Oregon Music News

The other morning, there was a grown man riding a skateboard in Northwest Portland’s  Couch Park. It was Bela Balogh, violinist and composer and a member of 3 Leg Torso since before there was a 3 Leg Torso. We chose a little (bolted-in) table, sat down and waited for Courtney Von Drehle, the other remaining original member, to join us.

While we’re waiting, you should know that they have a new album called “Animals and Cannibals which is available August 10. They’re CD release is Saturday, July 31 at Alberta Rose Theatre, 8pm, doors at 7pm, all ages, $15/advance, $25/advance with a CD, $17/day of show. Tickets.

They began thirteen or fourteen or fifteen years ago as a trio of penniless but earnest young men who would stand outside the Bagdad Theater and play for whatever meager coins the people in line would throw them. Using cheesy fake Hungarian accents, saying “Hey Meester!” Courtney Von Drehle, Bela Balogh and Gave Leavitt quickly became the hippest thing in town…except for the grunge bands who were getting all the money and the girls.

The new album is their first instrumental effort in seven years. It was worth the wait. It is self-assured, thrilling music with a sense of humor. These are sophisticated, clever tunes that are guaranteed to delight the most intelligent listener and entertain everyone else.

Let them describe what they do:

T.

The band consists of Von Drehle on accordion, Balogh on violin, piano and trumpet, Michael Papillo and Mike Murphy on bass, with Gary Irvine and T.J. Arko on various percussive instruments including vibes and drums.

In order to help finance the new CD they asked for donations from their fans. To discover how Bela and Courtney really work together, they made this video to thank them:

Courtney finally showed up and after some catching up, I said:

I better turn this tape recorder on. Did you just say that you had been writing one tune for seven years?

B: No, no no. It the album in the making for seven years.

C: The pieces are well matured.

I see you’ve signed with a major record label.

B: Meester Records? Been around 12 years.

C: Yeah, we’re with the big guys now. And the thing is, we know the guys who run it.

B: We don’t get along with them all the time.

3 Leg Torso

So Animals and Cannibals has been seven years in the making.

C: It’s been seven years since we had out last instrumental CD.

B: So what do you think about it?

Oh it’s not up to me. Is bass player Mike Papillo still in the band?

C: He has moved to L.A. but he will be back for our CD release and associated shows. He’s all over the CD except for a few tunes where our new bass player, Mike Murphy is playing. Plays on one of Bela’s tunes “Autumn.”

(to Bela) …where you get to play glockenspiel.

B: ….and piano at the same time!

No, not at the same time, it just sounds like it. But that was unusual because I don’t remember you playing piano on the other albums.

B: No. Not at all. I write on all different instruments, on accordion, on violin and on piano for this tune. I haven’t performed on piano in thirty-five years. It’s easy to do it in the studio.

Are you going to do it at the gig?

B: No.

C: We will do the tune.

B: We’re gonna have a guest play it, that’ll be a little surprise. I just don’t want the extras stress of getting out there and oh shit, I haven’t played in thirty-five years.

But you’re happy with this aren’t you?

Oh yeah, but it was easy to do in the studio.

Bela Balogh

I wouldn’t have thought that about you since you’re such a flamboyant performer.

On my most comfortable instrument, the violin.

Don’t you think you could just get out there and wail on the piano?

C: I’m sure that Bela could play the piece on the piano but I’m totally sympathetic to keeping the nerves relaxed, you know…

B: I’ve got enough to think about that day. I’m planning to do something else that will play into the whole thing of someone else playing the piece. I won’t dance or anything like that…

Awwww, why not?

B: I’m not a very good dancer, either…unless I’m drunk and then I think I am.

You almost dance with the violin when you’re playing.

B: I’ve played the violin almost continuously since I was four or five.

C: It’s a lot harder dancing with a piano…one of the partners doesn’t move much.

Let’s go through the tunes on the album. “Akiko Yano” is the name of a composer.

C: Composer, perfomer…previous wife of Ryuchi Sakamoto…a long history in Japan  as an artist who does a large variety of things. I hadn’t heard of her and I was driving home and they were playing a track of hers and I pulled the car over and said, “What is THIS?” It was just her piano and her voice. It was really beautiful, interesting changes in the piano parts and I was really captivated by the mood.

I did my version of getting a similar mood.

Csardas is by Vittorio Monti. Who is he?

B: He is an Italian composer and he apparently really liked Hungarian music and wrote a tribute the Hugarian band which is the Csardas. It’s a very classically composed piece…a piece I’ve been playing since I was ten. My granddad taught it to me. My dad and I woked on it. We were doing a sound check one day and our percussionist put a Latin beat to it. We thought that sounded cool.

C: …we kept adding things. Once we opened the door to non-tradition.

B: Going into three…where it’s kind of drunk and there’s an accelerado..we really kind of tweaked it.

C: It’s a bit of a war horse. A lot of people have associations with it. We tried to put the 3 Leg spin on it.

B: All the Hungarians light up at shows…..(in dialect) “Hey, that’s Hungarian!”

C: One thing Bela noticed is that there’s a version of it on YouTube in which the violinist plays without his shirt.

B: Pisses me off.

Aren’t you going to play without your shirt?

B: Not this year.

I see one animal, one cannibal…There’s “The Life and Good Deeds of St. Penguin.” Is the penguin an animal or a bird?

C: That’s an interesting question.

B: I consider it an animal…and a bird.

Who was St. Penguin?

B: The patron saint of people stuck on the ice. Courtney has a good story on that. I wrote the piece. Courtney wrote the piece too…section forty-nine of the piece, which you’ll notice if you listen very closely….

C: That’s the part where you go, “OH!”

B: “What was THAT?”

And what would be that story?

C: The tale varies, depending on the evening but it does relate to Bela’s fascination with Earnest Shackleton and his desire to learn more about the experience he wants to live some of the same type of experience and he finds out that there’s going to be a weather situation in Lake Oswego. He takes his sailfish out in Lake Oswego and it gets frozen in the ice for three days.

He’s likening that to Earnest Shackleton’s two-year experience. Sometimes Bela gets a little cold so he goes across the ice and gets hot chocolate. In his delirious state, when he’s run out of Fritos, he sees this a giant penguin.

B: Feeds me seal blubber.

What are the other cases?

C: Sometimes the penguin is just a vision. Sometimes the penguin is a savior. It’s never a haunting figure.

B: I wrote that on accordion. (sings it).

C: Is that your melody?

B: That’s what you’re playing. (singe)

C: You wrote it to teach someone the accordion.

B: Yeah. And we have orchestrated that…trumpets, french horns.

How long have you been playing the trumpet?

B: On and off, since I was in fifth grade. I don’t play it a lot. I play it when I need to. I mean I love playing the trumpet. You’ll find a lot of violinists who play trumpet. Like Eddie Parente, for instance. Pete Piazza does. I think that when we’re growing up playing violin, we really feel like we really need…I felt like, “The trumpet is so fucking macho.” And that’s what I did. “I wanna play trumpet now, dad.”

“Alright, I’ll get you a trumpet.” It balanced things out.

Courtney Von Drehle

Courtney, what was your first  instrument?

C: Guitar, for a long time. Also the violin is a lead instrument as is the trumpet. Functionally, it’s a similar role.

Was saxophone second?

C: Yes and then accordion…

B: …and a bunch of other things…slide guitar…

C: …slide guitars…on this album I used the Weissenborn and that’s been in the past four years. It’s an acoustic Hawaiian steel.

B: It’s a bad-ass.

C: It’s a really fun instrument to play…

B: When you put it through all those effects…

C: I had some wah-wah, distortion…I left behind the acoustic aesthetic quite a bit.

B: You certainly did. Freaked some people out.

“Toothless Cannibal” is an interesting image. What do u do? You have to puree the guy?

C: I’m working on a story where he might end up becoming a vegetarian as a result…even a vegan. He goes through some life changes. That tune starts with an accordion figure that I liked for a long time because it sounds atypical, it’s got this motion to it. And then I just…I was feeling like writing something that was…it was an aggressive tune. I don’t write a ton of aggressive tunes. That one needed to be.

Is it the 3 Leg version of head-banging?

C: True.

B: That’s one of my favorite tunes.

Listen to “Toothless Cannibal:”

Why am I not surprised? We have to talk about this cow song, “Driving along with My Cow in My Volga.”

B: That came about a long time ago on my drive home from a gig. I had these images. I just picture this guy driving around in Romania with his cow in the back seat of his car, with the top chopped off of the car. That developed into a story that I tell at concerts. I’ve had a lot of experiences driving over there and they drive like crazy.

A Volga

The Volga is a real car.

B: A Russian car. When I lived in Hungary, I used to think they were the coolest cars. The Russians were still there when I was there and the Russian officers would drive these black Volgas.

C: …a 1950’s type

B: …but they were new cars. The slow motion part is where he goes off the road. I’m following him in my BMW and he goes off the road into a big corn field and it’s dangerous and scary and turns into slow motion for me.

There’s a radio on in the car in that song. What are they saying?

C and B together: Oh…we don’t know. No. I dunno.

I don’t believe you.

C: We have no idea.

B: They might be saying, “Buy this album.”

C: When Bela says he wrote it on his way home, he kinda of heard it in his head. It came to him in not much time.

B: Didn’t have to work on it too much.

C: You came to rehearsal the next day saying, “Listen to this.”

B: It’s a simple tune. It has some character. You can visualize what’s happening.

C: We tend to steer away from simple tunes. But an occasional simple tune is a beautiful thing. It’s a chance to breathe.

Is “According to Chagall” actually inspired by a specific painting?

C: It was a more theatrical experience. I work with “Do-Jump.” They did a Chagall show with a lot of people dressed as paintings and backdrops. It told some of the life, literally but more in an imagistic, impressionistic way. It starts with a monologue and I wrote this music to back up the monologue. It wasn’t quite as it is now, but it was enough of a piece that I kept being drawn to finish it and turning it into a 3 Leg piece.

And then there’s this “Bus Stop to Oblivion.” It sounds like “Last Exit to Brooklyn.”

C: It’s true. That’s a full-on mashup. It starts inspired by and modeled after a 16th century Scottish fiddle tune, but I noticed that, at the same time, that it had a similar feel and changes to a Coltrane tune so I let it be influenced by that. And then I was doing a Summer workshop with Jenny Conley from the Decemberist and she was giving me some Decemberists stuff and I really liked the energy, so it influenced the next part of the tune.

You know that Turtles’ tune “So Happy Together?” Not that you can hear that in there but the following section is my Turtles moment.

B: Also you’ve got some “Twist and Shout” in there.

C: And then at the very end, there’s ELO.

B: Let me finish up here. When Courtney brought this tune to the band, everyone was like, “What the fuck is this? We don’t like this. It doesn’t have a melody. It’s got pieces of every tune in the world.” And Courtney, man I really mean it, I thought that was the greatest thing that you stood up for yourself. “We need to learn it. You haven’t played it yet.” And for maybe two years they were slinging mud at Courtney.

C: Every time we rehearsed it, I’d get a lecture.

B: There were times when everyone wanted to quit and end the rehearsal. “No, I’m not playing this because it sucks.” At one point, I got pissed and said, “You know what? I think Courtney has something here. Just let him do it. I know him because when we first started working together I thought one of the first tunes he played for me, I thought, “That sucks.”

But then give it some time. We went to work in the studio on this thing and it really studioed it out.

C: It really came to life in the studio. We had played it a few times live but hadn’t really gotten it to its full state, plus it did experience a lot of inertial resistance.

B: Oh God. I had to say, “Look you guys, just chill out, let him do it, let him learn it, let us all play it.

C: It met my vision in the end.

Now that’s a very unusual Frailach that you have on here.

C: It covers a lot of territory. It starts with a bass solo and that was a discovery in the studio.  Michael is a very inventive player and he started doing this strummy thing…maybe this will make a good background and put his solo on top and the whole next area, Bela took his solo but in the mixing area, too we had Tarik Banzi come in and play the doumbek.

This album more than any other album we’ve done is a studio project and so we got the tracks and they sounded pretty good but you can do so much sculpting and post-composition in the studio.

B: We call it our “White Album.”

C: We did a ton of massaging and adding some super-low drum, and stuff like that to tell the story and so it ends up being a little irregular as a Frailach.

You use a tuba on “Autumn.”

B: When I wrote it, I wrote it on piano, and I started to think this reminds me of riding my bike through Paris on an Autumn day, stopping here, stopping there and looking at things. Adding the tuba just seemed natural. It’s a melancholy tune.

C: This is a tune that Mike Murphy plays on and he’s a serious Classical dude and his bowing is really good. Between the bowing, the tuba and then in the mixing we got a weird tone out of the combination of those instruments that gives it a good character. I don’t just hear those instruments.

On the final track, “The Last Dream,” Bela wrote it but both of you arranged it. How does that work?

B: We disagree on that but for the sake of…you know, getting along.

I was going to ask you about that, it’s been a long time now…13 years. Things must be pretty settled between the two of you.

B: We’re settled. Naturally we have our…

C: I’m going to walk away, you can talk freely.

I’ve had lifelong friends to whom I feel free saying, “You’re a fucking asshole.”

B: He gets teary-eyed when that happens.

C: I don’t like that but Bela is a fucking asshole and I have to tell him.

B: He’s a little more sensitive to that stuff. It comes out a day later…”You really hurt my feelings.”

C: I tell you, that would be pretty quick.

B: When I started writing that tune, I had a dream…this was the morning that my wife was giving birth to our son, I was having this dream and this melody was going through my dream…my wife shakes me and wakes me up saying, “We have to go to the hospital.” She had a really really long labor, like thirty-some odd hours. When I got home I made sure to write down the song in my dream.

I came to the guys and I said, “Here, I have this tune.” I didn’t quite know how to bring it back around to the beginning. I had the palette and Courtney says, “Why don’t you do this?” A quick, simple fix like that and he says, “I want arranger’s credit.”

C: I helped with structure.

B: Yeah, two notes, dude.

C: I had four. Those extra two are the money notes.

B: If it wasn’t for Courtney, it might not have turned out the way it did. It’s a nice “goodnight” song.

C: It was an interesting tune. In my appreciation of Bela as a composer this was a tune that had a different sound than other stuff that I’ve heard from him. A lot of your tunes have activity to them and this is more spare and moody and very sweet, too.