Sky Fidelity

Catholic Radio (click to download)

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:47:04 -0400

Catholic Radio (Let It Go Let It Go LET IT GO)

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:47:00 -0400

“Avoid all forms of self-rejection.” – Henri Nouwen

I recently heard from a friend of mine, a friend whom I hadn’t spoken to in what seemed like ages but was realistically only a couple of years, and I was blown away with the remote changes that had rippled through his life.

He had decided to stop drinking, and even though I had never perceived his drinking to be a problem, it was obvious that it had been, and that he had successfully escaped this particular part of his life, and was better of for it.

He said the money he was saving in aspirin alone was nearly enough to fill his gas tank.

I thought about that for a minute. And I sighed, and laughed a little, and pondered upon what the little things do to us and in us and outside of us. No more drinking means no more hangovers means no more aspirin means 30 more dollars a month. Perhaps it’s only when we can draw diagrams like this that we can actually witness ourselves becoming fuller, becoming more pronounced and at-peace versions of ourselves.

***

One time, when I lived in Los Angeles, someone said something to me while we were eating breakfast that made me so mad and hurt and sick inside that I skipped both lunch and dinner so I wouldn’t have to see those people again, and spent the entire day writing in my journal and drinking straight from several bottles of Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider. In short, I became a nonfunctioning, nonalcoholic wino.

***

I hung up with my friend and that was it. But I think about the diagrams in my life that demonstrate my unwillingness to be self-destructive or sad or angry or self-doubting. I think it looks something like this: No more self-loathing means no more obsessing over what other people say means no more doubting the gifts God has given me means fully living life.

(Maybe this isn’t as small a change as I made it sound – “no more self-loathing” is a tall order)

(Or maybe it’s just making the choice to listen to what Mr Henri Nouwen called “the inner voice of love”)

(I don’t know)

***

When we’ve been gone for 20 years
They won’t remember what I did tonight
That I sat down with this old guitar
And struggled with the words to make this right
That I stared down all the chaos
And I dared myself to make my life lines straight
That I never hated anyone, but I hated this

And here I go - God forgive my sins because
I just don’t know why I’m buzzing like a
Catholic radio, humming with the pulse of untouched snow

So read me like the Gospel
And hear the things I say and what I won’t
The odd suspicious pauses
Where you wait for me to finish but I don’t
Read me like an open book
Underline the words that mean the most
And free me of the ghosts that I have haunting me

Love is perfect, undefiled
But only when it’s wasted on the dirty and the wild

When I’ve been dead for centuries
They won’t remember what I did tonight
That I whispered up a psalm to you
And shook my head and just shut off the light
That I slept for several hours
And woke up and just started it again
Like a man who’s playing chicken with his enemies

***

A few weeks ago, someone said something directed at me that was unkind and hurtful and served no purpose, and I got over the initial shock within an hour or so. I rededicated myself to praying for this person, and I went and got coffee with perhaps one of the only people I know who has the same job as I do within the same context, and I vented, and he vented, and we felt better. Then I went home and drank a beer on the back porch and wrote this song and inhaled deeply, because I am living life and life more abundantly.

If ever people who knew me 10 years ago want to know if I’ve changed, I’m not going to point to the house Amy and I bought and fixed up, or the job I am now holding down (a job that, 10 years ago, I would’ve lost almost immediately) or the group of people who call me their friend. I’m going to point to this song as proof that I can function in the face of self-doubt.

Downhill From Here (click to download!)

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:33:59 -0500

Downhill From Here (click to download!)

Downhill From Here (I'll Memorize the Earth Now)

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:32:12 -0500

Here is God’s honest truth, presented with no lace curtains or glitter – we are actively trying to memorize the world, so to speak; every step we take, every journey we embark on, big or small, is another test, another chance for our minds to read and swallow the details of an ever-shifting, ever-expanding world.

We memorize everything, whether we realize we’re doing it or not. We take note of where two freeway lanes merge into one, which red lights take the longest, where the sun is the most extreme. We learn which people are the friendliest, what to say to whom, how to get what we want from the people we need things from. It’s not just us falling into patterns – it’s us scripting our lives, running down call sheets of props and actors. Every day is another pass through a world that we are, in essence, mastering.

***

It only took an hour
To forget your face and name
I had you in my crosshairs
But never really aimed

I’ll memorize the earth now
The people that I meet
The signals that I’m sending
To my hands and to my feet

But it’s all downhill from here (my synapses firing like an antique gun)
My vision seemed so clear (but I was on the verge of losing everyone)
But oh that feeling of love so near
It’s all downhill from here

You cherish all the stories
Of people you don’t know
The inner strength and patience
Of strangers you’ve been shown

But quietly we’re waiting
For a sign that things have changed
And that we haven’t been forgotten
In the history we claim

***

Rachel and I sat down with our friend Trisha Madsen (sister to previous guest Tyler) and worked through some tricky three-part harmonies. There’s not a lot to say about this song, because it’s small, and I like it when songs are self-contained and small, when they’re easy to fold up and put away and pull out at a minute’s notice.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s OK for songs to be long and complicated; they can tell stories and carve out narratives and become big, near-unmanageable parts of us. But sometimes, songs can be tiny little snapshots of a fleeting thought - they can be sketches of our inner life. They can take place over three minutes, leave as quick as they came, and still make us smile, make us think, make us feel.

***

If you haven’t been afforded the time to listen to the EP, which we are very proud of, then you’re in luck: it’s streaming over at http://anonymousrecordings.com/northerndistrict, and can be purchased on iTunes right this minute.

Holy Ground (w/ Tyler Madsen) - click to download!

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:00:47 -0500

Holy Ground (w/ Tyler Madsen) - click to download!

Holy Ground (So This Is The New Year)

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:00:17 -0500

And the book says, “We may be through with the past, but the past is not through with us!”

***

Because I am a being of such extraordinary habit, because I am profoundly stuck in my ways like a tire in a rut of dirt road, because I laugh too loud and say bad words occasionally and lose my temper at other drivers; because of all this, I know that the prospect of personal change is a loose, ever-changing, ever-shifting concept. A concept that I can’t wrangle, that I can’t get my hands around; a concept that stands in direct opposition to my habits, to the person I am, to the sum total of near-30 years that is represented every time I open my mouth or answer an e-mail.

Every year, on December 31st, with a past year still clanging about in my synapses, I drink champagne and toast the arrival of something new, something different. I shift my gaze upward, to a cold sky charged with the unknown, and say, to myself, something along the lines of…

this year’s going to be different.

***

I didn’t do that this year. I stayed at a cabin with dear friends and band mates, and read the entirety of Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent, and reflected on the last year, and let the realization wash over me like an unexpected rogue wave: this was a pretty good year.

Good things happened this year. I began an employment shift that took me from “playing dodgeball with petulant pre-teens” to “being a paid part of a creative musical community”. I rode a blue and gold train from Anchorage to Seward, Alaska with a woman who I can’t believe I ever tricked into marrying me. I bought and renovated a house, put paint on the walls and doors on the hinges, and through it, rediscovered the joy of community, as countless friends poured through our doors and contributed to making this house our home.

I finished the Northern District EP (more on that later). I saw friends and loved ones healed of emotional turmoil. I connected with a mentor who poured life and direction into me. I got rid of some addictions, embraced a certain kind of sobriety that opened up the truth of Christ to me, and met some people who reminded me of Me From Three Years Ago.

In short, 2009 was Sacred Ground to me. I kept my figurative shoes off for most of it, and approached each month like it was a burning bush.

***

Take your shoes off; this is holy ground
Like a windmill, let it spin you ‘round
So in step with the breath of heaven
We might not come down
So take your shoes off; this is holy ground

This is holy ground…

In the middle of our darkest night
My parents woke me with the bedroom light
Said “pack your stuff up, keep your mouth shut
Leave it all behind”
In the middle of our darkest night

Leave your shoes in a pile by the door
Leave your shoes in a pile by the door
Leave your shoes in a pile by the door
We’ll be with each other in a pile by the door

A pile by the door…

I was nervous; I was 22
You slept for four months in my living room
And I waited, oh so patient
For your lips to move
When I was nervous, and I was 22

***

The point is, I will not be making resolutions this year. There is an inward change taking place, and it’s subtler and smaller than anything I could describe. Like the Honorable Thomas Merton said, “My only desire is to give myself completely to the action of this infinite love Who is God, Who demands to transform me into Himself secretly, darkly, in simplicity, in a way that has no drama about it and is infinitely beyond everything spectacular and astonishing, so is its significance and power.”

***

For this recording, the part of “Rachel Higuera” was played by Tyler Madsen; hopefully R. Higuera will understand.

We sat in my living room and talked about the year, and wrote this together, and tried hard to keep our distance from the tiny Macbook mic, so as to avoid the sum parts of our voices shorting out the entire operation. Like moths to a flame, we found ourselves subconsciously drawing nearer and nearer to the computer; we were like directionless helicopters, hovering and hollering into something considerably smaller than ourselves.

***

Let’s talk about this EP, which is now streaming, as we speak, over at http://anonymousrecordings.com/northerndistrict. It will be available in digital form within a week or two; the lovely, handmade physical copies are available, for $5, at our shows and by contacting us through the magical medium of Facebook.

Be blessed, practice grace, banish cynicism, and show love in all situations.

Train Just Passed (Click to download!)

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 12:59:59 -0500

Train Just Passed (Click to download!)

Train Just Passed (Or: You Can Leave Your Coat On the Rail of the Freighter)

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 12:59:55 -0500

What I want to share with you today is something I am extremely proud of.

***

In June of 2008, I was in transition. My previous musical outlet was beginning to collapse in on itself, and I was writing songs that felt unfamiliar to me. My friend Cameron sensed that in me, and being the good man that he is, urged me to follow that path - to begin a new project, to let the dark territory of these new songs see air and sunlight, and to not be afraid to take a chance on something new.

We began to make a record that winter. We started it in the living room of the house his brother shared with this guy, and we finished it in a small closet under the stairs in his mother’s house. In the course of that one year, life happened: I began a new job, bought a house, started this blog. We wrote a song for Daughtry that I’m still not 100% sure wasn’t a joke; we also began a friendship and a musical partnership that I’m blessed to be a part of.

This last spring, as we began to look at seriously releasing some of this music, we decided that we needed another voice on it. That led us to Rachel Higuera, who is prodigious and a friend. She is now my full-time songwriting partner.

We decided to give it a name, and that name was Northern District.

From the start, it was a product of community. Many excellent friends were a part of this EP taking shape: Eric Watson played all the bass tracks in one afternoon, for the price of a couple of tacos; Jonathan Meek played trumpet; Aaron DiMauro, our friend in Texas, played drums and made loops. Chris Pedro, who has been my support system and closest friend for the past two years, mixed and mastered it. On one track, you can hear Jason Kleist doing dishes in the background; on another, we put together a small choir of friends to sing, a group that may or may not have included Cameron’s mother. When I listen back to these six songs, I hear a cloud of people becoming tightly wound together. I can’t wait to start a new record with this cloud.

***

I wanted you guys to hear this song first, because I began it precisely one year ago to this date, December 28th, 2008. I was forced to face the remote spaces that are left in our lives when loved ones come and go; I was enticed by the reliability and presence that a train has, and I spent an afternoon sketching this obsession out.

I played it for Cameron, and we immediately began recording it, and it wasn’t long before it had a certain vibe attached to it. Whenever anyone came by to visit us, this is the song we’d play for them.

***

I am unaware if Aaron actually strapped chains to his bass drum. He is a mystery to us.

***

The train just passed
The rails are still warm and the air smells like coal
The train just passed
It left nothing behind but a big train-sized hole

Let the station lights stutter and darken
That train will soon come back to end what it started
Its track is like a figure eight

The train just passed
There’s a black cloud that’s thinning and it tugs at our veins
The train just passed
There’s a catch in our voices that we can not explain

You can leave your coat on the rail of the freighter
It will still be there when you come for it later
Sometimes early, never late

The train just passed
It bought me a beer and it pulled out of town
The train just passed
The bed is still warm and there’s clothes on the ground

You were standing there in my favorite sweater
You said your hands felt cold and you gave me a letter
I’ll save it for the car ride home

***

Northern District’s self-titled EP will be released both digitally and hand-stamped in the middle of January. There will be a release party, and you’re all invited. There are six songs on the EP.

Please share this song with your friends and neighbors, and let the good word of Northern District seep into the ground and blossom into something bigger.

(click to download)

Message From the First Mate (click to download)

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:16:09 -0500

Message From the First Mate (click to download)

Message From the First Mate (Short but Sweet, Or: The Devil Is Tall)

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:16:00 -0500

“I don’t think I speak this language anymore,” James whispered to me as we sat on a city bus;

I had to laugh because I knew exactly what he was talking about

***

Optimism is such a weird sensation, a weird concept; it’s an affirmation that happens within us that says things are going to be amazing, and while there have been times where I’ve felt this weird twinge of expectancy, I’m just not good at positive thinking.

Take this blog, for instance. I’ve gotten back such amazing feedback, both from people who I’m close with, and complete strangers. It’s heartening, really - to finally be in a position where I can put my heart and mind towards something, and know I have an audience. Know that what I’m doing will land somewhere, that it will reach something. It’s opened up new areas of trust in me, and it’s choked out some of the pessimism that used to cover up my more vulnerable spots.

But I worry that it’s all going to end, that my community will close around me and that I’ll disappear, or I’ll forget to play guitar or how to write words, that I’ll lose all my bearings and inspiration.

***

It’s weird to begin an optimistic song with the words “the ship is going down”.

But I’m thinking of several situations that people close to me have been in, situations that have started out as “disasters”, and slowly been upgraded to “opportunities”.

Let’s start looking at these shipwrecks differently, from new angles and unexposed vantage points. Let’s sing joyfully about the wreckage we’ve survived.

***

Oh, the ship is going down
The ship is going down
Telegram to the crowd, bring the rescue boat around

Oh, the ship is going down
Clear the clutter from the ground
The important people drown when the ship is going down

And oh, my hands, were made for your hands
And oh, my feet, were made to follow yours
And in the city lights, we’ll be friends
But when the streets disappear, I’ll be even lonelier

Oh the ship is sinking fast
I said the ship is sinking fast
This dream will never last, we’ll be buried by our past

Oh the ship is sinking fast
So run a warning up the mast
And the final cannon blast says the ship is sinking fast

And the devil is tall
The devil is tall
He doesn’t look like me at all but when I shut my mouth he talks

And oh, my mouth, will never speak your name
And oh, my heart will not forget the way you look tonight
And when we reach the shore, we’ll be cabin mates no more
I will tell my kids and wife about the wreckage I survived

***

Normally, I would write more, but there’s not much to write. Sometimes, you just have to throw songs out there, see if they stick to the (proverbial) wall.

This is the work I remain optimistic about; this is the effort that I long to see open up into something more.

Good night, world

Concrete Kiss (click to download)

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:34:51 -0500

Concrete Kiss (click to download)

Concrete Kiss (The Present Will Become the Past) (And We Might Find Rest)

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:34:46 -0500

The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid. - J.D. Salinger

***

This song came at the end of a long, purposeful battle of wills against myself - it was bloody, and hard-fought, and at times I was absolutely positive I was going to lose, but I did this, and I fought the good fight, and a song that began as a half-cooked idea and a melody became something more, something I’m proud of.

At this point, I should let you know how long this took me. I began writing this song in February of last year, as a defense mechanism, of sorts, against a crisis I saw opening up and blossoming next to me, as one of my closest friends went through a personal hell that I can’t pretend to understand or empathize with. At the time, writing about what was happening was painful to me; I felt like I was on a recon mission, trying desperately to salvage some sort of meaning or beauty out of an utterly meaningless, ugly situation.

I was dealing with emotional rawness, and the prospect of trying to add melody and semblance of order to this rawness was scary, and I gave up, because at the end of the day it’s a lot easier to write about fictional characters. You don’t worry about fictional characters; you don’t lose sleep thinking about what they’re experiencing.

***

What happened between February of 2008 and December of 2009? Did something change?

I’m not sure. I know that God is still good, that His mercy speaks my language and the language of others, even others who have trespassed against the people I love. I’ve seen extreme, unexpected joy invade, and it’s been unrelenting; it’s also been conspicuously absent at times, and there have been dark places, dark thoughts that I’m not proud of.

I’m just a bystander in all this; I can’t take you on a tour of what this is like on the inside. But I know what the last year and a half has been like from this vantage, and if this song can communicate just a bit of this, then I’m proud of it.

***

The story of the song, so to speak, is an analogy. It’s the story of someone you love disappearing, and resurfacing as something else, something unrecognizable. It’s an inventory of the things you’d feel, the whisper-y hurt of recognition and the knowledge of what the past does to us, how history sticks to us and makes us do and feel things we don’t understand.

It’s the story of what happens when the people closest to us change, mutate into something different. It’s a full recognition of how we can not control what effects us, what shakes us, what makes us cry or laugh or remember. We are powerless over memory’s pull, and this is what makes us strong.

***

Half a mile out of town
We both went underground
But only I came up

And I dug for days and days
Called you out by name
But that was not enough

I kneeled down in the sand
My head in my hands
And your blood in my veins

While I whispered to the sea
You surfaced next to me
But you didn’t look the same

Hey, I miss
Your concrete lips, your concrete kiss
Hey, I miss you now

Here’s a picture that I drew
Of the moon, the stars, and you
It’s my final testament

To the things I understand
Are now slipping through my hands
And what they represent

Oh, I hope this finds you well
I hope you’re finding hell
As welcoming as promised

Me, I got this brand-new fear
That I’m turning insincere
But at least I made you honest

***

The future won’t be the future forever; we have to believe that, we have to persevere and be assured that the future is coming, and the future will be now, and that this horrible present will be the past, and its draw on us will become weaker and weaker as the years peel over. If that’s what keeps us going, then so be it; a tacit understanding that we will be healed of time and its fury.

To Be Alone With You (click to download) This is a cover of a...

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:57:22 -0500

To Be Alone With You (click to download)

This is a cover of a Sufjan Stevens song. We recorded it as a small token of our gratitude to our friends for spreading the Northern District word. Be blessed, and trust always.

To Be Alone With You (On "Figuring it All Out")

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:57:08 -0500

maybe the price we pay for having it all “figured out”

is the knowledge that action is not only expected, but demanded

the knowledge that we, now full with that apple we plucked from the Tree

have got to find some fig leaves around here somewhere, because

there are just some parts of us that we are not

going to be putting on display

***

We were cold; and then we weren’t. We were hurt; and then we weren’t. We were rudderless, thoroughly lacking in direction and navigation; and then something, something unexplained and heretofore unseen, snapped into calibration inside us, snapped into place so defiantly that we felt it in our teeth.

We were useless, incapable of love, unknowing of where our destiny sprung forth from, and then, all of a sudden something, something so beautiful and deadly, click-k-k-k-k-k-k-ed and it made sense, our surroundings made sense, our world made sense.

It was the sudden burst of bright, the unpredicted flash of Technicolor, the unbelievably warm barrage of grace that had previously gone unheralded, but was now so big and so absolute that we shivered when it touched us, we felt it go through us like a surge of heat, and we could only shake like spent wires.

***

It was a night I spent in Long Island, after I ate unbelievable pasta, but before I called you from a pay phone outside of Chevy’s, it was this night in particular but really, it was a series of nights, each one jumping out from the one before it, like Russian nesting dolls - let me start over. It was a vague collection of nights, a collection of nights that we both agreed was necessary to me “figuring it all out”, which is a term I am loathe to explain and now even more loathe to comprehend.

And I want you to know that I called you that night, and it was six different nights all finding a voice inside of me, and I had no control over that voice, but I knew all the same what that voice was going to say: “I want to come home. I need to come home.”

***

There’s some Scripture I need to quote here, and it’s from 1 Corinthians, but wait, don’t stop me yet, it’s not the one you’re thinking of, it’s not the one that gets cross-stitched onto pillows and incanted at wedding ceremonies. This verse has nothing to do with love.

And, yet, it has everything to do with Love.

“No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has ever conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him.”

It was chicken-scratched on the inside cover of my sister’s bible, and I was sitting cross-legged in a park next to an abandoned swing-set and I was trying to read by the light of cars passing by, and it took several minutes, but I understood. I read and I understood and it hit me with the force of an unplanned punch:

There is no figuring it out.

There is no point where the future becomes known to us. It’s never clear. The future is a shifting concept: we amble into it clumsily, and the second our toes scrape the edge of it, it becomes the present, and we’re struck with a whole new set of mysteries. That’s the beauty of life, right there, wrapped up with a bow: you have one job in all of this, and that is to love, and to love fiercely.

***

I’d swim across Lake Michigan
I’d sell my shoes
I’d give my body to be back again
In the rest of the room
To be alone with you
To be alone with you
To be alone with you
To be alone with you

You gave your body to the lonely
They took your clothes
You gave up a wife and a family
You gave your goals
To be alone with me
To be alone with me
To be alone with me
You went up on a tree

***

So there, 3,000 miles away from warmth and familiarity and home-cooked meals and forgiveness, it clicked for me. It swung into such a focus that I was giddy, and then solemn, and then I was buying a plane ticket home, and crying happily into a plastic restroom sink on the South end of JFK airport.

That was six years ago. This morning, someone told me that they were waiting to do something because they hadn’t “figured out life yet”. I chuckled, and stopped, and stared into my coffee for an uncomfortable time, because when we are presented with our past selves, we must be careful not to upset them.

***

Today, let’s love God. Let’s cast aside worry and anxiety and five-year plans and ten-year plans and the entire concept of “figuring it all out” and “getting back on track”, let’s just accept that there is no “track”, at least not one that we can be conscious of, and let’s just love God. Let’s quit squinting our eyes to see, and cupping our ears to hear, and racking our imaginations to plot out our futures; let’s take God at his word and love Him.

***

For those just joining the party here at Sky Fidelity/Northern District Central, we are preparing our debut self-titled e.p. It should be in your hands by the end of the year. We’re just going to put it out and get right back to work, because worrying about sales and if we’re hitting the right market seems so five years ago. We sincerely hope you enjoy our music, and that you tell your friends, but above all else, we hope that our music fits inside you. We’re not sure precisely what that means, but we’re working on it.

We Don’t Need Our Arms Anymore (click to download)

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:25:21 -0400

We Don’t Need Our Arms Anymore (click to download)

We Don't Need Our Arms Anymore (Tell the Story, That's All.)

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:25:17 -0400

“The point of a story can penetrate far deeper than the point of any bullet.” - Lawrence Nault

***

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love telling stories. I’ll retell plots of entire movies, describe my day to wide-eyed near-strangers over hissing cups of coffee, and reenact entire random conversations for those unfortunate enough to get stuck in conversations with me.

This is how I’ve always been. Trying to change that now would be like trying to learn to write left-handed - it would run concurrent to my nature.

***

I have a collection of personal stories that I will recount for anyone, whether they ask or not. These stories have evolved and mutated over the years, and the details have grown legs and began walking around. There’s the story of how I almost ruined a wedding because of how unprepared I was to give a speech. The story of when I saw two near-nude, fully-drunk men at a midnight showing of “The Goonies” in Santa Cruz. (They were a drum-guitar duo, and they were screaming loudly about “the real [expletive] Goonies.”) The story of when me and my friend spent nearly an hour carefully and precisely dismantling/disparaging my roommate’s girlfriend in (loud) conversation, only to find that my roommate was laying in bed, quietly listening.

(I told that one to Adrian the other day, and he laughed. I don’t feel nearly as bad about that one as I used to.)

There’s also the story about driving all day to Palm Springs with an engagement ring in my pocket, trying to control my breathing and preparing to trip headlong into adulthood. The story of finding a 12 year-old boy in the middle of a field, unconscious and blue-lipped. (He’s OK.) The story of watching as an entire community slowly got their hearts broken by one person, and how it felt to stand there, helpless, and watch the lame stay lame and the blind grope for the doorway.

***

As songwriters, we are to do more than collect fancy words and bundle them together with melody. We are to establish narrative, and tell the story. Is there a time when you felt useless, a time when you felt afraid, a time when you saw someone crumble next to you? Tell the story.

One of the many valuable things I learned about songwriting from my friend Cameron is the virtue in being intentional. For the first ten years of my songwriting career, I would sit down with paper and pen and a guitar, and try and will words on to the page, through the sheer force of vocabulary and memory. It wasn’t until I began co-writing with Cameron that I learned to do things on purpose. Figure out the story you want to tell, and then tell it.

***

This song is a demo from the second, largely-unrecorded record from my old band, the Fair Saints. After I had written the story (based on a short, uneventful conversation I had with a 65 year-old receptionist as I was waiting in line for the ATM), the five of us sat in a church library and created this.

What I remember about this particular night is how miserable I felt, how the process of recording had already drained life out of me, how I couldn’t wait to go home and go to sleep. For this song, we played it all together, meaning (almost) no overdubs, meaning someone kept messing up, and that someone was me, from what I can recall. This take was recorded sometime between 11:30 and 1 in the morning.

Jeremy Taylor played drums. Chris Pedro played bass. Jonathan Meek played glockenspiel and shaker. Mike Mittelstedt played guitar and recorded it. I sat in a chair and tried my best to not fall apart.

***

Joan in advertising
Is so antagonizing
She just wants to see you crack
And you’re beholden to
The young whores in the steno pool
And they just smile behind your back

Ah, you hear those flash bulbs pop
Your memory’s a train your bones alone can’t hope to stop
It just goes on…just goes on:

We don’t need our arms anymore
They don’t belong anymore
We don’t need our arms anymore

Bring me the head of Julie
She made you feel so foolish
She pointed out your stocking run
And oh, the strength it takes
To wait until your coffee breaks
To lose it all and curse the setting sun

Ah, you hear those flash bulbs pop
Your memory’s a train your bones alone can’t hope to stop
It just goes on…just goes on:

We don’t need our arms anymore
They don’t belong anymore
We don’t need our arms anymore

Ah, you hear those flash bulbs pop
Our lives are hurricanes our bones alone could never stop
They just roll on…just roll on

I don’t need my arms anymore
I’m not writing songs anymore
I don’t need my arms anymore
They don’t belong anymore

***

I love songwriters who can tell a story. Some of my favorite song/stories are “This Year” by the Mountain Goats; “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” by Sufjan Stevens; “The Temptations of Adam” by Josh Ritter; “King of the Jailhouse” by Aimee Mann; and “Right in the Head” by M. Ward. Give a listen to any of these, and see what I mean - these are living, breathing narratives; they draw us in to a world unlike ours.

The Protestant (Click to Download)

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:25:17 -0400

The Protestant (Click to Download)

The Protestant (Oh It Was A Four Star Night At A Two Star Hotel)

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:25:09 -0400

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. - 1 Corinthians 13:11

***

I didn’t want to grow up, but I had to.

That’s the case with everyone, or at least everyone I know - we were all plunged, feet-first, into this sort-of pretend adulthood that trembled and glowed with artificiality. We learned which drinks we liked and which drinks we were supposed to like, we learned how to balance checkbooks and how to tie down furniture while moving it across town.

But it wasn’t enough to make us adults; it made us pretenders. We might’ve had suits and ties, but we didn’t look right in them. For all of us, it took specific things to nudge us towards true, unbridled experience.

For our Narrator, what it takes is one winter night in an unfamiliar city with a woman who he thinks he knows. Up to this point, he’s mimicked the steps beautifully; he’s paid for a hotel room, successfully navigated room service fees, and has managed to not turn into a total wreck in front of his companion.

But she either says or does something (what it is, it’s not clear, and not horribly important), and when she leaves to check the score of the previous night’s Braves game, he finds himself falling apart.

***

Oh, it was a four star night
At a two star hotel
And we toasted the new year
And prayed that hell wouldn’t swallow us whole

And you sketched me the outline
Of a complicated dream
And then left for the lobby
Looking for coffee and news on the home team

And I sat upright
In the bed and cried
And resolved to myself to turn into
A better man
By the time you got back

And you left your key on the dresser
So I sat still and listened for you
And I felt myself gasping and choking
It was morning and something was new

And I left CNN on the TV
And I picked up our plates and our trays
And I straightened the sheets and the pillows
And Ikneeled there and silently prayed

We ate breakfast and we said goodbye
And Phoenix shone like a dirty jewel
As I watched from my seat in the sky

***

I wrote this song last December. The minute details of a hotel room tryst ruined by sudden knowledge of impending adulthood sounded like something I wanted to explore, and I wanted it to be epistolic: a written remembrance of the exact moment our Narrator realized he was a child acting like a man, addressed to the woman who elbowed him into this particular crisis.

I explored and found myself enchanted by this idea. Then, after approximately two weeks of obsession, promptly abandoned it. You see, songwriters are fickle beasts. We chase down our muses, wring them dry, and leave for something brighter, something louder, something new.

But what happens when songs fight their way back? When they rise from the grave, hack their way through the underbrush of our haggard psyche, and present themselves as contenders? Do we ignore them, or do we give in to them? Does giving in to them make us weak, or does it simply mean that we are tuned into the heartbeat of what we create, of what we’ve forged from our footsteps?

Or does it simply mean that we’ve experienced wicked writer’s block, and that we’ve found ourselves deeply terrified, recently, that this “deep pool of songs” is drying up, that we’re losing touch with what makes us tick, that we are - gasp - out of ideas?

***

It might be a little bit of both.

***

(If, at one point during this recording, it sounds like Rachel and I are under attack by millions of tiny little paratroopers…

…it’s only because God brought the rain as we sat out on my back porch and recorded this song.)

Jesus Shall Reign (written by Isaac Watts; arr. by A. Wolfe/D....

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:34:46 -0400

Jesus Shall Reign (written by Isaac Watts; arr. by A. Wolfe/D. Walker) (click HERE to download)

Jesus Shall Reign (A Little Context Is Needed, Please.)

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 11:34:42 -0400

A little context is needed, please.

***

I have found myself, on more than one occasion, thinking that thought. A little context is needed, please.

I’m in Tujunga, CA, and I’m desperately looking for a cup of coffee, and I find a tiny coffee shop located in between a meat market and an Irish bar, and I walk in, and I quickly see that I am one of two people in the coffee shop. The other is a teenage girl behind the counter, who is listening to her headphones and sobbing quietly to herself. She takes my order without saying a word. I walk out without saying a word. A little context is needed, please.

I’m waiting at a taqueria for a friend, but my friend never comes, and I realize that it’s completely possible that I have the wrong day, and this is during a period of my life where I’m constantly forgetting important details, and I’m a little embarrassed, and I leave the taqueria without getting anything. As I walk around the corner to retrieve my car, I pass a police officer and a (presumably) homeless gentleman. The homeless gentleman is protesting something, and I walk by just in time to hear him say, “you don’t get it, man. I saw her break the window. Why would I lie to you?” A little context is needed, please.

I wake up depressed, and spend most of the day depressed, and find myself at an IHOP with a friend that night. He’s telling me about the horrible, unforeseen life change that is being thrust upon him, and it’s genuinely painful to comprehend the hurt and loss he’s getting ready to embark on. I leave the restaurant, and cry softly to myself, in my parked car, for a half-hour. I get home and tell my wife that traffic was horrible, but she sees my red eyes. A little context is needed, please.

***

We thirst for context, because it sharpens our perspective and, sometimes, narrows our focus, and we like feeling sharp and focused. We like knowing the peripheral details attached to certain situations that we wander into - without those details, we’re rudderless, and we don’t understand, and we feel like we’re a foreigner in a strange land.

The wisest decision I ever made was to start to pay attention to context, to stop relying on my wit and instinct and to start asking questions. How does this make you feel? Why do you think you’re scared of this? What would you lose if you did this?

(there are days where I wish that people would demand some tough answers from me; those days are perfectly counter-balanced by the days where I wish everyone would get out of business and leave me alone)

***

I’d like you to hear this hymn. It’s by Isaac Watts. A few months ago, a dear friend, Andrew Wolfe, sat down with me and helped me rearrange it. Almost immediately after, he left for Canada, and it’s hard for me to play this song without hearing his voice singing it.

Jesus shall reign wherever the sun
Does his successive journeys run
His kingdom stretch from shore to shore
’Til moons shall wax and wane no more

To Him shall endless prayer be made
And praises throng to crown His head
His Name like sweet perfume shall rise
With every morning sacrifice

Blessings abound wherever He reigns
The prisoner leaps to lose his chains
The weary find eternal rest
And all the sons of want are blessed

Let every creature rise and bring
Honors unrivaled to our King
Angels descend with songs again
And earth repeat the loud amen

Jesus shall reign…

***

May we be listening more and speaking less, may we search without ceasing and find satisfaction in the searching, may we be willing to look for context, even if it may lead to discomfort or suffering. May we be people who hunt out secrets in each other, who demand and receive authenticity, even when it’s not convenient or easy to deal with. May we not be people of one-word answers, and may we never be satisfied with the one-word answers of others. May our obsession with numbers and statistics be completely and thoroughly ravaged by our need for substance and truth.