STEVE WYNN
''SKETCHES IN SPAIN''
JULY 1 2014
78:38
1 /I'm Not Listening
Smack Dab 4:47
2 /Quarantine
Smack Dab 3:04
3 /Super 8
Smack Dab 2:23
4 /Free Love
Smack Dab 4:15
5 /My Cross to Bear
Smack Dab 3:37
6 /Kickstart My Jackknife
Smack Dab 4:25
7 /The Hollywood Sign
Smack Dab 3:53
8 /Smack Dab
Smack Dab 3:15
9 /Never Been to Spain
Hoyt Axton 3:41
10 /Lavender Foam
Smack Dab 7:56
11 /Suddenly
Francisco Fernández / Steve Wynn 4:48
12 /The King of Riverside Park
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 3:06
13 /The Last One Standing
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 4:03
14 /Underneath the Radar
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 8:20
15 /On the Town
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 2:22
16 /OTB
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 2:23
17 /Black Is Black
Anthony Hayes / Steve Wadey 4:18
18 /Claro Que Si
Steve Wynn 3:17
19 /Sometime Before I Die
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 4:45
1 to 10 feat: Smack Dab
11 to 19 feat: Australian Blonde
REVIEW
by Mark Deming
Among the many qualities that have made Steve Wynn one of rock's truest unsung heroes is his willingness to share the spotlight without gearing down his own talents. Wynn's a guy who thrives on a good collaboration, from Danny & Dusty and Gutterball to the Baseball Project and a pair of albums he recorded with Paco Loco (aka Paco Martinez), a Spanish musician and producer best known as a member of the band Australian Blonde. Loco and Wynn struck up a friendship while Wynn toured Spain in 1998, and in 2000, Wynn suggested they collaborate on a song for a project with eMusic. The tune spawned an entire album, with Wynn recording his parts in the United States and mailing tapes to Loco and his bandmates in Spain. That album, Momento, credited to Australian Blonde Featuring Steve Wynn, led to a second project in 2007, with Wynn and his longtime drummer Linda Pitmon recording with Loco at his studio in Andalucia under the collective handle Smack Dab. The Smack Dab album and Momento receive their long-overdue American debut on the two-fer Sketches in Spain, and both recordings are a testament to Wynn's gift as a songwriter and how he can mesh his own ideas with those of his musical partners. In some respects, Momento sounds like the polished and accessible pop album Wynn would never have dared to make on his own; Australian Blonde deliver a set of lively and eclectic indie pop, dotted with jangly guitars, keyboards, and occasional horn and string overdubs, while Wynn's dour vocals and streetwise, often witty lyrics make for a fascinating complement, blending sweet and sour in just the right proportions. This music turns out to be a superb accompaniment for Wynn's lyrics and vocals, without ever sounding like what you'd expect from a Steve Wynn record. The Smack Dab album is a very different project, sounding much less glossy and more organic, with Wynn and Loco tossing guitar lines back and forth while Pitmon holds down a lean, imaginative backbeat and Wynn delivers smart, razor-sharp lyrics. While musically Smack Dab has a personality that's very much its own, Wynn's contribution is strongly in the vein of his later-period Dream Syndicate work, especially on "My Cross to Bear" and "The Hollywood Sign," not derivative but a glimpse into a side of his musical personality that's not always on display these days. And on each album, Wynn has some corny fun with a cover, tackling Hoyt Axton's "Never Been to Spain" on Smack Dab and "Black Is Black" by Spanish one-hit wonders Los Bravos on Momento. Sketches in Spain brings together two very worthy rarities that Steve Wynn's fans will be delighted to hear, and according to the liner notes, Wynn and Paco have another album in the works that hopefully won't take so long to arrive stateside.
------------------------------
Press Release: Steve Wynn Sketches In Spain
by omnivore records
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 14, 2014
Steve Wynn’s 2001-2005 Spanish recording sessions to be release July 1 in U.S. as Sketches In Spain
Not a reissue. The Dream Syndicate front man’s work in Spain has never been available cross the Atlantic—until now.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Steve Wynn, best known for his bands the Dream Syndicate, Miracle 3 and the Baseball Project, has been recording steadily for decades since his emergence in the 1980s. Unfortunately, not all of those recordings have been available on these shores.
Steve once worked with the band Australian Blonde in Spain, recording an album titled Momento. He met producer Paco Loco, and a bond was formed. Wynn would return a few years later and form a band with Loco and his wife, Linda Pitmon, recording an album under the name Smack Dab. They created incredible music, but music only available in Spain. While the music retains the dynamic energy of Wynn’s classic rock albums, these sessions find him swapping his Americana roots for a more creative, Euro-pop vibe. Rarely has Wynn’s music sounded so playful!
“I first met Paco back in 1998,” says Wynn. “I had a show booked in the area where he and his wife Muni were living, down in Andalusia. The owner of my Spanish label had been the drummer in Australian Blonde with Paco and knew that he was a fan, so he arranged for the band to drop by their pad. At the time, he spoke much less English than he does now. And my Spanish wasn’t as good as it is now. So, most of what I could tell was that he was kind, knew about my music, and, most of all, was fascinating and eccentric.
“I’ve gotten to know him quite well over the years, but I can still say that there is nobody in the world who is quite like Paco Loco. He is a legendary producer in Spain, and despite the many records he’s made and his many accolades, he still approaches every session with the fervor, curiosity, playfulness, and unpredictability of someone who is just starting out or, more likely, just never bothered to learn the rules. In other words, I knew I had met a kindred spirit from the start.”
On July 1, 2014, Omnivore Recordings will release 19 tracks from those two albums as Sketches in Spain, a look and listen into Wynn’s expansive and essential ’90s work. The set includes liner notes by curator Pat Thomas and by Wynn himself.
From originals to covers of Three Dog Night’s “Never Been To Spain” and Los Bravos’ “Black Is Black,” these recordings form the perfect evolution from and complement to the Dream Syndicate’s classic albums, including Omnivore’s critically acclaimed reissue of The Day Before Wine And Roses.
Ready for an introduction to these shores, Sketches in Spain not only references another important release via its title, but will take U.S. fans into another world and culture.
------------------------------
Liner Notes
by Pat Thomas Burbank, CA Easter Sunday, 2014
Don't think of this music as a ‘reissue’ – because it’s not a lost classic that got ignored the first time around. Despite having been recorded several years ago, it simply was never released outside of the country of Spain (where it was recorded) until now. So, for most of you, these are “new” (to your ears) recordings and should be treated as such. This is the some of the freshest music that Steve Wynn has ever recorded - inspired and challenged by his Spanish collaborator Paco Loco. There’s two albums here, the first one was released under the artist & album name of Smack Dab – and consists primarily of Steve, Paco and Steve’s long time partner in crime, Linda Pitmon. The second one (pre-dating Smack Dab in recording and original release) is called Australian Blonde featuring Steve Wynn – which is Steve fronting the established Spanish pop/rock band Australian Blonde.
Steve provides some background,
Australian Blonde began as a trio in the early 90's. They had a big hit in Spain with a song called "Chup Chup" and were at the forefront of the same indie, grungy, fizzy-pop movement that was all the rage in the US about the same time. Paco wasn't in the band originally (though I think he produced all their records) but he ended up joining the band on guitar to round them out to a quartet. The tour we did together was great and nothing like anything I had done before. Because of all of the interesting arrangements on the album, it was decided that we would have all of the extra tracks played over the PA while we played live as a five-piece combo. [Sort of like The Who’s first tour of Quadrophenia with tapes of horns, keyboards, etc.] This meant that the drummer Paco Martinez had to listen on headphones to a click-track and the extra instrumentation while we played along to his beat. Linda's backing vocals (from the original recordings) were piped in over the PA every night.
With both Paco and the Spanish soil common to both albums, Sketches In Spain seemed like an apt title for these 2 albums on 1 CD package. I asked Steve to explain how it all began,
I first met Paco back in 1998. I had a show booked in the area where he and his wife Muni were living down in Andalucia. The owner of my Spanish label had been the drummer in Australian Blonde with Paco and knew that he was a fan so he arranged for the band to drop by their pad. At the time he spoke much less English than he does now. And my Spanish wasn't as good as it is now. So, most of what I could tell was that he was kind, knew about my music and, most of all, was fascinating and eccentric. I've gotten to know him quite well over the years but I can still say that there is nobody in the world who is quite like Paco Loco. He is a legendary producer in Spain and despite the many records he's made and his many accolades, he still approaches every session with the fervor, curiosity, playfulness and unpredictability of someone who is just starting out or, more likely, just never bothered to learn the rules. In other words, I knew I had met a kindred spirit from the start.
Their first collaboration was done virtually rather than physically in the same room; in fact the whole Australian Blonde featuring Steve Wynn album was recorded that way.
A few years after first meeting Paco, I was doing a song-of-the-month series for Emusic and wanted to collaborate with different people for each installment. It seemed like a good time to see how Paco and I could work together. I asked him to send me a track. Now, in today's world this all could happen easily by email--a song could be sent and the volleys could go back and forth by the hour. But in 2000 when we first worked together, Paco sent me an ADAT 8-track tape by mail, I wrote lyrics to the song that became "The Last One Standing," mailed the tape back to him and then he stripped away everything but my voice, re-tracked the entire song with Australian Blonde and then mixed it down. A very strange way to collaborate but it's the way we ended up doing the whole record. I didn't even meet the guys in the band until the record was released and we were in rehearsals to tour and promote the record. It ended up doing quite well in Spain and the tour was great.
The success of the Australian Blonde featuring Steve Wynn tour on Spanish soil, led to Smack Dab.
So, about four years later, Paco was starting a label and had the idea that Linda and I could come to his studio and where he and his wife Muni live in Puerto De Santa Maria for some kind of mixture of a vacation and possibly writing a couple of songs for a single. But, as often happens, we got so excited and swept up in the collaboration and the week of limitless studio time that we ended up constantly writing and having fun in the studio. We'd wake up in the morning, somebody would have a musical fragment (Paco's impressionistic broken beauty that became "Free Love," Linda's meditative piano figuring’s that became "Lavender Foam") and I would come up with words (though Linda wrote the lyrics for "Smack Dab.") Every song had it's own character (kind of a hallmark of the 3 records I've made with Paco--there is never one SOUND to anything we do together) and we built each track in different ways. I particularly love Linda's percussion overdubs on "Kickstart My Jackknife." And on "Lavender Foam," that's Paco on drums while Linda plays piano.
Anyway, we were really excited with the session and it came out in 2006. Once again the response was great, once again it was limited to Spain. So, I'm happy that these collaborations are seeing the light of day. They're unlike anything I've done before or since (outside of my latest collaboration with Paco). And they delight and surprise me - and that's always a good thing.
I’ve been writing about Steve ever since I first encountered him in the early 1980’s and I’ve been prone to much hyperbole along the way, especially when it comes to the Dream Syndicate. This time, I’ll refrain from words like “mind-blowing” but what I will impress upon you - is what these Spanish albums share with the best Dream Syndicate recordings. And that is a timeless quality- they sounded fresh a decade or more ago, and they still do. Don’t pigeonhole this release as a ‘reissue’ or an aural snapshot of something from the past. There’s a new Paco & Steve album in the works, what you hold in your hands is merely parts 1 and 2 of an on-going and current day thing. Long may it run…..
OFFICIAL SITE
''SKETCHES IN SPAIN''
JULY 1 2014
78:38
1 /I'm Not Listening
Smack Dab 4:47
2 /Quarantine
Smack Dab 3:04
3 /Super 8
Smack Dab 2:23
4 /Free Love
Smack Dab 4:15
5 /My Cross to Bear
Smack Dab 3:37
6 /Kickstart My Jackknife
Smack Dab 4:25
7 /The Hollywood Sign
Smack Dab 3:53
8 /Smack Dab
Smack Dab 3:15
9 /Never Been to Spain
Hoyt Axton 3:41
10 /Lavender Foam
Smack Dab 7:56
11 /Suddenly
Francisco Fernández / Steve Wynn 4:48
12 /The King of Riverside Park
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 3:06
13 /The Last One Standing
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 4:03
14 /Underneath the Radar
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 8:20
15 /On the Town
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 2:22
16 /OTB
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 2:23
17 /Black Is Black
Anthony Hayes / Steve Wadey 4:18
18 /Claro Que Si
Steve Wynn 3:17
19 /Sometime Before I Die
Paco Loco / Steve Wynn 4:45
1 to 10 feat: Smack Dab
11 to 19 feat: Australian Blonde
REVIEW
by Mark Deming
Among the many qualities that have made Steve Wynn one of rock's truest unsung heroes is his willingness to share the spotlight without gearing down his own talents. Wynn's a guy who thrives on a good collaboration, from Danny & Dusty and Gutterball to the Baseball Project and a pair of albums he recorded with Paco Loco (aka Paco Martinez), a Spanish musician and producer best known as a member of the band Australian Blonde. Loco and Wynn struck up a friendship while Wynn toured Spain in 1998, and in 2000, Wynn suggested they collaborate on a song for a project with eMusic. The tune spawned an entire album, with Wynn recording his parts in the United States and mailing tapes to Loco and his bandmates in Spain. That album, Momento, credited to Australian Blonde Featuring Steve Wynn, led to a second project in 2007, with Wynn and his longtime drummer Linda Pitmon recording with Loco at his studio in Andalucia under the collective handle Smack Dab. The Smack Dab album and Momento receive their long-overdue American debut on the two-fer Sketches in Spain, and both recordings are a testament to Wynn's gift as a songwriter and how he can mesh his own ideas with those of his musical partners. In some respects, Momento sounds like the polished and accessible pop album Wynn would never have dared to make on his own; Australian Blonde deliver a set of lively and eclectic indie pop, dotted with jangly guitars, keyboards, and occasional horn and string overdubs, while Wynn's dour vocals and streetwise, often witty lyrics make for a fascinating complement, blending sweet and sour in just the right proportions. This music turns out to be a superb accompaniment for Wynn's lyrics and vocals, without ever sounding like what you'd expect from a Steve Wynn record. The Smack Dab album is a very different project, sounding much less glossy and more organic, with Wynn and Loco tossing guitar lines back and forth while Pitmon holds down a lean, imaginative backbeat and Wynn delivers smart, razor-sharp lyrics. While musically Smack Dab has a personality that's very much its own, Wynn's contribution is strongly in the vein of his later-period Dream Syndicate work, especially on "My Cross to Bear" and "The Hollywood Sign," not derivative but a glimpse into a side of his musical personality that's not always on display these days. And on each album, Wynn has some corny fun with a cover, tackling Hoyt Axton's "Never Been to Spain" on Smack Dab and "Black Is Black" by Spanish one-hit wonders Los Bravos on Momento. Sketches in Spain brings together two very worthy rarities that Steve Wynn's fans will be delighted to hear, and according to the liner notes, Wynn and Paco have another album in the works that hopefully won't take so long to arrive stateside.
------------------------------
Press Release: Steve Wynn Sketches In Spain
by omnivore records
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 14, 2014
Steve Wynn’s 2001-2005 Spanish recording sessions to be release July 1 in U.S. as Sketches In Spain
Not a reissue. The Dream Syndicate front man’s work in Spain has never been available cross the Atlantic—until now.
LOS ANGELES, Calif. — Steve Wynn, best known for his bands the Dream Syndicate, Miracle 3 and the Baseball Project, has been recording steadily for decades since his emergence in the 1980s. Unfortunately, not all of those recordings have been available on these shores.
Steve once worked with the band Australian Blonde in Spain, recording an album titled Momento. He met producer Paco Loco, and a bond was formed. Wynn would return a few years later and form a band with Loco and his wife, Linda Pitmon, recording an album under the name Smack Dab. They created incredible music, but music only available in Spain. While the music retains the dynamic energy of Wynn’s classic rock albums, these sessions find him swapping his Americana roots for a more creative, Euro-pop vibe. Rarely has Wynn’s music sounded so playful!
“I first met Paco back in 1998,” says Wynn. “I had a show booked in the area where he and his wife Muni were living, down in Andalusia. The owner of my Spanish label had been the drummer in Australian Blonde with Paco and knew that he was a fan, so he arranged for the band to drop by their pad. At the time, he spoke much less English than he does now. And my Spanish wasn’t as good as it is now. So, most of what I could tell was that he was kind, knew about my music, and, most of all, was fascinating and eccentric.
“I’ve gotten to know him quite well over the years, but I can still say that there is nobody in the world who is quite like Paco Loco. He is a legendary producer in Spain, and despite the many records he’s made and his many accolades, he still approaches every session with the fervor, curiosity, playfulness, and unpredictability of someone who is just starting out or, more likely, just never bothered to learn the rules. In other words, I knew I had met a kindred spirit from the start.”
On July 1, 2014, Omnivore Recordings will release 19 tracks from those two albums as Sketches in Spain, a look and listen into Wynn’s expansive and essential ’90s work. The set includes liner notes by curator Pat Thomas and by Wynn himself.
From originals to covers of Three Dog Night’s “Never Been To Spain” and Los Bravos’ “Black Is Black,” these recordings form the perfect evolution from and complement to the Dream Syndicate’s classic albums, including Omnivore’s critically acclaimed reissue of The Day Before Wine And Roses.
Ready for an introduction to these shores, Sketches in Spain not only references another important release via its title, but will take U.S. fans into another world and culture.
------------------------------
Liner Notes
by Pat Thomas Burbank, CA Easter Sunday, 2014
Don't think of this music as a ‘reissue’ – because it’s not a lost classic that got ignored the first time around. Despite having been recorded several years ago, it simply was never released outside of the country of Spain (where it was recorded) until now. So, for most of you, these are “new” (to your ears) recordings and should be treated as such. This is the some of the freshest music that Steve Wynn has ever recorded - inspired and challenged by his Spanish collaborator Paco Loco. There’s two albums here, the first one was released under the artist & album name of Smack Dab – and consists primarily of Steve, Paco and Steve’s long time partner in crime, Linda Pitmon. The second one (pre-dating Smack Dab in recording and original release) is called Australian Blonde featuring Steve Wynn – which is Steve fronting the established Spanish pop/rock band Australian Blonde.
Steve provides some background,
Australian Blonde began as a trio in the early 90's. They had a big hit in Spain with a song called "Chup Chup" and were at the forefront of the same indie, grungy, fizzy-pop movement that was all the rage in the US about the same time. Paco wasn't in the band originally (though I think he produced all their records) but he ended up joining the band on guitar to round them out to a quartet. The tour we did together was great and nothing like anything I had done before. Because of all of the interesting arrangements on the album, it was decided that we would have all of the extra tracks played over the PA while we played live as a five-piece combo. [Sort of like The Who’s first tour of Quadrophenia with tapes of horns, keyboards, etc.] This meant that the drummer Paco Martinez had to listen on headphones to a click-track and the extra instrumentation while we played along to his beat. Linda's backing vocals (from the original recordings) were piped in over the PA every night.
With both Paco and the Spanish soil common to both albums, Sketches In Spain seemed like an apt title for these 2 albums on 1 CD package. I asked Steve to explain how it all began,
I first met Paco back in 1998. I had a show booked in the area where he and his wife Muni were living down in Andalucia. The owner of my Spanish label had been the drummer in Australian Blonde with Paco and knew that he was a fan so he arranged for the band to drop by their pad. At the time he spoke much less English than he does now. And my Spanish wasn't as good as it is now. So, most of what I could tell was that he was kind, knew about my music and, most of all, was fascinating and eccentric. I've gotten to know him quite well over the years but I can still say that there is nobody in the world who is quite like Paco Loco. He is a legendary producer in Spain and despite the many records he's made and his many accolades, he still approaches every session with the fervor, curiosity, playfulness and unpredictability of someone who is just starting out or, more likely, just never bothered to learn the rules. In other words, I knew I had met a kindred spirit from the start.
Their first collaboration was done virtually rather than physically in the same room; in fact the whole Australian Blonde featuring Steve Wynn album was recorded that way.
A few years after first meeting Paco, I was doing a song-of-the-month series for Emusic and wanted to collaborate with different people for each installment. It seemed like a good time to see how Paco and I could work together. I asked him to send me a track. Now, in today's world this all could happen easily by email--a song could be sent and the volleys could go back and forth by the hour. But in 2000 when we first worked together, Paco sent me an ADAT 8-track tape by mail, I wrote lyrics to the song that became "The Last One Standing," mailed the tape back to him and then he stripped away everything but my voice, re-tracked the entire song with Australian Blonde and then mixed it down. A very strange way to collaborate but it's the way we ended up doing the whole record. I didn't even meet the guys in the band until the record was released and we were in rehearsals to tour and promote the record. It ended up doing quite well in Spain and the tour was great.
The success of the Australian Blonde featuring Steve Wynn tour on Spanish soil, led to Smack Dab.
So, about four years later, Paco was starting a label and had the idea that Linda and I could come to his studio and where he and his wife Muni live in Puerto De Santa Maria for some kind of mixture of a vacation and possibly writing a couple of songs for a single. But, as often happens, we got so excited and swept up in the collaboration and the week of limitless studio time that we ended up constantly writing and having fun in the studio. We'd wake up in the morning, somebody would have a musical fragment (Paco's impressionistic broken beauty that became "Free Love," Linda's meditative piano figuring’s that became "Lavender Foam") and I would come up with words (though Linda wrote the lyrics for "Smack Dab.") Every song had it's own character (kind of a hallmark of the 3 records I've made with Paco--there is never one SOUND to anything we do together) and we built each track in different ways. I particularly love Linda's percussion overdubs on "Kickstart My Jackknife." And on "Lavender Foam," that's Paco on drums while Linda plays piano.
Anyway, we were really excited with the session and it came out in 2006. Once again the response was great, once again it was limited to Spain. So, I'm happy that these collaborations are seeing the light of day. They're unlike anything I've done before or since (outside of my latest collaboration with Paco). And they delight and surprise me - and that's always a good thing.
I’ve been writing about Steve ever since I first encountered him in the early 1980’s and I’ve been prone to much hyperbole along the way, especially when it comes to the Dream Syndicate. This time, I’ll refrain from words like “mind-blowing” but what I will impress upon you - is what these Spanish albums share with the best Dream Syndicate recordings. And that is a timeless quality- they sounded fresh a decade or more ago, and they still do. Don’t pigeonhole this release as a ‘reissue’ or an aural snapshot of something from the past. There’s a new Paco & Steve album in the works, what you hold in your hands is merely parts 1 and 2 of an on-going and current day thing. Long may it run…..
OFFICIAL SITE
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