toys and Helen got a Hello kitty tape recorder with a microphone that she kept singing into very loudly until we had to take out the batteries and i got some video of that to share soon and Helen said “This is the greatest day of my whole life” and we had Christmas eve dinner at Fred and Helen’s with Megan, Blake, Auntie, Thomas, GE, and Gran and everyone read a saying that Auntie found and placed in ornaments at everyone’s place at the table which were our decorations this year instead of having poppers and tissue crowns and now that I look back the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas are a total blur because we were super busy at work but I do remember Harrison’s Christmas pageant being incredible great but also kind of long and then feeling rushed about getting back to work but having to ride with the family and then having to circle the block because someone in the car wanted to see this chihuahua sitting on the front porch of a house and then I lost my favorite hat in New Orleans the first weekend in December but I forgot to mention the rabbits named Hazel and Sweet Fur who came to stay with us for 6 weeks and who live in a cage so we let them out in our backyard because their owner said they like to go for a “hop” but when we let them out to hop Sweet Fur hoped under the porch and we couldn’t get her out and so she slept outside for several days and we’d catch site of her in the yard and we’d try to catch her but she would run away and then one night I came home from work and Sweet Fur had escaped into the front yard and several children from the neighborhood were trying to catch her and one kid said that kitty had promised to pay him 10 dollars if he caught the rabbit and then Sweet Fur sprang from the bushes i ran back into the back yard i saw her spring through a tiny crack in the fence so I closed that opening with a piece of firewood and then noticed two cats in the backyard waiting for Sweet Fur so I scared them off but thought there is no way this rabbit will survive tonight so i thought about blocking the underside of the deck off with chicken wire and then cutting a hole in the deck to feed Sweet Fur and eventually catch her but then realized if we trapped Sweet Fur under the deck that way she’d definitely be a goner if a cat got under there so Sweet Fur lived under the deck for 3 whole cold weeks until she hopped into the garage one day but I forgot to mention I had this one moment where I had Sweet fur outside and she was in a bush and I had my flashlight trained on her and I said to myself you’ve got to grab her now whatever happens don’t let go this is your only chance and then I grabbed Sweet Fur and she screamed I didn’t know rabbits could scream but she screamed and that freaked me out so I let go and she ran back under the deck but no worries because she didn’t get eaten by cats though I will never agree to take care of anyone’s rabbits ever again and we also redid our front room so now I have a place to store all my records and books and we like to hang out in this room now and my trip to New Orleans was great I ate many po Boys and the Boondogs gig was terrific and there was a beautiful full moon up in the sky the night we drove back from Louisiana so you could see this big moon over the delta just like the song says and I also met a man who chopped off the ends of his fingers with a rotating saw and he had these prosthetic fingers he bought in a hotel in France because the prosthetic finger salesman met him in the hotel and these prosthetics were so real you would never have noticed them until his girlfriend said show them your fingers and he pulled them off and threw them in kitty’s lap and then told us the story of how he was working on a set for a casino and it was almost five and the next thing you know the tips of his three middle fingers were go and his favorite 2 songs were by the Ink Spots and Shellac and we stayed up late listening to records on my new turntable and telling stories and did you know that 2006 was the year of the dog and isn’t that great

A: The Big Diaper

i didn't know childs could be so smart

this is funky and peaceful

fly like the wind, sonny boy

greetings earthling, i've come to spank your bottom

Red Chuck: We’re driving to the gig. . . White Water. Um. You’ve been recording all day?

Chaz Sharp: I’ve been over at Jason Weinheimer’s Sellout Studios in Little Rock, AR.

RC: Right. And you are recording this here and you’ve been recording this. . .

CS: Some in London. Yeah, we did. . . analogue recording in London and we recorded a lot of drums, some guitars, some vocals. . .

RC: Uh-huh.

CS: And then. . . I brought it over here cause we didn’t finish off the mixes there and [I] wasn’t quite certain about ‘em yet. . . And then. . . came here to Arkansas, hooked up with you via. . . my Mom. . .

RC: Right.

CS: At the Rivermarket. . . And asked if anyone had a Pro Tools studio so we could get into the tracks. And. . . so be it. . . you. . .

RC: We made the connection.

CS: Yeah, you connected me to Jason Weinheimer and I connected into the Boondogs and seem to be connected right into the heart of the scene in Little Rock.

RC: Ha ha ha. . .

CS: Michael Goodrich.

RC: Michael Goodrich! You are definitely in the heart of the scene.

CS: The Parachute Woman.

RC: Um. Here’s the one. . . the main thing I’ll bet the Localist will want to know, is. . . what, first, is your connection to Arkansas?

CS: Oh, ok. Ahh. . . my Mom. Like, I grew up in Arkansas til I was 14.

RC: Uh huh.

CS: 13, 14. Then I went to high school in California, Southern California, did a little college in Los Angeles then moved to New York City. . . and. . . eventually made it over to London, but, yeah, I grew up in my teenage years in Arkansas. . .

RC: Right.

CS: So a lot of my roots are here, my Mom’s been here for 20. . . 30 years, probably.

RC: And you grew up in Jerusalem, Arkansas?

CS: Jerusalem. Yeah. Up in the mountains. . . like. . . way up.

RC: Uh-huh.

CS: Bunch of hippie families with farms. People who came back to the land in the 70s. . .

RC: Right.

CS: And started living amongst hillbilly people and being perceived as quite weird but then, sort of ingratiated themselves into that society and now they are part of the woodwork.

RC: Right. . . Um. So then what. . . how did you get from Jerusalem to London?

CS: Umm. From Jerusalem to London. Let’s see. Well, I ended up going. . . moving back to California, even though I was there when I was 4 or 5, I ended up moving back to California for high school, yeah, when I was 14, 15. Did 10th grade, 11th, 12th in San Diego then ended up moving up to Arkansas, My parents sort of split apart at that point. My mom, her heart was here in Arkansas, so she stayed on. My dad went back to the city, kind of. . . and he went back into sort of business and business ventures. He didn’t really want to be a farmer, so then, and they both re-married. . . with their common interests. And, um. . . that’s how I got to California. And then once I got to California. . . I started getting into all sorts of different things, I suppose. Well, I got up to Los Angeles. For a while I was interested in acting. And I went to USC for like a year and then I dropped out and I worked in restaurants as a busboy and a bar back and I was gradually starting to get into music. Music was sort of in my family. But then when I got to New York City and then I was studying acting and theatre stuff out there and then moved back to LA for awhile, I had a guitar at that point and started kind of getting. . . getting, ah. . . going towards song writing.

RC: Right.

CS: I don’t know, have I gotten off the point?

RC: No, no. Actually this is where we need to go.

CS: But that’s how I got there. Yeah.

RC: And so, what were you. . . were there certain influences, as a songwriter, that were from these areas, Los Angeles. . .

CS: Yeah, well sure. When I was growing up in Arkansas it was all top 40 music, right, cause that’s all you heard on the radio living up in Arkansas.

RC: Right.

CS: And we were talking about this the other night, when I came back, I was like “They’re still playing the same shit on top 40 here. . .”

RC Ha ha ha ha. . .

CS: Foreigner, Heart, stuff like that.

RC: Yeah.

CS: Yeah, so at first, I was into stuff like that. What I can remember that I liked from that era that I probably still like is stuff like the Doors. I remember hearing “Riders on the Storm” like in that sort of ambient. . . far out sound. . . Um. And then my parents were into stuff like The Band and Credence Clearwater. . . I mean, from the earliest memory was The Beatles so when I went to London I was like yeah, The Beatles man and The Rolling Stones. Those were central factors in my growing up. The Beatles, The Stones, there might have been some Crosby Stills & Nash records flying around.

RC: Um, you’re stuff has a real droning quality that reminds me of the Velvet Underground and some of your stuff reminds me of Nick Drake, a little. I mean are those valid influences?

CS: Definitely, definitely stuff I’ve picked up in the last 7, 6 or 7 years. Probably some of the first [Jeff] Buckley recordings I heard, “Live at Sine.” That got me going. And then by the time I was headed to London I was listening. . . that was about 5 or 6. . . 5 years ago. . . I was listening to the popular music that was coming out of there, which was becoming big here, stuff like Radiohead, Bjork. And then when I got over there, that stuff had already passed there and that was kind of my first impression of it there, but then I started getting into, actually, punk music and garage and I guess that whole new wave movement of garage and stuff, The White Stripes and. . . that’s what I thought was cool, I was like, “Aw, here’s. . . here’s blues and folk music blended with garage and punk” and then I kind of went, “Oh, I see that in the Beatles music, I see that in the Stones music,” but then I also like music that was kind of droney and out there, stuff like Bjork’s “Homogenic”. . . subtle electronics, I am not opposed to that.

RC: Hell yeah. Nothing wrong with that.

CS: Yeah.

RC: Ha ha.

CS: Yeah, a little bit of everything and so, I guess that London is a melting pot of all sorts of influences.

RC: Um. So what do you think of Little Rock music scene?

CS: I like it man. I’m really happy to be like. . .

RC: I mean as to compared to being in New York or London. . .

CS: Yeah yeah. I like it down here. There’s a rootsyness about the south that like. . . it goes all the way back into London and these places, supposedly the fashion centers. People that I know in London and New York City, there’s just the rootsiness of soul that comes from Arkansas or the southern states. It’s got a crack and a character to it and it’s great. It’s like. . . I like it! I like blues, yeah and like stuff like that, it’s got a lot of soul to it and country music. Some of the old like Hank Williams. . . they’re country singers. . . all those people are like soulful. It’s great stuff.

RC: That’s all from this part of the world.

CS: Yeah yeah. It’s great. Yeah. People in London love that too.

RC: Right.

CS: They wanna go to the South. They wanna go to Sun Studios. Yeah. They love it.

RC: Cool. All right. Thanks.