Cotton Mather - Cotton is Still King!
by Kent H. Benjamin

Cotton Mather has made exponential leaps in their music over the last few years, releasing several indie label albums that have garnered raves in the British press. Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis heard their 1997 album Kon-Tiki , pronounced it the best new album in the world, and invited the band to open for them in Europe. Yet back home in the so-called "Live Music Capital of the World" of Austin, Texas, they are basically ignored by the local music press, and play to no more than a few dozen loyal fans at their blindingly good shows. A US deal for the new album, The Big Picture (released in the UK last November on Rainbow Quartz) is pending, and maybe at long last, they'll achieve long-overdue recognition in their own country.

The story of the band has never really been told in detail, but here tis, as nearly as it can be recounted in a short space. They'vecome from indie art-rock backgrounds to become one of the most brilliant pop/rock bands in America. Robert Harrison, a terrific lead singer who's often compared to John Lennon, has developed into one of the most interesting writers around. And with his long-time partner, Whit Williams, on lead guitar and the band's secret weapon, an unassuming man who's a great guitarist in a town chock full of em, Dana Myzer on drums and backing vocals, and bassist Josh Gravelin, Harrison finally has assembled his dream band.

Harrison moved to Austin from Auburn, Alabama in the mid 1980's, formed an art-rock duo with a cellist and called the band Cotton Mather, after the Puritan historical figure. They soon recorded some demos. There was a tape called The Early Sermons.' That wasn't a rock band as such. It was just me and cellist Matt Shelton, and we got some other people to back us. We were together for a year, and played a little bit. I was completely naive in what I wanted to do play music like Fred Frith. Really jarring and interesting and obtuse.I met Matt and we started working on this very oddball stuff. Then at one point I started to break up with this girl who was making my life a living hell, and started to write all these pop songs. I had this change of heart, and when I started to write these songs, something moretrue about my nature came out. It wasn't completely cerebral. There was some heart, there was some melody, some harmony. I began to discover that oh, okay, maybe I'm not just about trying to impress people with how weird and intellectual I was.'

I met this bass player named Matt Hovis and we became close friends. So we formed a little group, got into CMJ and went up to New York, and had about a year's worth of adventures, recorded some demos, then broke up. Then about a year later I started putting together another group, a rock combo. [The promotional album] Crafty Flower Arranger was made by just me and Matt Hovis, we couldn't find a guitar player and a drummer. The drummer on the recordis Kevin Whitley, who was the drummer for Ed Hall. But we couldn't get him into Cotton Mather full-time, because he really wanted to front his own band, which became the Cherubs.

A friend referred him to Whit Williams, coincidentally from Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Harrison remembers: "When I first met Whit, I gave him a cassette with some of the songs. Then when we met in person, he said he didn't have his guitar with him. I asked him if he'd played any of the songs, and he said no.' So I thought, maybe we should wait a few more days, because I didn't want to audition him when he didn't know the material. But he said, I think I got it.' Not having played any of this stuff before, he sat down and said,do you want me to play the part that's in the left speaker, or the part that's in the right speaker?' He had it all in his head, absolutely note perfect. He has perfect pitch. He's a true musician. So I thought to myself, okay, I think we might have somebody we can work with here.' We found Whit and Greg Thibeaux and made Cotton Is King. We didn't have a band name, and went through a horrible list of names and finally decided to use my last band's name. So that's where the confusion comes in. I still run into people in Austin who say oh yeah, the cello band.'

Cotton Is King was released by indie label Elm Records. Harrison continues the story: Elm was owned by a very reputable publishing company called Windswept Pacific. Some really good guys who thought that doing an indie label would be up their street. But I don't think they understood the market, and I don't think they understood the band. They closed their doors months after they did our album.

The experience with Elm taught Harrison and Williams a hard-earned lesson. Harrison explains: Bands forget who they are, and start listening to what others think they should be. They start listening to the suits. I thought I'd written some good songs, I had some good friends playing with me, and we tried very hard. And that's the thing. We tried too hard. You can't make good rock records when you try too hard. Rock 'n' roll is about feeling and inspiration, being who you are. Not about trying too hard to achieve something. The real eye-opener was when we were touring, and it just became kind of ridiculous. Audiences were not being won over. Money was being blown like mad. We stayed for six days at the Sir Francis Drake hotel in San Francisco. Each man had his own Nintendo machine. And we were going to play two shows, for about 30 people. This was insane. It was an indie label that didn't understand they were an indie label. They didn't run it like Spinart does Ü four guys in a van and a fleabag motel. Here's $400 for your tour support. Have a good time. We'll see you in seven months.'

We came out of that experience, and I began to write a great deal. Not long after that, we started recording with a series of local producers with this really good band, sidemen, really. Dana wasn't sure where he stood with joining the group, and neither was George. They both loved the band, but couldn't do it full-time. And I didn't like the way the recordings were sounding. They sounded a little bit telegraphed, artificial, they didn't sound heartfelt. I had a good conversation with a friend of mine, Dave McNair, who suggested I produce myself.

Harrison and Williams began to record what became Kon-Tiki. He remembers: I went to a country house where Joe McDermott had a little recording studio where he made children's records. He had a little ADAT, and I had a 4-track. We had one microphone, one compressor, and one pre-amp. And we made Kon-Tiki that way. I began to upgrade some of my equipment when Joe's wife had a baby, and he had to shut down the studio. We had to finish the record at my house. I bought a few pieces of gear and we finished it on the 4-track. That record was made strictly because we wanted to make it. We didn't have a label, we weren't trying to impress anybody. We had had a difficult couple of years of knocking around in the music industry, disappointed in how our dreams were working out, and it was kind of a reclamation of passion and identity. Dana plays on a few tracks, Darin Murphy plays drums on Church Of Wilson and My Before And After. George Reiff is on bass.Kon-Tiki had a real sense of being a collaboration between a bunch of friends. There was something about that project that felt kind of guided; it felt like we couldn't do anything wrong when we were making it. It's a feeling I haven't felt before or since. I've heard that about some of the best records; that they make themselves, and you just try to get out of the way. That record was like that. It was really fun to make. We were just laughing through the whole thing.

In Nashville, producer Brad Jones fashioned the pieces of Kon-Tiki into a coherent album. Harrison laughingly remembers: The joke was that we make songs and then bury them in the back yard. We're never going to put this record out.' I would occasionally stay and do little board mixes out there. After we did the Badfinger tribute album (on Houston's Copper Records), label owner Darrell Clingman wanted to hear some of the material we were working on. I literally had a grocery sack of tapes, with some rough labeling on them. I told Darrell what my dilemma was Ü that I thought I'd made a record, but I didn't know how to turn all the tapes into an album. He said I know the guy who can do it, but let me come up and hear it.' And he listened, loved it and really believed in it. He put me in touch with Brad, who immediately called me back and said he wanted to do the record.

So I showed up at Brad's studio with my grocery bag of tapes, and bless his heart Ü he thought he was getting masters. Brad is the classic guy who, if you give him chickenshit, he'll make chicken salad. As we began to work on it, he had a few production ideas. Like on Homefront Cameo, we added a new beginning that was taped on a microcassette, which came out just wonderful. He said I think the song needs one more chorus.' I said I don't think it needs one more chorus, but I'll sleep on it.' We were just getting to know each other. So I came to him and said okay, I'll do one more chorus, but it has to be at the beginning, and we have to do it on a microcassette.' And he said I love it. Go pick up that guitar right there.' And I'm in the kitchen of the studio, in my boxers and t-shirt, having just woken up. He put this Gretsch electric guitar in my hand, and said sit down. Play it. You're on. This is the beginning of the song.' That's why you hear at the beginning of the song , if you turn it up, you can hear me fumbling and going wait a minute.'Then there are songs like Vegetable Row, Camp Hill Rail Operator, and My Before And After that were done, he simply mixed those and did a great job with them."

Cotton Mather was so satisfied with the process of making Kon-Tiki that commercial success was not that important to them. Harrison suggests that's the important thing Üprocess. We'd been focused before on the product, not the process. Within the process is the art, and within the art is our humanity and our reason for doing this. The whole record is a joyous celebration of the process. That's why you hear all the squeaks and blips. It's a conscious attempt to reveal the unconscious aspects of record-making, and put that on display. And part of the process was to say, well, we've made the most unlikely record ever, and we have to put it out with the most unlikely person we know.' I made one call for who to put out Kon-Tiki, and it was Darrell. I thought if it was really meant to be, it'll take off from there. So it was a little bit of throwing caution to the wind, but I don't regret it at all. Once Darrell put it out, we shopped the record to literally every label in the country and no one was interested. We had one major who wanted to put it out, but they wanted us to re-record it. And I think that's why the record had a grassroots appeal, because it was rather in defiance of the way records are recorded. But from his position, it would be difficult to go into a board meeting and ask for $200,000 for a budget for a new record to be recorded when you had a record that was made for $400. Because that's what it cost Ü $400 plus Brad's fee.

Meanwhile, Rainbow Quartz, a New York indie label, released Kon-Tiki in England and Europe to significant critical acclaim. Noel and Liam Gallagher of Oasis became huge fans. Creation/PopTones founder Alan McGee raved about the band. To keep the band in the public eye while recording a new album, Rainbow Quartz suggested they re-record the lead-off track to Cotton Is King, I Lost My Motto, which had become an audience favorite. It ended up on the seven-song EP Hotel Baltimore. They also contributed a terrific version of Don't Bother Me, the 1964 George Harrison song, to a UK promo album called Chartbusters. The song sounds for all the world like Revolver-era Lennon singing one of George's best songs.

With Dana Myzer now a committed full-time member, the addition of Josh Gravelin on bass has given Cotton Mather a stability and group sound it never had before. They've toured around the world, including some shows opening for Oasis. Says Harrison about the experience, we weren't really big fans of Oasis before that. We'd heard all the nice things they said about us in the press, and it really meant a lot to us. I can't say that I know Noel and Liam well, but they were just super nice to us every time we played with them. Noel and I mainly talked about music. We kind of bonded as songwriters who make our own home demos and are the songwriters for our bands. He asked me a lot about how I recorded this song and that song. So we did have a lot in common, oddly enough.

The Big Picture displays a band in the full peak of their powers, and one listen immediately makes it apparent why they are capable of opening for Oasis. Recorded again mostly at Harrison's home studio, with some work done in Nashville with Brad Jones, the sound is aided immeasurably by their touring experience. Several tracks match the fiery power of I Lost My Motto, especially Marathon Man, which echoes Oasis' Live Forever in Williams' scorching guitar solos (Harrison explains that yes, he did write the song with Oasis in mind, either as a tribute for them, or as something they might one day want to record). It's basically a concept album, in which a friend of Harrison's who lived a rock n' roll lifestyle and didn't make it is fictionalized and eulogized, because Harrison could see in his friend what path his own life might've taken had he not found new love and had a child. It opens with furious rock n' roll, and ends up with, well, the character having found redemption. Not unlike Jimmy at the end of Quadrophenia.

Harrison concludes: Cotton Mather has certainly never engaged in self sabotage but we have made self preservation a high priority. I've always sought to balance the integrity of the music with the demands of the profession. None of us are naturally adept at self-promotion and that is a serious shortcoming in the world of rock music. So I create the terms of my own success and I make music with my best friends. What could be more successful? Image has always been a bit of an obstacle. One also has to be willing to offer a false self to the world which can be eaten like a Snickers. As much as the kid in me wanted many days to wake up and find that I'd become David Bowie or Lou Reed or Elvis Costello overnight, it just wasn't in my nature. I can and will continue to make meaningful, contemporary and immediate art, don't get me wrong. But in order for us to become superstars, a paradigm shift of the largest order would need to take place in the world. I'm not ruling that out. We're living in interesting times and I'm willing to break new ground.

back to top