“Postcards From The Edge”:: an adventure story
by Guy Blakeslee


In early March 2019, I drove out from Los Angeles with my studio packed into my car, a destination in mind and a singular purpose—to record a new album—but no clear direction. 


I’d been working on a new batch of songs for over a year, many written on extended sojourns in London, Paris and Brussels in what had amounted to a failed attempt at fleeing the USA. Now back in Los Angeles, I found myself picking up the pieces and living in a tiny windowless room in Highland Park that doubled as my studio. I spent all my spare time obsessively recording and re-recording the songs, layering instruments—guitar, bass, an amazing antique organ I found in the alley next door, xylophone, shakers, and my own voice—using 4-track and 8-track cassette machines, playing everything myself, and pushing to complete the record single-handedly. I was developing a sound, and learned a lot about recording in the process, but also became keenly aware of my own limitations. I wondered if I was creating a “lost tape” that might not be heard for half a century. Nothing was coming together to my satisfaction, until I had a chance encounter that changed everything. 


I was doing front of house sound in LA at Zebulon, the experimental music and performance space in Frogtown. That’s where I met Enrique Tena Padilla, one of the audio wizards assigned to show me the ropes there and train me. Enrique was a generous soul and a magical presence, radiating positive energy. I liked him immediately. I had no idea he was also a gifted producer and engineer, who had been responsible for a lot of records I loved, by the Oh Sees and others, until, one day at work, I happened to see an interview Enrique posted on Instagram that he’d done with Tape Op magazine. 


He was clearly the person I needed to help me make the record. I sent him a text. He walked into the room almost immediately, and said “I know a place we should go to record in New Orleans!” Enrique had worked on some sessions with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, while a resident engineer at Sonic Ranch in Texas, and they’d invited him to come and record at their in-house studio anytime. I’d always dreamed of recording in New Orleans, and had at one point considered moving there just before Hurricane Katrina hit. I didn’t have to think twice about this new plan. “Yeah let’s do it!” From that point on, I handed the reins over to Enrique, and put my fate in his hands. 


I took a month off work and drove out to New Orleans with all the instruments I’d been using for my home recordings. While waiting for Enrique to arrive, I would go out for long walks around the old town late at night, soaking up the vibe of the city, carrying pages of lyrics I was still trying to fix and revise. By the time Enrique got there, I had reached a place where I felt my work was done, realizing there was no need to trip over all these words anymore. 


The recording process mirrored the themes in some of the lyrics, of letting go of preconceived ideas to follow the energy of the moment into unknown territory. I soon found out that Enrique is a producer in the fullest sense of the word. From organizing and planning, to setting the tone, and sending the songs in a totally-unexpected direction. He worked by intuition, and encouraged me to do the same, shattering my expectations. Several times, I came to recognize I was clinging on to an idea of what I thought a song was supposed to be, resistant to change,  and had to surrender myself to the process, trusting Enrique’s vision, and taking a leaping of faith. I lamented that “Giving Up The Ghost” was sounding too harsh, and he’d reply “That’s because you’re supposed to sound like a ghost trapped inside a broken radio!” Instead of letting me do something easily on the guitar, he would say, “Now, try that on a synth!” While I played, he’d destroy the sound I was making through this crazy chain of effects pedals he’d set up, like he was splatter painting with sound, launching the tracks into the stratosphere. A ‘party bus’ blasting dirty south hip hop would sometimes drive by the window while I was singing and I’d have to wait for it to pass. After working all night in the studio, we would wander the city at three in the morning, the witching hour in New Orleans, when it feels both so alive and so haunted. 


We recorded for ten days. On our last day in New Orleans, Enrique had to leave to catch a plane. I tried to drive him to the airport but my car wouldn’t start, so I had to order him a ride. After he left me at the studio, I recorded the piano that can be heard on the closing track, “Blue Butterfly”. It was pouring rain, so I recorded that for posterity and atmosphere. I’d switched off my phone and, when I turned it back on, I saw Enrique had texted to say his flight had been cancelled. He came back to the studio, and we realized the candle we had been burning to  transcend the blockages of Mercury Retrograde had been blown out in the morning by the housekeeper. We re-lit the candle,  dropped some acid, and went to see the Preservation Hall Jazz Band play. I recorded them warming up and hanging out backstage, then we went out into the street again and recorded the sounds of the city; trains rolling along the Mississippi river; horse drawn carriages and passing drunken strangers. All of this we added to the close of the album, a layered sound collage in memory of the city that had so inspired us. 


Just before dawn, we had a run in with a shadowy figure. He called out to both of us from across the street. “Hey, I haven’t seen you in awhile!” We felt his voice resonating inside of us, took him to be the devil, and ran away. We had both been tempted by the possibility of moving to New Orleans permanently, and starting new lives. The meeting with this character seemed like an omen that those lives might be much darker and more nihilistic than we had reckoned. As the sun came up, it felt like time to return to LA. I dropped Enrique off at the airport and drove all the way to Dallas without having slept, and was back in LA myself a couple days later, doing sound at Zebulon again. 


The whole experience reminded me of why I started making records in the first place; the opportunity to embark on an adventure, embracing the possibilities of chance and chaos, having faith that everything will magically align. The title track of the album was taken from the semi-autobiographical novel by Carrie Fisher; a book I’ve never read and a movie I’ve never seen, but a phrase that has fascinated me since I was a kid (Princess Leia was also the first woman I can remember being obsessed with). It came to mean something entirely different for me, something shamanistic; like those explorers, writers, and artists, who are driven to travel into uncharted terrain, internal as well as external, risking their safety and sanity, tasked with a sacred responsibility to come back and report about what they have seen and experienced. 


Think of “Postcards from the Edge” then, as a dispatch from the other side, from beyond the beyond; a journey into the unknown, and a well-trodden path back. In the words of the song that opens the album, “Sometimes: 


“What’s the point in going where you know what you will find. So I try my best to lose my way... sometimes.”