"I saw a man fall through the street at Leavenworth and Eddy," begins "Five on the Dime," the first song on Noe Venable's, No Curses Here. It's just one in a seemingly endless supply of images from Venable's treasure chest of creativity.
"I've always been interested in songs that tell stories," she says. "Songs that make you an active participant, that demand something of your imagination, that demand you to fill in some holes."
Venable (yes, she was named after Noe Street in SF) has created some delicious holes to fall through on her album--her sweet voice guides the listener through a world of jackals and highway diners, characters such as The Man With the Disease and The Starboy Coming Soon. Venable herself says much of the album "takes place in abandoned places, bars after hours, streets after dark, train tracks after floral conquest and insect ritual."
While No Curses Here is her first major release, in 1996 Venable and guitarist Tom Meshishnek recorded an independently-produced CD titled You Talkin' to Me? The album was a truly home-grown affair: "A lot of the drums were pots and pans," says Venable. "There was one song where we wanted to have a blender on it, but we were never able to get the right sound out of the blender, so it didn't happen. I've never felt that the song really works, because it's missing the blender."
Blender or not, the CD impressed Lee Townsend, who has produced albums for artists such as Pat Metheney and John Abercrombie. "I liked the sensibility [of her songs]," says Townsend. "There's some obliqueness and mystery in there." Townsend approached Venable about assembling a band and recording an album for the Intuition Music & Media label, and No Curses Here was born.
Recalling their first meeting, Venable says, "Lee leaned across the table and said, 'So, what would your ideal ensemble be?' I said, 'Let's see, I'd like bassoon, bass clarinet, tuba, maybe some violins, viola...' He said, 'Uh, what would your scaled down idea of an ensemble be?' I said, 'Well, first we need a bassist and a drummer.'"
"Noe's so prolific, one part of the process that was really interesting was to whittle down her catalog of songs into something that would tell a story ... something that would paint a picture of who she is, musically," says Townsend.
Venable continues to expand her imagination and her horizons. In addition to performing solo and with her band, she's working on a piece of musical theater that she describes as "a junk-opera freak show."
"Just about everything around us is developing at the expense of our imagination," she says. "Everything around you is telling you to fall into this deep and deadly sleep. Songwriting has helped me to find that things are really pretty fuckin' exciting."
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