Lost Souls of the Great Lakes

Have been lost at sea for the last decade and a half.

After a promising start, and a flurry of song writing, they went adrift.

We haven’t heard hide nor hair, nor heard a peep, and there-fore feared the worst.

But, these recordings of early demos have just washed up on the shore…

1 - THE GOLDEN STAR

2 - MOLLYLUJAH

3 - MY DARLING DAUGHTER

4 - CITY OF ANGELS

5 - MANY DARK MILES TO GO

6 - EN LA SILLA DEL ALTIPLANO

7 - THE SUN, IT IS A CIRCLE

8 - HOW WE MET D’OLAFF (LIVE FROM THE HIDEOUT)

9 - THE BALLAD OF CAPTAIN MANION

10 - SHE DANCES LIKE A HOOKER

11 - END OF THE BENDER

12 - THE THINGS THAT CANNOT BE

13 - THE BANDIT

14 - YE OLDE GRAND HOTEL

15 - LOOK AWAY

FRANK ORRALL:

“In the early 2000’s, the center of the universe, for me, was the 3 street intersection of Division St, Ashland & Milwaukee ave: The PDP studio & HQ was a block away (at 1136 S. Milwaukee ave), my apartment was 2 blocks away (Hermitage and Cortez), and, the Gold Star Bar, The Russian Bath house, Rock-a-Tiki bar & the Restaurant MAS were just blocks from that. The Gaijin Hotel & Mad Bar where just up the road.

I started gravitating to MAS because the food was so good. I got to know the chef, John Manion. He became a close friend, and creative consiglieri to me. We related to each other through our passions for our work; He, a chef with the heart of a musician, and I, a musician with the heart of a chef.

We stayed up many a nights listening to the Clash, the Pogues, the Waterboys, etc., while slamming dominos & breaking wine glasses. He became know affectionately to us as, ‘The Captain’.

His long time friend, Cree, had a sailboat. He would take us out. We started conversation/dreaming of open ocean sailing… Or, sailing up through the Great Lakes… maybe even out the Saint Lawrence Seaway and into the Atlantic… (when we got this far in the conversation, we were usually well oiled and not within shore of reason)… But, it was in this dreaming that a sort of fanciful GREAT LAKES mythology started to germinate.

I rarely left that 12 block radius.

Modus operandi: Rehearse at PDP HQ in the afternoon, Shop for groceries, cook/eat, then drink at Rock-a-Tiki or the Gold Star, back home to work on songs and then pass out. Wake the next day, sweat it out at the Russian Bath House, drink coffee at Milk & Honey, Record at PDP HQ, and then comb hair and dress it up for dinner at the Captain’s Table at MAS at night. Repeat. (It was an oblong cycle, but, it worked).

I was emerging from a decade of being deeply immersed in electronic and instrumental music & had not written many lyrics for a while. I was starting to resuscitate the lyrical ghost… it was real slow going. But, one afternoon, the lyrics to “butterflies”, arrived, and that sent a crack through the egg.

After a late night drinking with the Captain, I penned a lyrical ode to him, (in full spirit of the Pogues) entitled “The Ballad of Captain Manion”, a fanciful tale of a ship gone down in a terrible Great Lakes storm, with the Captain Manion character singing to his crew (as it sank) “girls, it’s just a bath!.

It was a lyric waiting for a Comrade. That Lyric (and I) found a Comrade in Dag Juhlin.

Dag and I were re-joining forces and kicking around ideas for a new PDP recording, and one night, drinking together at the Gold Star Bar, letting our sails get filled with an intoxicating brew of favorite songs, Norse Mythology, Great Lakes history, Old fort Dearborn / Streeterville Chicago, Nelson Algren, Folklore and True tales of ships gone down on the Lakes, … somewhere in the middle of that GOLD STAR night, emerging out of the cocktail haze… the metaphorical Ghost Ship of what would become the band 'The Lost Souls of the Great Lakes' appeared to us. We recognized it instantly. It was a vehicle we knew how to helm.”

DAG JUHLIN:

“On a snowy Chicago night in the Goldstar Bar, I remember sitting with Frank and talking about a million things. It was a good, solid night of jawing and laughing and glugging down the hooch, and it was probably long overdue. I’m really bad with timelines and sequences of events, and so I don’t even recall what the status of Poi dog was at the time. I think I was slowly sort of finding my way back to the group (I knew I’d be back; not many truly leave that band forever) after a kind of drastic late ‘90s reconfiguration. But there we were watching the snow fall down on a now unrecognizable Division Street, mutually moaning about songwriting, and possibly feeling that as writers we’d both sort of steered ourselves into cul-de-sacs that we were having a hard time pulling out of. The process of slicing open a vein and bleeding all over the page can become a little exhausting, if not downright tiresome to writer and listener alike. I remember, as the drinks continued to arrive, how we marveled at certain songwriters we loved, and how they weren’t burdened with the constant super-sensitive revelation of their FEELINGS, but rather chose to write in character, and to let their truths and observations out in that manner. Bowie, Randy Newman, even Steely Dan (more my thing than Frank’s) fer crissakes; all this stuff written in character, without the pressure of having to come up with POIGNANT REVELATIONS or SHOCKING SECRETS STRAIGHT FROM ONE’S DIARY. We thought, wow what an endless wealth of material if we just decided to write in character. And I’m pretty sure that that was the night The Lost Souls idea was hatched. The nautical theme (paying tribute to the region), the pseudonyms (mine was D’Olaf; a tribute to a beloved high school friend of mine who died much too young), the vests and bandanas, the mandatory, enforced drinking; those were all Frank’s ideas – he’s got a theatrical streak a mile wide, not to mention a streak of artistic bravery that’s twice as wide.

Here’s a revelation: I’ve been looking for a songwriting collaborator my entire career. Collaboration has barely been a blip during the, gulp, thirty plus years of songwriting I’ve done. Frank and I -- while we didn’t necessarily sit across the table from each other, tossing out lines and chords, bringing up songs together out of nowhere -- we did bring each other our rough ideas and bang them into shape as a duo. Mollylujah was originally a flat out ska song until Frank wisely added rum and turned it into a calypso; Frank was grappling with The Sun It Is A Circle and its odd amount of verse lines, when I added a simple two-chord turnaround and his finger thrust into the air: “Like the Carter Family!” he said, recalling the LPs of his youth and opening a bottle in celebration. It was that kind of thing. Zero pressure, a politely thumbed nose at expectations (though I hope by that point PDP fans were in some way expecting the unexpected), a looseness, an exploration of genres, a sense of fun, and an ocean of booze.”

FRANK ORRALL:

“We allowed ourselves to just write freely about characters… we wrote in the 3rd person, We wrote in the voices of people long gone and dead. We wrote in the style of songs we admired. We intertwined personal glimpses from our real life, and enshrouded them in cloaks of ole lore we made up.

The Songs Just Tumbled out. Dag and I ricochetting off of each other, compounding ideas. When we had a fist full of songs that had the shape of a band behind them, we enlisted like minded spirits; Martin, Susan, Max, Ted, Earl, Alison and Eddie, and booked a gig at the HIDEOUT. We cut ourselves enough cloth to be truly free, and made up our own names, made up personal histories… talked in accents if we felt like it. Stayed in character. We Played Fitzgerald’s a few months later. Maybe another gig… I can’t remember…”

DAG JUHLIN:

“Susan contributed what is probably the loveliest song in this batch, Look Away. Our ace engineer Martin Stebbing played autoharp, Ted Cho / banjo, Susan Voelz / violin, Max Crawford / accordion, Eddie Carlson / bass, Earl Talbot / drums, Alison Chesley / cello…. there may have been others… Things are hazy. We played some great shows at The Hideout and Fitzgerald’s, and I’m sure some other places. We spoke in accents. We wore jaunty caps. We just never found the time to record a proper album, and that’s unfortunate. We sailed off to someplace else. I don’t know that all of these songs would have made the cut, but this is our legacy. I won’t apologize for the warbled notes, the flimsy concepts or the general unkemptness of the whole package. For a time, it was a fun, beautiful thing and I loved it. I still do. Ahoy!”

FRANK ORRALL:

“We always intended to go to some cabin on the Great lakes somewhere and record a whole Lost Souls album over a debauched weekend… but, we got distracted… The writing was flowing, and the New PDP album, “7” was emerging, and we just put our shoulder to that. We loaded into Wall 2 Wall Studios and stayed for months on end and emerged as a unified band, with rock and soul swagger & a new album to crow about; “7”. (In a way, the Lost Souls of the Great Lakes was the catalyst).”

And, now… here were are… a fistful of PDP albums down the line from there, and boldly pressing on.

Recently, we rowed up upon these Lost Souls songs, just floating in the lake… like melodic ghosts.

It’s time to take them out for a night on the town,

Enjoy, Sailor…

Be back on the ship by dawn.

Dandy Jack Quimby

1 - THE GOLDEN STAR

Lyrics by: Frank Orrall / Music by: Dag Juhlin and Frank Orrall

D’Olaff - Guitar

Dandy Jack - Vocals

Guava Juice Music (BMI) 2019 / Famous Mistakes (BMI) 2019

2 - MOLLYLUJAH

by: Dag Juhlin

D’Olaff - Guitars & Vocals

Dandy Jack - Percussion & Vocals

Famous Mistakes (BMI) 2019

3 - MY DARLING DAUGHTER

by: Frank Orrall

Dandy Jack - Guitar & Vocals

Guava Juice Music (BMI) 2019

4 - CITY OF ANGELS

by: Frank Orrall

Dandy Jack - Percussion, Guitar & Vocals

Guava Juice Music (BMI) 2019

5 - MANY DARK MILES TO GO

by: Dag Juhlin

D’Olaff - Guitar & Vocals

Dandy Jack - Percussion

Famous Mistakes (BMI) 2019

6 - EN LA SILLA DEL ALTIPLANO

by: Frank Orrall & Dag Juhlin

Dandy Jack - Guitar & Percussion

D’Olaff - Guitar

Guava Juice Music (BMI) 2019 / Famous Mistakes (BMI) 2019

7 - THE SUN, IT IS A CIRCLE

Music by: Frank Orrall & Dag Juhlin / Lyrics by: Frank Orrall

Dandy Jack - Guitar & Vocals

D’Olaff - Guitar & Vocals

Guava Juice Music (BMI) 2019 / Famous Mistakes (BMI) 2019

8 - HOW WE MET D’OLAFF (LIVE FROM THE HIDEOUT)

9 - THE BALLAD OF CAPTAIN MANION

Music by: Frank Orrall & Dag Juhlin / Lyrics by: Frank Orrall

Dandy Jack - Guitar & Vocals

D’Olaff - Guitar

Guava Juice Music (BMI) 2019 / Famous Mistakes (BMI) 2019

10 - SHE DANCES LIKE A HOOKER

by: Frank Orrall

Dandy Jack - Guitar, Percussion & Vocals

Jacqui Wilson - Vocals

Guava Juice Music (BMI) 2019

11 - END OF THE BENDER

Music by: Frank Orrall & Dag Juhlin / Lyrics by: Frank Orrall

Dandy Jack - Guitar & Vocals

D’Olaff - Guitar

Guava Juice Music (BMI) 2019 / Famous Mistakes (BMI) 2019


12 - THE THINGS THAT CANNOT BE

by: Dag Juhlin

D’Olaff - Guitar & Vocals

Dandy Jack - Percussion & Vocals

Famous Mistakes (BMI) 2019

13 - THE BANDIT

by: Dag Juhlin

D’Olaff - Guitar & Vocals

Dandy Jack - Percussion

Famous Mistakes (BMI) 2019

14 - YE OLDE GRAND HOTEL

by: Dag Juhlin

D’Olaff - Guitar & Vocals

Dandy Jack - Percussion

Famous Mistakes (BMI) 2019

15 - LOOK AWAY

By: Susan Voelz

Susanna Maria - Guitars, Bass & Vocals

Susan Voelz Music (BMI) 2019

P&C 2019 Platetectonic Music