The Victor Mourning went into the studio on Wednesday, November 18, ‘09, to begin our new full length CD. We have about half the foundation tracks laid down and will be hopefully completing those next week.

We’ve also recently been asked by Marthijn DeWit, host of The Americana Music Club on Radio Nordoost-Friesland in Dokkum, Holland, to provide a couple of ID jingles for his show. We’ll be recording those next week as well.

Other than that, we’re  currently preparing for the holidays like everyone else and also filling out the remaining dates on our eastern tour in late March.

The Victor Mourning T-Shirt

When we’re out playing shows, people who visit our merchandise table are often curious about the image on our band t-shirts. The Victor Mourning t-shirt design replicates a Victorian era mourning brooch, most likely of English origin, created between 1860-80.  The original brooch is made of gutta percha, a natural latex material from the sap of a Malayan tree, first discovered by Westerners in 1842. This material could be placed in a mold or carved by hand to create detailed three-dimensional objects with great accuracy, as seen in this brooch, in which the fingernails, flora, and sleeve cuff are rendered delicately and precisely.

Victorian mourning jewelry traditions derived from memento mori images that date back to ancient Rome and flourished in the Middle Ages, but the apex of sentimental mourning jewelry was reached during the latter half of the nineteenth century. Some of the most compelling examples of Victorian era jewelry are those created to commemorate the loss of a loved one.

Mourning jewelry was often made of jet (the fossilized remains of wood decaying under water) or one of its more affordable alternatives including gutta percha; vulcanite (invented in the 1830s, it is similar in appearance to gutta percha, but is made from Indian rubber treated with sulfur); or French jet (black glass made to resemble true jet)—materials whose black color made them especially suitable for mourning.

Following the example set by Queen Victoria (1819-1901), who remained in mourning for the rest of her life after the death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861, mourning evolved into a rigidly structured code of practices that dictated proper behavior and the outward symbolism of clothing and jewelry. (Women, and widows in particular, were expected to adhere strictly to accepted mourning etiquette, and failure to do so was highly frowned upon; the standards for men were briefer and far more relaxed.)

The hand was a popular motif in Victorian imagery, and was associated with affection and love. It is found frequently on calling cards, where it may clasp another hand in friendship or offer a gift of flowers; in mourning jewelry, where it may be intended to point to the heart of the wearer, hold a sheaf of wheat, a sprig of yew, or a bouquet of forget-me-nots; and on gravestones, where a single hand may point heavenward or two clasped hands signify the heavenly reunion of a husband and wife divided by death.

The original brooch: roses and yew

In mourning jewelry, the image of a single hand holding a garland of roses and yew typically symbolized the death of a husband or sweetheart. The yew, a conifer, has been associated with death since ancient times, and it is known as the “death tree” throughout much of Europe. In the United Kingdom, the yew is most often found growing in churchyards and cemeteries, where it is seen as a symbol of mortality and the transcendence of death; in the nineteenth century it became a popular mourning emblem. In this context, roses are associated with condolence and sorrow, and symbolize the brevity of earthly existence.

We think it’s a fitting logo for The Victor Mourning.

—Lynne Adele 

British Sailors, 1908

“What is that instrument?” is a question we’re used to hearing in reference to my six-string banjo, or guitjo, when The Victor Mourning performs. Although it dates to the mid-nineteenth century, the guitjo (sometimes called a banjitar) remains surprisingly unfamiliar to the general public and musicians alike.

The banjo, of course, traces its history to African slaves in the United States, who adapted African stringed instruments into gourd banjos. Until the 1830s, the banjo was an instrument associated exclusively with African American musicians. The five-string banjo was popularized to white audiences in the U.S. by the early minstrel performer, Joel Sweeney, in the 1830s, and introduced to England by the Virginia Minstrels during the following decade. The banjo quickly became a favorite instrument in English music halls.

The six-string banjo was evidently a British innovation, attributed to William Temlett, one of England’s earliest banjo makers, who opened his shop in London in 1846. Although early examples differ in design, the guitjo soon came to consist of a banjo body with a guitar neck, tuned and played like a guitar. Other hybrid banjo forms include the banjolele (a banjo/ukelele combo), the mandobanjo (mandolin/banjo), bass banjo, and cello banjo.

The six-string banjo joined the four-string banjo as a popular instrument in jazz and swing music of the 1920s and 30s. The six-string banjo was the instrument of the early jazz great Johnny St. Cyr (of Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five and Hot Seven), as well as that of Django Reinhardt, Danny Barker, Papa Charlie Jackson and Clancy Hayes, as well as the blues and gospel singer The Reverend Gary Davis.

Johnny St Cyr

Neither banjo nor guitar, the guitjo belongs to both the banjo and guitar families. Its distinctly plunky, percussive sound is being rediscovered by musicians today. Artists including Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen have used it on tour and in the studio, and it is the primary instrument of Old Crow Medicine Show ‘s Kevin Hayes.

—Lynne Adele

Steve and I share a longtime interest in the work of self-taught visual artists. Among our favorite artists is Charles August Albert Dellschau (1830-1923). Born in Brandenburg, Prussia, Dellschau emigrated to the U.S. through the Port of Galveston at the age of twenty. He applied for U.S. Citizenship, married a widow with a young daughter, and fathered three children. Dellschau worked most of his life as butcher, and later as a clerk in his son-in-law’s saddle and harness shop in Houston.

After retiring in 1900 at the age of seventy, Dellschau began creating a series of scrapbooks in which he affixed mixed-media drawings of primitive flying machines. He called his drawings press blumen, or “press blooms.” Dellschau first drew grids in pencil on paper over which he drew the flying machines, or “aeros,” in ink and watercolor. To these, he added collage of newspaper clippings of the day, many relating to aeronautics and other scientific discoveries.

Each flying machine was given a name, attributed to a designer, pictured from various angles, and accompanied with notes regarding its history written in German and English as well as strange symbols that comprised a secret code. The final drawings are dated 1921, just two years before Dellschau’s death at the age of ninety-three.

The drawings remained unknown for more than forty years after Dellschau’s death, stored in the attic of the family home. In 1967, twelve of the scrapbooks were placed on the street for trash pickup, where they were rescued, and ended up in a junk store where they sat unnoticed for two more years. Found there in 1969 by a local college student, four of the books were eventually purchased for Houston’s Menil Collection. Four additional books are now shared between the San Antonio Museum of Art and the Witte Museum, and four more eventually came on to the market via a New York gallery. It is estimated that he may have created as many as 2000 drawings.

Until the late 1990s, Dellschau’s drawings spent most of their time in museum storage due to their fragile condition. They remained unknown outside of Texas—except to a small group of folk art scholars, amateur scientists, inventors, and individuals with interests ranging from physics to paranormal and extra-terrestrial phenomena. The drawings were at the center of a mystery involving a secret society and reported UFO sightings in the 19th century.

They became the passion of Pete Navarro, a Houston UFOlogist who deciphered Dellschau’s code, translated the texts from German to English, and uncovered a fascinating tale. He found that Dellschau claimed to be a member of a secret aero club comprised of some sixty individuals who gathered in the 1850s in Sonora, California. The drawings were said to represent airships that had actually been built and flown by the Sonora Aero Club before being dismantled. Navarro found that the books held designs for more than 100 distinct aircraft.

It is difficult to imagine any of Dellschau’s eccentric contraptions having aerodynamic capability. But supposedly, the aeros did not rely on conventional gases such as helium or hydrogen commonly used in dirigibles and balloons of the day. A member of Dellschau’s society had discovered a secret substance made from green crystals distilled from coal, which, when added to water, created a hot gas that had the ability to negate weight. With this antigravity substance, known as the “supe,” the airships were lifted and propelled in flight. The supe recipe was lost forever when its inventor died, and soon the group disbanded.

There are numerous newspaper accounts of mysterious airship sightings throughout the U.S. toward the end of the 19th century. But whether Dellschau’s drawings were designs for actual aircraft, or the fanciful creations of the artist’s imagination, one thing is certain: they represent an artistic achievement of great vision and importance, and serve as valuable documentation of man’s obsession with flight.

—Lynne Adele

Lately I’ve been researching American event songs recorded by hillbilly bands prior to WWII. The tunes I’m speaking of are those that are based on events that can actually be historically documented, unlike a song like “Knoxville Girl” which was arguably based on a real murder once upon a time but has morphed and changed so much over the centuries that the original event becomes so clouded that there’s no agreement on which historical event it’s actually based on. This means, of course, that we’re dealing with more recent events and more recent songs (although in some cases older tunes were used for the new songs.)

The oldest event that ends up in a song recorded by a pre-war hillbilly band that I’ve found is the murder of Naomi “Omie” Wise in Randolph County, North Carolina, in 1808 (some sources say 1807.) The traditional story, in brief, is that virtuous, innocent orphan Naomi is seduced by “John Lewis’ lies” and ultimately she is murdered and thrown in a river.

The ballad inspired by this murder first shows up (as far as I can tell) as “Poor Naomi” in an article by Braxton Craven (who wrote the earliest account of the murder, published as a pamphlet many years after it happened) in the Greensboro, NC, Patriot on April 29, 1874. Whether the tune started as a folk lyric or as a composed piece isn’t known, nor when the tune first entered the repertoire of local musicians. The tune, or a variation on it, first saw wax with Morgan Denmon’s 1927 version issued on the Okeh label. In subsequent years Omie’s story was put to disc by Ruben Burns (1927, Gennett, unissued), G.B. Grayson (1928, Victor), Clarence Ashley (1930, Columbia), and Aunt Idy Harper & the Coon Creek Girls (1938, Vocalion).

Now, the story of Omie’s undoing in the recorded versions of this song follows the classic murder ballad arc: innocence undone by treachery. But in a notebook in a library archive at UCLA there exists another version of the ballad, and indeed, another version of the story. The notebook was owned by one Mary Woody who would’ve been a little girl during the time of the murder (according to her reported birth date of 1801.) Her version of the ballad, which appears in the notebook as A true account of Nayomy Wise, tells of a Naomi who was far from innocent. In Woody’s version:

And by Some person was defild
And So brought forth a basturd Child
She Told her name neomy Wise
Her Carnal Conduct Some did despise

And then:

The Second Child neomy bore think She
Into a neighbors man Ben Sanders Swore

In this version, by the time she’s pregnant by John Lewis she’s now about to bear her third illegitimate child and is very proud of the fact. As “She So Sensless was of Shame”. Lewis asks her to keep it quiet, she doesn’t, so he kills her.

Whether this is a version that came from a different point of view, like someone close to the Lewis family, trying to cast Naomi’s virtue in doubt for posterity, or whether this is an echo of what truly may have occurred is open to debate without further research. If Naomi was the local slattern then she wasn’t very suited as the subject of a murder ballad in the classic sense as given the morality of the day she would’ve shared some of the guilt in that era’s worldview just by being who she was. But perhaps the very callousness of the act itself was seen as so great that the circumstances were modified to fit the classic “innocence wronged” model. Or maybe time and oral tradition simply erased the unpleasant details about Naomi’s character and shaped the ballad into the one we know today.

In many fields of research writers mention that someday we may have technology or tools to be able to improve what we know about a certain subject. Unfortunately, the very nature of history is that it tends to hide and disappear very easily. I wonder what kind of technology they could possibly develop in the future to help us find it?

-Stephen Lee Canner

An unknown work by Arthur Rimbaud has been discovered, written during the Franco-Prussian War.

“Bismarck’s dream”, a prose text running to around 50 lines, was published on November 25, 1870 in the local newspaper Le Progres des Ardennes, under the name Jean Baudry.

Rimbaud and his era was a fascination of mine about 20 years ago, about the time that Barnaby Conrad’s coffee table book on absinthe was published. The Franco-Prussian War has been another minor fascination lately. I recently found several small portraits of Prussian soldiers from this era and framed them. They now hang above my DVD shelf. I also recently discovered the probability that one branch of my family (my paternal great great grandmother) immigrated to the US from Prussia just before the war.

-Stephen Lee Canner

When I lived in Bloomington around 1984-85 I lived downtown in a large (now locally famous) apartment building called the Allen Building. Given the extremely cheap rent (bathroom down the hall, $135 a month) the vast majority of my neighbors were musicians, artists or just scenesters. But there were a couple of pensioners that I would occasionally see in the hall. I knew their names and would nod hello to them on the stairs, but nothing much more than that. One of these folks was Carl Moenkhaus, a thin balding man who never said much. I knew that there was a dorm building on the Indiana University campus called Moenkhaus but that was as far as the familiarity went.

Recently on the Indiana MFT site a discussion of Hoagy Carmichael’s early days in Bloomington came up. In the 1920s Carmichael famously hung out in the Book Nook, a soda shop/bookstore directly across the street from the gates to the university. By the time I lived in Bloomington the Book Nook was just a place to stop in and grab a Coke on the go, more a convenience store than a hangout. If memory serves they did still sell a few Cliff Notes and other minor books, though. In Hoagy’s day the Book Nook was evidently the hip place for the jazz kids to get together. One of these kids was William “Monk” Moenkhaus. Monk was great pals with Hoagy and evidently something of a Hoosier Dadaist. One source says that he was actually going to school in Zurich in 1914 (although according to what I’ve found he would’ve been 12 at the time, not sure how long he stayed there) and “apparently exposed to the Dadaist movement then taking shape in Zurich – or at least its intellectual fallout – and brought its principles back with him when he returned to study music in Bloomington.” If Monk stayed in Europe until he was 18, this would’ve been around 1920, then he was definitely old enough to have had meaningful contact with the Dada crowd.

If this is true we’ve found a direct connection between the Book Nook/Carmichael crowd and first wave Dada. In the early 80s when a friend of mine named his dorm room “The Cabaret Voltaire” and made Dada inspired flyers for our band Your Real Dad we had no idea that there could be any sort of connection between Zurich in the teens and the small southern Midwestern town we lived in.

I wasn’t sure exactly how old Carl Moenkhaus was but he seemed pretty frail in the mid-80s and did indeed die while I lived in the building. A bit more research turned up the fact that there was a zoology professor at Indiana named William Moenkhaus. As most professors at IU came from elsewhere, not the local community, and the last name not being a common one, I figured it was a good chance that Carl was closely related to Monk.

Then I came across this entry in the 1930 census. It appears that William “Monk” and Carl were both sons of William, Sr, 12 years apart. And given the fact that census takers in those days went from house to house and the next entry is for Alfred Kinsey (yes, THAT Kinsey) it appears that they were adjacent neighbors.

If only I’d known some of this at the time. What amazing stories could I have learned from Carl? The lesson from this is that history, amazing history, is all around us, all the time, no matter where we are. Don’t hesitate to reach out and gather as much of it as you can, before it’s too late.

–Stephen Lee Canner

I had no idea until this morning that the earliest known recording was recorded as early as 1860.

The recording of “Au Clair de la Lune”, recorded in 1860, is thought to be the oldest known recorded human voice.

A phonograph of Thomas Edison singing a children’s song in 1877 was previously thought to be the oldest record.

You can hear the creepy, ghostly sounding track here.

- Stephen Lee Canner

A nice little piece from This American Life about a pre-WWI, southern mystery:

The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar

- Stephen Lee Canner

I had initially intended to blog about my entire SXSW experience, but after writing out what was basically an abbreviated version of Day One I realized that each post would be very long, even in abbreviated form, and that each day seemed like one big name drop. So instead, I’ll just list the highlights of my week here:

Meeting Kim Fowley and spending much of SXSW with him. The man’s been everywhere and done everything and has some amazing stories.

Seeing Roky Erickson receive his Austin Music Award.

Meeting the Belfast contingent that were in town: the band Driving By Night (all very, very nice guys,) promoter Joe Dougan, and a few others.

Seeing the Teen Sensations, The Stems, and Muck and the Mires.

Meeting Art Fein, Danny Fields, and the Cowsills.

Seeing a riveting set by The Builders and The Butchers.

And most of all coming out the other end not so much with any big industry connections but with a very clear sense of what needs to be done at this point. I kept telling everyone I knew over the last month that this SXSW was going to be epic. And I can honestly say it really was.

- Stephen Lee Canner