Tag Archives: Archers of Loaf

Listen: Crooked Fingers – “Bad Blood (acoustic)” premiere

Crooked Fingers’ Breaks in the Armor was one of my favorite records released last year — Eric Bachmann’s best since Red Devil Dawn, I’d argue. If you pre-ordered the album through the Merge store, you also got a bonus download with acoustic versions of the songs. Now Breaks in the Armor: Acoustic Demo Version is getting an official release on iTunes and the Merge store. Give a listen to the beautifully stripped-down “Bad Blood” below:

Bachmann said of the demos, “Recording a stripped-down version of a song reveals its flaws. It also lets you hear the space you have to work with before you crowd it with ideas that can muddle the point. I don’t like to add drums or arrange songs with Crooked Fingers until I feel like the writing itself has reached a point. That’s why I record demos as stripped-down versions…
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Interview With Eric Bachmann

I’m going to make this brief. You should know who Eric Bachmann (former Archers of Loaf frontman and the guy currently behind Crooked Fingers) is. You don’t need me to blab about all the great work he’s done, particularly the four CF records, and besides I’m late in posting this feature. I will say that right now he’s on tour promoting last year’s equally impressive To the Races (Saddle Creek), which is the first proper album he’s done under his own name. (He released a movie score for Ball of Wax under his birth name in 2002.) The album was written while he was living in a van in Seattle, and recorded in the middle of winter at a deserted motel on North Carolina’s Outer Banks. So anyway, I talked to him on the phone last week, and he’ll be at Andyman’s Treehouse tonight, with local Eric Metronome opening.

I hear you’re hocking Cuban sandwiches in Denver.
Not anymore. I was last summer. I had a little sandwich stand and it was good, but I’m touring now.

So no one’s running it for you?
No, I couldn’t find anyone to make the bread. I was making my own bread and I didn’t know anyone that could do it.

So there was a dearth of Cuban sandwiches in Denver?
There were none that were that good. I know how to make them because I spent sometime growing up in Florida. It was always something I wanted to do, and something to get my head out of the music business shell. I’m really glad that I did it, but I don’t think I would do a cart again; I’d do a storefront. There’s so many laws for vending carts and they don’t make it easy to make money.

Are you into cooking in general or is it just sandwiches that are your forte?
No, I like to cook. I’m not the best cook in the world, but I like to do it. Continue reading