Lyrix Xchange

Since I'm in charge of producing the cover for this recording, it becomes my duty to explain what exactly goes on herein or, as some might say, what went wrong. I had been hoping to manage some type of collaboration with Mr. Caleb Fraid since first meeting him at a typically rambunctious Charlie McAlister performance for which he was a supporting act several years ago. Together we have schemed the McAlister tribute tape and Caleb's Doormal label released my wildly ignored Four Hankie Triumph, but the many miles separating Texas and South Carolina made any true meaning of creative minds seem hopeless. Hence this “splitter”, a compromise between the traditional art of the split tape and a joint effort at songwriting across several states. The idea, of course, was to send lyrics (ideally unfamiliar ones) for which the other artist would compose music and record the finished product. This seemed like an ideal use for the remnants of our previous, unfinished attempt at an instrumental splitter; we could simply make the other's lyrics fit into these already recorded tracks. However, while I can't speak directly for Fraidy, I quickly discovered that I would have to work almost entirely from scratch to suit the particular rhythms offered up by these words. And anyway, his lyrics were just too good to waste as fodder for a recycling job. In fact, only one song on the Holt side contains music that was previously recorded. And I'll never tell. Ultimately. I was happy that the project become more absorbing. Working within the limitation of another musician's word patterns forces the creative process into different directions and the songs presented here work quite differenty from our usual independent work. If you are a musician, regardless of the quality of our efforts, the lyrix xchange project goes highly recommended as a respite from the standard self-indulgence of us artistic types. Ashley Holt