Christian Kiefer

Artist Erik Werner has been hard at work designing a video for “Washington Dreams of the Hippopotamus” from Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies.  The best news for us who are not directly involved is that he has a great, funny video blog happening over at the production’s website: www.dreamofthehippo.com.  Check it out!

In case Erik’s name doesn’t ring a bell: If you have the Prez book, he’s the guy who did the cardboard-suited Hayes.  & the Washington video follows suit: All animated and puppeteered cardboard and crayons.  WTF indeed!

And one more interview, this one with our friends at Capitol Public Radio’s Insight.  Long and detailed, with lots of song clips from the project.  More to come!

Crowtown Episode 33

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any Crowtown Podcasts, but it feels like it’s about time.  Plus, this one is extra fun: an interview that Matthew, Jefferson, and I did for NPR’s All Things Considered.  Damn right!

Crowtown Episode 32

Jefferson and I sit with the host of WNYC’s Soundcheck to discuss our Presidents project: Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies.  Oh hell yes!

Crowtown Episode 31

Yessiree!  Step right up and register to vote today for 15% off your Standard Recording order for Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies (or anything else Standard sells).  Just click here and follow the leftward link to get your 15% off coupon code.  Pick up our pals Everthus the Deadbeats or Marla Hansen while you’re at it.  Them’s good records that we like!

While I’m at it, if you’ve not heard the piece on NPR’s All Things Considered you can listen to it here.

We three Presidential songwriters, along with about 10 other musicians, played a gig a few weeks ago in Sacramento–a kind of local celebration of the release of Of Great and Mortal Men.  I took some of the proceeds of that gig and joined the National Organization for Women (NOW if you dig acronyms).

There are numerous reasons to do this–it’s an important organization for forwarding the rights of over half of the people on this planet: geniuses, scientists, writers, mothers, poets, wives, doctors, etc.  But more immediate for me is the knowledge that Jefferson, Matthew and I collected over 50 musicians together to put together Of Great and Mortal Men and I think there are only four women on the entire project.  That seems embarrassing to me.  (Not to mention that to my immediately knowledge there are no people of color whatsoever.)  One could make the argument, I suppose, that we wrote a bunch of songs about white men and hence the “casting” makes sense, but I still don’t like it, and I’d guess my co-writers have similar feelings on the issue.

In any case, there’s much a man can to do help, and this is just one way.  Apologies to women everywhere for our phallocentric representation of a phallocentric history.

If you’re interested in NOW, just click here.

American River College
Sacramento, CA
Tuesday, November 18, 12:15pm - 1:15pm
Location: Raef 160

Facilitator: Michael Spurgeon

Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies

Hosted by ARC English Professor Michael Spurgeon, Christian Kiefer and J. Matthew Gerken will discuss their new triple CD project: Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies, an indie rock romp through American history. They’ll also perform a few of songs from this project live with help from drummer (and Presidential trivia maniac) Chip Conrad. Nick Miller, in a feature article on the group in the September 4, 2008, Sacramento News and Review writes the project is “dynamic, both stylistically and thematically, exploring ambient, prog and funk while portending a darker view of U.S. history.”

This activity meets ARC goals 1, 4 and state PD guideline B.

Hey!  Jefferson, Matthew, & I spoke on Capitol Public Radio (Sacramento) show Insight today with the great David Watts Barton at the helm.  Listen in as we talk about all manner of Presidential songwriting madness (including clips and discussion of Ford, Jackson, L.B. Johnson, and Washington). 

Here’s the link for the archive.  We’re on second, after the super smart scientists discussing the Hadron Collider.  Yeow.

Link to Insight’s homepage here, in the advent that the link above is not working.  Thanks to Mark Jones, Jen Picard, and David Watts Barton (and the absent Jeffrey Callison) for having us on air.  Go team!

J. Matthew Gerken, Christian Kiefer, and Jefferson Pitcher

OF GREAT AND MORTAL MEN
43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies

Buy a Physical Copy!
Direct from the Label
Amazon

Buy a Digital Download!
iTunes
Amazon

TRACK LISTING
(sound clips available at the digital download sites linked above)

CD 1

1. George Washington (Washington Dreams of the Hippopotamus) feat. Vince DiFiore (of Cake)
2. John Adams (Armed with Only Wit and the Vigor of the U.S. Navy) feat. These United States
3. Thomas Jefferson (The Mouldboard of Least Resistance)
4. James Madison (Zinger)
5. James Monroe (The Last Cocked Hat) feat. Marla Hansen
6. John Quincy Adams (Death in the Speaker’s Room)
7. Andrew Jackson (Benevolence) feat. Califone
8. Martin Van Buren (The Little Magician) feat. Tom Brosseau
9. William Henry Harrison (So You Don’t Have To)
10. John Tyler (In Hindsight) feat. Bill Callahan (of Smog)
11. James Knox Polk (The Other Is Better / The Landscape to Transform) feat. Monahans
12. Zachary Taylor (Rough and Ready)
13. Millard Fillmore (The Proof Is in the Pudding)
14. Franklin Pierce (My Only Enemy Is Myself) feat. Stephen Yerkey

CD 2

1. James Buchanan (God Will Strike You Down) feat. Reid Maclean
2. Abraham Lincoln (Malice, Charity, and the Oath of God) feat. Wooden Wand
3. Andrew Johnson (Was Ever Alone?)
4. Ulysses Simpson Grant (Helicopters Above Oakland)
5. Rutherford Birchard Hayes (The Beard of God)
6. James Abram Garfield (Seven Months)
7. Chester Alan Arthur (The Epitome of Dignity)
8. Stephen Grover Cleveland (Bees and Honey) feat. Tetuzi Akiyama
9. Benjamin Harrison (Kid Gloves Hands Surplus to Big Sugar)
10. Stephen Grover Cleveland (Rubbermouth)
11. William McKinley (Czolgosz’s Dream) feat. Magnolia Summer
12. Theodore Roosevelt (The Sherman Act Does Not Care) feat. Dean Haakenson (of Be Brave Bold Robot)
13. William Howard Taft (There Was No Longer Use to Hide the Fact That It Was Gout)
14. Thomas Woodrow Wilson (A Life Among Men) feat. Jamie Stewart (of Xiu Xiu)

CD 3

1. Warren Gamaliel Harding (An Army of Pompous Phrases)
2. John Calvin Coolidge (On Silence) feat. Radar Bros.
3. Herbert Clark Hoover (Woe Is a Spoon-Shaped Heart)
4. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Illuminating the Bright Lines)
5. Harry S. Truman (Suits and Fine Trousers vs. Hiroshima) feat. Denison Witmer
6. Dwight David Eisenhower (When Ike Walked the Land) feat. Mark Kozelek and Alan Sparhawk
7. John Fitzgerald Kennedy (There Is No Plan)
8. Lyndon Baines Johnson (Ladybird Take Me Home) feat. Steve Dawson
9. Richard Milhous Nixon (2 Under Pay Off the Coast of Africa) feat. Tom Carter
10. Gerald Rudolph Ford (Now You See It, Now You Don’t See It)
11. James Earl Carter, Jr. (A Great Beam of Light) feat. Rosie Thomas
12. Ronald Reagan (Such a Marvelous Dream) feat. Califone
13. George Herbert Walker Bush (It Was Foreshadowed Here: The Beginning of the End)
14. William Jefferson Clinton (The Mighty Lion Will Not Roar Again)
15. George Walker Bush (Though the Night)

AS THE STORY GOES…

On September 9, 2008, Standard Recording Company released the release of a triple CD Of Great and Mortal Men: 43 Songs for 43 U.S. Presidencies, a collection penned by songwriters J. Matthew Gerken (of Nice Monster), Christian Kiefer, and Jefferson Pitcher (formerly of Above the Orange Trees). The set features a slew of special studio guests including Califone, Rosie Thomas, Bill Callahan (Smog), Alan Sparhawk (Low), Mark Kozelek (Red House Painters, Sun Kil Moon), Marla Hansen (Sufjan Stevens), Steve Dawson (Dolly Varden), Vince DiFiore (Cake), Monahans, James Jackson Toth (Wooden Wand), and Tom Carter (Charalambides).

This project initially came about as part of “February Album Writing Month,” a website (www.fawm.org) that challenges songwriters to write 14 songs in 28 days. The three songwriters wrote and recorded rough demos of the first 42 songs in February 2006 (leaving only George W. Bush for later). “It was an amazing challenge to get that many songs written, even split three ways,” notes Kiefer. “Blasting the first four or five is easy and then you’ve used up all the ideas that have been floating around and have to come up with new ones. And you have to come up with those new ideas right now.”

It was decided soon after that the project was too interesting to leave in the demo stage and so the recording process began anew with guests coming into the fray as time and schedules allowed. The project is now in its final phases. “It’s a walk through American history and an inquiry into what makes us Americans as filtered through the lens of our highest public office. There’s heartbreak and beauty and criticism and revelation. We’re trying to make it work like a big beautiful historical novel.”

The released project includes a 100+ page book featuring individual images of the Presidents by 43 different artists, all hand-selected by art curator Pitcher to be included in the project.  To quote from Kiefer’s song about President Tyler: “Oh!  Hell yes!”

Kiefer’s album Dogs & Donkeys (Undertow) appeared to favorable reviews last year and featured guests Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker (Low), Nels Cline (Wilco, The Geraldine Fibbers, etc.), and Garth Hudson (The Band). Kiefer and Jefferson Pitcher also saw the release of their collaboration To All Dead Sailors via Australia’s Camera Obscura earlier this year, a project recorded in the midst of the Presidential madness. Pitcher’s recent concept album I am not in Spain was also released this year on Mudita Records. Gerken’s acoustic indie-math rock quartet Nice Monster is also in the studio recording a follow-up EP to their full-length Good Times + Sharp Knives (Grayscale).