AMERICAN TUNE

Page two

Please do not copy the photos on these pages.



Album cover INTERVIEW WITH EILEEN WHITE

The term "Buried Treasure" applies to more than just the music on the album AMERICAN TUNE. The cover photo, and the photos and drawings inside the CD leaflet, also have an interesting story behind their discovery. You'll have to wait until the album's release to see most of the images mentioned below, but it'll be worth it!

Laura Bligh spoke with Eileen White, the graphic designer for AMERICAN TUNE, in July of 2003:

'In 2002, Chris Biondo sold his house in Upper Marlboro. He hadn't been living there, but a lot of his stuff was in the house, and I helped him clean the place out. When we were packing everything up, I found some interesting things that Eva had left, from the time when she lived there.

When we cleaned out the storage room in the back of the basement, we found a box that was full of some of Eva's old art stuff -- half-used tubes of paint, a sketchbook, a T-square, things like that. In the same box, I found a baggie that had four or five rolls of film in it. I found some other rolls of film lying around in various places. One roll was sitting on top of the big wooden entertainment unit, not even in a protective canister. By the time I got done, I had found eight rolls of film. They looked like they had been used but never developed. Chris hadn't even known they were there. I decided to take a chance and have them developed and see what was on them.

"It was fun, really fun. I picked them up later that day. I didn't want to wait till I got home to see them, so I sat in my car to go through them.

Clock "Some of the rolls had nothing on them. A couple had four or five pictures of nothing in particular. For example, there was one that had pictures of water, like at the ocean. Maybe Eva took the photos to use as references for her paintings. Another one had four pictures of a clock, taken through the window of an antique shop, that's all there was on that roll. Chris remembered this one, he said Eva liked the clock, it was a small clock that showed the phases of the moon.

Eva OK "One roll had pictures of a trip Eva and Chris took to the Caribbean. It has some beautiful pictures of the sky, I'm thinking she might have been taking pictures of the clouds, again to use in her paintings. It must have been St. John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, because there is a picture of the Moravian Church that Eva did a painting of. There is a rather funny picture of the water, in which you can see Eva's hand showing at the side of the picture, making an OK sign. Her hand is very distinctive, the way the fingers bend.

House "There was a roll that had a couple of shots of Eva and Chris in the Upper Marlboro house, when it was empty and they were just moving in. It was odd to have the photos developed when the house was empty again, and Chris was moving out.

"Then I started finding some good stuff. There were some outdoor shots of Eva in a pasture, along with various pictures of the pasture with cows. Two of the pictures on AMERICAN TUNE came from that roll. That's where I found the picture of Eva standing next to the fence, which is now the cover of AMERICAN TUNE. When I saw that picture I smiled and said "That's a CD cover." The photo looks posed to me, as if Eva asked Chris to take the picture that way. I think she knew it would be a good composition, like the cover photo of EVA BY HEART, which was taken by her mother at Eva's request.

"The other roll that turned out to be a big bonanza, a real treasure, had pictures of a hiking trip that Chris and Eva took together. Five of the pictures on AMERICAN TUNE came from that roll. There's one of Eva touching water, two of her touching moss, a landscape, and one of Eva standing in a field, a different one from the cover photo.

Chris as poet "Apart from the pictures Chris took of Eva, there were other pictures that Eva took, some of them of Chris. For example, one of the pictures used in AMERICAN TUNE is a landscape, and Eva took a picture of Chris lying in that landscape that I thought was great. It looks like something the Pre-Raphaelite painters might have done, with Chris as Ophelia. You can see in that photo that Chris is wearing one of the necklaces Eva made.

"I asked Chris about the photos, and he said he vaguely remembers them, but they went on so many hiking trips together, it was hard for him to remember specifically what trips those were. So we don't know exactly where the pictures were taken.

"One of the things that was interesting about the photos was the way that some of the colors were skewed. Because the film was so old, it had been sitting around in Chris's basement for ten years, and some of the rolls were not particularly protected, they probably had some light leaks. There are some weird, unnatural color casts to the photos that I actually thought made them look pretty interesting, they had sort of a surreal, otherworldly quality. While I could have corrected for the color casts in the final scans, I decided to leave them because I liked the way they looked. The film was also very grainy, it may have been that she was using fast film which would make it grainy. I didn't try to adjust for that either, I almost thought that the defects in the film were part of the story.

"Not long after I found the pictures, I started working on a sample layout to see how I could get them to work together. What struck me as I was working with them was how Eva seemed to be touching the elements of nature. We have her touching water, earth, the air. The only thing that's missing is fire. I thought that worked well visually, with what we know about her love of nature. So I put together this sample layout. There wasn't a CD project in the works at the time, so I put it on the shelf until I heard that AMERICAN TUNE was in the works. I took it out, dusted it off, and submitted it to Blix Street Records for their consideration. They were looking for new photos, so it turned out well for everybody.

"The drawings used in the layout are from the old sketchbook of Eva's that we found among the art supplies. It was a very informal collection of interesting doodles and characters and figures, but one of the drawings that really struck me was a little figure looking up and dreaming that he's flying. When I saw this drawing I immediately thought of the lyrics of the song 'American Tune,' which I had heard on the Pearl's tape, where Eva sings 'And I dreamed I was flying.' I knew I wanted to use the drawing in connection with that song. Another drawing in the sketchbook, which I also used in the layout, has a small figure riding on the back of a bird in flight. That is on the CD itself, which is otherwise very simple.

"The colors in the layout were taken from colors that were in the photographs. I used the pinkish color on the inside, the shade is actually taken from the strange pink cast on the photographs. I chose a typeface that I thought looked delicate and light. In fact, the type face used on the cover is called Poetica. The type on the inside is called Minion.

"I haven't seen the final yet, but I think it's going to look good. I've heard that Blix Street Records printed it as I designed it, for the US version of the album. I know that Hot Records made a few changes for the UK version, so that may look a little different. You'll be able to tell whether you have a US or UK version by the differences in the layout, especially the cover. I know the typography was changed on the cover, in the UK.

"I got a nice card in the mail from Eva's parents saying how much they liked the photos and the layout. I'm so glad they are pleased with it, and I hope that Eva's fans will like it too.'


Note: Eileen White designed the albums EVA BY HEART and TIME AFTER TIME as well as AMERICAN TUNE. She has also done CD packages for Chuck Brown, Liaison Records, and other local singer/songwriters such as Tom Forsey. For more information about Eileen's design for TIME AFTER TIME, click here.  


For further information about AMERICAN TUNE, continue reading on PAGE THREE.