Margo and Harold Story from Patterson

[Tequila Cowboy]

Y’all,
Over my morning cup (my “Royale" as Brian Koppelman coined and Glenn Raucher spread to our Heathen ranks) I saw the post on Margo and Harold and decided to say HI!
Seemed fitting as I wrote it a little over 25 years ago and we recorded it nearly the same. June 10, 1996.

The take of M&H on Pizza Deliverance was a one-take wonder from the very first day of our band.
We had gotten together at Andy Baker's studio in his house on the bottom of the hill on College Ave. just before the bridge at MLK and Ruth Street.
I had saved up my money to have the $200 that a day at Andy’s required plus enough cash for a bunch of beer and pizza.
Cooley drove over from Birmingham, Adam was my roommate and had formerly lived with Cooley and I in Auburn (He played bass in Horsepussy).
I knew Matt Lane from his being the drummer in The Possibilities (my favorite new Athens band at the time), John Neff from his being the pedal steel player in Hot Burritos, and Barry Sell from his time in Redneck Greece Deluxe and Hot Burritos.
Matt, John and Barry had never met Cooley and hadn’t ever played with Adam.
DBT all met each other that first day.

Andy’s studio was small and funky but clean and sounded really good. I had always had a fascination with ‘home’ recording and he definitely knew how to get every inch f sound from his environment.
I had never worked with him before, but he was super friendly and was the only person I talked to in town that didn’t balk at my crazy idea to record everything completely live, including live vocals.
Doing so with a six piece band including an upright bass was a technically daunting process but Andy jumped right in and we all had a fantastic time.

Cooley, Adam and I were still grieving really hard from losing Monster.
Chris Quillen died in an automobile accident on May 26th and we were all devastated. Chris had been supposed to be part of this session.
He was going to hitch a ride to Birmingham and then ride over with Cooley. Chris famously didn’t drive, which made his awful death at the wheel all the more mysterious and hard to fathom.
The rest of the band never met him but could feel the extent that we were all channeling some kind of otherworldly energy from him.

If memory serves me, we began the day by recording Bulldozers and Dirt. I think one-take although it could have been two.
Then Nine Bullets. We released those two cuts a year later as our first 45 (the infamous 45 that people sell for too much money online).
I still love that 45 and the cool cover that Jim Stacy designed and drew. (The brown cover is the official one, the white ones were a temporary fix while we waited for the unbleached paper to come in).

Then we recorded an early version of Zoloft. Not one of my better songs, but it was fun and funny and showed off the influence of my Bob Wills obsession that was then new and strong.
We re-recorded it a couple of years later, live at High Hat club on Clayton Street. That’s the version we put on Pizza Deliverance.

The true highlight of the day and literally to this day one of my favorite studio memories was the recording of Margo and Harold.
I had written it (Feb 1996, I think) about some real life friends of mine. The kind of thing you write about people you like, but you’re not sure you want those people to actually see it.
I changed some things about them for the song, but the most damning parts were all true and the story revolved around a night of terror I spent with them along with my then girlfriend, later wife and much later ex-wife DJ.
I was 29 and living back home with my mom. Not a happy time for me in any level. DJ was living with he parents in Atlanta.
Margo and Harold hired DJ to work a gun show with them which enabled her enough money to come shack up with me for a few days.
Harold had a pawn shop and was a gun dealer. Margo was a former hippie free spirit who suddenly was married to this entirely new world.
It was complicated. Still is to explain all these years later.
We all went to dinner then ended up in the basement of the pawn shop with the promise of weed.
There was gunplay (the shop literally had an indoor shooting range down there) and an aspect of menace that we were eager to escape.
A few years later when we saw Pulp Fiction, I was extra bothered by the pawn shop scene.

I had played the song a time or two with Cooley and Adam and I had sat around the house playing it.
I think I had practiced it a couple of times with Barry, John and Matt, but all of us had never played it together.
The take on the album is a ONE take with only one overdub.
Everyone’s chemistry and performance is great. Even the vocal take is live.
When we finished, Andy Baker asked if he could add something to the final take.
We listened back and at the end of each chorus, Andy pulled out one of those bells that motels used to have at the front desk and BING!
The track was complete.

Some years later, after that song had been out a while, I was playing a solo show in Sheffield and “Harold” came to see me.
I wasn’t planning on playing that song, but he sent up a huge glass of whisky with a request for it.
After I played it, I went over to say hi and he said “Everyone loves to be immortalized in a song”.

[Iowan]

I guess Harold really is an open minded cat.

Thanks Patterson! Great story.