Introducing: Maple Dye (plus new song: "As my mood goes down")




I've always found that many musicians, even many musicians that I adore, constrain themselves too much into a certain genre. Music making, in my case, certainly does not work that way; I listen to lots of different kinds of music (and not like a tourist: the moment you get chills out of a song, there's some serious stuff going on there, that song becomes a part of you, and such phenomenon has happened to me, and happily still does, with a wide spectrum of genres). So when the moment comes and this music lover moves into music making mode, the sources of influence are many and the results are therefore diverse. However, I've also felt for some time now a need to "divide the ocean", to give some additional pointers to the audience, as a sort of courtesy. That's how I decided to create this second "band" (I hope I can kick out the quote unquote at some point), for my let's say more "classic", hard rock influences. As another way of describing it, Black Sheep Riot has hardcore punk and thrash metal in its heart, while Maple Dye is my band for the songs in a line closer to Neil Young, Tom Petty, JJ Cale, Eric Clapton... Yet another way to put it would be that BSR tends more to anger and MD tends more to sadness. But in fact these are all oversimplifications, and there are often big grey areas where I'm not sure where to put a song better... there are dark ballads that feel more BSR to me, and MD has some kick ass rockers too... In any case, here is the first Maple Dye song, "As my mood goes down". Here it is officially, I mean; in fact this song, and the few upcoming that are going to follow, have already had some minor internet distribution in the past. But I thought it would be a good idea to revisit them "systematically" in this blog, now that I'm going to gather them in the shape of an album, which will also include 3 new songs. My initial idea was to finish the Black Sheep Riot album first (2 songs to go), but, as I continue with my struggle to repair my sonic chain, it does me good to "clear the decks" and keep the machine moving... I hope you enjoy the song, written in (alas) 1993 and for a long time forgotten. The harmonica bit at the end is probably due to the fact that in those days I was discovering Bob Dylan big time. There is also influence of The Doors ("Been down so long"), and The Notting Hillbilies, I think (I saw Steve Phillips live in those days, in a gig that perhaps he would like to forget -small attendance-, but that I will always remember fondly :) ).

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