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John Doe and Exene Cervenka ‘Singing and Playing’ on first duo album

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The first-ever duo album from X founding singers and chief songwriters Exene Cervenka and John Doe began about three years ago as a humble keepsake they made as a fan-only offer to those who turned out for their 2009-2010 tour as a twosome.

Now it’s been released by a fledgling label, Orange-based Moonlight Graham Records. It the inaugural offering from what is promised to be a string of recordings by Southern California musicians that will also include former TSOL frontman Jack Grisham and beyond.

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The eight tracks on “John Doe and Exene Cervenka Singing and Playing Live” constitute a combination of songs written independently and several on which they collaborated. Included are ‘Never Enough,’ which Doe recorded in a different version for his 2011 solo album, ‘Keeper,’ and ‘Lonesome War,’ which Cervenka had written on her own, but never released. (‘It was tailor-made for us,’ Doe said.)

Pop & Hiss sat down with them last week to talk about the album for a profile in Tuesday’s Calendar. Doe, who arrived first to the interview, was invited to talk about the first track, “It Just Dawned on Me,” which stood out as a sterling example of the unexpected directions that he and Cervenka have gone throughout their careers together and apart.

“It’s a typically John-and-Exene song,” he said of this stripped-down, predominantly acoustic affair that demonstrates how they still complement one another more than three decades after X was born on the gritty back streets of the City of Angels.

Its arc begins with the singer’s moment of awareness that a romantic partner has emotionally exited a relationship. Initial reactions of confusion and hurt lead to the realization that maybe the split isn’t such a bad thing after all.

“She had the idea,” said Doe, wearing a brownish-red plaid western shirt, blue jeans and lightly tinted Ray-Ban glasses. “She thought of it more mentally -- of someone being there in a relationship and then not being there; you know, how people just check out of a relationship?

“I immediately interpreted it as physically,” he said, jerking his head in a double take to emphasize the point: “‘What? Where’d you go?’ She had one or two lines: ‘It just dawned on me that you’re gone,’ like the dawn’s coming up and there’s a dent in the pillow where someone’s head was, and they evaporated, they’ve been spirited away. I just kind of framed that within a Johnny Cash-June Carter song style.

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“And it’s a little bit of a women-empowered kind of song,” he added, “because at the end, she’s glad that he’s gone.”

RELATED:

Album review: John Doe’s ‘Keeper’

Keeping up with Exene Cervenka

Exene Cervenka cancels tour, citing her MS

-- Randy Lewis

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