African and Irish music

this doesn't have to do with much of anything, but i've been thinking more and more lately that indigenous "american" music all pretty much is descended from irish music (country, folk, most of the "white" half of rock and roll that's not from england) and african music (this needs no explanation -- pretty much all the rest of what we call "american" music).

what's interesting is that these were probably the two most historically downtrodden groups of americans struggling to assimilate (ironically, these two groups have clashed time and time again throughout american history, competing for that precious second-to-last rung of the american social system). the third group that i can think of -- jewish immigrants -- has had a profound impact on culture as well, although the impact of traditional jewish music on the american songbook is far more limited; most jewish american songwriters gravitated toward african music (gershwin) or irish music (zimmerman). the cultural impact of jewish immigrants is felt far more in literature, a result, perhaps, of the emphasis in judaism on the power of the written word versus the oral and musical cultures of irish and african laborers.

i'm a quarter irish, but as far as i know, i don't have any jewish or african ancestry.

Cocaine Cocaine (Unmastered)

[UPDATE 2/11/09: don't download that other shit below. i mixed them down before i understood anything about anything. this is what the song is supposed to sound like:

[[[[ CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE IMPROVED "COCAINE COCAINE" ]]]]

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this recording of Cocaine Cocaine was made with my old mic. the sound is raw, which i like, but i feel like i could get a more complete vocal spectrum with the new mic i just bought. this song was actually recorded a couple of weeks ago as a scratch track the night i wrote the song; that's part of why i like this recording -- the emotions are still really, really close to the surface.

[UPDATE 2/4/09: here's the new recording with the new mic i bought: CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD COCAINE COCAINE]

my intonation is also off here and there, and i'm not going to use any pitch correction software on my vocals (probably ever, though i should never say never), but when i do the next few takes i'll probably try to aim a little more for the center of the pitch. i'm going to re-record the vocal and see if i like it better that way, and i'll post the result when i'm done with it.

this is a pretty self-explanatory song. if my future mother-in-law is reading this, though, i want to make it clear that although each character in these songs is drawn from personal experience, the first verse is not about my financee (although the second verse is about my actual brother; if you want more details on his situation, read the Long Way Off post).

the "drum" is me smacking my open hand against my chest. the synthetic choir at the end is a mellotron choir sound, which i am frankly a little obsessed with, and will probably show up on almost every track on this record.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD "COCAINE COCAINE (UNMASTERED)"

obama

this isn't a political blog, really, so i'll keep most of my obama love off of here, but i just wanted to mention how notable this is, via Nate Silver. Obama has over 60% approval rating in places like Alabama and Kentucky.

i guess racial resentment in America is never as strong as the fear of losing money. you know the old saying: a liberal is just a conservative who's been mugged by reality.

new mic

i didn't like the mic sound i was getting so i just upgraded to this. i bought it used off craigslist and have yet to try it out. i'll post a new Long Way Off when i re-record the vocal. i was also plugging my guitar directly into pro tools and putting digital effects on it -- and i hate the sound. so, this mic is going to be useful in recording a live guitar sound as well.

don't be boring

this is pretty much the prime directive of all art, isn't it? people will keep watching/listening/following as long as you keep their brains interested. the problem is, our brains are smarter than we think they are, and they can see patterns coming a mile away. so a writer needs to make sure everything is interesting -- lyrics, chord changes, each instrumental line, the song subject matter, the orchestration, everything. but, there must be SOME pattern to follow -- so much of our joy in listening to music involves our brains learning pleasing patterns that are built into the structure of the music. we like for our expectations to be fulfilled along the way, but we also want our expectations to be subverted. (Daniel Levitin, who wrote This Is Your Brain On Music, expands on this idea in his excellent book, but i must have read it elsewhere before i read the Levitin, since i've been boring my friends with this fulfilling/subverting talk for goddamn years.)

now ain't the time for your tears

interesting piece in the New Yorker about william zantzinger, and the truth versus myth behind the Dylan song. zantzinger just died, apparently.

realness

i've been pretty immersed in the hip hop world for about the last two years, and one perennial source of friction within the community is the debate over "realness". is a rapper/producer/commentator "doing it for the streets," or is the artist in question a sellout, a "ringtone rapper" (or whatever derogatory term du jour you prefer)? roughly, this is the same conflict found in the indiemusicblog community, and probably every artistic community since the dawn of creative expression: is your art authentic, or is it tainted by commercial compromise?

this debate, i think, misreads the history of art and culture, and becomes more obsolete as communications technology continues to scale the knee of the exponential curve (speaking from an evolutionary standpoint). i happen to be of the -- and call me naive if you will -- but i happen to be of the opinion that in this day and age, if you are creating music worth listening to, and you are willing to put some effort into getting it out there, you will find an audience. how large of an audience is almost entirely dependent on cultural factors beyond any writer's control, but in this day and age, if your music is capable of connecting with people, and you are serious about seeking out those listeners who might be receptive to it, your music will find an audience to connect with. the music business has never been, and will never be, a true meritocracy, but at this particular historical moment, we are as close as we are likely to come to that ideal. the concept of "selling out" contains powerful emotional appeal, but when it comes to music, it's not clear what that means. does it mean being featured in a car commercial? at this point, very few would agree that having one's music featured in a car commercial is the mark of a sellout. however, most of us (myself included) would agree that letting business or marketing interests rule the day when it comes to the creative process is the hallmark of "selling out" (which is what most major labels are set up to do, business-wise).

HOWEVER...that doesn't mean that the artist should create music that people don't want to listen to. that misses the point entirely. music is about communication, connection, shared experience, whether in the intimate setting of one's own living room or in the collective experience of a concert in a large arena. what an artist should avoid, however, is any "creative" input that changes the intent of the piece.

it also doesn't mean that the musician should be an enemy of marketing or commercialism. i myself am a ruthless self-promoter when it comes to work that i'm proud of, but it's important to separate the two processes: make the music first, then figure out how to sell the shit out of it.

i am a songwriter. songwriters write songs to communicate with other human beings. Leonard Bernstein (one of my artistic heroes) once described the artistic impulse as pure longing for connection with others: i have felt this way, says the artist; haven't you felt this way too?

Bernstein's definition of art has always hewed very closely to mine. this, i think, is the ultimate "realness": a self-described artist presumptuous enough to make an attempt at describing the human condition, as honestly as he or she can.

but what is "the human condition"? and what is an authentic description of it? are some artists more honest with their expression, and do other artists seek to cynically exploit our emotional or cultural hot buttons? this is where the debate lives. it's not a simple one to untangle, as it is wrapped up with subjective reactions to musical and cultural phenomena that may or may not be temporary.

here's the deal: music is tricky. science is still unable to explain its effects on our emotions. simply put, we know that a resolution to a major chord sounds "stable" or "complete", and we know that a resolution to a minor or a subdominant chord sounds "unresolved" or even "melancholy", but what the hell does that tell us? we're only describing our emotional reactions to sonic events. the human brain clearly has some standard musical templates that it uses as a starting point -- the major scale, the 12-tone series, and the basics of tonal harmony -- but just about everything else is based around a series of decisions that are almost entirely cultural. different harmonic patterns and chord changes go in and out of style. different elements (rhythm, harmony, melody) are emphasized depending on the genre and on the era. the music we listen to today is entirely dependent on the music that came before it, just as tomorrow's music will be either a building upon or a reaction against the music of today (most likely the latter). the music in 30 years will loop back around and reference the music of today, just as the music of today parallels the music of 30 years ago (i have more thoughts on these 30-year cycles, but that's for another post).

the point is, our judgments about which music is cool or uncool, which music is authentic or inauthentic, which sounds are current or dated, are hopelessly influenced by our own subjective cultural experiences. i believe the only way to really write "real" material, material sprung from that Bernstein ideal, is to write the kind of music you like. that's it. it's not magic, but it's also not easy. but, if you have the talent to put together a piece of musical expression that is very, very close to the kind of music you personally love, then chances are, other people will personally love it too. it's as simple as that. we're all in this cultural moment together, after all.

so, when it comes to debates over realness and authenticity, my stance is, i'm going to create the music that moves me the most. after that process is complete, i'm going to do my best to make sure every single person in the world has the chance to hear it -- you never know who is going to connect with your music. musicians and artists shouldn't fear success; on some level, all lasting commercial success is an indication that your music is resonating with millions of people. because of the internet, we now have the power to control our own music and still market it to anyone in the world, all by ourselves. the distinction between realness and ringtone is vanishing, at least for the moment.

Long Way Off (Unmastered)

UPDATE 2/23/09: Here is the final, final mix of the song (unmastered):

[[[[[ DOWNLOAD THE FINAL "LONG WAY OFF" (UNMASTERED) HERE ]]]]]

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UPDATE 2/11/09: IGNORE THOSE OTHER VERSIONS OF THE SONG. they are all a fucking joke, only worth listening to if you want to hear how lost i was before last night's breakthrough.

[[[[[ DOWNLOAD THE REAL "LONG WAY OFF" HERE... ]]]]]

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UPDATE 2/10/09: i still wasn't happy with the clean sound on this song, so i re-recorded the guitar with way more distortion and i put way more fuzz on my voice as well. this sound is way more alive i think. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE NEWER "LONG WAY OFF"

UPDATE 2/4/09: i bought a new mic and re-recorded the vocal. it sounds much better. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD LONG WAY OFF

i'm going to post the rough versions of these as i finish them. this is the first track off the album, Long Way Off.

i started these lyrics thinking the song was about a man and a woman who had an affair a long time ago but it got screwed up, and now their lives didn't turn out like they'd hoped, and the man was begging for another shot. the way these things usually go is, you start writing about one thing and you realize that you're writing about an entirely other thing, so at some point you need to surrender to that thing you're actually trying to say because it's going to fuck up whatever your previous plans were anyway.

this is a roundabout way of saying that i realized this song was about the fact that i fled my household as soon as i was able, and it's only recently that i've been trying to reconcile my way back to feeling connected to my family in spite of a lot of water under the bridge.

i am the oldest, or the eldest, as my mother would say. my sister and brother are younger than me, closer in age to one another than to myself. we have a pretty common sibling dynamic, i think: i was the striver, my brother was the problem, and my sister was in the middle.

my parents had a rough time of it. they divorced when i was 8, and my mother settled into a pretty serious drinking problem, but more than that, she was on a self-destructive path that she thankfully tried to shield us from as much as possible. my mother has struggled with depression her whole life, and our house was a very sad place. my mother was also working three jobs to support us, and i remember her car (an old Yugo -- remember those?) breaking down nearly once a month. things seemed hopeless. various men moved in and out of our lives; one of them was a heroin and speed addict who stole many of my mother's few remaining valuables. social services visited our house a few times. i was also a rebellious kid at this point, acting out and playing with fire and breaking windows and generally being destructive. i was 9. after she put us to bed, my mother would listen to one depressing album after another, and drink cheap wine until she passed out. i remember hearing Dire Straits' "Why Worry" (off their classic Brothers In Arms) as my mother quietly cried and cried, thinking we couldn't hear her. at some point she prepared us for the worst -- we were being evicted from our house and would have to move into a homeless shelter. at the last minute, a friend of my mother's took pity on us and invited our family to move into his family's house in the country near Leon Springs, out on I-10 just west of Boerne. this situation was a little rough as well -- the other family didn't mingle well with mine, and the older brother knocked us around a little bit and the mother beat us with a belt a few times. their house was where i first began to teach myself to play piano, though, so i will always be grateful for that at least.

soon, my mother remarried, and at first times were a bit better, but something turned at some point, and after that my mother and stepfather were always swamped with debt. i remember the irs agents coming by the house, snooping around each room and treating my mother and stepfather with utter contempt, as if to find evidence that my mother and stepfather were tax cheats, and not just hopelessly behind on all their bills.

so, my household (and by extension, my hometown and home state) was a place that i knew i had to get away from. and i did. my mother missed me, but she also gave me plenty of space throughout my twenties to work out exactly what the hell i thought about everything, and i'm grateful for that.

and then there is my brilliant, troubled brother. he picked up painting from my mother, who was an artist herself. he and my mother were a volatile pair, though, and it soon became clear that their sicknesses were exacerbating one another. when he was a teenager, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which is a mental disease doctors are still struggling to understand. his condition grew more serious after high school, and became more difficult to medicate. he turned to crack and began self-medicating, which culminated in his involvement in a robbery in an attempt to get drug money.

while in the texas justice system, he was routinely denied access to his medication; this happened almost every time he was transferred to a new facility. he was having an incredibly hard time with his mental anguish at that point; the voices in his head grew so loud at one time that he tried to take out his eye in order to stop them (his self portrait at the bottom right hand side of this page visually describes this incident).

finally, after my father lobbied extensively to the judge and to the state legislature, david got treated a bit better and was relatively stable. in the meantime, his art had developed into something quite profound and wrenching as he struggled with this sickness that will be with him his whole life.

there are no easy answers; my brother has a hard time even under the best medication. he slips into addiction easily, seeking to kill the pain if he can't quiet the storm.

for a long while in my twenties, my brother and i didn't speak much. i didn't know how to handle his sickness, and i told myself that i was working so hard at my own success so that i could afford better treatment for him as the family breadwinner. this was part true, but of course only part.

but now he and i are speaking to one another again, and it feels good. i admire him so much, and he has known troubles that i couldn't begin to fathom. my mother and i are becoming closer as well, and my sister (who has struggled a great deal with her own family demons) is finally building a stable life for herself with a pretty terrific guy and a job that she is passionate about. we are all slowly putting things back together, i think.

so, Long Way Off is about reconciling with my family again after many years of trying to figure out what exactly happened when i was growing up, and how those things have shaped me into the person i am today, for better or worse.


CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD "LONG WAY OFF"

i don't want a record deal, and neither do you

this is a moment of technological miracle, everybody. musicians have the power to make their own music for practically no money, distribute it for absolutely no money, and work with a business manager of some sort should one become necessary. that's everything. sure, you might need a publicist, a web designer, and people of that sort, but those people want nothing to do with controlling your music. a publicist doesn't own the masters. no label should ever own them.

the music industry isn't cratering. it's flourishing. we're witnessing beginning of a thrilling renaissance in home production that's going to shape the future of music for generations. hip hop has been wise to this for years -- all the hip hop superheroes were self-made; there wasn't a hip hop record industry, so they built one. the roc-a-fella model is about to become the norm.

but, the major labels are cratering. well, that's good. the explosion of independent music that coincided with the rise of the internet demonstrates that people wanted far more than the labels were set up to put out. it's not their fault; they had a business to run, they had a business model, and it's simply unsustainable now. that's the end of an era, but not the end of music. but it does mean that all of us should stay as far away from the major labels as possible. if you were a businessperson, you wouldn't invest in one, would you?

we're in an age when, if music is good, and the musician is willing to do the work to get it out there, it will find an audience. tv and print promotion? people are far more likely to listen to a band if it pops up on a friend's myspace and sounds cool.

it's important to get it out there obviously -- you still need a few reviews to demonstrate that you were willing to subject it to critical scrutiny -- but there are podcasts, youtube videos, internet radio, satellite radio, websites and blogs -- an entire industry of effort built to oppose the major labels. the infrastructure becomes more complex and self-sustaining every year. more people are tuning in every year. at some point, new business models will rise up and corporate music will be the order of the day, but right now, we can control our own destinies. for a quick moment in history, anyway, the musicians are in the driver's seat.

"Blueyed Son"

the title obviously refers to Dylan's lyric from "Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall". i have a couple of strong associations with this song and this lyric.

my parents didn't listen to too much music in the house, but they did have a few things, mostly from the late 70s and early 80s. i remember a Placido Domingo record featuring Willie Nelson (the one with "To All The Girls I've Loved Before," which was one of the first pop songs i remember playing over and over on the record player), i remember a record of disney songs, i remember Let It Be (the title track becoming the second song i would play on the record player over and over), i remember a record of John Williams' music written for the 1984 summer olympic games. and i remember the first cassette tape i stole from my mother: Chicago 17. music was fun, and i loved it. i loved singing to all these songs, and i was becoming aware of how important music was to me right at the moment when my parents were going through a rough divorce. i was 8. my mother favored more sentimental music (the Placido Domingo was hers) and i started by sharing her tastes, as i suppose all children do. i liked songs that made me feel good, or made me feel like god would protect me (like Let It Be).

i remember the first song i ever wrote, in the backseat of my parents' car. it had to be before i was 8, but i don't know how much earlier it was; my memories of life before that time are conflicting and unreliable. the song was called "Loving You," and it was about loving someone, since love appeared to be the subject of all great songs. the lyric was:

loving you:
it's just a habit that i cannot break [totally cribbed that line from Chicago, obviously]
and i do not think that i can take
not loving you.

i believe there was another stanza, but that's all i can remember of the lyric. i remember the melody perfectly, though.

songs, to me, were about feeling good, or making you feel good when you were feeling blue. as my parents' divorce progressed, music slowly began to mean something different.

the first song that made me cry, and still does to this day, is "Saying Goodbye," from the film The Muppets Take Manhattan. my parents were separated, and we were temporarily staying in a motel. actually, i'm not sure of this -- they might not have been separated yet; my memory is still unreliable for this period. but i knew things weren't good. i and my younger brother and sister were routinely sent into the backyard while my parents fought, and the piercing sound of my mother screaming at my father is one that i will never be able to forget. i had never heard anyone make a sound like that. anyway, i remember sitting in the motel, watching the Muppets say goodbye to one another for what seemed to be no good reason at all, and singing a heartbreaking song describing their departure. one line always pulls the trigger for me, and it's this:

somehow i know
we'll meet again
not sure quite where
and i don't know just when
you're in my heart
so until then
it's time for saying goodbye.

it was at least 10 or 15 years later when i connected my reaction to that song with the events in my life. this is a familiar sentiment in the American songbook (explored in "We'll Meet Again" among others) but it was my first exposure to the concept. after all these years, i still am drawn to songwriting that expresses the same conflict between hope for the future (or just as often, wistfulness for the past), and the harsh realities of the present. this is as rich a vein as any in the history of songwriting, and everything i've written since has contained some element of that conflict.

the second song that made me cry was similar: "Grandpa," by The Judds. here was the lyric that wrecked me:

Did lovers really fall in love to stay
And stand beside each other, come what may
Was a promise really something people kept
Not just something they would say
Did families really bow their heads to pray
Did daddies really never go away
Woah oh, grandpa, tell me 'bout the good old days

this is a thoroughly excellent lyric, one that i would be proud to have written. it is as plain as growing up, and just as universal. the line about "daddies" etched itself onto my brain more than the rest, but every line is beautifully wrought.

when i was a bit older -- 5th grade -- i spent a hell of a lot of time at my friend Paul's house, and his parents had an honest-to-goodness hippie/sexual revolution/protest movement/psychedelic record collection, a big one. Paul's house was where i first heard practically every classic 60s rock record worth listening to -- Abbey Road, and Richie Havens opening the Woodstock festival with "Freedom", and Aqualung, and Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit", and Joan Baez singing about the robin's egg eyes of her lover Bob Dylan.

...and Bob Dylan.

i remember Paul pulling out the Dylan record (it wasn't Freewheelin' -- it was the Best Of, Volume II) and told me the name of the song he was going to play me: A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall. i had never heard it, or any other Bob Dylan song that i could recall, though he reminded me about the one about getting stoned.

as the song played, Paul sang the lyrics, and offered me his interpretation of their meaning -- his description of "one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'" signifying soldiers firing machine guns on a battlefield still seems to be a remarkable insight for a junior high kid's mind, and i am as impressed with it now as i was then.

the song was, in so many ways, a revelation for me. first, the lyric was a serious piece of writing: there were deep patterns and structures built into it (the continuing conversation between the father and the blue-eyed son); there were stunning images that stood alone but also built to a final verse that projected hope in spite of hardships (there's that theme again); there were deep, sometimes inscrutable metaphors that invited contemplation; and there was the balance between plainspoken vernacular and poetic profundity ("Where black is the color and none is the number" always blew my head off as a descriptor). i had always loved music and i had always loved words and ideas -- i was devouring both fiction and nonfiction books from age 4 -- but the two had never seemed so connected as they did that evening.

the image of the blue-eyed son haunts me. though i would never, ever claim to be the songwriter that Bob Dylan is, i feel touched by that lyric in particular, as though he and i shared something that perhaps other people didn't quite relate to. i have always felt like i was watching, observing, in the world but not of it; not quite sure of how to do basic things like speak to cute girls and figure out the coolest sneakers to buy (we called them tennis shoes in San Antonio, actually), but constantly trying, in my adolescent way, to unlock the mysteries of life and injustice and human nature. i was a pretty lonely kid, but i guess this isn't uncommon among writers and musicians.

so, i'm calling my band Blueyed Son. the combined words were borne of necessity -- i wanted the url for my band to be completely mine, and there's already a Blue Eyed Son out there, so i started playing around with other options. i'm very happy with what i came up with; the "Blueyed" is aesthetically pleasing to me, and it is not exactly quoting Dylan but rather inspired by him, which is what i hope my music is as well.

[UPDATE 2/24/09: another reason for wanting this name occurs to me: my brother. it's funny how the motives for doing something are often buried while you're in the moment making the decisions, but the main event that prompted me to write the material for this album was seeing my brother in Texas after he had just been released from prison. i'm not going to go into too much detail, because the 2nd verse/chorus of "Cocaine Cocaine" tells the story of that encounter rather completely. i didn't think of this at the time i wrote it, but it's no coincidence that in the song i chose to be the album opener for my Blueyed Son debut, i refer to my brother as being the blue-eyed son. you never really know all the reasons for doing things in this world, but this band and this album is turning out to be as much about him as it is about me.]

first1!11@~ *

i started this blog to make a record of a record. i hope to continue it after the Blueyed Son debut album is finished, but first, i want this blog to be a place for me to work out my thoughts on the process of writing and recording an unbelievably personal collection of songs. i'm going to use this space to discuss not only the logistics of recording the material (instrument choices, stylistic aims, what have you) but the background behind each song. i've always found these writings useful when they come from other artists, and it is my somewhat earnest wish that this blog will similarly inspire someone else. if that's not really your thing, then this probably isn't the blog for you.

all these thoughts, and all the thoughts i plan to air out on this blog in the future, are unfinished. i stand by all of them as the truth of what i was thinking and feeling at the time of writing, but our perspectives can change quickly and dramatically, and anything i write today may be contradicted by something i write tomorrow. that's the nature of blogging, of course, and those times when i do change my mind about something or contradict something i said earlier, i'll note it and try to explain why.

anyway, i'm going to make an attempt to be as honest as possible about myself and my music. this isn't so easy. everyone wants to have tight control over the narrative that they present to other people; writers and other artists are usually even more susceptible to this, since their job is to create "the lie that tells the truth" as a great artist once said.

i confess that part of the reason i became a writer was to escape the world i was living in and write some stories that suffused my personal frustrations and hardships with some grander meaning, though i was not aware of this at the time. resisting this tendency to propagandize requires constant diligence. self-examination is often brutal and painful, and it is much easier to put your pose on, even (or perhaps especially) for a writer. over the past three years or so, i've been kicking my own ass into forcing some real honest-to-god appraisals of who i am, why i am the person i am, what i want from my life, and perhaps most crucially, how i fit into the world around me. three years ago, my answers to those questions would have been almost completely opposite what they are today. this is progress, i think.

so this is Blueyed Blog. i've probably done too much talking about what it's going to be already, so i'm just go ahead and start making it into whatever it eventually becomes. if you're reading this, i hope you'll take part.

* title dedicated to all your internet traditions, of which i am aware.