DAY eight – curandera
You know how, when you’re in a tiny village high in the Sierra Madre, pounding shots of homemade mescal in a tiny tarpaper shack, and the witch doctor grabs your wrist and commands you to sing, to save your friend’s soul, it’s really hard to come up with something on the spot?
No?
Well, it was a first for me, too, and I’m not at all sure that I passed…but I did get a song out of it…
ABOUT THE SONG
I was on a truly epic road trip with my friend K., driving from San Francisco, CA to La Ceiba, Honduras—a journey of more than three thousand miles—and it was not going well. (I know that you probably already read about this in Day One of the Road Trip, but just let me refresh your memory here.) So, a partial list of the trouble we ran into includes:
- Having both our driver’s licenses stolen at the border between El Paso and Ciudad Juarez
- Daily shakedowns by federales and law enforcement of every stripe on the highways and dirt roads of Central Mexico (our watches, Walkmans, cameras and boombox were sacrificed in the interests of international goodwill)
- Running a Guatamalan army roadblock in the dark and fleeing through the night from vans full of teenaged paramilitaries with AK-47s
- Total inability to find turkey OR cranberry sauce anywhere in Guatemala on Thanksgiving
To make matters worse, my friend was suffering from hepatitis-like symptoms, which had proven totally unresponsive to hospital visits and all the normal types of medication he’d been given back in California.
Which is why we found ourselves stuffed into a tarpaper shanty in a Michoacan village with the witch doctor, her assistant, two pigs and a bowl full of chicken blood. And a bottle of the strongest mescal you’ve ever tasted.
K. had been referred to this doctor (or faith-healer—“curandera”) in a last-ditch attempt at a cure. She took one look at him, declared he was possessed, and herded everyone into her “office”, where in short order, a chicken was killed and bled, non-optional mescal was prescribed to all present, and I was commanded to sing, to play my part in spinning the incantation that would drive the demons out of K.’s body.
What’s the appropriate type of number for that situation? A lullaby? Show tunes? Meat Loaf?
My memory is a little bit hazy (because mescal), but I think I may have vamped a little and then come out with sort of a mashup of “Doctor, Doctor”, by the Thompson Twins and Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire”…and then a little bit of “Jack & Diane”, by John Cougar Mellencamp. (Like I said, mescal.)
Whatever it was, I guess it did the trick, because the curandera abruptly stopped me and declared that K. was no longer in danger of keeling over before bedtime, but that he’d need to stay in the village under her personal care for an additional 30 days before he could be fully cured. And that her fee would be three thousand dollars, American. We decided to look for a second opinion.
about the recording
Not too long after this, I found myself back in Northern California, standing in front of one of the super-tasty microphones at Fantasy Studios with my little Sony digital recorder in my hand. We were about to cut the lead vocal track for the song and I was playing and rewinding and replaying my lo-fi demo of the song, reminding myself of the vocal approach I wanted to take.
I took a deep breath and was all ready to cut the all-important final vocal when my producer’s excited voice came through my headphones: “Wait—what is that? That’s fantastic!”
He was all amped up about the way my little demo was sounding in the control room, and we decided then and there that it would make a great intro to the song—it’s that tinny little excerpt from the first verse that kicks off the track.
Other highlights from this track (in my humble opinion) include:
Interesting synth programming from yours truly—all the weird sweeping noises at the beginning and end of the song were super-fun to design and play. I did all this stuff in my studio at home, then burned the sounds to a CD and brought them in to Fantasy to be added to the track.
The propulsive, galloping beat from drummer Steve Bowman, a genius approach which none of us had even imagined before the recording sessions
Creamy, glowing harmony vocals from my good friend and all-star vocalist Tom Hamilton—check him in the duet on the bridge especially
More killer Wurlitzer electric piano from Jef Labes—he prefers to play acoustic piano, but I just love the way he plays the Wurly
get the audio
lyrics
i’ve taken a lover into my bed
whispers of Spanish float ’round her head
and sometimes her skin smells like chilis and sunlight
and sometimes she wakes
in the middle of the night
she gets long distance calls from Barranca del Cobre
something about her always looks hungry
and i want her so much i’ll follow wherever she goes
but i don’t see the thorns here for the rose
and high up/in Mexico
Curanderas bought her soul
now i see shadows/at high noon
and my heart changes/with the moon
she went to say Hail Marys down at the mission
says she’s on the hook for the sin of sedition
what union she’s running from just her confessor can tell
but today i have not heard them sound the bell
and high up/in Mexico
Curanderas bought her soul
now i see shadows/at high noon
and my heart changes/with the moon
oh, mother of pearl/birds of paradise
Sierra Madre earth/Cuernavaca night
and i feel a burning through her skin
branded by her tears
like an animal she cries out
but i see nothing
nothing in her mirrors
i try to tell her the things i can’t show her
she drops the needle, the music takes over
we dance until the blood flows and the saints intervene
and she prays for just one night without any dreams
and high up/in Mexico
Curanderas bought her soul
now i see shadows/at high noon
and my heart changes/with the moon
today’s bonuses
Original Demo
Check out the original demo for “Curandera”—love the chair creaking at the very beginning. Very casual. You might notice that the drum sounds bear a strong resemblance to those in the “Cortez & Pizarro” Demo. Very strong.
In fact, they’re exactly the same. Just like every other bedroom producer, I stole a hi-hat, kick and snare from a James Brown record, and for a while I was using them on all my tracks. Funky!
MINI CONCERT
“Curandera” is my favorite song to play with the partial capo (that brass & black thing down on the right side of the guitar neck). The ringing open strings throughout the song really give the whole thing a lot more weight and resonance.