Music

Need To Bleed EP   Year: 2003 | Run Time: 36:18

©2003 Meat Market Records & Lo-Fidelity Records. All songs by Bill Mallonee, CyBrenJoJosh Music ©2003 BMI.

Track List

    1. Double Cure [5:11]
    2. Locket Full of Moonlight [4:05]
    3. Always the Same Medicine [3:47]
    4. Audible Sigh [5:28]
    5. Dirty Job [4:07]
    6. Your Part of the Story [5:20]
    7. Moonlight Dripping [3:08]
    8. On to Bethlehem [5:12]

    About Need To Bleed EP

    Limited to 1,000 copies, the Need to Bleed EP was released as an outlet for some of VoL's unreleased gems. The intent was for this to be the first of a series, but the BillTunes program eventually filled that role.

    Quotes from Bill Mallonee

    Jun 27, 2003: In a way it's sort of engaging... you'd be surprised at how many songs I'd actually forgotten that I'd written.... So much so that when one finds one of the rare jewels and feels they "stand up," "ring true," and even inspire, then one wants to share them with everyone.... That's what started to happen as I listened down to the tunes I've done over the years.... The only criteria was to be able to say at the end of a track was: "Well, now that felt pretty good! Do you think other's would like it?"

    Jun 27, 2003: In the end, my work with that much missed entity known as VOL, was always about a heart on the sleeve abandon... and a lot of word of mouth from folks like yourselves who were always there with goodwill and encouragement.... Consider this as way to give something back.... You'll recognize the themes of despair, desperation, hope... and redemption from Something bigger than yourself throughout these songs.... As far as VOL went, it was never very safe to be transparent, but I am glad we never quite figured out how to tow the line and play it safe for the sake of commercial success.... At some point it was bound to hit the wall, fall off the tight rope and burst into flames.... Oh sure, that's grandiose and overly romanticized! But it was the music that kept us going... we bought it all and lived it for all it was worth... in the end it was all so very rock and roll.

    Credits

    Mastering and Audio: Kevin Fromer. Design: Marc Ludena with Jeffrey Kotthoff. Photos: Dinah Kotthoff.

    Liner Notes

    Over the years I've written for many reasons... Sometimes they were simply pep talks to myself. God forgive me if they were ever too agenda ridden! (somewhat in those early days of VOL I tried so hard to be urban-clever!)... For I believe He alone is big enough to capture the hardest heart... He did so with me... Sometimes I wrote to stay sane; to fend off depression... to find some happiness or something close to it... maybe I wrote to just find a musical skeleton to hang something called joy on... sometimes the song became a sacramental joy itself... To me, there's hardly a thing that compares to the clang, 6-string drag and jangle of guitars playing through a good chord progression at that place where heart and voice meet in yearning, hope and mystery... it is mystery, you know... the smell, the sound, the feel of making a song.

    Even the logistics of being a writer are a leap of faith: why anyone would want to abandon the security of a 9-to-5 and pursue such a muse as songwriting, recording, playing and touring is almost beyond comprehension in this day and age of 6-figure aspirations, in search of the perfect body and the perfect cafeteria-style "new age" soul... I guess most of what I do is simply scraping a wound... it's a selfish, almost neurotic preoccupation/fascination with what kinda stuff I'm made of... and, as a corollary, what good could possibly be expected of one so bound by flesh and blood?

    I've been sticking this stuff in songs for 12 years now... I dunno how to do it any other way at this point... Still, my hunch is that we're all made of the same fallen stuff and so perhaps a song or two will "resonate" with those who've given up on themselves, or at least put those "selves" in perspective... After all, we're all in the same hospital, so I've never written with a particular patient (audience) in mind...

    But back to that notion of transformation when bound by such "dodgy" stuff as flesh and blood... Is this a dream; a wish too fantastic to entertain? Is it possible at all? Well, I stayed with this thing called songwriting because it helped me have faith that these sorts of things can and do happen. I came to realize that grace comes pretty quietly and unobtrusively on most days... Music seemed to train my eyes and ears to sense it; to "taste and see that the Lord is good!" Even now we get pretty good "reports from the front" that such transformations are not only possible but in process... I see it daily in the eyes of my children, my band-mates and friends... I see it in the Blessed Sacrament. I sense it at night when I feel my wife's gentle breath on my chest as wel sleep...

    I am glad for the persistence of folks like Jeffrey Kotthoff and Lo-Fidelity Records in asking me to search through the vaults of literally 100's of songs that have been recorded over the years and make them available! So we'll try to do so on a regular basis.

    To the hard-core fans, perhaps these tunes are like little treasures... but to me they are kind of a bittersweet experience... sometimes I had no idea I'd written the tune or that it was evn recorded, (as in the case of "live" material...!) But often, I think they simply helped me see how I got from one part of the trail to another. Upon recent listening, most of them seem full of too much sadness and pain, so much so that I had to stop the listening process on more than one occasion... Perhaps it's the depressing realization for me that for as much time as I spent scraping a wound and trying to make it into a song, it would probably never be heard by many folks at all. There were never many resources or safety nets surrounding VOL. After a while, it seemed, our hopes faded. The again, even if folks did hear them would they understand their meaning? Would they understand them in an age where perceptions of melancholy spirituality are considered suspect, if not heretical. I decided to leave the critics opinions on such things in the dust about 8 years ago just before the making of Slow Dark Train and just open the vein as far as my writing songs goes...

    And then, a funny thing happened: The world shrank rather quickly. The party went sour. Industry, record folks, and well-wishers vanished. Hipper-than-thou-hanger-ons left. The folks who only came to hear the radio hits felt too uncomfortable and called their respective cabs... As a band we soldiered on till we could no longer pretend it didn't hurt... and then we crashed.

    For a while the world felt small and fragile, pointless... but new songs kept showing up so I wrote them, wondering what this was all for. Until one day I realized that this thing had been (really from the very beginning) always and only, for an audience of One... and that Audience has been so generous and so patient with me, so extravagant in His love for me that I never again forgot that whatever bar I was playing in on some dark night 2000 miles from home, was always... full.

    And knowing that truth has made this the largest, most beautiful mysterious world ever since.

    bill mallonee
    summer 2003

     

     

     

     

     

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