songs:365

  • day 77: The Man Who Couldn’t Cry

    The Man Who Couldn’t Cry, by Johnny Cash (and Loudon Wainwright III).

    When I started this project, I didn’t know how many covers-of-covers would be involved, nor would I have expected to play three Loudon Wainwright III songs in the first 77 days, but here we are, because it really might be the fourth Johnny Cash song, depending on how we’re classifying these things.

    I am a pedant when it comes to taxonomy, but part of the fun of this project is playing and singing songs I have always wanted to play and sing, and another part of the fun has turned out to be finding inspiration in the (heavily curated and crafted by my own habits) serendipity of the music that pops onto Spotify in the car on the way back from soccer practice or while I’m making breakfast, and just reflecting back the soundtrack of my day.

    This song (the original) came on today as we left the parking lot at soccer practice, and I made the 10-year-old listen a little, and maybe it was the rain, or maybe he was curious, or maybe he happened to drift into his own world right then, or replay the goal he scored, or maybe it really was the rain, but he seemed to be listening, didn’t complain, and didn’t reflexively chime in with his own pedantry about the impossibility of the lyrics.

    Or maybe I just tuned him out. 😉

    Kept it bare bones tonight, though I did have to tune up out of the weird Pavement stuff from yesterday.

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  • day 76: Starlings in the Slipstream

    Starlings in the Slipstream, by Pavement.

    OK, once you’re tuned down half a step, you might as well commit to weird tunings for another day, check the Pavement tuning list, switch into DADABE, and take on this song, second to last on Brighten the Corners.

    I swear, I thought the whole “no coast of Nebraska” thing went on much longer, and that maybe it was “no Pope of Nebraska” but who am I to say. Also, the “hard, hard Cs” was “high, high Cs” in my memory for a long time.

    Piled in a little too much and it’s silly, but there we are.

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  • day 75: Fade Into You

    Fade Into You, by Mazzy Star.

    Did anyone else have certain albums that they could put on at bedtime (as a teen, or in your college years with a roommate) to fall asleep to? I mean, it’s not like that — I wasn’t boring myself to sleep — it was more like, the music would carry you off into dreams?

    Eh, or less romantically to obscure the sounds of your roommates existing in small spaces?

    Mazzy Star will help you get your Zs, true, but also, this song and its simple drone punches me in the guts with feelings, and it was really fun to sing.

    Ended up doing this still tuned down half a step from last night’s Cat Power song because I tried it and loved how it sounded for this.

    Added a buncha stuff, although I didn’t like the garageband effects on the acoustic as much this time. The synth pad thing is just right. I like synths. Synths are cool now.

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  • day 74: American Flag

    American Flag, by Cat Power.

    Sometimes you just have go back to the source, and Cat Power for me, is an empty, warm, New York City apartment, distortion coming through the vinyl records and the warped hardwood floors, and the leaky foam around the garbage-nook-level apartment, the Laverne & Shirley apartment, my mother called it, because you could see people walking by outside if you ever dared peek through the sheets I nailed over the windows.

    This song is from Moon Pix, and well, let’s let Wikipedia do some of the talking here:

    Much of the album was written in a single night, following a hallucinatory nightmare Marshall experienced while staying at a farmhouse in South Carolina. Prior to that, Marshall had intended to retire from music.

    what

    while alone in the South Carolina farmhouse she shared with her then-boyfriend, Bill Callahan

    what??

    Oh and The Dirty Three accompany her on most of this record, and my goodness gracious, that is one of the reasons it grabs me by the guts.

    Had a little fun with this one. My favorite part is the second acoustic track with garage band distortion applied, but the background hum of the guitar sounded like a jet engine in the quiet parts (hmm maybe that was the space heater?) so I had to crank up the noise gating to the point where there’s like no sustain and the guitar sounds nice and chopping.

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  • day 73: Whole Love

    Whole Love, by Wilco.

    A fourth Wilco song? Blame it on the marigolds. Seriously, I was looking at the (still dormant) garden out back and trying to remember what was in this one pot, and I remembered it’s the marigolds, and, as ever, this song popped into my head.

    A bunch of weekend layers, including a couple electric guitar tracks, and a (successful?) desperate attempt to add some harmony at the end by transposing one of the backup tracks up a few steps. Feels like I got lucky! Also managed to mess up the part at the end where there’s a little mini key change that I missed.

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  • day 72: Party in the USA

    Party in the USA, by Miley Cyrus.

    I was playing some Weird Al for the 10-year-old on the way home from soccer today. He’s been getting into Monty Python (a little) and I had run out of, uh, 10yo-appropriate material from them, so I tried Al. Landed an unexpected win with the Captain Underpants Theme Song (though he complained it’s not the regular one – maybe this was from the movie?) and then moved on to The Saga Begins (Day the Music Died, but make it Episode I), which made me tear up with laughter, and, indeed, tears.

    And then Party in the CIA came on, and he kinda recognized this song a little, and I had to explain the CIA, so there was that, but we live in Northern Virginia, so he should know these things.

    I played it a full step lower than the internet told me to. Sorry, that had more to do with the state of my left wrist and size of my fingers than my vocal range, which is bad enough as is. Was I going for emo? Johnny Cash? Lin Manuel? Could’ve had some fun with autotune on this one.

    Spent a little Saturday afternoon time on this, which was a good way to lower my heart rate after (watching my child play) soccer.

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  • day 71: Hollywood Hopeful

    Hollywood Hopeful, by Loudon Wainwright III.

    We’ve all been holed up in our Hollywood hotel suites for year now, with tequila to drink and avocado to eat.

    This song is the second Loudon Wainwright III number on the list — oh and by the way, the skunk is back. I fell into listening to this guy’s music after John Prine died and there was a really nice and relatively recent video going around of John Prine playing in like an apartment in Paris or something — it was a small space, whatever, and Loudon Wainwright was sitting there enjoying himself, singing along, eyes closed.

    Do I have that story right? googling noises

    Yes. Yes I do.

    John Prine was one of the first famous (to us, anyway) people we lost a year ago when this all started, and his was the first song I sang for this project on the first of the year. That was not intentional, but here we are, a year into this particular sickness, an anniversary offset, the beginning and end of a season.

    I am a full fledged grown up adult.

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  • day 70: Me and Bobby McGee

    Me and Bobby McGee, by Kris Kristofferson / Janis Joplin.

    I did a cover of the original but I know the more famous cover better and kinda sang it like that sometimes and like the original sometimes. Got that?

    [reads Wikipedia once]

    Actualllllllly… Kristofferson wrote it; Roger Miller recorded it first; then everyone else in country music, inclusive of Kenny Rogers, then Janis makes it a #1 hit. (Two years have passed since the original recording at this point.)

    Who else records this song later? The Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Loretta Lynn, Olivia Newton-John, (Jennifer Love Hewitt, for that matter), Joan Baez, etc.

    It’s late, and it’s simple, and it’s yours.

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  • day 69: I’ve Been Everywhere

    I’ve Been Everywhere, by Johnny Cash.

    Let’s just assume you’re here for the feeling of this song, and not the audio quality. Still a long way to go to get this new mic position right, especially for a song like this where I want to bang away at the strings in the big dumb black hat, because Johnny Cash.

    I am no Rick Rubin, though we have “NYU dorm room” in common. He was incrementally more enterprising and entrepreneurial in his.

    OK, I have been to 31 places mentioned in this song. What’s your score?

    Also, the one I absolutely butchered, well, more than the rest, was Ombabika, and if you mash your mouse on that link, you’ll find someone who visited is visiting? WAS visiting?? all 92 places mentioned in this song.

    And apparently he is not the only one. This is a thing. His last post was March 11, and was a different post about Ombabika, which apparently is not easy to get to. Upon further review, I think he did it?

    Goals.im

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  • day 68: In The Pines

    In The Pines, by The Louvin Brothers.

    You probably know the Leadbelly version of this, or at least the Nirvana (Unplugged) cover of that one, which you should hear, if somehow you haven’t. I don’t even know which I heard first or how the heck I got into the Louvin Brothers, but I had this one album and played the heck out of this one song.

    “The longest train I ever saw
    was 19 coaches long
    The only girl I ever loved
    is on that train and gone.”

    That’s goddamn poetry right there.

    Once in New Mexico, at a small town bar with a live two-step band, I hollered something like “Y’ALL KNOW ANY LOUVIN BROTHERS?” Mind you, I’m pretty sure it was dinnertime, and I couldn’t have been that drunk. Yet. No one in the room had any idea what I was talking about, which is right and good and correct.

    //

    I tried a harmony on the 4th this time, and it’s present in the background somewhere, but mostly you’ll hear my whine an octave up, but that’s kinda fun, too. I looked up “bluegrass harmony” and accidentally downloaded an html file of what I guess isn’t much of a website anymore, and learned that bluegrass vocal harmonies should stay pretty close to the lead, but idk if that means I should sing just like a full step up or down, which seems weird, but we’ve established I don’t know what I’m doing with the harmony.

    Plinky second guitar to give the vaguest impression that I’ve ever heard a mandolin before.

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