The Moonlit Melodies of Captain's Audio Project

Prolific songwriter and multi-instrumentalist James Cook has worn many hats throughout his musical career. He’s toured with jazz bands, playing double bass, and jug bands, complete with washboard, harmonica, and ragtime guitar. Relocating to Portland, Joe formed Trashcan Joe, who are well known for wild performances on homemade instruments, including a bass and banjo out of trashcans. Amidst all this activity, James amassed an impressive number of original compositions and sought yet another outlet. Thus, Waiting For The Moon—a solo effort consisting of eight raw and heartfelt tracks. The album finds the longtime band leader finding a straightforward and stripped-back avenue for his songwriting.

Under the moniker of Captain’s Audio Project, James built the album around his 1931 National Tenor Resonator guitar and upright bass, opting for a barebones sound with distinct touches of folk and blues. Veteran Portland sideman Paul Brainard’s pedal steel added lush, pillowy counterpoints to James’s sparse but rooted basslines. The record also features the additional textures of Mike Danner on electric piano and organ and the horn section of Willy Mathis and Scott Van Schlick.

Much of the project's inspiration comes from James’s journeys deep into the natural wonders of America’s West. In addition to the title track, songs like “Out On The Minam” and “The River” reflect James’s camping trips and deep appreciation for Mother Earth. As well as a story about the great outdoors, Waiting For The Moon is a tale of love and connection to one’s life. James Cook has found that these connections often bear the sweetest fruits when put down on paper.

In this conversation, James Cook discusses his origin story, the inspiration for handmade instruments, and how he learned not to worry about making people mad with his songs. The interview has been edited for length, clarity, and flow.

Sam Bradley: To start, I wanted to know what got you into playing and writing music, and at what point did that shift into recording?

James Cook: Well, I started playing acoustic guitar when I was around twelve years old, and I had a really good teacher who inspired me to learn different fingerpicking styles. I started learning other people's music, as we all do as musicians, and that's how you form a basis of what you think of as yourself. I almost immediately felt like I could compose stuff, like I had ideas about what I wanted to do. I would learn a song and then take that information and think, "Well, I can use those tools I just learned in that song and make something my own that's similar."

I remember once a long time ago, I was trying to add up how many songs I had; it was about fifteen hundred at the time. Many of those fall by the wayside, or as you get better, your skills improve, and you find that you’re more connected to what you’re writing, so you discard some of the old stuff. In the old days, I would have a little boom box with a cassette tape in it, and I would just sit down next to the boom box, press record, put down an idea, and then hit stop. Then I'd work on it for a bit and record a bit more until I had something that I felt was pretty together, and then I would just record the whole thing, which would be my record.

I have boxes of hundreds of tapes from that era. I started, stopped, and worked on stuff, and that's how I kept a record of what I did instead of writing down or notating it musically.

Sam: What would you point to as your biggest inspiration in the early days of writing and getting your ideas together?

James: I was influenced by acoustic guitar players. At the time, I wasn't playing an electric guitar. Classic rock players like Steve Howe of Yes were an influence, but I also quickly became interested in rock music, and there is an interesting little story associated with that.

My next-door neighbor was a few years older than me growing up. He unfortunately got heavily into drugs, so much that he had a mental breakdown and was going to be institutionalized. He came to me and said, "Hey, you know, I'm going into this hospital, and they told me I have to give away all my stuff, and I was wondering if you could take care of my record collection while I'm in the hospital." He happened to have sort of the "who's who" of classic rock. So there was like the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers, Elton John's Honky Château, Black Sabbath's Paranoid, Led Zeppelin's I, II, and the rest of them.

All of a sudden, as a twelve-year-old, I was given this—all this great music, like, bam, here’s this collection of music. So I spent hours and hours in my room with my little toy child's phonograph, probably doing more damage to those records than I want to admit.

I connected with Jimi Hendrix. I enjoyed his approach to the guitar, songwriting, and lyrical content.

Sam: I read that there were a lot of very old, potentially approaching hundred-year-old guitars and microphones and different things you used for the album. How does working with historic instruments change the process?

James: I started playing tenor guitar, which is the four-string guitar, and I had a friend who approached me one time and said, "Hey listen, you know tax time is coming up. I've got this old National Resonator Tenor guitar. It's really old. It's from 1928, and I need money to pay my taxes, and I was wondering if you would be interested in buying it." At the time, I didn’t have much money anyway, so I said, "Well, you know, I would love to buy it."

The next day, he called me back and said, "Well, look, here's the deal. I really need the money for taxes. I'll sell it to you for what you got, but you just have to promise me that if you ever want to get rid of it, you will sell it back to me." I agreed and he sold me this old National Resonator guitar. It brought me into this world of the old-timey days. There were bands called jug bands—they got their name because they would blow across the top of a big jug, which was sort of the bass sound of the band. What these bands were famous for was that they would play anything.

That's sort of what got me into these things. One of the main guitars I used on the recording is a 1931 National Tenor Guitar.

Sam: I also read you have a history of making instruments.

James: I do. This sort of came about in the early 2000s. I had just gotten off doing a bunch of touring with the upright bass and trashed it. Touring was tough on the bass, which is also a hundred years old and made of wood. It hadn't fared well over that time.

I thought about what I could do. Is there a way I could have a bass that sounds similar to an upright bass that I could work on myself, which was much cheaper and easier to fix? I started researching the old-fashioned washtub basses they would use in some of these old string bands and whatnot from a hundred years ago. Those things are pretty basic—a washtub turned upside down.

You don't have to buy expensive instruments. If you want to make music, it comes from inside you, and you can make music from many things.

Sam: In contrast with working with bands like Trashcan Joe, what kind of weight does a solo project carry that a band project might not?

James: So in Trashcan Joe, everybody sings, brings their songs to the table, and we all take turns passing around the microphone. One of my bandmates told me, "Look, you've got all this great music. Why don't you come into my studio, sit down with a microphone and a guitar, and play your songs? Put that out.”

So I did that. I went into a studio and recorded these eleven songs. When I was done doing that, I thought, “Well, I'm an upright bass player, I've got my bass. Why don't I just throw some tracks down on bass?" And so I did that.

Sam: So it sounds like even though it is a solo project, it's still a collaborative effort, done with people like Paul Brainard and Mike Danner, with whom you have a lot of musical experience.

James: Yeah, it’s sort of a collaborative effort. We brought people in. If you hire good musicians and let them do what they're best at, you will get the best quality recording.

Sam: How much writing comes from being out in nature, or am I looking at that at too much of a surface level?

James: There is a heavy influence from that just because some of those songs were written in environments where I was out in nature and just appreciating it. The title track, "Waiting for the Moon," was about a camping trip.

I took a solo camping trip, and I had a telescope with me. The Moon, considered one of the biggest light polluters in astronomy, was up, so I sat around waiting for it to go down behind the mountain before I could bring my telescope back and effectively use it.

"Out On The Minam" is just a direct, kind of personal song about the experience of going into the backcountry of the Wallowa Mountains. The song "The River" is a love song for the planet.

The longer you're a songwriter, the more you are connected and able to write about your life, and it's those life inspirations that are the strongest influence in writing a good song. It feels almost like you're not writing it. It's like a gift from somewhere else, you know.

Sam: I noted "Satan Wrote This Song" and "I'll Follow" as adding religious or spiritual themes. I was curious if spirituality is a big part of your life or if it is more of a songwriting tool.

James: Well, in this case, I would say that I am sort of a spiritual agnostic. I grew up in a conservative religious family, and very early on, I sort of recognized the hypocrisy associated with a lot of that. One of my favorite sayings is "Jesus, save me from your followers."

It's really about portraying some of the hypocrisy that is in some of those fundamentalist hyper-conservative fanatical religions or religious people. You know, if it offends somebody, well, I guess that's what I was supposed to do.

Sam: On that train of thought, is there anything you wanted people to take away from the record?

James: I don't know if there's any particular statement. The two songs we just talked about are kind of funny because they are a little bit polarizing in that way. I put those on the record just because I had written them, and in the past, I had thought, "Man, I just don't know if I ever want to play these songs because it will make somebody mad.” And then I got over that. Now I'm like, “Just put them out there and see what people think." Maybe it's controversial, maybe it's not, I don't care. I'm just going to see what happens with it.

You can purchase Waiting for the Moon by Captain's Audio Project from Bandcamp or listen on your streaming platform of choice. James will host a release party for Waiting for the Moon at Atlantis Lounge in Portland on March 9.