There’s not much in the world of Americana music that sounds quite like Jake Duda. He and his band, which consists of numerous family members, exist in a world of raucous and rich sounds.
It’s the sheer variety of sounds that make his debut effort De Soto so interesting. His banjo playing is at various times accompanied by a squeezebox, a tuba, a glockenspiel, and a cello. There’s also squealing pigs, a flushing toilet, and a verse that’s as loud and distorted as the one you’d find on a metal record. The variety of instruments Duda employs reflect the rich musical heritage found along the Mississippi River, even towards its northernmost points. The collection of harsh sounds and sharp notes work together with Duda’s at times rough vocals to create a sense of chaos and anguish that is difficult to replicate.
Some tracks are more peaceful. “One Last Shot” gets close to sounding like something Mumford and Sons could’ve pulled off had they used their infectious guitar and banjo riffs to fuel a bluegrass career and not arena rock stardom. On “Pernilla,” a track named for cousins’ grandmother, Ernster makes the bold decision to have Duda’s vocals essentially sing background to a dominant string section. It’s warm, unexpected, and above all, it works.
Lyrically, De Soto pushes fewer boundaries. The album is steeped in the traditional murder ballads, blue-collar laments, tales of outlaws on the run, and hard drinking songs so crucial to the history of American folk music. That’s not to say the lyrics have no impact. Some of Duda’s more violent imagery (“I’ll steal your hand and the blood from your arm”) pairs especially well with the band’s frenzied playing and the aforementioned harsh sounds. By the time standout track and callous reflection on murder “She Gon” throws squealing pigs into the mix, it’s as disquieting as any slasher flick.
Still, it’s lyrics about booze that are most memorable. In “Bathroom Bartender,” the singer confesses to doing most of his praying in a bathroom stall, presumably because he’s already forced to be on his knees to vomit. “Doin’ It Wrong” finds a man willing to admit to himself that he’s lost control of his life, yet he still gets defensive when his mother nudges him to do something about it. Sure both tracks seem to exaggerate some details, but their underlying concepts feel painfully honest.
Glide’s Trevor Christian spoke with Duda and learned a couple of remarkable details about the making of this album, including how he wound up being listed in the album credits as playing “guitar and toilet on “Bathroom Bartender.””
Your new album Desoto just came out and it’s one that’s almost entirely about booze, crime, and debauchery in general, so just how hard are you living it up by the Great Lakes?
I’m just getting by day by day. There are some late nights. But you know, just trying to live next to the Mississippi River and do as they did back in the old days.
So these stories are not exactly personally inspired?
A little bit of both. You know some are tales of late night bar hops and then some are just something that came to me just from living in a river town and just from hearing some of those stories.
I know you come from the midwest but I hear an awful lot of Cajun influences in your music.
Yeah. With a lot of it mainly just play the banjo and harmonica. I do like some of that old Cajun music and those old medicine show-style performances. So I mean you can say that some of that influence got into some of the songs.
Now, most people I know when they’re busting their musical influences probably don’t have their grandmother at age 97 on the list.
Yeah. That’s true. That’s true. Grandma Pernilla. So she was a big influence on me. She was playing throughout her whole career. She played piano, accordion, and glockenspiel type stuff. She was touring around through her 90s with a group of older ladies called the Granny Band. So I got to see them play a bunch of times. Also in the band is my cousin Matty, who even helped me produce this record. She was such a big influence on both of us.
Give some credit to Matty because I think that that is one of the more brilliant albums in terms of production I’ve heard this year. You play around with some really harsh sounds at least in terms of what you normally hear in the Americana world in this day and age. So how did screamed lyrics and pig squealing make it onto this album and how did I wind up liking it so much?
Me and Matt would do some field recordings here and there. There were some that I was out in Northern Wisconsin at a cabin with some friends and we got some different sounds around the lake. And then Matty was out in South Dakota with some his younger nephews who have a pig farm and got some good squeals from them. We just were playing around with them and we’re like that’s too perfect. So you know we put it in there and it worked out pretty well.
You definitely are the only band I’ve ever heard that goes with a 10-second toilet flush on a track.
Oh, that was a one time take too, we recorded that one live. And yeah it was in the next room over. Mattie was recording it. Somehow we have the mic to get a good toilet sound and we had good timing on a scene to work out pretty well.
You’re telling me that the toilet flush was part of the live take?
It was. It fit perfect. So I’ll take the credit for the toilet flushes, but with the direction that Matt gave me. And yeah they were perfect for the Bathroom Bartender song. I wound up writing that line that says ‘in the bathroom stall’ and I was like ‘we need to get some toilet flushes in here.’ And it worked out.
You also — more than most vocalists — there are tracks when your lead vocal seems to be more of a background type of vocal and the music takes center stage. How did that decision come about?
Well just we do the best we can with what we have and most of my lyrics. Some of the songs are a little bit rowdier, especially live where we’re playing fast and loud and you usually got to get the vocals out over the playing and so usually it is some screaming and louder, raspier stuff. But just there is no rhyme or reason behind it, it’s just how it sounds.
And finally, correct me if I’m wrong, but you did a couple of takes on the traditional murder ballad on this album.
I don’t know what it was. I wrote most of the songs in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, which is where I was living at the time and working at an old brewery down there. Living for a while in an old river town like LaCrosse, you got to hear a lot of those older dark stories about murder ballads and I was intrigued by them and ended up writing one called De Soto and another one called She Gon’ and I don’t know where they came from but we wrote them and they ended up turning out pretty good.
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