Allelujah

Following a few albums with the experimental noise pop band Minus Story and several years of touring, Andy Byers relocated to New York where he worked in film as a production designer and composer for a number of projects, including being a critical part of Isabella Rossellini’s series Green Porno.  After that, Andy moved to LA, where he rediscovered his passion for songwriting.  He started to trade ideas with Shearwater’s Lucas Oswald, and during a week long writing session in Los Angeles the two of them had outlined the basic concept for Allelujah’s The Death and Life of Capt Nathan Baker.

After stumbling upon a photo book belonging to a Civil War Captain in an antique store while visiting the Hudson River Valley, a fascination began with the story behind it’s previous owner. Through the writings of a very detailed journal kept by the Captain, a true hero is revealed in Nathan Baker, the soldier and chaplain who fought in the Civil War. He would kneel down to pray with his men, preparing them for possible death before leading them to the battlefield, fought on the front lines, carried the injured that fell behind and properly sent those freed souls into the afterlife. After the war, he returned home to marry his young love, whom he met the day he left for his first battle. Baker spent the remainder of his days building telescopes to better study the astral world above him, becoming obsessed with the cosmos.

Andy felt a true connection to the spiritual tale of Captain Baker. Andy’s father, who spent most of his life in the military, including several tours in Vietnam, filled his childhood with stories of battle and jungle warfare.  Andy was also himself an ordained full-gospel Baptist teenage preacher. That environment saturated him with spiritual songs and 2 hour dance spells lead by the whirling, breathing church organs, back beats, hand claps, tambourine slaps, shouts of hallelujah, and a syrup-heavy pouring out of the holy spirit that found it’s way back into his own musical creations.  By the time Andy discovered Captain Baker, he was no longer preaching but he was still deeply affected by spiritual those ideas.

The Death and Life of Capt Baker was conceived with the idea that these songs could be structured like gospel hymns to pile poetry upon. In the year leading up to the recording, Patti Smith and Bob Dylan fell into huge rotation and the goal was to go into the studio with those three pillars to rely on in directing how the songs would unfold. By employing the help of fellow Minus Story members, the guitar work of a music theater wrangler, and the horns from a member of the United States Army Band; the result is a raw abstraction of the story a man who went through a spiritual journey during a time of incredible hardships and came out on the other side of the world.

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