It is the spring of 2019, and Chris Weisman's landline is ringing in Brattleboro, Vermont. On the other end, in Los Angeles, Blake Mills is assembling a venturesome dream team of songwriters for a television series he's been tapped to create the music for. The two of them are, at this point, complete strangers. Chris is decades deep into an ossified obscurity-it can feel like (blessing or curse) a kind of invisibility. But Blake sees him. The planet turns, becomes crazier.
It is the spring of 2022, and Weisman is at the Steinway. He and Blake are composing his overlay voicings together, a layer of icing, for the bridge to “THERE IS NO NOW” that they just wrote from scratch--lyrics, melody, chords, Blake at his Goya, Chris pacing the perimeter of this illustrious room, Studio A of SOUND CITY STUDIOS in Van Nuys, California, veritably vibrating with history you could cut with a knife. Chris plays a big, sweet Ab Major 9 on the downbeat, and the whole room sings. Where an F minor turns Major, Blake suggests the 3rd should resolve an octave lower instead of traveling up a half-step, eschewing the obvious voice leading for an octave displacement. These are the leaps. It is heavenly-voiced down, the A natural seems to glow gently orange.
Blake is in his customary crouch over pedals, at the foot of the console with his baritone fretless sustainer guitar. Infinitely tall Joseph Lorge, with his signature blue work shirt and big, green eyes, is in the chair beside him, turned toward the screen. They work telepathically, quickly, seemingly flawlessly. It doesn't matter how important the moment is--to a song, a record, a career--there is no pressure of import, no ritual. This is the guitar solo on “SKELETON IS WALKING.” All the tension built up in Blake's one-note, incantatory vocal is finally breaking, exploding from his guitar like enormous, time-lapse flowers unfolding themselves.
The album opens under pointillistic stars, cosmic wheeling forms, an abyss of perplexity. On the title track, Chris's horn calls out over a pleasure of drums and slashing classical guitars. There are no constellations, no narratives to navigate on “JELLY ROAD.” We let ourselves dream, and we let ourselves beam. We open outside of time, we end by refusing to.
Speak to me in breadcrumbs
Speak to me in code
Tell me it again
About the Jelly Road
~ Blake Mills & Chris Weisman ~
