songs:365

Month: May 2021

  • day 141: On the Road Again

    On the Road Again, by Willie Nelson.

    First night on the road in 2021, so this is a little on the nose. 😉 When I started this project and the question of what I would do when I started traveling again for work came up, I did not anticipate that I would be traveling for youth soccer first. But here we are, in Rock Hill, South Carolina, just outside Charlotte, after a long day on the road.

    This song might’ve been the very first Willie song I ever heard, even before the Red Headed Stranger cassette took its turn on repeat around my Dad. Feels like it’s been watered down by a thousand commercial uses (full credit to Willie for being a player, though), but what few lyrics there are hit a little harder now. I changed the “gypsies” reference the second time through, and should’ve skipped it the first time, too. C’mon, Willie.

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    Uh, if the video quality is better on my iPhone 11 than on my 2017 MBP camera, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. The audio is comically acceptable, though. I supposed millions of influencers talking into their ringlights can’t be wrong.

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  • day 140: Man on the Moon

    Man on the Moon, by REM.

    Took 140 days to get to REM, one of the most important bands of my teenage years? It’s not that I heard Green for the first time at summer camp, but that’s where the kids from North Carolina and Georgia taught me that it was Important Music, and that Orange Crush was about Vietnam, man, not soda.

    I knew that. I got it, man.

    There came a point (again, the record store work, employee discount, and $8.98 bargain bin helped) where I owned every REM album, right up until Monster came out my freshman year of college — honestly, that’s the first CD I remember buying at Tower Records on W. 4th Street.

    This song wasn’t a meaningful favorite, but it’s one that sticks in my head today, yeah yeah yeah yeah. Let’s play Twister, let’s play Risk.

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    Late decision to add a bassline saved this thing. Also, I can not sing the harmony parts. Which Mike is it with the high voice? Mills? Is there a second Mike? I don’t remember all the details, but I can tell you which road I was driving on when Belong started meaning something to me, and that it was a tape playing in the boom box in my first car, etc., etc., etc.

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  • day 139: I Shall Be Released

    I Shall Be Released, by The Band*.

    Yes, indeed, it is a cover-of-a-cover, but that is sometimes the case the the Dylan/Band overlaps. I am way, way, way more familiar with The Band’s version, so that’s what this song is for me.

    I spent a lot of time listening to The Band on a discman in Morocco — at least until I really got into the Gnaoua CD I picked up in Marrakech. This song might’ve been on one of those Band CDs I had on repeat when I hiked, alone, into the scrub outside Tinghir (Tenerhir) and left the tourist trail, scrambled up the rocks, and spent the night in what was clearly some goatherd’s regular campsite.

    In the middle of the night, I woke once to the sound of bleating animals strolling by on the path; I woke up a hundred more times to the light of the moon in my eyes. (The ultralight tarp in my daypack was not enough to block it out; the clementines and almonds I brought were sufficient nourishment, though.)

    The walk back through the date farms was a highlight of that trip, but I’ll save that for another song.

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  • day 138: We Are 138

    We Are 138, by the Misfits.

    I couldn’t resist. Look, the thing is, I have heard this song more often than I have made it through THX-1138 without falling asleep. Honestly, it’s pretty boring! Lotta white, tbqh. Not that I didn’t attempt a weird homage to it in film school, because that was the sort of thing I did. My sci-fi short remained unfinished, never as overexposed as I wanted it, but it was the moment, thankfully, I realized the last thing I should do for a career was talk to actors. Animation would’ve suited me better.

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    Actual electric guitar for the first time in a long time, and it came out kinda appropriate! Just one vocal, the tiny solo, and another electric guitar track transposed down as bass.

    Oh, and dumb video effects.

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  • day 137: From Hank to Hendrix

    From Hank to Hendrix, by Neil Young.

    The Harvest Moon album came out near the beginning of my junior year of high school, when I was fresh off a climactic finale to the summer camp experience of my formative years and… yeah it sounds like the soundtrack to some big life change because it is!

    This song was an early favorite of mine, and there are lines in it that still make me feel like an old man taking a look at my life, even if I was 16 then, and in the grand scheme of things, I’m not much older now. Does Neil Young make us all talk in clichés? Maybe. But maybe it’s alright to cheese it up sometimes for the greater good, isn’t it? Maybe.

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    Extra vocals, extra guitars, but I really need to do harmonica songs before the kids go to bed.

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  • day 136: Althea

    Althea, by the Grateful Dead.

    A third Dead song, and I did one two weeks ago? Fine. I have an excuse, and John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats is to blame (two songs, and I did one three days ago). He tweeted something about the album version of Althea being a rare canonical take on an album, compared to other songs where there are live versions that are understood to be more complete or something ANYWAY the point is I was reminded of this song like an hour ago and was compelled to record it tonight.

    https://twitter.com/mountain_goats/status/1394074829675016192?s=20

    This is one that got a lot of acoustic time in our sophomore year dorm room, especially when the Dead fan roommate (Hi Dan!) who could play (infinitely better than me with more talent and feeling than I can even approach now, especially on this number) had a couple friends over and we were treated to a guitar and voice trio arrangement and some of these people are professional musicians now maybe? I lose track, but these were not the other very professional musicians who were and are also still friends of ours but also, I’m so pleased it’s not that complicated, and I could kinda hack it.

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    Actually had to hack the video together after a computer-went-to-sleep mishap, but these things happen. Obligatory Bm scale noodling.

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  • day 135: Tangled Up In Blue

    Tangled Up In Blue, by Bob Dylan.

    This song always reminds me of a certain person, in one verse, and a certain time, in other places, and certain trips, elsewhere, and I think that’s the point, it’s a song about nostalgia, and everybody has some, even as they keep up their day jobs or even their day lives and every now and again crosses paths with their past, and it’s alright. Sometimes.

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    I think I accidentally discovered that panicked mouse scrolling to get more of the lyrics in view — when done to the Quicktime window capturing the video instead of the Chrome window with the lyrics — is probably how I occasionally freeze the recording, say, for example, two minutes into a seven minute song. So we won’t make that mistake again. Much.

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    Some extra guitar, and a fuzzy little solo at the end in the spirit of a harmonica, which I have, in this key, maybe, but should really clean up, having not put a mouth on it in like 15 years or so. Probably.

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  • day 134: Campus

    Campus, by Vampire Weekend.

    This song is for my daughter on her 14th birthday. It’s one of her favorites, and whenever we “jam” together (kinda), we like to sing along to this one.

    I was not sure I could play the extremely basic G major scale run and sing at the same time, and even this mediocre-but-complete edition would’ve absolutely disgusted my guitar teacher from 1990 who would’ve tossed his hair back, shaken his head, mumbled something about Steely Dan, and told me to practice that goddamn scale exercise for an hour a day or don’t bother having him over next week.

    Reader, I did not practice it enough.

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    How sparse is the original of this? I think it’s pretty sparse, frankly, maybe sparser than this. I added a bass to the guitar, a strategically placed backup vocal, and a little bit of a third guitar strumming the chords in one of the bits.

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  • day 133: No Children

    No Children, by Mountain Goats.

    Well, this went pretty terribly. Wasn’t really feeling a love song, so I played a breakup song, and it’s just too dang bitter for me. This one almost deserves the Johnny Cash (Rick Rubin years) cover treatment. Imagine him pronouncing “hand in unlovable hand!” Hey that’s a decent idea, I had, just now, after recording this song and having a hard time with it.

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    The dumb guitar riff from Margaritaville was way easier than the opening piano thing to this, which I tried on guitar and could not work out.

    (Uh, the, um, lyrics of this one are not an accurate reflection of the management’s opinion, and uh, etc.)

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  • day 132: I Am A Cinematographer

    I Am A Cinematographer, by Palace Brothers.

    I mean, how am I supposed to come back from literally Margaritaville? That’s right, we’re going to the well for one of the most pretentious songs I could possibly play, a Palace (Brothers/Music/(just Palace)/Will Oldham/Bonnie Prince Billy) number that harks back to when Cinematographer was pretty much my desired job title, and I was doing it in school a little, and then I walked away from New York City, and eventually California, oh, indeed.

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    Short and sweet, but had to add a second little guitar line and a little backup vocal because I am not that fragile.

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