Navajo Nights

In 1985 jazz musician Ray Griffin and I tried recording this audio book in Abiqui, New Mexico.  We were in a canyon and there was a great echo there.  But Echo stole the stories.  If it had been Rainbow, the colorful one, it might have been different.  But Echo is a loud person and very possessive of sound.

Where do we record this? Ray asked.

We tried various places -- his studio and another backroom studio of a friend of my brother's.  The recordings did not come out well.  Finally, Ray was visiting our house in Tesuque, and he went into the downstairs bathroom.  This was in the deepest part of the passive solar house, buried 22 feet under the earth.  Jay DeGroat, my Navajo artist friend, painted a howling coyote on the south wall of the bathroom.

Here, Ray Griffin said, is where we'll record the stories. 

Every one was recorded in that holy place, the bathroom, under the ground, in the First World.