ALL THE PROCEEDS FROM THIS EP WILL BENEFIT SERVICE WORKERS COALITION!!
Amish Records presents Model Songs (AMI053), Jim McHugh’s (SUNWATCHERS, DARK MEAT) latest solo effort. This EP builds on a series of benefit releases McHugh has issued throughout the tumultuous summer of 2020. Recorded in his Brooklyn apartment during the Covid-19 quarantine, Model Songs reflects the isolation many experienced during the pandemic. As a collection of cover songs, however, McHugh’s recordings also articulate a shared sense of loneliness and yearning for a collective experience that has been lost during this global emergency.
During the early days of Covid, McHugh writes, “I felt driven to record, but was too overwhelmed to generate the exploratory focus necessary to create original music. Engaging with songs I’ve loved for decades moved me from my bed and made me want to stay alive. Memorizing D. Boon lyrics and improving my Travis-picking went a long way toward keeping me out of perpetual nosedive. The practice kept me healthy, vigilant and responsive.”
Echoing McHugh, Model Songs means two things. First, these recordings recall the experience of building model airplanes, or playing with a post-war erector set; establishing new circuits of connection, making and creating to help the hours disappear and to complete something constructive, however flawed or innovative in design.
Secondly, this project more obviously engages the complex impact of role models, especially for artists and musicians. Quoting McHugh, “these figures I found in the dollar-bins of my youth widened my small-town world perspective, revealing movements beyond the mores of my rinky-dink cultural postage stamp. As much as they enthralled and altered me with their rebellious energies, the true spiritual gravity of our first favorite records lies in how they make concrete the exhilarating hyper-specifics of new ways-of-being: they tell us we are not alone, that the cities teem with freaks and lifers, and you’ll find them someday - but, in the meantime, you’ve got shit to do: figure out how to make this stuff your own….become a musician.”
“Crucial to the depths of these impressions, of course, is the age at which we make our defining discoveries: our limited and clammy adolescence, when we feel both paralyzed and emboldened by a burgeoning awareness-of-self at odds with our lives thus far; this is when we first encounter that mixture of loneliness, paranoia, and lack of wherewithal we come to recognize as alienation. It makes perfect sense that I would turn instinctively to these songs as the quarantine began. Of course, the alienation we are experiencing during the pandemic is different in both degree and kind from that associated with growing up. During many sleepless nights when I was recording, tho, as the burgeoning awareness of our city's struggles clashed loudly with its very-recent past, I would seek shelter in these songs.”
TRACKLISTING
1. Little Man With A Gun In His Hand (Minutemen)
2. Hello Cruel World (Mekons)
3. My Rifle, My Pony & Me (Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson)
4. Beautiful Things (3Ds)
5. Something Extra (Roky Erickson)
CREDITS:
Jim McHugh: All vocals and instruments
Brigid Dawson: Vocals on "Hello Cruel World"
Colin Langenus: Phased guitar on "Something Extra"
All songs arranged, recorded and mixed by JMM at his apartment in BK during the Covid-19 quarantine, March 16 - May 15, 2020.
“Hello Cruel World" was initially tracked by Jon Erickson as a last-minute duet during the summer of 2018 when Sunwatchers backed Brigid Dawson for her Ballet of Apes (Castle Face, 2020). During the shutdown, JMM rerecorded and rearranged vocals, added keyboard and remixed those basic tracks.
Jon Erickson: Mastering; major mixing assistance on tracks 2 & 5
Drawing of JMM by E.A. Bethea
Layout by Elizabeth Hindman Harvery
Service Workers Coalition is a grassroots Mutual Aid Fund, and now incorporated Non-Profit Organization, that has mobilized to respond to the evolving needs of laid off hospitality workers throughout the COVID-19 crisis. The central action of SWC is grocery stipends … We also offer delivery of those supplies if a worker is quarantined for any reason, or does not have access to a bank account, which is needed for wire transfer of the stipend. We are also offering to facilitate harm-reduction supply access and coordinate wellness check-ins and other mental health services remotely.
We prioritize workers who are undocumented, are refugees, don't have bank accounts, have fallen ill, or have been unable to access unemployment benefits […]
Mutual aid is much more than just giving people things or even money … It’s an act of care that helps create new social relations in order to survive. When you give to SWC, you are supporting each other, if you are a service worker yourself, for no reason other than to overcome the alienation that has become common in our society, in our labor and in our other communities.