The Captain’s Project – Waiting For the Moon
The Captain’s Project has a new album that’s an incredibly timeless sounding creation. It’s easygoing and will make you feel you’re being treated to a Friday night back country campfire gig – a perennial favorite way to listen to music, enveloped in darkness with stars all around as backdrop. The Captain’s Project is the brainchild of Portland area musician James Cook, and most of the lyrics on the album spring from his many and various particular experiences especially in the wilds of nature, and often in Northern Oregon.
“Really Hard to Find” immediately puts you at ease. The guitar is melodious, almost like listening to your own stream of consciousness, and it’s punctuated by simple muted horns, as James sings of an ideal, but as yet unknown connection, and “waiting for the right moment to come, when I meet my lover / maybe it’s an easy road for some… you’re really hard to find.”
“Out on the Minam” is an ode to the Minam River in Oregon, one of those rare spaces where you can get away from life and just be out on your own, maybe see an eagle. Thankfully there are still places we can go to find peace in nature and this song, and as such, it’s highly relatable. James wrote this as a homage to time he spent traveling through the Minam River Valley and its bordering wilderness in Northeast Oregon. There, he lived and worked at a lodge that could only be accessed by bush plane. James passed many moons there, building trails, chopping wood, and luckily for music lovers, composing songs by firelight.
“There’s No Rain” addresses that sense of euphoria that buoys us when we’re in early phases of falling love. Nothing sorrowful seems to really be able to spoil that state “the rain never seems to come down.” “The River” envisions a river as the lifeblood of Mother Earth with her waters, a metaphor for the waters that carry us from birth to death, and back into the Earth again. The steel strings of the guitar evoke the winding river bank as sings that “no matter what you do, the sea will great you one day, and the river flowing through my heart is you.”
The title track describes a time James hiked with his telescope on a solo journey into the Warner Mountains in Northeastern California to peer into the night sky. He trekked up to a 7,000 mile elevation seeking the clearest most unpolluted view. “Waiting For The Moon” was written as an ode to the musician astronomer having to wait for the moon to duck behind the mountain. This song was born as James waited by the fire for the moon to yield to darkness.
The instruments on the album are rich and historied. The guitar is James’ 1931 National Tenor Resonator Guitar and his 100 year old upright bass also provides lush resonance. Against this backdrop, James’ philosophical, pensive and guileless songwriting shines through in simple splendor.
Find the music here: https://mudporch.bandcamp.com/album/waiting-for-the-moon
Musicians on the album are James Cook on tenor guitar, vocals, and upright bass; Mike Danner on keyboards; Paul Brainard (The Decemberists, Alejandro Escovedo) on pedal steel guitar, and trumpet; Willie Mathis on saxophone; and Scott Van Schlick on trombone.
Waiting For the Moon was engineered and produced by Mike Danner at Mike’s Garage in Portland, Orgon, and mastered by Jon Neufeld at Treehouse Mastering.
