Greg Weeks

Zen and the art of geological energy retention [Listen to Language of Stone artists Mountain Home and Orion Rigel Dommisse on the CP Playa]

by A.D. Amorosi

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Published: Oct 17, 2007

Michael T. Regan

Here in the 21st century, everybody from Radiohead to Diplo seems to be taking control of their digital destiny.

Greg Weeks, best known as the frontman for Philly's freaky, folky Espers, wasn't thinking about the digital-only domain when he and his wife, Jessica, started their own imprint on the Drag City record label, Language of Stone, in September.

The imprint's first releases — Mountain Home's eponymous debut and Orion Rigel Dommisse's What I Want from You Is Sweet — were taped and mixed to entirely analog formats at Greg's Hexham Head studio with nearly no digital processing. It's a decided emphasis on the human element of recording music. Those albums came out on CD and will be available on vinyl. All of Language of Stone's records will do likewise.

The Language of Stone division of labor calls for Jessica to serve as head officer, leaving Greg to tend to the label's A&R.

And be an Esper. And play in Grass and La Secta — with Jessica, who is also in Woodwose. And continue on with a solo career, started in 1996, that made him one of the godfathers of Philly's atmospheric folk and earthen psychedelic sound. And get the Valerie Project ready to tour. (That's where Greg and friends lay down live music to accompany 1970 Czech horror flick Valerie and her Week of Wonders.)

"When something deeply moves me, I'm wont to share that experience," says Greg. "It's like an ever-widening circle."

The 36-year-old guitarist, singer and recorder player knows about ever widening circles.

He started Espers in 2001 as a trio only to watch it blossom into its current six-person odyssey. The Valerie Project was going to be a solo soundtrack effort until nine more people including a few Espers, Charles Cohen and members of Fern Knight joined in.

Orion Rigel Dommisse

Greg had been trying to create an imprint since he began touring. "Playing shows in far-off places — even your own backyard — exposes you to undiscovered talent. I guess there's always been an urge within me to help other people gain exposure," he says.

"Just like the musicians of Mountain Home are a part of a community, if you will, so is Greg and Jessica," says Ilya Monosov, the banjoist/hurdy gurdy player for Mountain Home. Monosov, 29, grew up in Moscow, moved to San Diego at the age of 10 and met Greg after a mutual friend assured him they'd hit it off immediately. The friend was right. Perhaps it was the fact that Mountain Home's music had a dramatic but subtly atmospheric Appalachian vibe.

"Ilya's material is so perverse it transcends to the compelling," claims Greg. "Plus, it's good to know someone's got your back in a knife fight."

They clicked creatively, too. "After recording with Greg, he offered us to join LOS," says Monosov. "And I recorded a solo record for LOS with Greg shortly after we recorded Mountain Home. LOS is born out of a community who support it and each other."

That level of support comes from its core. Greg may yield to Jessica when it comes to business. "She's a rock," he says. "People feel comfortable with her authoritativeness and her thoroughness."

But it's his straightforwardness and natural leadership ability that made Language of Stone work. "I wouldn't fare so well in a more aggressively competitive field. So I created a non-competitive model."

The Weeks own a huge stone house across from a park in Wissanoming. He won't say how close his home is to Hexham Head; he doesn't want people walking off with the mostly analog, rare recording equipment. He had to sell a painful portion of his record collection to furnish the studio. "I have no regrets, but it's sad to see the few rows of records we store in wooden units in our living room thinning like old-man hair."

Like his studio, Greg found his label's name from the science of crystal structuralism — a book called The Secret Language of Stone. The book got Greg so interested in geological energy retention, he wrote a screenplay around it. He also wrote a script for Children of Stone with his wife in mind for the lead ("she's disturbingly talented"). They'll get filming as soon as they have the money to buy a decent camera and lighting equipment.

The live score he's written for Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, which will be released in November on Drag City, is a joyously melancholic folk fantasy. "The Valerie Project's already allowed for the film to become known to thousands of people who otherwise might have missed its existence altogether. That's reason enough to do it for me."

Exposing audiences to new things is the essence of his label, as well.

It's one thing to turn people on to Philly's witchy Woodwose ("Black Sabbath riffage via Fender Rhodes at half-speed"), its glammy Ex Reverie ("If I didn't put this out, it'd be five years of Latin classes for Gillian Chadwick down the shitter") and its freakily experimental Wiseblood ("Natalie Merrin is a dream old soul that walks to her own beat").

Mythical Beast

But it's the overall Language of Stone sound that's most exciting. Greg may not admit it. But his production ideal is the equivalent of a shimmer of light through shadow. No one will confuse Noa Babayof, Festival, La Secta and Mythical Beast with each other or with Orion Rigel Dommisse.

Language of Stone specializes in the analog aesthetic, but doesn't exclude digital work or technology so far as it betters the human condition. "Offering a home studio in a $600 box is a great thing, but it doesn't further the culture and art of music," says Greg.

For him, recording with the warmth of analog comes down to values.

Bands paying their dues and sounding like it. Something that places the human dynamic back into what Greg feels has become a lost art.

"People dress like slobs, wear pajamas, whatever — that trickles down," he says testily. "Now it's OK to release a pajama record CD-R with a bunch of crappily recorded un-mastered tunes — the equivalent of a tattooed belly hanging out from a baby tee over drawstring PJs. Blech."

But along with using analog gear with user-friendly controls ("Big knobs. Large meters. Looking at them work makes me feel good"), it's Greg's head that's most crucial.

"My sound is my ear and my brain, and how the two talk to each other after meeting your brain, your mouth and your demo," says Greg with pride. "The people that come to me and Hexham Head are aligned with my esthetic philosophy. This means that by the time they are ready to leave, they have no label lined up to release it. So when they turn and ask me if I know of any labels that would release their album, sometimes I say, 'We will.'"

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)

 

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