FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 24, 2009
Marley's Ghost: (L-R:) Jerry Fletcher, Mike Phelan, Dan Wheetman, Cowboy Jack Clement, Ed Littlefield, Jr., Jon WilcoxMARLEY’S GHOST RETURN WITH NINTH ALBUM GHOST TOWN,RECORDED IN NASHVILLE WITH COWBOY JACK CLEMENT
Acoustic quintet from Northern California and Pacific Northwest migrates to the (615) to record with legendary musician/producer, veteran of Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash.
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Marley’s Ghost, cited by Paste magazine as “(having) earned cult-band status over 20 years of spirited musicianship, multi-part harmonies and irreverent humor,” will return from a three-year absence from recording with a new album, Ghost Town, due out February 23, 2010 on Sage Arts Records. The new album was produced by Cowboy Jack Clement, in whose Nashville home studio it was recorded. The cover was painted by acclaimed American watercolorist William Matthews.
The album follows Marley’s Ghost’s 2006 album Spooked, which was produced by Van Dyke Parks and featured a cover by R. Crumb. Of Spooked, No Depression remarked, “The band’s eighth full-length in 20 years glides with deadpan sincerity through sea chanteys, perverted mountain gospel, country-rock, vintage pre-WWII pop, Jazz Age vamps, Dylan, western campfire songs, and a rib-tickling salute to ‘the French Elvis,’ Johnny Hallyday. Brilliantly sung and played, Spooked is a heady, subversive treat.”
The latest development in the band’s recording career may prove to be the crucial link for Marley’s Ghost. Clement, the country music cornerstone whose career entwined with those of Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings and so many others, is the beloved dean of Nashville producers, and the presence of Marley’s Ghost in his studio earned the band its first Music Row buzz.
“Working with Jack is standing in the front door looking out into the world with the whole house of rock ’n’ roll and country music behind you,” says Marley’s Ghost bassist and singer Dan Wheetman. “Jack is steeped in the Sun Records ideals of music. The technical side is important but takes a backseat to the ‘bang,’ the performance with heart and energy.”
“It’s easy to think of Jack as the guy who wrote hits for Cash at Sun Records and recorded Charley Pride in the ’70s, but you know, he has a platinum album with U2,” he adds, referring to a portion of Rattle and Hum that Clement oversaw.
“Marley’s Ghost is very experienced, versatile and best of all, open-minded, and a fun bunch of guys,” says Clement. “I prefer to play with a great band rather than a bunch of great session players. And they are a great band. They understand that we are all in the fun business and if we’re not having fun, we’re not doing our jobs. And they can play just about anything they want to. Even polkas. I ain’t got ’em to do one yet, but I will.”
After more than 20 years of making music together— recording nine albums and performing thousands of shows around the country — Marley’s Ghost remains one of the best-kept secrets in the music world, an untapped natural resource waiting to be discovered.
“Our criteria,” says the band’s guitarist, Mike Phelan, “has always been: bring it, let’s run it. It’s not about genre or style.” This is one band that knows all the songs from both The Harder They Come soundtrack and Ralph Stanley’s Cry From the Cross. Or as Paste puts it, "a decidedly unusual band, as capable of reanimating Appalachian folk songs as they are traditional Celtic fare, honky tonk and reggae.”
The most important ingredients in the Marley’s Ghost musical brew are the characters in the band. The five multi-instrumentalists boast distinctive musical personalities that couldn’t be less alike.
Dan Wheetman is a veteran of the ’60s Simi Valley, Calif. teen rock group the Humane Society, and, as a member of ’70s country-rockers Liberty, toured for years with John Denver and Steve Martin. Jon Wilcox, mandolinist and vocalist, used to trudge around the country as a solo artist. Mike Phelan, like Wheetman and Wilcox a prolific songwriter, can tear your heart out with a soul tune, put a romantic lilt into an Irish folk tune or blast molten lead guitar licks through the heart of a blues. Innovative pedal steel guitarist Ed Littlefield, Jr., spent years performing C&W in rugged roadhouses for loggers across the Pacific Northwest, and plays a fierce fiddle and bagpipes. And Jerry Fletcher, the band’s secret weapon and unofficial fifth Ghost, became “certified” in 2006, bringing his eclectic music skills (drums, keys, accordion and vocal arranging) to bear full-time.
Together they are a unique amalgam of their respective backgrounds, personal proclivities and musical abilities — a blend honed to a seamless collaboration over the many miles they have traveled together down the road.
“I call it ’bang,’” says Clement in summation. “It’s got bang. The band’s got some bang to it.”
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 21, 2005
MARLEY’S GHOST ENLIST VAN DYKE PARKS, R. CRUMB TO GET ‘SPOOKED’ ON BAND’S EIGHTH CD, OUT ON FEB. 21, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Since forming 20 years ago, Marley’s Ghost has built a singular reputation among discerning roots-music lovers for its ultra-tight four-part harmonies, instrumental virtuosity and animated live performances. On Spooked, the band’s eighth album, yet its first to receive a full-fledged national release (on Sage Arts Records through Ryko Distribution), Marley’s Ghost creates a musically sophisticated, thematically rich piece of work that serves as a belated coming-out party for a band that deserves to be more widely heard.
The album, slated for release February 21, 2006, bears the stamp of two legendary figures whose idiosyncratic skills match up beautifully with the band’s own — composer/arranger/player Van Dyke Parks, who jumped at the chance to produce, and cartoonist R. Crumb, who illustrated the package.
According to Van Dyke Parks, “I simply tried to strengthen the group’s conviction. For example, I insisted they do things to bring enunciation to the parts they played. We’d double guitar parts using techniques I’d learned from people like Brian Wilson. I dragged these guys through the production mud. I’ve never worked harder or had more fun on a record.”
For the album, recorded at the Sage Arts Studio on the rustic banks on “an unpronounceable river” in Washington state, Parks brought in such renowned players as guitarist Bill Frisell, bassist Buell Neidlinger, and drummer Don Heffington to complement the core band on select tracks. With the goal of delivering an album “that will have some degree of permanence,” Parks became an auxiliary band-member himself, playing piano, Hammond B-3 organ, marimba and chimes. “I got to be the fifth wheel and enjoyed it immensely,” he says.
One of the reference points for Spooked was Ry Cooder’s self-titled 1970 debut, which Parks arranged and co-produced. Another was The Band’s 1968 landmark, Music From Big Pink. The album contains 12 originals that range from such deftly witty and satirical compositions as “Get Off the Track,” “Last Words,” “There’s Religion in Rhythm” and “The Ballad of Johnny Hallyday” to touches of stone country (“High Walls”), white gospel (“”Last Words,” “Old Time Religion”) and the Stephen Foster-steeped “Love, Not Reason.” The band also covers Bob Dylan’s “Wicked Messenger” and the Civil War-era “Sail Away, Ladies,” which salutes the album’s closing track, “Seaman’s Hymn.”
The front cover, illustrated by R. Crumb, depicts a decidedly “spooked” Marley’s Ghost. The back cover depicts the same band spellbound and transformed, smiling upwards at an intertwined mermaid and devil. Marley’s Ghost member Dan Wheetman used to be in Crumb’s Cheap Suit Serenaders. Crumb is a fan of Marley's Ghost’s music.
Marley’s Ghost is comprised of Dan Wheetman (vocals, bass, rhythm guitar, fiddle, harmonica, banjo, Dobro and lap steel), Jon Wilcox (vocals, mandolin, rhythm guitar, guitar, bouzouki), Mike Phelan (vocals, lead guitar, fiddle, Dobro, bass and lap steel) and Ed Littlefield Jr. (vocals, pedal steel guitar, Highland bagpipes, keyboards, mandolin, Dobro and lead guitar). They make their homes along the West Coast variously between Northern California and Washington state.
The band will embark on a U.S. tour in spring 2006 to help spread Spooked across the nation.
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