songs:365

  • day 17: My Girls

    My Girls, by Animal Collective.

    I fell for this song a few different times, in phases, but really got into it before we were going to a Fleet Foxes show a few years ago with Animal Collective opening for them at literally Merriweather Post Pavilion and…. then I read about Panda Bear’s breakup and that they didn’t play the song anymore… or DID I? I can’t find anything remotely like that, but I can tell you they did not play this song when we saw them live.

    Fun Sunday project, including a little autotune on the additional vocals, a couple software synths, and don’t forget to wait until the beat drops.

    Oh, also. Am I singing the right words? Maybe not! This is what the guitar chords had written down, but looking at Genius, there are some big differences. I like these words just fine.

    Tags:

  • day 16: Random Rules

    Random Rules, by Silver Jews.

    In my indie rock record purchasing days back in the East Village (hello, I was a type, but a lesser version of it, honest), I heard something that clearly sounded like Stephen Malkmus singing with a band that didn’t sound like Pavement, and asked if it was new Pavement, and the polite hipster at the register said no, of course not, there is no Pavement, this is Silver Jews.

    I’ve listened to this record on and off, nowhere near as much as I’ve listened to some of the Malkmus/Jicks/solo records, but when David Berman died, I picked it up again. Then Robin Pecknold name checked American Water on the Fleet Foxes record, and I tried this one out.

    Two acoustic tracks with a tiny bit of stereo you’ll hear on headphones! And the fuzzed up electric again to poorly mime a Malkmus fill for a solo at the end.

    Tags:

  • day 15: Wellerman

    Wellerman, a, um, sea shanty, because that’s what we’re all singing this week.

    Not sure what to say about this except:

    Tags:

  • day 14: I Am Trying To Break Your Heart

    I Am Trying To Break Your Heart by Wilco.

    I had a hard time picking a song today. I kept trying to go back to things I know well, but kept getting frustrated trying to finish before dinner or bedtime, and in the end I recorded after the kids were done for the night, and layered on all these other fun things in my dark office up too late.

    I heard the story of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot before I got into Wilco. But I knew the Uncle Tupelo records from long before that. And then I heard some live recordings, and Heavy Metal Drummer was my gateway.

    I Am Trying To Break Your Heart holds a special space, though maybe not as emotional a space as the whole Sky Blue Sky album, but still.

    Oh, and when I do a silly minor middle-of-Via-Chicago thing with the drums, that’s because the dog scratched at the office door and I had to let her in. (She didn’t come in. It wasn’t time for work.)

    Still trying to learn how to get the keyboard timing right with the software instruments.

    Tags:

  • day 13: Harness Your Hopes

    Harness Your Hopes, by Pavement.

    This odd b-side became one of Pavement’s most popular songs on Spotify for very strictly algorithmic reasons and that makes it extra fascinating to me.

    Nowhere close to my favorite Pavement song, and has little meaning to me personally, since I heard it for the first time in the past couple years as Spotify started carrying all these deep cut rerelease remaster whatever thingies of all the Pavement albums, which I have on vinyl, thank you very much, but was already late to when a certain art student a year older than me played Crooked Rain in her dorm room and I developed a crush but she was gay and I was thoroughly clueless.

    The vinyl all got taped to cassette and even later stuff like their last album together was walkman fodder for my walking-and-commuting-a-lot-in-New-York-City years.

    Added an electric track and kinda sorta tried to play the solo at the end, which is cute. If it sounds like anything it’s thanks to the Fuzz Factory pedal I have specifically so I can sound a little like Stephen Malkmus. (The guitar and amp were also selected to serve that purpose but we’ll get to them later.)

    Tags:

  • day 12: Untitled

    Untitled by Palace Songs

    Did I really start listening to Palace because of that Amy Sohn column in New York Press? Maybe. Maybe I got into them after one of my most indie rocking indie rock friends in college played something of theirs at… a party? A dinner party? Why was I there? I met that guy on a student film where he was the DP and the dolly grip was cracking up for some reason and sort of ran away from the set while the camera was rolling and I jumped up and finished the shot and it only occurs to me all these years later that it was the first of TWO times that I ended up getting a gig because a dolly grip laughed during a camera move and the second time it had to do with Joan Rivers.

    Anyway.

    Playing with Garage Band software instruments and layering on more vocals to disguise my lack of talent is fun and reminds me of learning to use Photoshop around 2001 and covering up for my crappy scanner that left a pink streak on everything.

    But also, this song is somehow banal yet critical to my psyche. I mumbled the words at dinner tonight and my wife recognized it from the first mixtape I ever mailed her.

    Tags:

  • day 11: A Girl In Port

    A Girl In Port by Okkervil River.

    I can only assume I first heard Okkervil River on NPR All Songs Considered, most likely in the years of my longest car commute, when podcasts dotted a landscape otherwise made up of recurring Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend, torrented-and-burnt Kanye, and the like.

    I was already half a decade late to this record then, but in 2007 I was probably stuck on Bright Eyes and not sleeping much, because parenting.

    A guilty dissolve to merge two pieces after I messed up the last verse badly enough to ditch it. More production on my vocals would help here.

    This song doesn’t feel five minutes long when they do it.

    Tags:

  • day 10: Friend of the Devil

    Friend of the Devil, by the Grateful Dead

    Listen, I know there are more interesting Dead songs, but Friend of the Devil was the quietest thing I could think of to play after running out the kids bedtime clock on Blank Space, which I’ll have to come back to when I have some more time to learn it in something approaching the right key that either Ryan Adams or Taylor Swift sing it in.

    The thing about American Beauty, as an album, was its over the top ubiquity in bargain CD bins in the early 90s. Like, as soon as CDs existed, you could find this record and the entirety of Bob Dylan’s catalog for $8.98 a pop.

    At the same time, other than Truckin’, this was probably the first Grateful Dead song I ever heard on the radio.

    I heard, um, much, much more Grateful Dead in college. I saw two of the last shows at MSG, including one on my 18th birthday, had a roommate who played a ton sophomore year, and picked my favorites from there. May of ’77. Europe ’72. None of the songs on American Beauty really seem that important any more, although Ripple might still make me weep in the right context.

    Tags:

  • day 9: Dead Skunk

    Dead Skunk by Loudon Wainwright III

    THIS SONG IS DEDICATED TO THE SKUNK THAT HAS TAKEN UP RESIDENCE IN THE GROUNDHOG TUNNELS UNDER OUR FRONT STAIRS AND STUNK UP OUR WHOLE HOUSE THIS MORNING.

    I had a completely different Loudon Wainwright III song on the list, but sometimes inspiration just strikes you right in the guts. Or the nose. Or both.

    https://twitter.com/ryansholin/status/1347945228045590528

    Three chords and a software tamboruine.

    Tags:

  • day 8: See America Right

    See America Right by the Mountain Goats

    Honestly no idea when I started listening to the Mountain Goats, but I mostly stick with the classics. This and No Children and This Year are just absolute anthems.

    One take and one overdub on electric for, uh, “solos.”

    Tags: ,