If the Seattle-based label Light in the Attic hadn’t already spent more than a year planning a reissue of a peculiar vanity press album from Donnie & Joe Emerson, two teen brothers (ages 17 and 19 respectively) located in the logging community of Fruitland, Washington, they would have had to initiate it for the calendar year of 2012. Some 33 years after pressing up copies of Dreamin’ Wild, only to have it sit in their home studio erected solely for its creation (right next to a concert venue erected 30 yards from the house), its dream is finally turning into a realization.
For an album whose renaissance can be traced back to record collector Jack Fleischer encountering a sealed copy sitting on a mantelpiece in a Spokane antique shop—far from any other dusty record in the place—and posting an entry on his Out of the Bubbling Dusk blog, it’s taken a curious and circuitous route to its current renaissance. Ariel Pink bassist Tim Koh championed it on his Lamaraba blog, Soul Sides repped for it while another blog mocked its cheesy cover. It also popped up on Memoryhouse’s mixtape for Self-Titled magazine and nu-disco producer Psychemagick slotted it alongside Czech disco and Italian synth-prog on his After the Void compilation.
This year alone, Donnie & Joe Emerson’s stunning soul ballad “Baby” has been covered by dubstep rapscallions Hype Williams on their Black Is Beautiful album (without crediting the original), while Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti collaborated with Dâm-Funk for their soulful rendition of the same song. Originally intended for a forthcoming Light in the Attic compilation, Ariel and Dâm’s cover ended up being chosen as the first single from Ariel’s forthcoming album, Mature Themes. Not bad for a financial disaster that derailed a teen’s dream and nearly bankrupted the Emerson family, decimating their acreage from 1,600 down to 65 via a woeful bank loan taken out at 18% back in the late ’70s. Remastered ever so gently, with fascinating investigative liner notes from the Stranger’s Dave Segal (a former editor of mine), the full story behind the album is far more bizarre than the sight of a white jumpsuited, two-headed brother against a JCPenney’s portrait backdrop on the cover would lead you to believe.
In some ways, the Emersons’ story runs parallel to that of the Wiggins sisters from the Shaggs. Just as that their father decided that his girls could make their own music and not just rehash what was emanating from the radio, Don Emerson Sr. also wanted his sons to play their own music and not simply regurgitate the pop hits of the day. It’s only natural for a father to encourage creativity in his sons, but Don Sr. went well beyond ordering a Danelectro guitar out of the Sears-Roebuck catalog and calling it a day. Instead, he took out a loan with his land as leverage in order to erect a log cabin for the boys to woodshed in, then furnished it into a full-blown studio, complete with a TEAC 8-track, amplifiers, drum kit, PolyMoog, and more. (And that’s saying nothing of “Camp Jammin’”: a 300-capacity venue that their father also erected on the property, complete with his/her bathrooms, concession area, balcony and green room.)
And unlike the Shaggs’ endearing/excruciating Philosophy of the World, Donnie and Joe can sing, write songs, and play. In between logging, fence-post digging, and other farm chores, the boys practiced nonstop and put Dreamin’ Wild to tape with little idea of what was happening in popular music (they barely even knew how to load a reel of tape in their studio) other than what emanated from the radio. Listening through, you catch glints of Smokey Robinson, Hall and Oates, the Commodores, Bread, Pablo Cruise, Boz Scaggs, and Chuck Mangione amid the AM bullion. Blue-eyed soul, meandering funk (see “Feels Like the Sun” which encourages you to “sing or play a musical instrument along with the boys”), and landlocked yacht rock are evident. Yet the wide-eyed and utterly sincere vision of a 17-year old Donnie stuns.
Whenever he takes a guitar solo—or when he drops an unhinged psychedelic Moog blast on the vamp of “Give Me the Chance”—his talent is prodigal. That he can then endeavor a naked piano ballad like “Dream Full of Dreams,” deftly wrapping a warm synth line around it, hints at what his future as a songwriter or producer might have been like. Psychedelic slow-burner “My Heart” even shows him knowing how to bring an album to a satisfying close. In another century, Donnie Sr. could have saved the Emerson land by simply uploading a video of his son singing to YouTube and waited for international acclaim that way. Instead, we are left with a curious what-if album that during its finest moments—to twist a Brian Wilson phrase—is a godlike symphony to teenhood.
