One thousand days, maybe a bit more.
About three years separate "Homegrown" from "Hotel Bravo", Washington's debut album. One thousand mornings, evenings, nights, and many more times of joy and laughter, many rivers of tears. Beautiful people met and the usual hard lessons learned.
Twelve original songs. Picked from life.
And one Skip James Song, too. Washington: "This one's here as a Trojan Horse, what's important is what it carries. It's here to say where I come from, who I owe a lot. I didn't invent anything". A tribute then? "Yes, in a certain way. In life, you'll never be able to thank people for a legacy you receive, as those you get it from ain't here to hear you no more. But in music you can, and I'd be an idiot to miss that".
Homegrown was recorded in New York, in august 2005, after eighteen months of preproduction in Switzerland. "I wanted to record in New York because for me, this city is a metaphor of the planet. It’s a cultural gumbo of a million colors, an hyper-active and extremely concentrated collection of people, lives, big and small stories all happening and passing by at lightspeed. Elements from many different cultures crammed into one single spot, trying to find their way to live together: it kind of matches my situation. I was born in Europe, yet I live on a culture and its musical expression originated 7,000 miles from my place, and long before I was born. That’s a wide stretch to live and one may see it as a nonsense, still it’s a fact."
The musicians hired for the sessions were from New York as well. "It was another part of the project, I wanted this particular album to be made this way. The people I worked with are - and it's a noble word in my book - like construction workers, or guys who build, say, boats: there’s a project somewhere, a team is set up with the right capabilities and skills and everybody works his ass off and then moves to the next boat, while this one goes sailing. Yes... it was exactly like that. And this type of craftsmanship deserves a lot of respect, in my opinion. A whole lot."
But more than all this, Homegrown came from something Washington eventually woke up to: "In this job, you have to define your own freedom. Man, ain't I fortunate".
About three years separate "Homegrown" from "Hotel Bravo", Washington's debut album. One thousand mornings, evenings, nights, and many more times of joy and laughter, many rivers of tears. Beautiful people met and the usual hard lessons learned.
Twelve original songs. Picked from life.
And one Skip James Song, too. Washington: "This one's here as a Trojan Horse, what's important is what it carries. It's here to say where I come from, who I owe a lot. I didn't invent anything". A tribute then? "Yes, in a certain way. In life, you'll never be able to thank people for a legacy you receive, as those you get it from ain't here to hear you no more. But in music you can, and I'd be an idiot to miss that".
Homegrown was recorded in New York, in august 2005, after eighteen months of preproduction in Switzerland. "I wanted to record in New York because for me, this city is a metaphor of the planet. It’s a cultural gumbo of a million colors, an hyper-active and extremely concentrated collection of people, lives, big and small stories all happening and passing by at lightspeed. Elements from many different cultures crammed into one single spot, trying to find their way to live together: it kind of matches my situation. I was born in Europe, yet I live on a culture and its musical expression originated 7,000 miles from my place, and long before I was born. That’s a wide stretch to live and one may see it as a nonsense, still it’s a fact."
The musicians hired for the sessions were from New York as well. "It was another part of the project, I wanted this particular album to be made this way. The people I worked with are - and it's a noble word in my book - like construction workers, or guys who build, say, boats: there’s a project somewhere, a team is set up with the right capabilities and skills and everybody works his ass off and then moves to the next boat, while this one goes sailing. Yes... it was exactly like that. And this type of craftsmanship deserves a lot of respect, in my opinion. A whole lot."
But more than all this, Homegrown came from something Washington eventually woke up to: "In this job, you have to define your own freedom. Man, ain't I fortunate".
