A DIFFERENT STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Source: Impact, June 1995

Every songwriter has a different source of lyrical inspiration. In the case of The Tea Party's Jeff Martin, delving into an abyss in his own mind is apparently the only way to bring forth the stories. "Part of what I do to inspire the words is to experience different esoteric traditions and that sort of thing", says Martin. "Lyrically there is a cohesiveness on this album, because the songs are a collection of poems from the first tour. The poems are about different experiences that I have had re-evaluating my values, both ideally and poetically." On The Tea Party's second album, The Edges of Twilight, the lyrics were woven together by a thread which shows off a different side of the band--its aggressiveness. "Basically, in the process of the re-evaluation of my values there was this rip happening, and through that there has been a lot of aggression. That would be why this record sounds darker than the previous [record]," says Martin, who can calm the wildest of rattlesnakes with his devil-like stare. "A lot of the songs were inspired by our first tour, because we had no time off. It was so empirical; we had to experience different states of consciousness in order to create the music." Before the recording of the band's debut album, Splendor Solis, The Tea Party had been drawn into a web known as world beat music. On The Edges of Twilight a variety of instruments--such as the santoor, sarod and sitar--was used to achieve its infectious, soul-rattling, captivating sound. According to drummer Jeff Burrows, "The sound has been part of the band since before the first album. It really came into play sometime after our first [self-titled] indie got re-released." Martin cites Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as the record that first turned him on to the world beat sound. "The spark came when I heard George Harrison's 'Within You Without You,'" he explains. "From that point in, I had a real curiousity with exploring that type of music, its actual roots, and getting away from the western artist's sense of interpretation." Jeff says the job of spreading world music to the masses has become the responsibility of musicians. "Given things like the Internet and the access everyone now has to world music, I think it's an artist's job to reflect that, as opposed to what's easy. That's where we come from ethically. We want to reflect what's going on in all channels of communication." The Tea Party's influences, though, are not confined to world beat but explore the English acoustic guitar sound as well. As a fan of revolutionary open-tuned guitar players like Davey Grant and Bertin Hanks, Jeff says having legendary English folk singer Roy Harper appear on the album was momentous. "Our manager had known I was a fan, so he set up a meeting of sorts," he says. Jeff lowers his head, as if in a trance, and describes the first meeting of the two--who have since developed a transatlantic friendship. "I arrived at the party when it was already night. Roy was in an intimate situation, everyone was focused on him, he was the master storyteller. I just sat down quietly and listened. Eventually it was just myself, Roy, and Michael [manager], and I had dragged an acoustic guitar out and was playing some English stuff. Roy was like, 'How do you know that?' and 'What do you listen to?' From there on in we just bonded." With the release of The Edges of Twilight The Tea Party will undoubtedly once again face comparisons to bands of the past, especially The Doors. But they maintain that they have left that ball and chain behind. "I will say one thing in hindsight: perhaps in some of the ways we let ourselves be perceived, some of those comparisons were justified," says Jeff. "But every band derives something from somewhere else. What a lot of critics did with their negative press, what they proved to us, is that the power of the paragraph is worth more to them than the value of sincerity. This time out I dare anyone to compare us as blatantly. Then they are just being malicious."
by David Sabatini

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