2003: Califone, Quicksand/Cradlesnakes
By Rachel Scott
When I stepped up to the merch table in the back of Little Brother’s in 2003 and traded a handful of bills for an already-cracked jewel case, I didn’t yet know that Califone’s Quicksand/Cradlesnakes would be the record that could contain everything.
I was briefly back home in Columbus from the East Coast during a college break, and buying a ticket to the show had been a small act of proving myself. Earlier that school year I’d met a boy whose main interest outside of studying long hours was hosting a show on the college radio station. Since my own main interest lay in studying long hours, naturally we’d first noticed each other in the library. I asked around about him, learned about his show, and tuned in on the analog stereo in my dorm room.
What I heard was new territory. My music consumption up to this point had mainly revolved around my hometown’s “rock alternative” station and the jam bands that were in the water of generic suburban high school counterculture. I’d always had a sense there was something better out there waiting for me, but I didn’t know how to find it among the CD racks in the Waves store of City Center Mall or the newly available morass of Napster files. But here on this narrowest of bands on the FM dial were fuzzed out guitars, clever lyrical turns, and reverb-soaked choruses. Here was an entire underground genre I’d only ever encountered the edges of despite loving and playing music my whole life. I gathered my nerve and called into his show.
A couple of awkward dining hall dates later, we were a thing and I was falling fast — for his self-deprecating humor and love of art and tall t-shirted frame, but also for each next record he introduced me to. I started passing time in the back room of the radio station flipping through shelves of discs and vinyl, playing catch-up on my education with the help of the handwritten reviews taped to each cover. Together we’d take the train into the city for shows in dark clubs and church basements, where we’d whisper-yell appraisals of the band and expressions of desire into each other’s ears. For Christmas that year I asked my parents for copies of my favorite CDs from his collection, even while tacitly hoping they’d all end up on the same shelf one day.
But as grateful as I was for the cultural gateway he’d opened for me, I also felt discomfort in this sort of musical co-dependence. My feminist sensibilities did not love that he was my source for everything new and cool. So I’d bought the ticket to see Califone and found myself at Little Brother’s, sitting alone on the stage-right ledge with a beer in hand waiting for them to go on. I’d vaguely known their name from the college radio playlist but had never listened; they just popped up in my search for bands to see on break in an effort to strike out on my own. Unlike so many, they’d chosen to stop in Columbus instead of pass through en route to some other city perceived as more worthy of the Midwestern leg of the tour.
The lights went down and the opening bars electrified my senses. Synthesized tones tangled together with banjo rolls and slide guitar runs. Shakers, sleigh bells, and assorted found objects punctuated the rock drumbeat. Tim Rutili’s voice rose and fell flanked in two- and three-part harmonies. The sum of all the sounds — at once rooted and cosmic — vibrated something deep inside me. At the end of the show I headed to the merch table, mumbled some inadequate admirations to the band, and walked out holding Quicksand/Cradlesnakes, gratified that my attempt to prove myself had yielded a new gem for my own shelf.
Within days I knew the record front to back. It stayed in heavy rotation on my own radio show the next year and beyond. What made it different from anything I’d encountered was its sheer range — of sound, of instrumentation, of emotion. Whatever I showed up with, this record could hold. When my mind was running anxious loops, the opening track “One…” called my senses back to the present with its otherworldly telegraph signal. When I felt unsteady in the world, the clear, unadorned piano chords that open “Horoscopic.Amputation.Honey” offered solid ground. When sadness crept in, the picks and plucks of “Michigan Girls” would catch and comfort me as its words quietly counseled, “don’t give it a name.” There was plenty of room for joy too — in the breezy fiddling of “Million Dollar Funeral,” in the banjo breakdown of “Mean Little Seed,” in the buoyant build of “Vampiring Again” finally releasing in a chaotic climax. And the humble strumming of the closing track “Stepdaughter” always sent me back into the world a little more hopeful than when I’d pressed play.
As college ended and the next chapter began, many of those records I’d fallen for didn’t hold up. They’d made good soundtracks for the exuberance of youth, less good for the uncertain wayfinding of early adulthood. Meanwhile Quicksand/Cradlesnakes proved well-rounded enough to endure. So did the boy, it turned out, as we staked out footholds of careers in the hustle of the northeast and built the beginnings of a shared life. In the years that followed I turned to Califone over and over through the increasingly complex moments life served up. Through the wins and stinging setbacks of trying to define my worth through work. Through the rush of making art with people dear to me and ambivalence about having chosen a pragmatic path that only left room at the margins for that art. Further along, through the winding journey to parenthood with its loss and waiting, through eventually crossing the threshold in a tangle of joy and confusion, unprepared to be so fundamentally rearranged.
Quicksand/Cradlesnakes provided particular solace during a stretch in my 20s that was marked by puzzling physical pain and prolonged attempts to trace its source. Doctor after doctor told me the diagnostics looked normal and shrugged at the root cause. I spiraled deep into my own head wondering if I’d somehow brought this upon myself through stress or striving. I felt utterly alone with a mounting fear that this pain would be with me forever. Around this time I saw Califone play at the Middle East Upstairs, and toward the show’s end Tim Rutili confided to the audience that he’d been dealing with a similarly intractable ailment that blurred the boundaries of body and mind. He called onto stage the doctor who had eventually helped restore his health and gave him a moment in the spotlight as a small gesture of gratitude where words fell short. I was in the thick of it with my own pain, but I took comfort. Rutili always sang with the slightly weathered voice of someone who has seen their share of suffering and sublime. His music made room for both and reassured me that I could do the same. It reminded me that, in Rilke’s words, no feeling is final.
That’s proven true in the nearly twenty years since this record came into my life. The pain eventually receded to the outer edges of my awareness. The east coast hustle and career tunnel vision eventually lost their shine. Columbus beckoned me back to attempt to craft a life with more room for family and art and activism. The boy’s records and mine have been sitting on the same shelf for almost two decades now, though that shelf has grown more polyphonic since our college radio days. The same could be said of our partnership, which has changed shape to make space for two kids and new selves as we march steadily into midlife. The direction of travel from here is toward greater complexity, not less. Even so I keep turning to Quicksand/Cradlesnakes, and it keeps revealing new curiosities and pockets of grace. In the quiet intimacy of “Michigan Girls,” Rutili intones “take my comfort anywhere,” which is just what I’ll continue to do.
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Rachel Scott lives on the South Side of Columbus, Ohio with her husband and two young sons. In stolen moments between work and parenting, she writes and records music for her homespun rock project, The Fossil Record. You can find her on Instagram @thefossilrecord and at https://thefossilrecord.bandcamp.com.