Eighteenth Solo Album Song Shards: Soul Jingles, Stoic Jingles, Vintage Jingles, Prayers and Rounds by Peter Stampfel, Friends & Daughters Out Sept. 19 on Jalopy Records
“Next to Bob Dylan, Stampfel is the closest thing to a genius that [the folk scene] produced.”
–Robert Christgau
“Oddball and ambitious.”
–Rolling Stone
“Something of a legend… Peter Stampfel is an absolute eccentric whose obsession with American popular music in the 20th century is unlike anyone I’ve ever known.”
–Bob Boilen, NPR Music
“Has been twisting folk traditions since he started the Holy Modal Rounders in the 1960s”
–New York Times
“The musician widely regarded as the Last Beatnik Standing.”
–The Times (UK)
As a member of the Holy Modal Rounders, of the Fugs, and through numerous collaborations and solo projects, the “legend [and] absolute eccentric” (NPR Music) Peter Stampfel is a huge influence on both freak-folk and anti-folk music and “one of the first artists to explore the nexus where folk and psychedelia meet… influential and uncompromising” (All Music). Stampfel has collaborated with Michael Hurley, Jeffrey Lewis, Yo La Tengo, and They Might Be Giants. Today, Jalopy Records shared the first tracks from the upcoming album Song Shards: Soul Jingles, Stoic Jingles, Vintage Jingles, Prayers and Rounds by Peter Stampfel, Friends & Daughters (September 19 / Jalopy Records), HEAR/SHARE.
Song Shards marries two concepts, part one made up of stoic aphorisms: prayers and observations of wit and wisdom; while part two sees Stampfel revisiting remembered radio advertising jingles. Both are made up of extremely short songs. As with all things Stampfel, the result is penetrating, deeply strange, funny at times, contains more than a little observed truth, and sounds like no one and nothing else. “I truly believe goofyness is one of personkind’s most powerful survival tools. It facilitates play, another of personkind’s most powerful tools,” he attests.
Song Shards represents a return to health for Stampfel, who was unable to sing for a time due to dysphonia. After diligently performing voice exercises for years, his voice began to recover its musicality. His vocals betray the scars of the condition.
Among the tracks today are Stampfel’s thank you to creativity in “Muses Nine,” which features a sung bass line accompanying Stampfel’s resonator ukulele with heavenly backing harmonies; a radio jingle heard in NYC in the 1960s with him backed again by those voices; the indie rock-influenced “You Are the Product” with heavy delay on electric guitar; a drugged-out re-write of a 1950s round (in which multiple voices sing the same melody but starting at different points) in “Swell Hells Bells” that gets further and further out there as it goes along; and a genuine round in “Wisconsin Service Stations.”
The aphorisms were inspired by prayers learned in Alcoholics Anonymous and others by revelations gained smoking weed; he was sober from 1988 to 2000 and has been almost entirely alcohol free since then. When first given a two-sentence prayer by his AA sponsor, he had trouble memorizing it and set it to music to remember it. “I had been re-writing folk songs for over a half century, ‘50s rock n’ roll songs for decades, and Great American Songbook songs since the ‘70s. Ah, why not re-write the bible. What the hell, you know? And thus, it was. My Stoic Jingles are based on stoic aphorisms; Soul Jingles are ones I made up,” says Stampfel.
“Previously, I knew nothing about stoicism,” he continues, saying, “I thought it simply meant putting up with pain and discomfort without complaining. But the more I began to understand it, the more sense it made. Then I ran into a list of 50 stoic aphorisms, and thought, ‘Hey, these are good song lyrics.’ Lucid, smart and useful.” He decided that the songs didn’t have to be longer than the aphorisms themselves, beyond possibly repeating a couple of times, not requiring verses or further structure. And he saw that this new song form he had stumbled on resembled radio jingles.
Part two is made up of what Stampfel calls “capitalism’s sonic heraldry,” his recreations and distortions of long-remembered radio jingles, the first of which he heard on the radio in Wisconsin at the age of six in 1945.
The album was produced by OffBeat Magazine Best-of-the-Beat award winner and founder of the legendary Piety Street Studios, Mark Bingham (Marianne Faithfull, James Blood Ulmer, Dr. John, R.E.M., Elvis Costello, Allen Toussaint) and recorded in Brooklyn and New Orleans. Among the players on the album is guitarist Jonathan Frelich of the New Orleans Klezmer All Stars.
Song Shards is accompanied by insightful online liner notes and track annotations by Peter spanning almost 14,000 words: READ HERE
Stampfel’s first band, the Holy Modal Rounders, featured a young Sam Shepard on drums and opened concerts for the Velvet Underground, Pink Floyd, and Ike & Tina Turner. The band reached beyond the core countercultural audience in 1969 when their song “If You Want To Be a Bird (Bird Song)” was featured in the film and soundtrack to the generation-defining Easy Rider.
Stampfel won a GRAMMY Award for his liner notes of The Anthology of American Folk Music reissue.
Song Shards: Soul Jingles, Stoic Jingles, Vintage Jingles, Prayers and Rounds track listing
1 Muses Nine
2 Maximum Love
3 Every Person
4 Open Me
5 More Wack
6 Swell Hells Bells
7 Day Go By
8 The Obstacle is the Way
9 God May Be Indifferent
10 Please Help Me
11 Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
12 Find a Way
13 Be Strict with Yourself
14 You Are the Product
15 Hail Mary
16 Love The Hand That Fate Deals You
17 The Road
18 You Fight for Your Life
19 Focus
20 New Prayer of Jabez
21 Ajax
22 All-Purpose Rit
23 Aunt Fanny’s Bread
24 Blatz
25 Castro Convertible
26 Cream of Wheat
27 Elsie, The Borden Cow
28 Goldblatt’s
29 Libby’s Canned Food
30 Linco
31 Log Cabin Syrup
32 Old Timer’s Beer
33 Omar Bread
34 Pepsi-Cola
35 Postum
36 Prell Shampoo
37 Rival Dog Food
38 Robert Hall Clothing Store
39 Sal Hepatica
40 Super Suds
41 Swift Premium Franks
42 Beer Jingle
43 White Rose Petroleum Jelly
44 White Tower Hamburgers
45 Whitman’s Sampler
46 Wisconsin Super Service Stations
