Shakespeare Wallah:  In Praise of Inauthenticity

The last time I caught up with Vincent M., he'd just released a rather unique collection of mechanical and steam-powered pop songs augmented by carillons, nickelodeons and self-playing violins.  Dressed accordingly in a spiffy linen suit topped with a straw fedora, he was ready, willing and able to discuss everything from Edwardian dining habits to the undeserved demonization of J. Bruce Ismay, the builder of the Titanic.  Everything, that is, except his music.

He was still doing business under the brand name Wunderbar! in those days, and the thing I never cared for was their penchant for musical magic tricks.   The succession of infinite rabbits pulled out of innumerable hats tended to overshadow the songs themselves.

That is all history.  V.  Merkhajeb  has begun trading under the name of Shakespeare Wallah, no exclamation points, seeking those damp, musty corners where mutually exclusive musical genres accidentally dovetail.  There he constructs a League of Nations from palm fronds, Egyptian marble and broken bottle glass in their mildewed shade.

You read the word 'authentic' a lot when it comes to rating the work of musicians and songwriters.  Vincent M. doesn't buy that, thinks the term is as meaningless, vapid and as overused as 'professional musician' and even goes out of his way to point out if there ever was a phony, it's probably himself.  At least when it comes to roots music.

Take "Unreliable Narrator".  As much Grand Ol' Opry as it is Egyptian Souk, bluegrass banjos bating an Arabic string section.  But this isn't a DJ jumble sale.  More a melting pot, and in that respect, more American than Wunderbar! ever was.  An idealized America, to be sure.  Where all cultures and their particular musical expression are equal. 

V. Merkhajeb smiles and shrugs.  His beloved dog that,  à la Pet Sounds, made an appearance on Papageno's opening track, died last week.  He looks tired and slightly lost.  Gone are the smart Mark Twain duds. Apparently Shakespeare Wallah is more Depression-era cabby chic, vintage brown leather jacket and work duds.

Shakespeare Wallah is at once more and less pop than Wunderbar!  Discuss.

"Well, Shakespeare Wallah certainly is noisier than Wunderbar!  Wunderbar!  never collapsed entirely into noise, and the solos, even those played on wonky homemade instruments generally stayed somewhere in key." 

Tracks like "Neanderthal Waltz" acknowledge just about everything but pop and rock.  Chinese stringed instruments  rub shoulders with steel guitar and French horn. Guest duet vocalist and harp player Kevin Epperson sounds as if he'd be more comfortable singing in a 19th century parlor than a modern recording studio.

"It's a very different sort of voice Kevin has, and one that you'd hear singing art songs or leider before pop or something.  That's a favorite track of mine because, since I share the vocals with him, the way he understands and interprets the lyrics is different from how I do, but equally legitimate.  Writing and recording a song...  It's like knowing everything about a certain person.  And the way Kevin sings his lines, it's like that person's twin I've never met."

With nods toward the orchestrated chaos of early twentieth century American composer and Transcendentalist Charles Ives blended with a gentle country waltz, the song is at once familiar and jarring.  The same is true in spades for Six Years Old, a gentle piano ballad punctuated with sudden violent stabs of sampled percussive noise.

"It's about the earthquake and tsunami in Northern Japan.  There was no way I was going to rhyme 'hope' with 'cope' or something.  I didn't even feel qualified to write the lyrics.  I ended up correlating quotes from the survivors and settled on those more or less in meter."

Similar in concept and execution is the brief Halloween number, a collaboration with illustrator and writer Linda Tatro Dobbins.  "Orchid" is assembled from EVP "spirit transcriptions" sung in a round with a suitably slithery string arrangement.

"I still think Paul's 'Can You Take Me Back' fragment just before Revolution #9 is the scariest piece of music I've ever heard. It's out there in the cemetery with Doc Boggs or something.  That kind of song isn't written.  It's streamed directly from Limbo or something.  And Linda's illustrations, particularly the cover, were just perfect.  Very cold, very sad.  The best ghost stories treat death as a metaphor for long term depression."

"Face down in Boudin Noir and Crestor Part 1" is fragmented, spindly jazz twisted into candy cane pop, but prone to collapsing into bleating saxophone and out of context guitar breaks. Its sequel, Part 10, a fable involving a German industrialist's bankruptcy and subsequent failed suicide includes Kevin Epperson's sly, hilarious dubbed-up harmonica solo that manages to somehow quote both Trenchtown and "Stayin' Alive".  There are, apparently nine more sections to be completed.

"It's the rosemary you planted in your yard. You'd thought you'd pick some from time to time to use in the kitchen, and next thing you know, it's turned into a jungle, choking the pansies.  But Part 10 was recorded three times.  I just kept the same harmonica track.  It was the only thing worth keeping.  So now it's kind of like a man in a tuxedo at a tractor pull, and I like that.  It's incongruous, and to give sufficient time and musical space for that to register with the listener, I had to stop batting the needle all over the record, snatching it off the turntable and breaking it over my head.  So to speak."

Shakespeare Wallah has a sideline in cinematic instrumentals as well, tracks Bad News First and El Chupacabra are cut like short films transitioning between scenes, wide shots and close-ups.  Whereas Wunderbar!  always sounded as if he had approximately thirty seconds to prove something, grab the listener's attention before they began scrolling through their IPod for Radiohead or Coldplay, Shakespeare Wallah, with it's sustained moods, exudes something not unlike confidence.

"I guess so.  At some point, I realized there were thousands of people downloading my songs, and I decided maybe I didn't have to keep so many plates in the air at the same time anymore."

"Maybe just one plate.  And I could even afford to drop and break one from time to time."

Rene Naiff