"This album is defined by harmony. As I grieved for a lost love, I sought the compliment, the harmony, to grief, which to me is music. And as I was losing a love, I sought and found a love, which is 'Roaming Dragons'. " - Hoag (singer / writer)

18 MP3 Songs in this album (55:35) !
Related styles: Easy Listening: Soft Rock, Rock: Adult Contemporary, Type: Acoustic

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Details:
Thoughts on "Roaming Dragons" - by Hoagman
People have said thereâs a lot of harmony on this album. The funny thing is, itâs not just a vocal thing. Harmony is all about things that complement one another. And in that sense the album represents a long history of collaboration with my brother, whose nickname âBonesawâ seems off-kilter in light of the general feel of this album, so weâll just call him Tim.

In fact, the volume level and instrumentation that âFull Serviceâ is known for seems substantially at odds with what âRoaming Dragonsâ delivers. But I donât really see it that way. I see the two sides of the sound complimenting one another. Thatâs why weâre not freaking out about how this âredfines the bandâ or anything like that. Itâs all part of the adventure.

Take percussion for example. We knew we didnât want to record a regular drum-set on this album, so we had to search around for the right âboomâ sound to compliment the right ârattleâ sound, the right âshakeâ and âsnapâ to compliment the right âjingleâ and âjangleâ. Thatâs why we ended up using things like brushes and chicken feed and pieces of wood, as well as more normal stuff like snare drums and toms.

I actually think that if there no vocals on this album whatsoever, youâd still hear plenty of harmonies in the guitar work alone. One of the things thatâs funny about writing songs with Bonesaw (sorry, I canât call him âTimâ) is that he never writes lyrics or vocal parts. Iâve come to realize, however, that he actually does, he just writes them into the guitar parts. His songs by themselves are so deeply harmonic. How fun is my job that I get to hunt inside his riffs and chord changes and pull out the melodies and the harmonies that lay waiting inside? If I listen closely enough, Iâm usually able to find what he must have wanted the voices to sound like. And even what he wanted them to say. The lyrics to âLatelyâ and âRoaming Dragonsâ just sound to me like what his guitar is singing.

The story of our collaboration has mostly been one of him writing guitar parts and me writing words and melodies. But sometimes I write songs on guitar, and we included the specific song-writing credits on the back of the album because we both think itâs funny to see how the songs that I write the guitar parts for are so different fromâbut sometimes so similar toâthe ones that he writes. But mine are more like thoughts, not songs, and the ones that are songs are based on simple chord changes. Songs like âThe Owl Owns the Treeâ, âIsland on an Islandâ, âMinnowsâ, and âKristineâ. And with Bonesaw weâre talking about songs like âRoaming Dragonsâ, âHallwaysâ, âStringsâ, and âLatelyâ. A.k.a, the best songs on the album in my opinion, because they represent that very specific and deep collaboration that weâve arrived at over the years.

Speaking of which, you might be wondering why itâs just me and Bonesaw on the cover. I meanâ¦this is still Full Service, but for some reason this turned out to be a brothers project. It doesnât mean anything, it just means it was time.

One of the reasons it was time is because I had just lost someone very dear to me. And in this way, too, the album is defined by harmony. As I grieved, I sought the compliment, the harmony, to grief, which to me is music. And as I was losing a love, I sought and found a love, which is âRoaming Dragonsâ.

Making this album was all I wanted to do during this time, and in fact when we finished it I got very sad. Because even though as recording is around forever and we can always experience it in the present tense by performing it live, I knew that the late nights in the âstudioâ (which is really just our jam roomâwe recorded it ourselves) were over. Those sessions were my unconditional friends during a very rough time.

The good news is, weâre not a band thatâs inclined to stay out of the studio for very long. So we pretty much headed right back in there and believe it or not weâre close to another release (in the more electric vain but not entirely without its lullabies and folk songs).

So enjoy âRoaming Dragonsâ, and I hope to see many of you on the â20 Tourâ in 2011!