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Jeffrey Alan Bright Music Archive
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Super​-​Natural

by Darke County

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1.
Super-Natural 04:58
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The sign outside hung me up Please come in Come in or walk away It said ESP & Palmistry ESP & Palmistry ESP & Palmistry Come in or walk away I should walk away... Madam, you see I've got these wicked ideas inside of me I've been landlocked for 29 years The bashful child a good mother reared But now all I have are these wild ideas Burning a hole inside of me Is it natural, or super-natural? Is it natural, or super-natural? Super-natural Super-natural Super-natural I should walk away Walk away Walk away Walk away! Master the pain of my education Respectable career, I had real-life occupation But now all I have are these wild, wild ideas Burning a hole inside of me Is it natural, or super-natural? Is it natural, or super-natural? Super-natural Super-natural Super-natural I should walk away… I can't walk away I can't walk away I can't walk away
2.
Chinatown Incident 00:29
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(instrumental)
3.
Crushed Velvet 01:52
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You wear straw by daylight The day is made of straw Crushed velvet for twilight It helps to break your fall You shun the sun at noon Because the heat could make you thaw Fractured by moonlight You say the crutches make you tall The night is made of nothing There is nothing to fear Not the Thief, the Clown nor Cupid But the fear of velvet The night is made of nothing But the fear of velvet

about

Darke County’s music, a product of the late-80s-early-90s songwriting collaboration between ex-Pleasures Pale front man Jeffrey Bright and fellow Ohio native Eric “E-Bone” Schulz, was a tilted landscape of tall tales and mysteries of the heart, a ghost-town brew of haunted longing and ironic nostalgia populated by tormented characters from the creases and folds of so many darkening American dreams. Constructed around Bright’s crooning and noir-tinged lyrics and Schulz’s eclectic arrangements, the band’s sound was an amalgam of mid-century American styles, sharing more DNA with cool jazz, old-time country, exotica, TV detective themes, and Mancini film scores than with rock, but never straying too far from pop idioms of the day.

Work from the early days of the Bright-Schulz partnership has remained obscure for close to 30 years. Now, as a project of the Jeffrey Alan Bright Music Archive, this uniquely rich material is being exhumed from cassette, digitized and restored, in some cases finished with further recording, and now presented here on Bandcamp. Three decades entombed has only made the material more fascinating, poignant, and oddly brilliant. Today it stands as an intriguing artifact from a period that is looking evermore like the waning years of San Francisco’s once thriving bohemia.

This three-song excerpt from the forthcoming “Edge of Night” LP centers on a cornerstone of Darke County’s live show. Years before Santana’s hit of a similar title, DC’s “Super-Natural” was shaking butts and prompting bar-top dancing in the SF underground. The song’s ending vamp was prime for a sweaty end-of-show send off, often churning its way into a frenzied rendition of the James Brown classic “Sex Machine.”

Atop the tight groove from bassist Chris Green and drummer Christopher Fisher, and alongside Schulz’s expressive, funky, wah-wah guitar, singer Bright weaves a yarn of temptation and submission — the naïve son “a good mother reared” drifts not-unwillingly into the occult’s velvet grip. In so doing, the narrative conjures a metaphor for the creative life, where the leap from conformity’s safety to a state of radical thought and invention assumes the form of a supernatural “possession.” Set against the song’s underlying rumba, the episode is one of stylish doom and foreshadows the gypsy and Latin influences to follow in other tracks on the LP.

Backing “Super-Natural” on this release are “Chinatown Incident” and “Crushed Velvet.” The former, a brief, off-handed guitar sketch employing random radio static and a clichéd Oriental motif, hints at what were likely the duo’s initial exposures to San Francisco’s infamous Chinatown, an exotic district — stereotyped by its own authenticity — who’s dark alleys, garish window scenes, narrow, teeming streets, harsh bouquet of aromas, and glaring signs fit neatly into the backdrop of any American West Coast noir tableau. Ultimately, “CI” serves as a send up for “Crushed Velvet,” the set’s finale.

Fans of Darke County and their later incarnation Myself a Living Torch will recognize “Crushed Velvet” as the seed that would vine and flower into “Fear of Velvet,” a song that, as much as any other, defined the band’s “dark-with-an-e” aesthetic. Here, the original composition draft — featuring Schulz playing drums, guitar, 6-string bass guitar, and harmonica — has been rescued from cassette and finished with Bright’s vocals and additional tracking as one more headlong roll in an existential tumble toward the edge of night.

credits

released July 25, 2020

jeffrey bright – voice
e-bone schulz – electric guitar & 6-string bass, harmonica, radio, drums (3)
chris troy green – acoustic double bass (1)
drums (1) – christopher fisher

initial recording:
minna mansion
san francisco, california
1990–1991
​
additional recording:
san francisco, california
2019

cover design – jeffrey bright
tarot drawing from the esoteric workings of
the secret order of the golden dawn

c) 1991 Darke County
p) 2020 JABMA
Fugitive Music Publishing / BMI

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Darke County San Francisco, California

An actual place in rural Ohio, Darke County is also the shadowy dream state of American gothic & noir created by the late 1980s / early 1990s songwriting partnership of ex-Pleasures Pale vocalist Jeffrey Bright and the artist now known as Harlan T Bobo. DarCo performed regularly in the San Francisco underground before reincarnation in late 1991 as surrealist indie act Myself a Living Torch. ... more

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