It began in 2019 – a collection of articles from the year in LengPleng and elsewhere was published as Around the Traps. The following year it happened again – Around the Traps 2020 documented the year that Cambodia was the live music capital of the world. Since then Passing Chords Vols I & II has also been collected and released.
This year it’s something slightly different – Around the Traps 2021 and Passing Chords Vol III appear in the same volume. Copies are available now; a launch will be held on Thursday 20th at Oscar’s on the Corner, with a listening party for the upper third of the RadioOun Top 100 Songs of All Time – dominated by Cambodian artists. Further details next week.
In the meantime, here are some of LengPleng’s favourite moments from the book.
Alli G
“For a while I was living in South Africa but I had to leave every three months, and one time I found a cheap ticket to go to Jamaica. Oh, I want to see Bob Marley’s studio and everything! I love Bob Marley dearly, the way he shows the way to the world, music unites people. The first day I was playing in the street in Kingston, and one guy came to me – bro, you play reggae wrong. He said come, follow me, I’ll show you. So we went straight into a studio and sat down to play with all these musicians. They told me it’s how you feel it. I was only supposed to be there a week, I wound up staying almost a month and playing a tour with Skip Marley, the grandson of Bob. So I learned from the best. Skip sounded the same as Bob. It was like I did see him alive.”
Gary Custance
An early music memory:
We only had 2 albums in our car. Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours and the Annie Lennox album that opened with Walking on broken glass. I could sing you every word of that Fleetwood Mac album, if you’d like?
Grass Snake: Marianna Hensley
So is there a precise formula for what makes bluegrass music bluegrass? “You’re asking the wrong person,” says Marianna. “This is where the geography of my childhood gets misinterpreted as knowledge. It’s very strings based: specifically banjo, mandolin, fiddle, double bass, maybe guitar. Voices, but more than anything tight, tight vocal harmonies layered one on top of the other.
“I find bluegrass very gracious, there’s a lot of equality. In bluegrass bands old and new, there might be a leader, but in performance solos get passed around, it’s communal. While being collective it really highlights the individual players and their strengths in a very inclusive way.”
Jeff Baker
Once in college, Jeff discovered the capo. “I found I could do a lot of stuff with a string open, like Blink 182 or Alkaline Trio, using that technique to play rhythm and lead at the same time, in a fast chuggy way. I realised that I’m going to have to move the capo around to find the right key, and also have the same effect, because you can’t do that all in standard tuning. I came upon it by accident: if I can’t sing in this key all I have to do is move the capo. Now I use the capo on almost every song, because I have an extremely limited vocal range. If you look at a setlist it always has a number next to the song so I know where to put the capo.
Cecile Hinas
“Improvisation is a big part of my heart and my energy. I’m frustrated by bands and musicians that only play covers; I love going to the open mics to improvise and create. I like to challenge – when you don’t know the musicians and we start with nothing to create a movement for a few minutes.”
Esther Mao
“By playing gigs, we have learned that there are a huge and warm friendly musician community included the Khmer people and the foreigners all around world have come together to enjoy the same interest which make the music performance even better. November Band would love to do more of the fun gigs to get to know more interesting people and create more amazing moment in the upcoming year ahead.”
Darryl “Packo” Paxton
What languages can you speak?
Bahasa Indonesia. I lived and worked in Indonesia on the oil rigs, back in 1990 I worked in East Kalimantan, and later Sumatra, Java, and lived in Jakarta for ten years. My Khmer is dodgy.
Will Canuck
My best buddy and I decided we had to be in a band. We went down to a department store in Toronto with our paper route money and spent the lot on absolute garbage Japanese $59 guitars. My buddy wanted to play lead, so he conned me into buying a bass. I didn’t actually really know what a bass was – I knew Paul McCartney played the bass, but I had no idea that it made a different sound than an electric guitar. Took it home, wired it into the back of my dad’s stereo, and I was immediately disappointed when I touched the string and instead of it going “waaah” it went “thud”. Wait a minute! I’ve been fooled! But I had it, so that was my instrument.
Sage Greco
A book or movie you keep going back to:
Inevitably it will always come back to The Big Lebowski for numerous reasons, one of which is it was shot in my mom’s old 1920s bungalow (The Dude’s place) and I always get a kick out of seeing it again. But, like that’s just my opinion, man.
Table Six Miniature Harmonica Orchestra
While the origins of the T6MHO remain not so much mysterious as vague, the location is not: it all happened at Mexican restaurant and music nook Tacos Kokopelli, formerly the Alley Cat. Consensus places the starting date in late 2019; after many years of sitting at the bar during the Sunday Sundowner Sessions (a regular open mic which began in mid 2013) David and Hayley moved to the now famous table six.
David: Hayley had been moving to the booths more and more often.
Hayley: I couldn’t see anything, Dallas was in the way.
David: And Zoe got her first harmonica, and it sort of spiralled from there.
Zoe: I brought along my first miniature harmonica, and I saw the joy in their eyes when I started playing it, so how could I resist getting everybody else one?
Hayley: I’ve got a feeling it was approaching Christmas. I nearly cried. I hadn’t got a present for years, and then when I saw what it was I was just so tearful.
Phil Javelle
You have a time machine and a magic ticket to one gig or festival in the past. What do you choose?
Frank Zappa Live At The Palladium New York, Halloween 1977
Son Sabor Trio: Andy Luna
“Basically Latin music is whatever comes from Latin America,” says Andy. “There are the well known styles like salsa, merengue, bachata, and the new ones like reggaetón, that’s the music everybody knows. But there’s also Latin rock, flamenco, bossa nova, and those are also considered Latin music. We try to mix it up a little. Not only the traditional Latin music that everybody knows and loves, but also new things that people can appreciate and enjoy.”
Sharon Lui
A private musical indulgence:
Cantopop. It has all the genre, Pop, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Bossa Nova, Disco, funk, musical, EDM, Folk, French Swing, Japanese city pop, etc. It shaped my music taste since I was small. And the lyrics are, figurative enough to make me sit down and savour the story behind the song.
Ernie Buck
Is there a favourite? “I’d say the very last song, Almond Eyes. I wrote it when Rady was about a month old. I’d been wanting to record it for ages and had never had the opportunity. When I was in a studio in the UK I wasn’t planning to record it, but we had some extra time and I thought why not? Just a guide track, might use it later. And then when I heard it I thought it actually doesn’t need anything else, just the American Standard Telecaster, clean, a tiny bit of reverb. Finished. I didn’t realise. I’m very proud of that song.”
Chema Rodriguez
Do you have a pet musical hate?
Being a traveller and a musician, I hate being the drummer, having to carry all the gear. Having to buy the cases, the bags, and then there’s 12, 15 kilos just in stands. Sometimes I really wish I was a singer.
Gareth Bawden
“I can’t force the song to come out, I can just let it sit there – nothing’s coming right now, I’ll come back to it tomorrow, if not this week I’ll back to it next week. I’ve started writing ideas on my phone – I’ve got loads of them on there now – and I’ll come back to them later and maybe develop them. The songs that I sing today are the same ones I was writing in my teens. I’ve got some from my 20s, I’ve got a couple of that I picked up in Canada. A lot of them fall by the wayside, particularly if I’m not getting a good vibe from other people.”
Frank Scarfone
The year you first came to Cambodia:
December 2018. I was sending CVs around in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, but a studio here in Phnom Penh responded quickly. I packed and came without knowing anything about the country.
ZyctDan
You have a time machine and a magic ticket to one gig or festival in the past. What do you choose?
I want to go back on the 4th July 1966, when The Beatles played in the Philippines.
