Snapshots in sound

Jeffrey Diamond often considers what coulda been. It’s not an obsession, nor is it something overwhelmingly drowned in regret. It’s more like a question mark that lingers in the mind of the 42-year-old Atlanta painting contractor: What if a sudden sickness at age 19 hadn’t derailed his music studies at University of the Pacific (“where Dave Brubeck went”) and sent him back home to Georgia? What if recurrent medical problems throughout his 20s hadn’t compelled him toward the security — and medical benefits — of his family’s third-generation painting business?
His recent CD, Turnip, suggests that Diamond — who records under his longtime nickname Moondy — could certainly have been a contender. Moondy’s keyboard-driven songs inhabit a world of timeless pop — sometimes Beatlesque, sometimes new wavey, sometimes reminiscent of ’70s AOR singer/songwriter fare — as icy cool as his Nord synthesizer and as comfortably warm as his Fender Rhodes electric piano. For such an understated release — which evolved through the informal jamming of friends, some local music scenesters, some complete non-musicians — Turnip is a remarkably consistent, expertly arranged and sharply produced collection of first-rate material.
It’s impossible to know whether Moondy could’ve become a household name — whether he even could’ve been among the few musicians able to translate talent into a sustainable career. In one important way, however, Diamond does know exactly what would’ve been.
Had he ended up part of a professional recording act, his music would by definition have become a product, just like every piece of music heard on the radio, in clubs, on MTV or in the background of films, commercials and elevators. It would’ve been a byte in the endless stream that constitutes the way our culture tends to process music: As a commodity transmitted from the makers, via middlemen, to largely passive consumers, who continuously seek out music that reflects their personal needs and suits their tastes. It would’ve been another choice in the daily transaction that continues, unquestioned, as if the tools for making our own ideal musical expression are not readily accessible in the hands of each of us.
Though it sounds a lot like the pop music that gets bought and sold every day — and, in fact, the CD is available commercially — Turnip was not made to be put up for sale. The motivations that led to its creation have more in common with why humans initially created music, and the reason people around the world continue making folk music on very direct and intimate levels.
More than anything, Turnip is about music as a natural extension of community. It uses pop songs partly to tell about friends and emotions, but more as a way to make friends and communicate directly between friends. And it offers an important message, not only to fans who think of music as something you buy, but also to musicians focused on stardom as the ultimate ends of music-making.
“It’s much more honest, more enjoyable, therapeutic — whatever you want to call it — to think about music in terms of a neighborhood rather than in terms of trying to conquer the world,” Moondy says. “I think it’s much better to think of it in terms of playing with friends, enjoying yourself, writing music, producing art that people enjoy and are able to put their two cents in.”
On a weekday afternoon, Jeffrey Diamond sits in a booth at the Cabbagetown Grill swigging a dark beer. He might otherwise be working, but he’s his own boss and he’s happy to temporarily escape into Cabbagetown bohemianism for a drink and some conversation.
Born and raised in Northwest Atlanta, Diamond grew up privileged enough to have received piano lessons since age 5, and to have attended the private Lovett School before shipping off to college at Boston’s Berklee College of Music and later University of the Pacific in California.
“Then I got really sick,” he says. “I had colon problems, I had to have surgery. I basically was in and out of the hospital during my 20s, about every other year for about three or four weeks. And I was sick for three or four months, not wanting to go to the hospital, and then recovering for the next two months. So it wasn’t a good time.”
As medical problems kept him either in bed or at work (to keep his health benefits), they stopped him from pursuing any long-term music project. He continued to play when he could — first in Diamonds and Hearts in the mid-’80s, then in Ack Ack Adak, Zoo-A-Go-Go, Steel Blue Sky and most recently, Los Huertas . But by the time he’d returned to full health, Diamond was nearing 30. Considering his prime dues-paying years past him, he resigned himself to music as an avocation rather than a full-time occupation.
Then, three years ago, a friend inspired Diamond to give her a tape of his songs as a Christmas present. “She really liked it and said I should do something with this,” Diamond recalls. “So I got myself a little four-track and did a better one the next year. I printed out about 30 CDs and gave them out for Christmas presents. And two years ago I did another one.”
Diamond’s plans for a fourth gift recording coincided with a party Diamond and his wife, visual artist Linda Mitchell, held at their house a year and a half ago. A bunch of friends there joked about forming a band, even though few of them knew how to play instruments. Diamond’s close friend Kim Roberts, who wanted to learn bass, happened to bring along her friend Darcey Quinn, who’d recently moved back to town, and Roberts suggested Quinn as a qualified vocalist. Another friend, Melissa Griffeth, expressed interest in playing tom toms.
“The concept was to get together and have a good time and whatever musically happened would happen,” Diamond says. “We basically drank and played music. Some of it was really ridiculous. But it was a very good time for everybody involved.”
As the friends started to convene regularly to hang out and jam, bits of songs began to emerge. In between the playing, conversations erupted freely, sometimes gravitating toward issues each of the participants were confronting in their lives: Kim’s frustrations over dating, which seemed to turn up a continuous stream of assholes; the strain of Darcey’s long-distance romance with her Swedish boyfriend; Melissa’s difficulties being apart from her husband, a touring musician; the professional disappointments of Linda, whose artwork had long gone unrecognized.
“It really was about people coming together, and often it was kind of like therapy,” Quinn says. “I guess music is like therapy for a lot people. We kind of came together, consciously or unconsciously, and I think that we all learned from it, either about ourselves or about each other.”
Away from the group, Diamond (with his wife as lyrical collaborator) fleshed out the songs over the course of a year. Then he entered local producer Rob Gal’s Snack N’ Shack studio and, with the help of Gal (who contributed guitar and bass), Michael Lorant (drums, vocals) and other musician friends — including singing contributions from Quinn — Diamond recorded the songs that appear on Turnip.
Only after completing the recording did Diamond see how the music he’d made had been shaped by his friends, both in the group and beyond. “I don’t think during the course of writing the songs I was actually thinking about these people,” Diamond says. “But after the thing was done with, I started thinking about what the songs meant, and almost magically they started to very much imitate these people’s lives in a weird way. And I realized all this stuff that had gone on for the last year and a half started coming together in a nice sort of cosmology, or whatever.”
Following through on this bit of intuition, Diamond re-envisioned Turnip into a sort of concept album of character sketches, renaming each of the 10 songs for either a friend (“Kim’s Song,” “Melissa’s Song,” “Ricky’s Song”), a family member (“Linda Lee’s Song” for his wife, “Dylan’s Song” for his son) or a departed spirit who had touched him (“John’s Suicide Song,” after a school friend; “Benjamin’s Song,” for the local music icon who’d recently died).
Had the tracks been all sentimental tributes, most would have been flattered by having a song named for them. Hearing the CD, however, left some with disturbing questions about what exactly Diamond meant by this or that. In particular, Moondy’s friend Rick was surprised to hear lyrics to “Ricky’s Song” such as, “I keep on looking, but you’re not in your skin,” which for the first time conveyed Diamond’s feelings of distance from Rick.
“For the people who got the songs,” Mitchell says, “there was a little consternation about some of them. ‘Why is this song for me?’ Or, ‘What does this mean?’ Then the people who didn’t get one were mad. ‘Where’s my song? Why didn’t you name one after me?’”
While the songs are hardly defamatory, Diamond admits, “the album is probably not the most sensitive, loving album. It’s frank, not completely sweet.” Diamond, in fact, considered the impact Turnip would have on friends before releasing it, but ultimately decided there were more reasons to keep the song titles as they were. “When you’re writing something that’s honest, or from your perspective anyway, it trims some people’s feathers. Any good music or good writing does that. ‘I didn’t know you felt that way about me,’ or whatever. It hasn’t undermined any relationships I have, but it was a bit of a prick.”
By the time Turnip came out late last year, many of the issues addressed in the songs had resolved themselves. Kim had gotten married to Brand New Immortals drummer Kenny Cresswell (the two recently had a daughter, Ruby). Linda began selling her art and reaping the rewards of her work. Darcey’s Swedish boyfriend, Joakim, is planning to move to the U.S.
“The funny thing about it is that everyone is just so far past this whole thing that I’m not even sure what the hell is going on now,” Diamond says. “It’s just odd to me how time can pass and change all flavors dramatically.”
What’s left, then, is Turnip as a snapshot, somewhat dated perhaps, of the people in Moondy’s life. “I look at it like a soap opera or a diary,” Diamond says. “Most of it is unconscious. A lot of it came from the little jams we had. A lot of it came from just me sitting at the piano, just spewing out cathartic lines and translating it. All of it just came out as a composite of this group of people. The music really is a social thing. One of the real reasons I wanted to play music was just to develop some more friends. And I can think of far worse reasons to start a band.”
And for the friends involved in both creating and inspiring the music, the process amounted to a kind of community building. “Everyone who worked on this, except Jeffrey and Kim, are not from Atlanta. And I know for me, my group of friends are more a family to me. My friends make Atlanta feel like home.”

Roni.sarig@creativeloafing.com
Moondy’s CD, Turnip is available through Amazon.com, at local independent record stores or by contacting bitterpoodle@mediaone.net.