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“Mos maiorum” means “the time-honored traditions of the ancestors” in the Latin of the ancient Romans. I thought it a good name for an album of songs in traditional American styles.
Except for Crazy ‘Bout You, Baby and Sweet Young Thing, both of which I wrote in Austin, Texas, I wrote all of these songs around the same time, at home, on a little, borrowed, nylon-string acoustic guitar, the same one I use on the recording. I liked the way it sounded, I could really strum up a storm on it, and, turned up loud, it sounds very percussive, making for a good beat that is easy to dance to, sans drums. The plan was to record an album of simple, to-the-point roots music, rockabilly, blues, folk, country (plus quasi-calypso, as it turns out).
In keeping with the simplicity of the music, we kept the recording complexity to a minimum. Mike Perkin sat me down in front of his studio soundboard with two microphones and went back upstairs to watch TV. I think I pumped all the songs out in a day, maybe two at the most.
In concert with the simplicity theme, the album cover is minimal, a drawing of The Ancient Temple of the Mos Maiorum and some words.
Ramona
Ramona is blues without a turnaround in form, rockabilly in style. The solo incorporates a riff I stole from my friend and Austin band-mate California Jeff Kile’s version of Fannie Mae. It is always a joy when you get to use phrases like “St. Vitus’ Dance,” “ants in the pants,” “ballin’ the jack,” and “jumpin’ bean” in a song. I like to play it at blazing tempos, or faster if possible. I learned the blazing tempo thing from punk bands at the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco. Blazing tempos were what I liked about punk. They lost me when they started grinding the tempos down to a middling-to-slow drag.
Crazy ‘Bout You, Baby
This blues brings back memories: East Austin, Texas, sitting on next-door neighbor Texas bluesman Hank Drury’s porch and gobbling his personally-formulated-barbeque-sauce-slathered ribs, California Jeff Kile’s James Cotton/Norton Buffalo harmonica wailing amidst the parti-colored candles shaped like armadillos that he hand-crafted and sold at a table down on Sixth Street for spending money, the watermelon trucks, the sunflowers, the bluebell, the Indian paintbrush, swimming in the Pedernales. I think the lyrics might have to do with Hank’s perception of his domestic situation or something, I don’t know.
Why She Loves Me
This is a punch-line song about an incorrigible reprobate and the woman who loves him. The verse uses that good old Jailhouse Rock-ish stop-time, but the chorus is a kind of rockabilly Robert Johnson, if such a hippogriff were permissible. In the middle, the written-out, 12-bar-style solo creates a whole nother song with alternate chord voicings.
Pass Round the Bottle
I always liked songs about passing bottles round in colloquy. This one celebrates that eternal wondering about the one that got away so many are prone to in their cups. Odd how, even in this our day and age, age of jet travel and mass communication though it may be, when somebody moves away, that’s generally all she wrote. My direct inspiration was that bass riff and chord thing that Elvis does while singing One Night With You on that segment of his 1968 TV Comeback Special where he sits in a circle with his friends and plays old songs, the drummer keeping the beat on the back of a guitar case. I recommend it.
Long Gone
The inspiration for this song came from an old hillbilly I used to know in Nashville, Tennessee who was always saying, “I’ll tell you what.” In another case of accidental word-painting, the blazing tempo, it seems, recapitulates the speed with which the speaker of the song wishes to skedaddle. On the other hand, I would have played it at blazing tempo even if the lyrics didn’t fit. By piling a bunch of my favorite cliches all on top of each other like that, humor is intended.
You’ve Got to Take that Freight Train
I always like to include a one-chord song, although somebody told me once You’ve Got to Take that Freight Train has three chords. Passing chords is my retort. Passing chords. I don’t know what got me started listing state products. I vaguely recall a chapter in a 4th grade textbook about state export industries: New Jersey truck farms, Arkansas rice bogs, and so on. I know, I have uranium in there, and I am inordinately un-fond of uranium, especially riding the rails in a boxcar next to a load of it. But uranium rhymes with titanium. What could I do?
Sweet Young Thing
This is the other blues song I wrote in Austin, Texas. Texas is known for its Miss Americas, and I was inspired by some young women in the milieu who were so popular they started fights. Everywhere they went they were forever surrounded by a pack of yapping, emulous dogs. In emulation of the pack, the whole band used to come in in unison on the chorus. I always liked when the big bands used to do that, put down their horns and chime in on the vocals. Ray Charles’s Granny Wasn’t Grinnin’ comes to mind.
If There’s One Thing
If There’s One Thing started out as an instrumental that I later added lyrics, chorus and bridge to, a kind of Maybelle Carter/Buddy Holly chord/melody guitar riff that really rumbles on that old nylon-string. The lyrics’ theme is the time-honored “stupid me” one of Sam Cooke’s Wonderful World. In my defense, I am not the only one who cannot tell Crockett from Boone—in view of the fact that they’re both Fess Parker anyway.
On Account of My Heart
I originally thought of this as a sort of minor-key folk-blues/garage-band song. Garage-band because it is a chaconne like Louie, Louie. I was trying to learn some Robert Johnson songs at the time, and I noticed, for all the attention given to his guitar-playing, his vocal style, with all that swooping up and down and abrupt changes of register, is just as worthy of study. Which worthy vocal style then bled into the melody I devised for On Account of My Heart, the most difficult vocal on the album. It may not sound difficult. But it is. I spent a lot of time on the road around the time I wrote the lyrics, and sometimes it is my experience that a long highway drive through night-time America can leave one feeling a little bleak.
All Night Long, Maryanne
Strumming away like a self-pitchforked demon, my guitar style on All Night Long, Maryanne is hardly calypso. Nor ska nor highlife either. But whatever it is the guitar is up to, the lyrics partake of the cheerful spirit of Caribbean song. A lot of it. Bordering on the deliriously ecstatic. I don’t remember doing it deliberately, but the chaconne on I-IV-V changes and the inverse-pyramid harmony entrances on the dominant crescendo would indicate a certain debt to Twist and Shout.
Ted Silar 