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Strange Day In Mexico
Released August 2005
The Making Of:
Q-How did the recording process begin for “Strange Day in Mexico”?
Levi:
We started arranging songs in our basement. John and I were living together at the time. We’d record us playing the songs and then send these really crappy recordings to Ian in Minnesota via email. He’d record guitar parts on top of our recordings and send them back. Once we were comfortable with the arrangements and parts, we started doing the final recordings. Ian flew out for a week when it was time to record his guitar. I was the one who ended up producing the record. It wasn’t the plan from the beginning like with Not Fighters. I just ended up being the one to do all of the work. It was A LOT of work. There was so much trial and error dealing with gear and importing and exporting from different recording software platforms. I was disgusted with John because of his inability to sing well in the studio. Come With Me took well over 30 vocal takes. What we discovered and later confirmed while recording Not Fighters is that John is actually an AMAZING singer in the studio. The problem was that we were recording in the height of allergy season and John has really bad allergies. His singing gets even worse when he takes allergy pills.
We were so desperate to get this record done in a timely fashion that I went ahead and booked the CD release show before we even started! I scheduled the mix down with our friend Ken Mary in Phoenix but by the time that rolled around I still had hours and hours of work to do getting the sessions ready for mix down. My flight left at 6am in Billings. I stayed up until 3:30am editing and then slept in the car while John gave me a ride from Bozeman. I just barely caught the plane in time.
It was really dramatic.
All of these challenges made the completion of this record all that much sweeter.
John:
After having seen the success of EP with our fans, it made us want to do a full length album all on our own. At the time we didn't have the necessary gear to build our own studio, so we rented out Jereco Studios in Bozeman for the tracking sessions. Short of putting our beds and dressers in there, we basically moved in. A few months and several cases of beer and Red Bull later, we had put together a kick ass album that had increased our learning curve exponentially.
Q-What brought about naming the album “Strange Day in Mexico”?
Levi:
It had a ring to it that wasn’t cliché. It was the opposite of cliché actually. Nothing against clichés though. They can be fun too.
John:
The album was named after the song (track #3) STRANGE DAY IN MEXICO. We liked that it wasn't the typical "We're Trying To Be A Cookie Cutter Band" title, but the title didn't reflect anything about the record itself. On a side note, we released it six months before Kenny Chesney started getting to be known as the "Mexico" guy. (Never mind the fact that Kenny is a monster musician.) What can I say? You can't wear flip flops in Montana for more than about four months. In retrospect, we should've named it, "Montana Winters Are Flippin' Cold."
Q-What was the mission going into the recording of “Strange Day in Mexico”?
Levi: We had limited knowledge of recording an album on our own. We had a habit of not finishing things that we started. We were unfocused, spread around the country, and a little confused about the role that The Clintons should play in our individual lives. John had just gotten out of a long-term relationship and we weren’t playing much at all. The state of the band prior to starting the Mexico project was probably at an all time low. The mission was to finally complete a project, on our own, and within the time frame we set for ourselves. To us, if we could do that, we’d have a prayer of fixing all of the problems that plagued us. In retrospect, we couldn’t have been more correct.
John:
Levi and I were roommates at the time we made SDIM. We'd recorded EP in the basement of that house but hadn't recorded a single track since. Levi and I literally used to plan to record tracks in the basement of our house at night, then friends would randomly come over to play "midnight croquet" which involves playing croquet in the dark with head lamps, a mallet in one hand and a beer in the other at all times. It was comical and we had a ton of fun, but we weren't getting any recording done.
We figured that the easiest way to make our next record would be to rent studio time from Jereco studios in Bozeman. The band was now financially obligated to show up on time and actually be productive in the studio rather than put off making a record.
Q-Can you give us some insight into the lyrics?
SAVE THE WORLD
I had writers block and no motivation. Crazy Jim is usually my cure for procrastination, but he wasn't in Bozeman at the time, so I couldn't call him to go write songs with him. Jimmy was working on a cruise ship as a bartender. He'd call me every few weeks, typically before he was about to party in some bizarre, adventure filled location. Thus, the entire song is about me needing "a new cliche" to write about. When the lyric, "we're on a cruise ship and the bartender's been drinking," that's a shout out to Crazy Jim, bless his heart. He did come back for a week, enough time for us to write and finish the song, which would ultimately become the title track, SDIM.
SEX ON THE RADIO
My girl always holds my hand when we drive, whether it's to the store, to the beach, wherever, we always hold hands in the car. She'll crank up the radio and sing her heart out, and it always sweeps me off of my feet (even though I'm sitting). She's got grey/green eyes, but when we hit the beach for a day, her eyes turn breath taking blue. It's pretty bad ass actually. Thus the lyrics more or less are about rolling down the car windows while driving with your sweetheart to the beach as the radio leads the sing along.
STRANGE DAY IN MEXICO
Crazy Jim found himself quite drunk at a house party sometime around noon one random day in Mexico. The owner of the house, a fifty-year-old "yachtie" (a yacht owning American) was piss drunk too, and decided he'd jump on a motorcycle. He drove around his driveway, but ended up crashing into a big ass Saguaro cactus. Apparently, the thing pinned him under his cycle. Jimmy says that no one was sober enough, AT NOON, to go help this poor bastard out. I said to Jim, "Jim, that's a song."
As we wrote the song, we found we didn't want to throw in the typical Mexico references of "tequila, sombreros, cantinas, etc." The song became the biggest rant of images of wasting time while drunk, but not really having the wherewithal to know what's going on around you. Lines like "our hero pours himself another and he looks out of the bubble," is the perfect summation of a "Strange Day in Mexico."
COME WITH ME
At one point in time, Levi and I were roommates. The first recording of Come With Me was recorded in Levi’s basement bedroom on his old piece of crap computer. We liked the song but never thought too much about it, simply because the recording was intended to be an EP demo to be sent to prospective record labels. We made it cheap and fast. Little did we know that this song on EP would become a fan favorite.
The band was hanging out in the KISS FM radio studio with Eric O’Connor, the morning radio DJ, and we were promoting the EP release party. We had brought a guitar and sang Come With Me live on the air. As we sang the song we could see that Eric was digging the tune but we figured that he was just enjoying having a bunch of rowdy dudes hanging out with him at 8am. We left Eric a copy of EP and thanked him for his time. Unknown to us, Eric gave Come With Me a couple of spins on his radio show. Apparently within a few weeks he’d gotten so many requests from listeners to play the song that he decided to put it into full rotation (7 spins a day). Friends of ours would call us and say, “we just heard The Clintons on the radio!” We’d reply, “how in the hell did that happen!?”
Come With Me is easily our #1 “sing along” song whenever we play shows. It’s amazing to see how that song has connected with so many people.
This song is all about a crush. Whether you just met someone or you've been married for 30 years, a crush is a kick ass thing. I love the idea of "getting away" from the normal grind of life, especially when you can do it with your crush. "Come with me, it's a beautiful day for a getaway baby." Life is a grind. Love makes it all worth it. Also, of worthy personal note, the two things I do best are singing and making breakfast, so those cropped up as lyrics in the song.
THEN MY GIRL WALKS IN
Imagine you're sitting at the bar, not necessarily enjoying your drink, but not disliking it either. You're just there. Your girl is there socializing with everyone because she's "your pretty little social butterfly." However, you're cool with it all because you're just content to hang until it's time to go. "Then my girl walks in and says with her mischievous smile, you should finish what you're drinking, we should go someplace where we can be alone." When women want something and they use their beautiful powers of persuasion, doesn't that make the patiently waiting all worth it?
FREE RIDE IN A COP CAR
"The perfect heist, the perfect getaway, and it's our proverbial payday in a loser sort of way," sets the story up for something that makes you think, what in the hell are they stealing? "Take the keys, take the back roads, and our hair is looking for a couple of criminals." Although the lyrics don't state it, I was trying to allude to the fact that these guys are hippies with dreadlocks. "But it never goes as planned, you get run down by the man, and instead of beating Zelda or a hundred other games and pulling off the perfect scam," lets you know that these lovely hippies tried to steal some video games and got caught, so now they're "looking at a free ride in a cop car. The view's not what I expected. A free ride in a cop car, then again the view's not so bad!" Yes, The Clintons have a song about hippies stealing video games. That doesn't mean that we think that hippies don't need love. They do. If these hippies had a little more love in their lives, they wouldn't turn to crime. Hippies, like band guys, need love too.
COLLEGE DAZE
Crazy Jim and I used to work with a bartender named Robin Blumberg. He seriously knows every bizarre mixed drink you can imagine. He used to make a hideous drink that had Jaegermiester in it that all of our friends in college used to do shots of. They loved it, and for whatever reason, it was really popular amongst our crew.
Back then Jimmy used the saying, "blah, blah, schmee, schmee" all of the time. It's sort of a replacement for "yadda, yadda, yadda." For example: "I met this gal at the company party, we had some wine, blah, blah, schmee, schmee, and I'm asking her how she likes her coffee while making her breakfast." That's only one use of the saying, but you get the idea.
When Jimmy and I were writing this tune, we couldn't remember the name of that Jaeger drink. We tried the lyrics, "when we're pounding Jaegermeister," and "when we're pounding Jaeger bombers," but it didn't work for us because we knew there was a name for that drink. Out of frustration, Jimmy sort of blurted out "when we're pounding Jaeger Schmee Schmees" and honestly, we laughed ourselves to tears. When we finally simmered down, there was no changing the lyric, even if we found out the REAL name of the drink was called (which, to this day, we have no clue).
SAME MISTAKE
I found myself in Portland, Oregon driving my girlfriend to class one day, and upon dropping her off I headed back to her apartment. When I got to the front door I found that it was locked and realized I had no key. It was 7:30am and I was wearing pajamas with slippers on a rainy Portland morning. I had my wallet and car keys, so I decided to drive to a Starbucks and order coffee. No one gave me a second glance, even though I was in my PJ's (some Portland residents dress much crazier). I spent the day in my car listening to my iPod, and the band had recorded the music to this song as a sort of “instrumental jam.” The melody just sort of floated into my head. "Locked out again, here I am, standing on the front porch waiting for you to come home and let me in..."
FOLLOW ME HOME
When I first moved to Bozeman, MT, I knew no one. I went there for college because I loved the town and something felt right in my soul, but since I knew nobody, I was really lonely. I found myself at the Molly Brown (a cigarette smoke filled bar with a skier/college crowd) one night, and sitting at the opposite end of the bar was a gal all by herself. She looked about as lonely as I felt. I imagined going up and talking to her. I wanted to make a new friend. I wanted to get to know her, to discover who she was and what made her tick. It wasn't, "follow me to my apartment and let's fool around." God knows there are plenty of songs like that. Follow Me Home was all about filling that lonely void with the euphoria of getting to know someone. For what it's worth, I never got the courage to go talk to her. I'm glad this song came out of it though. It's my favorite Clintons song of all time, no doubt.
CHILL OUT
For anyone who's played Halo I, they'll know the multiplayer map "Chill Out." Levi and I were playing each other, one on one, and it was tied 24 to 24 (first one to 25 wins). You might laugh, but the tension between us was pretty intense. Here's the explanation of some of the lyrics.
I was using the crappy controller (we had two, one of which was sort of busted) so he was the "one in control." He was invisible because he had gotten the "invisible armor," and he had jumped up on a ledge to get the most powerful weapon, the rocket launcher. I wanted to call him a bastard, but I figured "I should really guard what I say," because he was likely to smoke me, and I didn't want him to rub it in when the game was over. He came to the ledge, looking down on me, so I told him, "think about what you're gonna do before you do what you think you gotta do." (You see, if he jumped, he had one chance to kill me, because if he missed, he'd die from the jump and I'd win.) Well, he jumped off with his rocket launcher pointed directly at me, thus getting "the drop on me." I unloaded my gun clip at him, but his rocket killed me just moments before the jump killed him. He won.
We both jumped up off of the couch, hollering and going nuts at the scene that had just unfolded before us. We looked at each other and basically came to the conclusion that "this is something normal people just don't do."
The lyric, "I'm afraid to say why I'm afraid to date you, cuz you might hate me and I'd really hate that" was just a line that I really liked and ended up sneaking into this sort of "break up" song about Halo.
ABERCROMBIE JEANS
The first time I played this song for Josh and Levi was back in November of 2001. I was playing a solo acoustic gig at The Bay in Bozeman. Josh and Levi were there partying. When I kicked into Abercrombie Jeans they both hooted and hollered at the top of their lungs. Levi pointed at me with raised eyebrows and mouthed the word, “you?” as to inquire if I was the writer of the song. I nodded, then he smiled and gave me the thumbs up. Keehr just raised his beer and hollered some more.
I played Abercrombie Jeans for another six months at my solo gigs but since I was more of a pop-country guy at the time and the song was a bluegrass tune, it was kind of forgotten. As we were picking songs to go on SDIM, I asked the boys if they remembered the song. I played it for them and they all went, “that’s going on the record.”
A year had passed from releasing the album when we decided to make a music video for Abercrombie Jeans. We’re an independent band without a huge support staff, hair stylists, etc, so organizing a music video shoot was a challenge. I’m proud to say, “we got ‘er done.” When the music video was released, I sort of had a moment of realization what a strange trip this song had been on. It had started as a rowdy anthem at solo gigs filled with crazy college kids to finally having it’s own music video
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