Somewhere inside these unusual holiday circumstances, there is the very essence of joy and erstwhile. A dear friend, a face from a memory, now tattered around the edges…
There are many songs about love, and (comparatively) few about friendship. Bob Stewart’s single “Sukhumvit Haze” is one of them. A bed of soft classic Americana is the vessel that allows the memory of the moment to come through. Like an oil painting, once this solo artist has brushed on his sounds, they remain captured on the canvas, unforgettable.
Bob Stewart is a roots rock artist from Athens, Ohio. He was raised in Thailand as a missionary kid. He nods to this in his most recent album with “It’s Snowing in Bangkok”, and in this single, “Sukhumvit Haze” as well.
Sukhumvit is a major road that goes through Bangkok. It is known for its lively nightlife, exquisite culinary experiences, and entertainment… So, what will we discover in Stewart’s version of this street?
A soulful yet delicate piano line opens up the song. Despite the pared down instruments, and we get this cinematic immensity…a feeling, nostalgia-meets-heart-welling…as if a favorite movie from our childhood was just about to end. The twangy arpeggiations of the acoustic guitar join in, a duo. Finally, a voice (through the haze), honest and deep:
“The war was a-waginin’, just across the way
Daddy was a-fightin’, he was always away
My sister was cryin’, hidin’ in a tree
Mama was lonely, just dreamin’ of bein’ free”
This family veered off an old crooked highway and were lost in the rain..A Christmas (far too muggy)…
The imagery is so strong that it almost feels as though we can almost feel the humidity and warm dirt beneath our own feet. We wonder if this person is missing something, or if he simply recalling vivid memories. The chorus then blooms, slowly.
“Eatin’ Chinese on Christmas, lights turned low
Remembering you
And a time long ago.”
Space surrounds the following instrumental, with Jorma Kaukonen’s teeming solo, which made listening as easy as breathing.
As if from a dream, we awaken from the solo’s bliss to the following lyrics:
“Too tired and angry to get back on track
When we all got home, we never looked back
But on a dark winter night, I can still see your face
Such a beautiful sight in a Sukhumvit haze.”
As the chorus comes around again, the emotions of “Sukhumvit Haze” become stronger, warmer, like a cotton ball under a magnifying glass in the sun…despite being soft, we wonder if it will catch fire.
Musically, we end on a delicate major chord, closing with the feelings of longing and fondness.
Q&A
What do you remember from Thailand? On the whole, what kind of an experience was it like to be an American kid who was living there?
My family moved to Thailand when I was 15 months old, and except for “furloughs” back in the U.S. every four years, I stayed in Thailand until graduating high school in 1975 — the same year that Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos fell. My high school classmates included many U.S. military dependents, as well as other missionary kids (like me), children of diplomats from all over the world, and of course some kids whose parents worked for big international companies. When I was younger, I lived outside of Bangkok, so many of my friends were Thai kids my age. It was a great place to grow up. I got a much broader world view than would have been the case if we had stayed in Alabama, where I was born.
“Sukhumvit Haze” features a guitar solo by Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane. How did you come to meet Jorma, and what was it like working with him (as well as bassist Kent Jolly) in the studio?
I’m very fortunate that Jorma moved to my town (Athens, Ohio) several years ago to open a guitar camp (Fur Peace). My wife and I had come to know his wife, Vanessa, over the years. One day she gave us a copy of his recently published memoir, which is a great read. I was astonished to learn that he, too, had grown up overseas, the son of a U.S. diplomat. So we actually had a lot of similar global experiences.
I had sent Vanessa a couple of my songs over the years and both she and Jorma had given me very encouraging feedback about my song-making. I finally got the courage up to ask if Jorma would be willing to get together to hear a few of my newer songs. He agreed, and we spent a couple of hours trading songs out at the Fur Peace library. He was very generous with his time and his compliments, which was a big boost for me.
Jorma had initially said he would record an electric guitar lead with some thick reverb. So he and his roadie brought in all of that gear and my producer/engineer, Bernie Nau, recorded several takes. We collectively agreed on one, whereupon Jorma said, hey, I brought my acoustic with me, which I’ve been playing a lot more, so how about we record a couple of takes with it and then you pick the one you like?
As soon as he started playing the acoustic version, we knew it was pure Jorma. Great tone, great melodic interpretation, and easy to listen to, over and over again. Truly a gift.
Kent Jolley is a local musician who has worked with my producer, Bernie Nau, on other projects. A very accomplished bassist as well as a good vocal harmonizer, who sang on another album of mine.
You mentioned being inspired by ragtime-style picking. What was the first ragtime song you ever fell in love with (and why)?
Oddly enough, it is most likely that some of Paul McCartney’s songs, such as “When I’m 64,” were influential for me. John Lennon called them “Granny Songs,” so I’m not 100% sure it’s correct for me to call them ragtime, but I think it comes close. I suspect that my parents played some ragtime music on the phonograph, and my mother played some fun tunes on the piano — “Roll Out the Barrel,” for example.
What was your personal favorite tune to record off this album, Voices+?
All of the songs on Voices+ were fun to record because, except for “Sukhumvit Haze,” I had amazing singers fronting the song for me, including two songs sung by jw Smith of the Blind Boys of Alabama. jw also lives in Athens, Ohio and was a colleague of mine at Ohio University. But at the end of the day, “Sukhumvit Haze” is the most personal of the songs, as it reminisces about a high school friend, a former band mate in fact, from my days back in Bangkok. His father was an Army officer, so he was like a lot of the other students enrolled there at that time. He told of struggling a great deal when he first arrived in Bangkok because he didn’t know anyone. Once school started, it all worked out fine, but it wasn’t at all clear that that would be the case. Drugs and alcohol were a big allure to high school kids in Thailand during that time period, for example, and the school experienced a number of overdoses. So the song looks through the “haze” — which could also refer to the pollution on Sukhumvit Road, which was (and still is) a major commercial road in Bangkok.
I should add that the chorus of that song was inspired by a passage in Jorma’s memoir, in which he described having Chinese food on a Christmas Day. At the time I wrote the song I didn’t even think about him being Jewish, and thus following an age-old tradition of having Chinese food on Christmas Day. Rather, I took it as — you are far from home, and far from the traditions “back home.” Long story short, I asked Jorma if he would consider singing that song, since the idea of “Voices+” was to feature other singers. After he and Vanessa listened to it, they made the case that my “demo” vocals were a great “fit” for the song, and how about Jorma play guitar on it instead? Of course, that sounded like a great idea to me!
Who played the opening piano line on this one?
Me. I studied piano for a few months as a kid, because my mother always wanted me to be a pianist. But at age nine I decided guitar was for me. I did start playing piano again when Elton John hit the scene, when I was in high school, and then studied piano for two years as a theory/composition major in college. After two years, the demands of piano were too great, so I dropped out of college for a year, moved to New York City, and resumed my studies as a communication major.
