Another one off the old editing hard drive, from the night in the fall of 2009 whenever Curt Vernon last came to visit. One more after this one.
This is “Onward Christian Soldiers,” which is the one song in this batch you might already know, and which most people know as a very loud hymn with a marching cadence and a lot of brass behind it. Curt does not do that. He plays it slow, alone, on an acoustic guitar in a parking lot, and it turns into a completely different song. Same words. Nothing else the same.
The setup here is the same as the rest of the Parking Lot Sessions, because it all happened on one night. One streetlight, closed storefronts a long way off in the background, a friend sitting off to the side, and black and white because there was nowhere near enough light for anything else. I set up, he played, and I never asked for a second take on any of these.
Something I’ve thought about a lot since: whenever you’re filming somebody who’s actually good, the temptation is to add stuff. Move the camera, cut faster, find an angle. The right call almost always turns out to be sitting still and letting them finish.
Curt’s full album is free to download, and it’s on his page here along with the rest of these recordings. There’s also the music video I shot for “I’m A Rebel Bride”, if you want to see him with an actual lighting setup for once. The other two from this night are “Rebel Bride” and “Pornography Will Murder You”.