The Seventeenth Hotel: the title track
the closing track from a new album of songs
The Seventeenth Hotel
by Dan Trueman, track 5
from the album The Seventeenth Hotel, with
- Molly Trueman (voice)
- Jason Treuting (drums)
- Florent Ghys (bass)
- Dan Trueman (bitKlavier, Hardanger d’Amore, voice)
- Recorded by Molly Trueman, Dan Trueman, and Matt Poirier
- Mixed by Matt Poirier and Dan Trueman, Mastered by Matt Poirier.
- Artwork by Judy Trueman
The title track for this album is also its last track, and draws its name from a bit of information in Candacy Taylor’s The Overground Railroad, which itself quotes journalist George Schuyler:
“Prior to 1945, the number of hotels, restaurants, motels and such establishments that welcomed Negro patronage outside the south was infinitesimal.” By 1949, “Negro travelers were welcome in not more than 6 percent of the nation’s better hotels and motels,” and there were “probably fewer than twenty cities in the country where Negroes are not completely barred from white-owned restaurants.”
6 percent => approximately one in seventeen. There’s more from Taylor’s book in this track as well, but best to leave it to the reader/listener…
The music in “The Seventeenth Hotel” emerged from Machine for Listening #4, which has a lopsided pulse to it—perhaps akin to the rhythm of the road on some long stretches of seamed highway—along with a bit of pitch drift (if you listen carefully) reminiscent of the doppler shift of a passing train:
Lulling, if you aren’t careful.
The complete album, The Seventeenth Hotel, will be released later this fall, more soon!
