Monday, July 12, 2010

More "Royal Applebaums" secrets

Ha, ha, sorry everyone but, after the last post I totally realized I left out a few things. So, here they are:

When the record was recorded, that week was very eventful and one of the things that happened (and a keen ear can hear it in the leanings of some of the music here) is that I was dealing with the sudden happening of my dog, King Ramses, having to be put down. In that...well, the album is bittersweet to me.

Jordan's being in town slightly coincided with McDonald's release of its Sweet Tea so, the line on Midnight Love at 2 am "I need you in my life like sweet tea" was literally because of his obsession with the drink at that time. We had a few trips to get some, thats for sure.

There's a track called Day to Day that didn't make this record, for whatever reason, with a 18-20 bar verse of mine that I can actually rap at any moment, off the top. My friend Noah, at the time, was around so, we allowed him to get in on singing the chorus, which he did off the top of his head and without writing it down. It was fun and, to be honest, I've no idea how it DIDN'T make it on the record.

Originally, we wanted to call the group, "Conduct Lionhardt and Jordan Santana will blow you to Smithereens," or, "the Smithereens." Didn't take long for us, however, to discover a group that went by the name already so, we went back to the drawing board or, in this case, to some stuff that influence us. Big nod to the film "Royal Tannenbaums" for being so awesome and quirky. Thus, we re-christened ourselves the Royal Applebaums. Like a hip hop version of Gene Hackman and Danny Glover. (bet Jordan might put that in a future verse...)

The album cover is my sketchy take on the Original art for the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, from early cover art for Alice in Wonderland. I had this idea (and I will eventually do more than just some random Spider-Man villain images I've done for my nephew) to draw with a pencil and white on brown paper bags. I set out to do that with this cover but, I really messed up by leaving all my art stuff behind in Pittsburgh, as this cover wasn't drawn until my trip to Arizona last year. Ha, ha. So, while there, I went and got some colored pencils and some construction paper (since I couldn't find something akin to brown paper bag there) and did that with 2 different browns, peach, and white. Amazingly, it doesn't look that bad to me...but its far from what I envisioned. The paper bag adds this grainy old look and I can strip the image a bit to make it look like a worn cover. Alas, should have, could haves... But, take note of how freaked out I made Jordan on the image, with me winking to him as to say, "Yeah, it is trippy but it will be okay, dun son."

So yeah, that was the extra bits. Hope you enjoyed them. Next post will be about...something else!


- Conduct Lionhardt

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