songs:365

  • day 7: Desaparecido

    Desaparecido by Manu Chao

    The first time I heard this album was probably the first day in New Mexico, the first day working on the gig where I met my wife. I loved it. Manu Chao’s music reminds of those weeks, those months, our early days together. There’s other music that might be more specifically romantic to us, but there’s no other music that we listened to as much at the beginning of our romance.

    Just try to get some feelings out, literally while the kids are brushing their teeth, running late to get them to bed. Three whole chords in this one. The translation(s) around the internet are… not great, but this one seems close.

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  • day 6: Hit The Ground Running

    Hit The Ground Running by Smog

    bit of a day

    I had to shut down Twitter and news and work and do something else to back away from the stream of madness for a few minutes and conveniently had a hard time with this two-chord number from Smog aka Bill Callahan.

    Conveniently, it starts with the words “I had to leave the country.”

    Leaving it nice and raw here because that’s how I feel and also because editing is time consuming!

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  • day 5: Love Me

    Love Me by Elvis Presley

    Well, I couldn’t mention it yesterday without singing it soon, so here it is. This song was on the Heartbreak Hotel soundtrack — yes, an ’80s movie about kidnapping Elvis and fixing him up with your mom — and looking back at the credits, it wasn’t even Elvis singing it on the cassette I wore out?

    OK, actor who played Elvis, or probably singer who did the vocals for the actor, look, I’m not sure if the version I remember is yours or Elvis Presley’s, but I loved that song and never heard it anywhere else.

    I know my guitar teacher wrote the chords out for me on this one in F, because I have it in my old Mel Bay spiral manuscript book somewhere between Stairway to Heaven and Hotel California.

    But that F barre chord is a jerk, so I learned it in E.

    This took a few takes, mostly because the more I ham up the performance, the harder time I have getting the parts in the right order. Added a couple backup singers who don’t know harmonies on the final chorus because otherwise I just mumble-hum it anyway. But didn’t bother mixing it properly.

    Oh, also, different camera angle today.

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  • day 4: Sex and Magic

    Sex and Magic by Esther Rose

    Not actually a cover of a cover, I think? Though I was tempted by Johnny Cash’s version of Tom Waits’s Down There By The Train, this is Sex and Magic.

    I added a second vocal doubling part of the chorus, managed to fail at exporting it to the video around dinnertime, and listening to it now, it wasn’t worth keeping. Someday I’ll learn to sing harmony on a song I didn’t memorize in elementary school.

    Oh, and the whistling doesn’t do the fiddle justice.

    Here’s a piece about the writing of this song.

    “People have told me that this song makes them feel nostalgic in a way they can’t explain”

    Yes! I imagine it has something to do with the chord changes. I’m using a capo as instructed in the online version of the chords, but it seems silly since you could play it open in G without any trouble. It reminds me a little bit of Love Me by Elvis with the seventh in there (yes, the one music thing I can identify, sure, fine.)

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  • day 3: Frying Pan

    Frying Pan, by Victoria Williams (but I only know the Evan Dando cover)

    YO DAWG i heard you like covers of covers so i put a cover in your cover so you can cover while you cover.

    Right, so, day three, and it’s the third day of playing a song I know best as a cover. This is not the only song from the Sweet Relief tribute to / benefit for Victoria Williams (sister to Lucinda) that I have on the list. This is also another song I only ever heard in public at that first record store where I worked as a teenager. Formative years!

    I also have a funny Evan Dando story from just a couple years later when I was a freshman in college. The details are not for search engines, but the tl;dr is that we shut down a long gone East Village bar, singing along to Aretha Franklin on the jukebox, mostly.

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  • day 2: Blue Bayou

    Blue Bayou by Roy Orbison but really with Linda Rondstadt’s version in mind.

    Sometime in the past couple years, I heard an Esther Rose cover of Blue Bayou and tried it out. I probably heard Linda Rondstadt’s version first as a kid, because that’s just how Love 94, the local radio station ubiquitous in our house at the time, would have rolled.

    I added a second track of electric guitar to fill it out a little, because it’s the weekend and I had a minute. Oh, also, this must be pandemic self-haircut 5 or so.

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  • day 1: The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness

    The Speed of the Sound of Loneliness by John Prine

    The first thousand times I heard this song, it was on that Nanci Griffiths album of covers. We played it to death at the first record store I worked at, when I was 16.

    The thing about getting started with something is that you just have to start. Three takes, three chords, a comfortable song I know for going on 30 years, it’s as good a place to start as any.

    I didn’t get more familiar with John Prine until a couple friends went all In Spite of Ourselves at karaoke a few times in a row, and then John died right at the start of the pandemic, and then I listened to lots of him for a while.

    This one sits close to me because of the Nanci Griffths record, though, and everyone from that time.

    I’m in the middle of a whole workspace reorganization when it comes to computer things, so this is my laptop camera and my nice microphone and a struggle to get everything plugged in to these measly little USB-C ports at once, so I couldn’t get the mouse and the microphone both — anyway, you’ll see me adjust the scroll of the words a couple times.

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  • why songs:365

    you learn to play guitar as a teenager, and when you stop taking lessons you stop learning. you never learn to read music, you don’t know much about fifths or eights or whatever but you can play a major seventh chord anywhere on the neck because you learned them for Eyes of the World or Stairway to Heaven or one of those. you briefly front a terrible high school band and nothing really happens in college despite constantly lugging a guitar or two around. you learn lots of songs, play them once or twice, and they fade. you grow up and have kids and teach them songs and play at the holidays and for your congregation and maybe even in the band. you want to play more.

    getting better isn’t really the goal. the goal is to play every day, and to be ok with just being ok at this.

    Normalize being kinda mediocre at something and still finding value in trying to get better at it.

    — Casey Johnston, aka Ask A Swole Woman

    The Rules

    eh, well, I thought about rules, like “play it in one take and post whatever happens” or “no editing or extra tracks allowed” and things like that, but honestly, that is less fun. the better rule, maybe, is that only thing to take seriously is playing something every day and posting it.

    The List of Songs

    …is a work in progress.