songs:365

Month: August 2021

  • day 223: Blue Spotted Tail

    Blue Spotted Tail, by Fleet Foxes.

    This song is one of maybe forty or fifty Fleet Foxes tunes that are completely unidentifiable by their titles, so I just start paging through their songs on the guitar chords sites until I find something I want to play. The next real step is to start googling things like “fleet foxes weird tuning” and the song title, but I didn’t go there this time, just slapping a capo on the 7th fret as instructed, and it’s pretty as heck, a flat out lullaby, so I hope you like it.

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    Not on the bear deck, but on a super resonant patio with tile floors and (fake?) stone walls.

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  • day 222: Take It To The Limit

    Take It To The Limit, by the Eagles.

    I mean, look, I don’t actually hate the Eagles? Like, I get it, Dude, that night, I would also have much preferred, say, Townes van Zandt to the Eagles, but I also believe in respecting the cab driver’s choice of music. I think things are different in the Uber/Lyft era, but still.

    This song is one of literally ten thousand Eagles songs that were unavoidable on the radio for like the first 18 years of my life, and the whole time/money/love bit is pretty cool, as is the B7/Em (uh, or whatever it is in this key with the capo on 4).

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    Recorded in a cabin in the Smokies while the kids play air hockey upstairs (you can absolutely hear them in the background). I would’ve taken the guitar outside, but it rained while we were at the grocery store, and all the decks — including the most obvious bear viewing platform — are wet.

  • day 221: Pastures of Plenty

    Pastures of Plenty, by Woody Guthrie.

    This song, like most Woody Guthrie songs, does a great job of storytelling about water rights. And dams. And migration. Obviously, you’ve read Grapes of Wrath! Throw Chinatown in there, and maybe much more recent stories about the almond and fruit tree business, and how water flows (or doesn’t) into it.

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  • day 220: Ripple

    Ripple, by the Grateful Dead.

    Do I have feelings about this song? Sure. I think everybody has feelings when they hear this song?

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    Recorded tonight in mom’s art studio in Asheville, North Carolina, which is a pretty neat trick. šŸ˜‰ Possibly 2-3 cats in the room at the time, but no meowing backing vocals.

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  • day 219: Frank Mills

    Frank Mills, by the Lemonheads.

    Evan Dando and the Lemonheads came up just a few days ago with a truncated version of the Do Right Woman story, and today I’ve been listening to a Bandsplain podcast about the band (it’s great for bands that you only know like that one or two albums) so it felt proper to pay proper homage with this song, a cute little throwaway thing that clocks in at 1:43 on It’s A Shame About Ray.

    And of course, because I just went to the trouble to look it up, and because the podcast very specifically pointed out that Lemonheads covers are so good sometimes you don’t know they’re covers, I have just been informed that, yes, yes, indeed [puts finger to earpiece] this is in fact a #cover-of-a-cover and is originally a song from the musical Hair which I have never seen, although I could easily identify two songs from it.

    So there’s that.

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    I am an absolute mark for songs that mention “The Waverly” which might mean the diner on 6th Ave. in New York City, which I frequented on a short visit to check out NYU, but can’t remember setting foot in again after that? Maybe once freshman year? It could also be referencing a theater of the same name which seems like it was probably next door?

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  • day 218: Down The Highway

    Down The Highway, by Bob Dylan.

    This is another one of those moments where I’ve tuned to something weird-ish (Double Dropped D, in this case), and mess around with songs in that tuning until I find something viable. I was down there for Blue Ridge Mountains (Fleet Foxes), which I’m not ready to record yet, despite plans to be in those precise hills next week. Then I gave The Chain (Fleetwood Mac) a shot, which has wholeheartedly been on my list since I listened to one of those song-deconstruction podcast episodes about it. Then I gave the Dylan Chords site a browse, and found this song, which I only vaguely recognized, but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s one of those open chord Dylan blues things, and in open D? I can handle that.

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    Had to stop and start when the computer fell asleep, so there’s a small edit and transitions, but I’m still not ready to pull out Garageband and try to produce anything elaborate.

    Oh, and I drew this out like two more minutes longer than the Dylan version?

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  • day 217: I’m Waiting For My Man

    I’m Waiting For My Man, by The Velvet Underground.

    I have no idea what Lou Reed is talking about in this song, nope, why do you ask?

    A fun one, very proto-punk Velvets, best played loud.

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  • day 216: Wilco (The Song)

    Wilco (The Song), by Wilco.

    And lo, he recorded the sixth Wilco song in the eighth month, depending on how you count the Billy Bragg tune, and it was alright.

    Kinda neat how the chords to the verse in this song are the reverse of Handshake Drugs, I think? Yep, that’s the kind of thing you notice, 216 days into a 365 day project.

    Proud that I got the timing pretty much dead on.

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  • day 215: Do Right Woman

    Do Right Woman, by Aretha Franklin.

    I probably told the story early in the year about the time Evan Dando, myself, and our wingmen (ha) closed down Cherry Tavern and sang along with this song on the jukebox. The version I found when I looked it up today was a Flying Burrito Brothers cover, which makes me wonder which one Evan was most familiar with? Let’s assume Aretha, but there’s nothing wrong with the Gram Parsons version either.

    But I definitely sang some butchered FBB lyric in the first verse.

  • day 214: New York

    New York, by St. Vincent.

    Would’ve made a lot more sense to do this song on day 212, but I wasn’t cursing much on the Happy Hour porch! These aren’t the avenues I would choose to namecheck in a song, of course, but this one does remind me of a few friends from my New York days who left before I did. And then I left. And going back wasn’t fun for a long time, but these days I wouldn’t mind a night or two in a boring midtown hotel, not one bit.

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    I probably haven’t listened to this for a couple years, so I didn’t get the bridgey parts right, but I got them. Taking the easy route with the phone, ringlight, and YouTube again today, just keeping it real.

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