35: The Many Sad Me's Of The Times I Was Singing Those Songs
Reminiscences On A Musical Catalogue
First a brief non-saucy confession: I recently set up a LinkTree. I then realized that I’m what the kids call very online. For gits & shiggles I went ahead and put every one of my social network profiles on it: Medium, Patreon, Substack, Instagram, Twitter, Wordpress, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, Facebook, TikTok and even fucking Linked In. It was too much, so now I just have the first three, plus the Go Fund Me for my lil buddy Miles who is currently enduring Leukemia.
Which is all to say that every 6 months or so I remember I have a soundcloud—that I am a soundcloud artist—and then listen to my own songs for an evening while I’m doing the dishes or laundry or whatever. Invariably my desire to find a bass player flares up and I tweet about it (I already have a drummer—my boy Jeremy—so if you play bass hm tf u!). Then “life goes on” for around another six months before I remember again and so on and so forth.
This time when I listened to my near-30 song catalogue, I was struck by a pleasant sense of… nostalgia? Not exactly a desire to return to a time… also it was sorrowful, the remembering. Mildly painful, like reliving difficult times—as in: I was experiencing the feeling I had when I was then/ there. But (this time (?) it was) sweet. I enjoyed it. And not simply in the look-how-far-I’ve-come way, though a little of that too. It was more like—if I’m able to sort of step outside of the me sitting there listening to these songs, which writing apparently effects—I was feeling a great deal of affection for the many sad me’s of the times I was singing those songs. And also/ again it wasn’t in the condescending/ naive celebrity-liberal-5-days-into-a-pandemic-singing-a-song-saying-“things will get better”-or-“this is just the hard part”-advice-from-older-me-to-younger-me sort of way. I just felt love for that guy, going through what he’s going through, whom I know so well partly because I have also gone through those things.
For the uninitiated (which I’m pretty sure is most of you) my SoundCloud page is just me and my acoustic guitar, singing mostly country-ish cover versions of songs I love, with a smattering of originals thrown into the mix. They’re all recorded on whatever iphone I have at the moment, and the whole idea is to rip them out in one take, so they’re pretty lo-fi and many of them have mistakes but that’s part of the point. I’ll sing whenever, regardless of my voice health, not a few times whilst I’m pretty sure I was having a cold, or hadn’t sung in forever.
The first song I posted was a cover of Bright Eye’s “June On The West Coast,” from their 1998 album “Letting Off The Happiness,” which was a big album for my friends and I in KC around that time. I’d always wanted it to be a little more rip snortin’, so that’s how I played it. It’s probs too fast, but I don’t care.
Then I recorded a version of Rancid’s “Olympia, WA,” from their 1995 “... Out Come The Wolves,” a little slower and obvs more country than the original.
Then I recorded my rendition of Kris Krisstoferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” because during the winter of 2011-12, while I was living in a little one-room hotel style residence in downtown Berkeley, I’d been blown away by a YouTube video of the Bay Area Bart-playing punk legend Jesse Morris singing it at the 24th and Mission station. Shortly after that he died. RIP Jesse.
After that I posted an original song—the first song I’d written in something like seven years, and my first song with a solo—called “Something (‘s Just Begun),” or something like this. It was about breakups and divorce and being sad, etc. etc. and I think the first song I meant to be explicitly country, if that’s a possible thing to do.
Next up was my cover of Damien Jurado’s “Ohio,” from his 1999 album “Rehearsal’s for a Departure,” which was also a big song and album for my KC crew around the turn of the century, and is also more rip snortin’ than the original (I love the original picking style but still have not learned how to do it), and the public playing of which I have documented proof via the inimitable Anne Boyer, for whom, along with an audience at The now possibly defunct Starry Plough’s open mic night, I was honored to perform back in 2018. The song is about a person in LA from Ohio, but I feel that it also works for a Bay Area expat from Kansas.
After that I posted another rough draft demo original, a song called “The Coward” about judgement and owning your shit and hard decisions.You know: feel good stuff.
The next song is an old AJJ (formerly known as Andrew Jackson Jihad) tune, “Big Bird,” that I both lazily (in terms of tempo) and rip snortingly countrified. The great thing about this track was that back when I started recording these, around 2015 or 2016, I usually practiced guitar while giving my youngest a bath. Eventually, she started making requests and singing alot, which she does with the AJJ tune, but also with maybe my favorite on my SoundCloud page, a truncated version of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (done more in the style of Jeff Buckley, and not at all countryish), which I recorded during bath time at 417 Avon street a couple years ago, with hilarious background vocals from Seva James.
Next I posted the first of three Elliot Smith tunes, “Between the Bars.” You can also find “The Biggest Lie” and “Say Yes” there. Tbh I used to watch my ex-wife play those and think “damn I’ll never be able to do that,” so I’m pretty proud of my (audibly not as good and somewhat halting) minor successes.
Then I did another Bright Eyes song, from Fevers and Mirrors (200), “Something Vague,” which had been my favorite Bright Eyes tune for ages—I was always surprised that it wasn’t more popular.
After that I did another rip snortin’ update of one of my favorite hidden Bob Dylan gems, “Moonshiner,” which I’ve always thought is one of the saddest songs ever. Again this was a case where I’ve always been a big fan of the picking style (very similar to the Jurado track), but I’ve never picked it up.
After that I changed things up a bit: my middle child had sent me a hilarious audio file of him and one of his buddies harmonizing to The Beatles’ “Come Together,” while it played in the background, so ofc I posted it. This was 2016, I think, and he was 9.
Next I did a version of Gillian Welch’s “Annabelle,” which is haunting and beautiful (hers is—I hope mine approximates that!). This song somehow lends itself well both to Appalachian folk style harmonizing and a little 90’s era riffing (toward the end).
Then I did my version of Aimee Mann’s “Little Bombs,” which has always been my favorite song of hers, even though I like the album prior to the one this song appears on is my overall favorite. I recorded this toward the beginning of 2017, when things were getting really sad and scary, and I was living in a room in an unfamiliar house with little more than a sleeping bag on a futon in it. I came to heal there, and to love that house and that room, but when I recorded this I was just about paralyzed by sadness and fear. Oh and also I changed the place lyric from “Atlanta” to “Albany,” as I was—well, had been, living there up until that point.
The next song is one I used to sing to Seva a lot back when we all lived together in Albany, and which I remember the first time I heard it: I was careening down the grapevine in a moving van through a storm, the lightning lighting intermittent fires in the dark distance, wind and tumbleweeds slamming into the truck making it feel as though I’d tip over. It came on as we crested the last hills, and the lights of LA spread out in front of me. I was moving the kids and their mother down to her sisters in Glendale. This was late 2011. Oh, the song is “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” by Death Cab for a Cutie.
After that I posted another, very old original: a song I’d written for an old friend and with whom I performed it as a part of our band—The Glenwood 4—back in the turn of the century KC days. Not country, I’m not sure what’s up with this song, though I love it. It’s called “She Smiles When She Cries.” Also I’ve always wanted to do a pop punk version of it lol.
Then, another original song, written in late 2001/ early 2002, and actually the first song where I was like wait do I write and sing country songs? It’s a 9/11 song. Well, it’s about the folk who jumped off the towers: the three verses are three possible backstories for the couple who had jumped and held hands as the towers collapsed around them. It’s called “All The Way Down.”
Oh! And then I posted a reading from my last ‘zine/ chapbook, released in 2018 called IN JUNE OF THE YEAR I CAN’T BELIEVE. I sat on my porch down on Avon and recorded it, with some Phillip Glass playing in the background (Hit up my patreon on how to get your hands on a copy!).
After that you can enjoy a Belle & Sebastian tune, “Sleep the Clock Around,” which I sing, I think, while I have a cold?, in a very low register. It did not translate well, but I still like it.
More confessions! 2018 was a rough year for me, but there was an album that came out six years prior by a band I used to make fun of, but which I fell in love with that summer: fun.’s “Some Nights.” That summer the kids and I raced around the East Bay in the old unregistered Nissan, windows down coz the ac didn’t work, blasting that shit as loud as we could, and singing along. Tbh, I love every song on that album, but for my SoundCloud track list I chose “We Are Young.” Also I changed some lyrics— “Golden Gate” instead of “Empire State,” among others (see if you can spot them!).
After that I did an old hidden 90’s era Kansas indie gem, “Trust?” by Frogpond. If you know you know. I guess it’s on spotify now, but it wasn’t back when I recorded it, and could only be found on Youtube. The lyrics were apropos for my situation at the time, and the photo I used on the track listing is a selfie I took in front of the mural that used to be on the plywood that covered up the pit they were digging for the very large condos and whole foods which is now at 52nd and Telegraph. The mural is gone.
At some sad point that same year I remember thinking that Quiet Riot’s “Cum On Feel the Noize” would actually translate well into a little country acoustic diddy, and I think I was right. It’s actually oddly touching sounding, if that makes sense. I grew up on a lot of hair metal, thanks in part to my very cool older brother, and had the album “Metal Health” on tape. I’d wanted to do “Firebird,” the epic and grossly sentimental love ballad at the end of that album, but it didn’t feel right, so I did their hit, and I still love listening to it lol.
That’s when I posted Hallelujah, listed above, after which I posted the second song I wrote since moving to California, another (you guessed it) break up tune, that I just remember I performed at The Starry Plough’s open mic night just prior to my 40th birthday, as things were starting to look up again. It’s called “Seeing Is Believing,” and it’s pretty petty and I really love it.
Then one day I randomly posted Everclear’s “Santa Monica.”
After THAT I posted a song by an artist my dear friend Kelly had shared with me, “Bobby,” by Sandy Alex G. The range is a little too high and I low key recorded this as practice, to try and get my range up a bit (something I rarely do!), and for whatever reason went ahead and posted it. I think that was early 2019? Winter? I remember it was cold. That winter I spent a lot of time with Kelly—another Kansas ex-pat—and that was part of my healing narrative, too. We even recorded a bit of a Lorde song, “Liability,” that we’d hoped to one day perform together. Maybe someday we will. Also you can hear her dog, Walter, doing background panting in that track.
Which brings me to my last song, the first on my track list, which I just realized I’d posted two whole ass years ago! I coulda swore I’ve posted since then—up until recently I’d been playing and even writing a lot—but after we moved to our new place last spring I’ve realized I haven’t been playing much. I did do an IG live one Sunday evening, what I called a “Sunday Night Country Music Porch-A-Thon,” and which featured a lot of my unrecorded material, though probably a little too informally. I’d planned on doing that every or every other Sunday, but I’m usually too tired. The last song listed on my SoundCloud is my version of “The Rains of Castamere,” of Game of Thrones fame. Pretty sure Seva got tired of hearing me play this one at the old house, though I wonder if it makes her as nostalgic as it does me when I play it? Who knows.
So that’s that, I guess. Probably time I posted some new material. I have a few covers and originals I’d like to share, thought tbh getting a bass player so we can post up on a street corner somewhere is sounding closer to an actual next goal re my music. We’ll see! Whatever happens I’m sure I’ll share it with you here. Ok bye xo