Visit Live4ever Media!
Follow Oasis Newsroom on Twitter

Home of the web's most popular Oasis Forum

follow newsroom on twitter
L4E Homepage

Established 2002

Twitter





Site Navigation






Oasis Bootleg Board



Social Media







Read Our Exclusive Interview
News Archives

  • December 2002
  • January 2003
  • February 2003
  • March 2003
  • April 2003
  • May 2003
  • June 2003
  • July 2003
  • August 2003
  • September 2003
  • October 2003
  • November 2003
  • December 2003
  • January 2004
  • February 2004
  • March 2004
  • April 2004
  • May 2004
  • June 2004
  • July 2004
  • August 2004
  • September 2004
  • October 2004
  • November 2004
  • December 2004
  • January 2005
  • February 2005
  • March 2005
  • April 2005
  • May 2005
  • June 2005
  • July 2005
  • August 2005
  • September 2005
  • October 2005
  • November 2005
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • About US

    Live4ever Media LLC (NYC / Leeds) are purveyors of new music, daily news, exclusive features and photo galleries on the world’s best Indie bands.

    Live4ever also produces and promotes high quality live music events, and is enjoying a growing industry-wide reputation for both discovering and showcasing new bands.

    Among the network of websites published are the acclaimed Live4ever and The Oasis Newsroom, the web’s most popular site reporting on the brothers Gallagher.

    Live4ever was founded by 3-time Emmy Award winning cameraman and concert photographer, Paul Bachmann. Senior editor Dave Smith is based in Leeds, England and heads up Live4ever’s UK content, as well as overseeing all writing assignments for the site.

    “I love Live4ever – It’s a great site and always bang on the button!”

    Alan McGee,
    Creation Records Founder, Producer
    Community
    Oasis Web Links
    Partners

    Today's Top Stories

    Thursday, February 09, 2012


      Live Forever - Cotton Mather




    Cotton Mather's 'Kontiki' still floats



    February 1, 2000: Cotton Mather readies to take the stage at the Camden Falcon in London for a Chinese New Year performance.
    The 300-capacity club is packed. Despite the cold English night, inside, the venue's cinder-block walls sweat with canned humanity. Bandleader Robert Harrison can barely breathe. Although Cotton Mather's second album, Kontiki, came out in 1997, effusive praise from members of Oasis and a swooning British music press have made this little-known pure pop combo from Austin white-hot.
    "I thought if that isn't the best record I've heard in 10 years, then I don't know what is," Oasis' Noel Gallagher tells MOJO. "It's one of my favorites of all time."
    After a meticulous sound check to allay his longstanding phobia of having "a Woody Allen-style meltdown" over onstage gear malfunctions, Harrison takes a meditative walk.
    "I always walk away from the club and spend some time by myself after sound check," Harrison says today. "I went under this underpass and felt an incredible sense of peace just pouring over me. It was powerful."
    After fighting his way back into the club, Harrison comes face to face with Liam Gallagher. Noel is home sick, but the younger Gallagher is highly complimentary. It hardly matters that most of what he says is indecipherable.
    "The last thing I remember before going on was Liam patting me on the back," Harrison says. "Then we heard, 'Ladies and gentlemen ... Cotton Mather!'
    "So we go running up and all the gear was gone. No drum set, no amplifiers – just three guitars and stands on a naked, bare stage."
    Despite the venue having inexplicably broken down the band's gear after sound check, Harrison faces off against his fear. Summoning all the tranquility of his preshow walk, he calmly tells the crowd they're going to have to wait a little longer to see Cotton Mather.
    "We played one of the best shows we'd ever played," says Harrison. "I haven't had that phobia since."
    Kon-Tiki was the name of the raft Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl navigated across the Pacific from South America to the Polynesian Islands in 1947. The ramshackle fashion in which Cotton Mather's Kontiki originated is only slightly less tenuous than the voyage of its floating namesake.
    "We thought that the only way we were going to make the trip was to do it ourselves," Harrison says of the album his Star Apple Kingdom label is reissuing on Valentine's Day in deluxe, two-disc form.
    Cotton Mather played its first show locally in 1990 at the Cannibal Club. They emerged into a verdant guitar-driven pop scene that included Balloonatic, Hey Zeus, and Britt Daniel's pre-Spoon outfit Skellington.
    "There were about three places to play and we all played them, all the time," says Harrison. "Usually it was just the other bands in the audience."
    By 1994, the band's quirky, Beatles-esque pop contagions had earned it a minor-label record deal. Its debut album, Cotton Is King, fit the rubric of contemporaries like Matthew Sweet and the Posies, but it failed to break nationally. Which was fine by Harrison, who wasn't particularly fond of it.
    "It sounds to me like I'm trying too hard," he admits. "I hear the sound of myself thinking about the way I'm singing. The lyrics are a little too clever."
    Then the rhythm section left, leaving only Harrison and guitarist Whit Williams. There was some question as to whether Cotton Mather would continue. Harrison's mother passed away during the Cotton Is King tour, and the emotional aftermath changed how he thought about music.
    "When you've experienced anything as heavy and life-changing as that, cleverness has no appeal," he says.
    Around the same time, Williams began collaborating more closely with Harrison. The two began rifling through songs night after night.
    "When we started working on the Kontiki songs, I felt like that's when I really came into my own as a guitar player," says Williams. "That's where we really bonded creatively."
    Bassist George Reiff and drummer Dana Myzer joined in late 1995, just in time to tour Japan. A particularly triumphant show at Yachiyo International University outside of Tokyo helped bond the four musicians. Although Reiff and Myzer would depart for other gigs before Kontiki's release, this lineup recorded most of the album.
    David McNair initially signed on to produce Cotton Mather, but no one was satisfied with the result. As frustration mounted, McNair took Harrison aside.
    "He told me, 'You're one of these guys who needs to lock yourself in a room and figure out how to produce yourself,'" Harrison recalls.
    Fortunately, Joe McDermott had given Harrison access to just such a room at a beat-up house out in Leander. Harrison and Williams spent hours hunkered down there, recording what they first thought were demos.
    "I stepped back and he became this tornado," Williams says. "Twiddling knobs. Plugging and unplugging. Doing everything – mostly incorrectly."
    Operating before Pro Tools and under the influence of Guided by Voices, Harrison recorded much of Kontiki on four-track cassettes, occasionally bouncing to ADAT and two-track DAT. Some basic tracks were recorded in Harrison's living room with just one microphone on the drums.
    While "My Before and After" boasted a joyous transistor radio hook, "Aurora Bori Alice" channeled the psychedelic whimsy of XTC in Dukes of Stratosphear mode. "Lily Dreams On" captured Harrison at his most vulnerable.
    "That was a very powerful session because the song was about my mother," Harrison says. "On the long drive home from Leander, Whit turned to me and said, 'Do you think it's too personal?,' and I said, 'Hell, no! If you're asking me that question, I think we're doing something right.'"
    Released in November 1997 on Houston-based Copper Records, Kontiki neither set the world on fire nor made much of a splash in Austin. On a whim, the band let Rainbow Quartz reissue the LP in the UK and Europe late the following year. Then Noel Gallagher went on the BBC and told an international audience that his favorite new album was by a band from Texas called Cotton Mather. The locals eventually opened for Oasis on several European warm-up dates for its 2000 world tour.
    "The first thing you think of [with Oasis] is headlines and punch-ups, but they're really generous guys," Harrison chuckles.
    After struggling to get 2001's The Big Picture released (a reissue of that album is planned), Harrison ended Cotton Mather in 2003. Since then, he's continued to produce intricate pop tapestries with Future Clouds & Radar (see "Strawberry Fields Forever," Nov. 14, 2008). The Harrison-led collective's Peoria was one of 2008's best local releases.
    Harrison decided to reissue Kontiki in part to relaunch Star Apple Kingdom. To finance the project, he enlisted online fundraising platform Kickstarter. Noel Gallagher, Britt Daniel, and Nicole Atkins issued appeals for investors and Harrison exceeded his goal by nearly $5,000.
    "The campaign was great," he says. "We have fans who've been very generous."
    Next up is a Cotton Mather reunion during South by Southwest. Harrison, Williams, and Reiff will perform withKontiki touring bassist Josh Gravelin and pinch-hitting drummer Darin Murphy. Myzer, now drumming for London-based band Farrah, will (ahem) definitely maybe be there, too.
    "Kontiki just keeps giving," Harrison says. "I'm very grateful for that little record."

    Cotton Mather will re-issue its 1997 underground classic album "Kontiki" on Valentines Day, 2012. The Deluxe Edition will include a bonus disc of demos and outtakes.





    Share Post
    [+] 0 comments

    For Breaking News visit our flagship site Live4ever Media

    Make sure to join the world's largest Oasis Community

    Pretty Green - mens clothing from Liam Gallagher




    Visit our extensive news archives on the left sidebar for more!


    Pretty Green Ltd
    Newsroom Homepage

    Made in NYC
    Our Sponsors

    ---------------------------


    Pretty Green







    ---------------------------


    ---------------------------
    Oasis Rarities


    ---------------------------


    SHOP

    ---------------------------


    Stats

    ---------------------------

    Visits Since 2002:

       24 Million & counting

    Registered Members:

       33'000




    | Contact |    | Privacy / Terms & Conditions |

    | RSS Feed |    | Twitter |    | Forum |


    All Rights Reserved; Live4ever Media LLC 2002-2021