Veil & Subdue Blog

In 1995 I was living in a farmhouse outside of Lexington , KY. I was still recovering from the end of a long-term relationship the year previous, and I found the calm of the countryside to be a welcome refuge. There were four of us total living in the farmhouse, and it inevitably became a makeshift creative commune. I embraced it.

It was that winter, alone in my tiny bedroom, warmed by my quaint, one-log fireplace, that I began to focus more seriously on music. With microphone propped on top of my Casio keyboard, and Tascam 4-track cassette recorder on standby, I began composing and recording. I proceeded in the direction of some of my favorite influences at the time: The Cure, Bauhaus, Christian Death, Siouxsie and others. Not surprisingly, the recordings from this time-period were thick with layers of reverb and echo, and the lyrics were all inevitably maudlin in some way or other.

I was recording under the name Candle back then, and created “album” tapes from time to time to give away to friends. The tape that I was working on then was a 90-minute work entitled Dismal Hollow. It is there that the song Pieces On Me first appeared.

In the years since, I’ve considered dusting Pieces On Me off and re-recording it. It was in the final days of working on Veil & Subdue that I realized that I needed a “song of frustration” from the female character Semele’s boyfriend, Colin. Almost immediately, Pieces On Me arose in my memory, demanding a new life. Sure enough, with a few tweaks to the lyrics it fit perfectly into the context of the V&S story arc. It proved to be the perfect lift into the final act, actually, as well as is one of the few straight-up rockers on the album.

Veil & Subdue
By Kara Pound

“Two local musicians conceptualize goth-rock opera”

Local theatre co-founder and musician, Paul Ramey, can’t pinpoint his inspiration. “All of my life I’ve been influenced by concept albums,” he said referring to the similarity of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” to his new goth-rock opera CD, “Veil & Subdue,” in which he wrote and performed most of the songs. “It’s a whole album telling a story.” Along with concept albums, Ramey’s work is also inspired by Greek mythology, Neil Gaiman’s dark comic book series, “Sandman,” and, most interestingly, a close friend’s nightly brush with a phenomenon called, “night terrors.”

Anna K. Meade, Ramey’s good friend for nearly a decade and fellow Theatre Saint Augustine co-founder, has experienced these medical and psychological episodes for most of her life. “This is not a very well understood phenomenon,” Ramey said. “There isn’t much help out there and it’s very debilitating.” Night terrors are explained as when a person is abruptly awoken from sleep to extreme terror and the temporary inability to regain full consciousness. Gasping, moaning and/or screaming can also accompany them.

“Instead of a medical explanation, I wanted to look at a possible mythic, god-like cause for night terrors,” Ramey said of the storyline for the opera in which he co-wrote with Meade. The two were curious about the mythological undertones of the episodes back two or three thousand years ago when there weren’t necessarily medical explanations for such things. They also always knew that they wanted to collaborate on a creative project together.

The result is a two-disc, 22-song rock-goth opera that chronicles the ill-fated love between the god of dreams (Morpheus) and a mortal woman. The self-funded, three-year-long project, classified by Ramey as darkwave or “a wide range of musical sounds with a gothic edge,” was recently released on his own label, Masque Records – ensuring total creative control.

Meade and Ramey have always had grand aspirations for their project – wishing that one day, it will grace a stage or screen. “The hope from the beginning,” Ramey said, “is to create a complete work and do as much as we can to make it real . . . so that someone theatrically trained can put [the production] on.” With recent success of their Theatre Saint Augustine productions like “Private Lives,” the two may not have to wait too long to see their dream become a reality.

Veil & Subdue is for sale locally at Needful Thingz, 215 W King St., and Music Matters, 196 SR 312, and online at www.veilandsubdue.com.

© The St. Augustine Record

See the review: http://staugustine.com/stories/100409/community_2027756.shtml

Hi guys! So, I’ve mostly been “hitting the internet streets” with Veil for the past week or two, sending email letters as well as mailing out hard copies of the CD, inviting various online goth zines to check out the stuff and maybe do a review. So far have gotten some good responses, and even some inquiries about the eventual stage production! I’m also scheduled to be interviewed for St. Augustine, Florida’s newspaper weekly entertainment insert, Compass, in the next day or two, which I’m very much looking forward to. Local exposure is very exciting!