Home Hear Now Hear This: The Tasty Kings With Blondie Chaplin | Native Tongue

Now Hear This: The Tasty Kings With Blondie Chaplin | Native Tongue

Charlie Sexton, Darryl Jones, Charley Drayton & Ian McLagan are part of the all-star lineup on the latest album from New York City songwriter & musician Andrew Morse.

The Tasty Kings feed your soul with the help of some classic-rock royalty on their latest album Native Tongue — showcasing today on Tinnitist.

Founded by songwriter and musician Andrew Morse, the New York City collective take flight on their third full-length album, joing forces with veteran vocalist Blonde Chaplin, a six-decade journeyman from South Africa who’s toured or recorded with The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys, The Byrds, Rick Danko, Jeff Beck and many more.

Also along for the ride: A slate of VIP artists and sideman whose names will be familiar to anyone who’s spent quality time listening to the Stones, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, Faces and others: Bassist Darryl Jones, drummer Charley Drayton, keyboardist Ian McLagan, singer-guitarist Charlie Sexton, guitarist Kevin Trainor, bassists George Reiff and Tony Garnier, keyboardist Stephen Barber, sax player John Mills and more. With so many hands on deck, it’s a distillation of generations. As noted poet laureate Jardine Libaire (White Fur, Here Kitty Kitty, Gravity) has surmised in an eloquent essay, Native Tongue is a social record. Here’s what she wrote:

“There’s traces of companionship all over the album, clues in a hotel room that had been packed with friends who talked and laughed for hours, leaving behind stubbed-out cigarettes and empty take-out containers, someone forgot a silk scarf. It makes me tear up to hear Ian McLagan and George Reiff on Oceans Unfaithful, both great men gone from this immediate world but alive and beloved on this album. Both still at home in this house.

Blondie Chaplin.

“In a way, Native Tongue feels like playing in a backyard. Not because it’s childish, but because of the innocence the echoes through it, the version of innocence that comes from people playing together and losing track of time, not caring about some evil authority figure that’s going to call them in for dinner — not reckless, just not self-conscious. This is a gentle way to lose oneself.

“Music is of course always a connector; go to any dancefloor for verification. But even when we’re alone, an album like this includes us in the company of people who try to understand the same things and honor the same mysteries. A few lyrics either refer to a mythology, like the story of Icarus in Flyboy, or the lyrics in The Girl Next Door give a character her overdue and rightful place in folklore, or the lyrics grieve that the violence in our country has resulted in a tragically ageless story, in George Floyd.

“But even the narrative songs, like Flyboy, leave space for the listener to join in and help bring the story to fruition, to huddle in the dark corners, to wander inside the song. This is the supernatural power that poetry gives us. The good poems bring us up on the stage, into the ring, give us access to the labyrinth. They make a set of feelings like a cat’s cradle, a design of emotions and memories, lacing hands together.

Maybe I’m A Queen puts me in a movie theater with rows of strangers, all of us looking at the screen together; the song is the epic soundtrack of a film not made yet, that should get made. It’s a movie you want to watch over and over, it makes you feel good, it becomes a classic. Largely because of the characters. One of the strongest throughlines to this album is a sense of mindful people collaborating on it, which, after the past few completely divisive years, is priceless. The tracks promise to take care of us. They promise community,” shares Libaire.

To complement Maybe I’m A Queen, Morse entrusted director Jacques Naudé to helm an artfully brilliant short-form film that’s been awarded honors by the Munich Music Video Awards and others. Libaire paints its essence: “Nameless highways, cityscapes too far away to touch, and empty sidewalks — this modern world asks questions about who we are. Maybe I’m A Queen answers with a dreamy, radiant, lovely little portfolio. The Tasty Kings with Blondie Chaplin are putting together the shards of a broken mirror.

“For someone who played midnight gigs at the age of 12 in 1963 South Africa, you’d think Blondie could be jaded. But his eyes are clear, his voice is raw, and he conducts this song in a sacred tone. He lies back on crimson carpet in a hotel with nowhere to be, and thinks about this strange moment in time. And what does he promise?

“The city is impenetrable, the overpass is blank, the cars are blurs. But a parade of souls, portraits that quiver like a flower does, show us humanity. Even when these beautiful characters are filmed alone, they’re brought together. The queen, the mother, the child, the hero from a long-ago dream, the poet running guns on the side. It’s a fractured place we call home these days, we’re divided and at odds. But Blondie’s words match each brief moment here of exquisite dance, a girl laughing, a man moving with a shadow — proving we’re all one, and the same spirit flows through every being.”

Watch the video for Maybe I’m A Queen above, listen to Native Tongue and read Tasty Kings leader Andrew Morse’s track-by-track notes below, or find the album on your preferred streamer HERE:

 

Native Tongue Liner Notes by Andrew Morse

1 | Done & Dusted

“Written during the early days of quarantine, living in New York City, which felt deserted. I’d wander around the West Village late at night and hear weird sounds like the hum of the streetlights, which I never noticed when the traffic and people were around. I always thought this might be a good tune for Tina Turner.”

2 | Maybe I’m A Queen

“This one came to me in 2019 at the airport in Austin, Texas. Originally it came out sounding like the Stones, but then it took on a more acoustic vibe. It took a while to figure out all the different images — I tried all sorts of combinations before settling on a final draft. Hearing Blondie sing it really opened it up, gave it more depth.”

3 | Birthday Girl

“A girl I knew told me that when she was born her dad apparently yelled out, ‘It’s a girl!’ So I took it from there, and gave her the song as a birthday present. The music box playing Happy Birthday on the morning of her birthday is something I did for my own daughter when she was little. This tune reminds me of Lou Reed’s Crazy Feeling, the opening song on Coney Island Baby.”

4 | South America

“I once knew a girl with a birthmark that looked like a continent; but then this song just falls into a bunch of hallucinogenic metaphor about a romance that self-destructed. Charlie Sexton’s extended solo on this one just slays me.”

Andrew Morse & Charlie Sexton. Photo by Tony Notarberardino.

5 | Oceans Unfaithful

“I made up this one while living in Alvin Ailey’s old room at the Hotel Chelsea on 23rd Street. I like the solo because it reminds me of Ron Wood.”

6 | George Floyd

“This was one of the first songs I wrote under quarantine. Like many people, it upset me to watch the police officer sitting with his knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck, not giving a shit that he was killing somebody.”

7 | Flyboy

“I knew I wanted to write a song about the myth of Icarus. For months, I walked around with the lines “Tell me who’s afraid / I just don’t care anymore,” and built the song around that. A strange way to write a song, sort of like building an entire car around a spark plug.”

8 | Steady Reggie

“There was a moving company in Brooklyn named Steady Reggie, so I started thinking about that after I saw one of their trucks down on Broadway and 19th Street. Maybe it was their only truck. This was back in the ’90s. The moving guys all looked like Rastas, and they seemed pretty together.”

9 | Kiss Me

“Another true story that happened to me. Blondie said this one reminded him of Merle Haggard.”

10 | Girl Next Door

“This one also reminds me a bit of Lou Reed, around The Blue Mask period. The bridge sounds a bit to me like the Stones in the late ’70s; one of those records that got trashed when it came out and 45 years later everybody loves.”