Thomas Truax: March Winds, My Father's Death and April Showers

Thomas Truax's Monthly Journal - Twelve Months Twelve Tracks

New track April Showers

Unlike an album released when finished in the usual way, the Monthly Journal project will be a living, mutating organism taking place in twelve intervals over 2011.

Tracks will be informed by any number of things: the vibe, feeling, texture, atmosphere of the changing seasons, the expanding and contracting lengths of days and nights, weather, news, dreams, personal or world events as they unfold. He'll respond to these with a piece that will be created, produced and released within the window of each month.

The intention is not necessarily to create pieces that are fully representative of the month in which they are composed, but perhaps just to capture a glimpse - as one might do visually by taking a photo - of something that is coloured by or reflects an aspect of the point on the calendar in which it takes place.

Thomas Truax - April Showers:

Here's April's update from the man himself:

'March Winds', my Father's Death and 'April Showers'

"Sometimes the words and atmosphere of a song come from places in you that you're not necessarily fully conscious of at the time of writing. Later, associated with real events, they may take on new and/or fuller meanings. 'March Winds' was like that for me.

My Father passed away on the 28th of March at the age of 84. Having done battle with numerous health problems for quite a few years, he surrendered finally to wait out that inevitable eventual call of whatever-waits-next, and I spent a lot of time with him in his last weeks laid up in a hospice. 'March Winds' was the last song I played for him while he was alive. I played it again at his funeral. Though I did not write it for or about him, it will now always have a relationship with him in my mind. I thought initially that perhaps when I got on to writing April's song, it would be about my Father in some way. I even wrote a few lines, but realized that March Winds is that song, even though I didn't set out writing it for or about him. In his final days he struggled through some terrifying visions and spiritual challenges before his mind and body finally broke down completely.

I almost dreaded getting in to writing April's song for fear that it would be doomed to being something awful born from the state of grief, jetlag and emotional weariness I was in. Instead, working on it was more like medicine. It's not necessarily a happy song, but from where I was at, to work on it lifted me. To look around from the vantage point of the dark places I'd been recently, hanging around death's door with my Dad, to arrive back in England and see the long warmer days and everything flowering and this Royal Wedding approaching, I just felt like "no, you can't just go straight from that challenging dark world into a pastel Hallmark card can you? Please April, have a little sympathy and rain a little?" So on a certain level maybe April Showers portrays something of this transition between death/loss and embracing life while you still have the gift of it. It wasn't a difficult song to write. Once I had the basic feel of it taking form, I just kept letting it grow. Until I ran out of time. Which may be a saving grace for me on this project. (As I've said before there's a danger of overcooking songs when I've got unlimited time.)"

- Thomas Truax April 18 '11

"When he performs, it is a spectacle - the originality and seeming impossibility of what he does is much of the appeal." - The Guardian

"It's a mutual exchange of blood, bone, wood and metal, most of which is home grown. If you leave a Truax show without smiling somewhere in your body, you're f***ed." - Richard Hawley

"Like a trip to the frayed edges of sanity…unapologetically original." - Dazed and Confused

Photo credit: Chris Saunders

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