Here's an early draft of "Bender," the track we cut from Highway Gothic. (We'll still make it available on the four-side extended LP, when that's possible.) 

The idea for the song came its first line, "I need you like the devil needs an advocate." It's pretty much all similes from there. Unfortunately good similes are difficult to write.

Anyway there were a lot of swings and misses on this one, some quite feeble indeed. (That is, tbh, one of the reasons the song is so short.) I had completely forgotten about the line "I need you like Lost needed a season 5." Presumably the verse would've concluded "That must be the reason I've / Binged it all again." 

One of these days, if live concerts are a thing we can do again, we ought to play the draft versions of things. Including Thomas's version of "O Chem" ("Telephone, Jellophone...").

It's been a week of Broken Things, so in lieu of a complete song, here's a lyric that hasn't found a home yet. A counterpart, I guess, to the idea that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

(I think this might actually fit in one of the current songs in progress? But if I try to record a demo this week I will probably wind up electrocuting myself.)

Here's the original draft of "The Age and the Ache," which took a bit of rearranging before it settled into its final form. 

Typically I jot down the first idea for a lyric on the recto page. Then, later, I can leaf through the notebook and see if anything grabs me. The first idea for this song was the pair of lyrics that turned into the verse motif, "You pretend you're free / I'll pretend I'm beautiful." That's pretty much the essence of the song, and most of the lyrics followed pretty quickly (which you can tell from the fact that they're mostly in the same color of ink).

I use curly brackets to mark words and phrases when I think they need revision, or I can't choose between several similar phrasings, or I'm not sure about keeping the line. It's a handy way to keep writing without stopping to fuss over minutiae. I was gunning hard for "really and truly alone" here, but it's bracketed twice, and it never made it in.

On the verso page you can see the tab of the riff—which I think Charlie plays a little differently with the slide, and which we replaced with accordion in the final recording—and my frustrated attempt at working out the correct music-theory name of a chord in the chorus. Still not sure I ever arrived at the correct name, to be honest. 

Songs rarely arrive neatly, at least not for me. ("Like" did, and I almost resent it for that: it makes every other writing process seem proportionally harder.) "Posthistoric" took multiple tries, across two notebooks, with months elapsing between the initial idea and the finished song.

There are almost always a lot of early lines that don't make it to the final song. Sometimes you have to write an idea down to figure out that it doesn't belong. I had forgotten that this draft included a reference to the Loudness War.

People tend to assume that I have some great overarching System of Ink Color. I do always have a lot of different-colored pens around: my day gigs involve (or used to involve) a lot of proofreading on hard-copy layouts; in rehearsals, I try to color-code my line and blocking notes by day, so I can tell at a glance which ones are the most recent. In the music notebooks, though, a change in ink color just means I started the song, stalled out, and happened to grab a different pen when I came back to it later.  

The "URL" line that ends the recording appeared on its own at least a year ago, with no attached idea for a song. I thought for a while that it might just wind up being a stand-alone joke in the liner notes. In this song, it's still a little detached from the rest, but...well, if it doesn't belong in this song, it doesn't belong anywhere.

Below is a verse I couldn't use (though I did put the Joyce quote at the top of the lyrics on Bandcamp). I always tell myself I'm saving such things for later. It's rarely true. But I do love the image of some future historian tracing thoughts in the embossed lines of a rollerball point on a seemingly blank scrap of paper.

I was all about using the lockdown to focus on technical skills and songwriting. Then a kitchen accident on July 4 almost cost me part of a fingertip on my fret hand. So there hasn't been much guitar in the past week. (I think the finger is going to be okay, though it still looks and feels kind of gnarly.)

BUT that means I've been able to dig in on things like lyric videos for our back catalogue of songs. If you're the sort of listener who cares whether it's "fingernails and cigarettes" or "bacon and cigarettes" that make a lousy dinner (and you probably are, or you wouldn't be reading this), then head on over to our YouTube channel to find out whether the words to "Slinky" are really as nonsensical as they seem. (They are.) 

Another big music-adjacent project for the year is illustrating The ABCs of Rock, written by fellow musician Randy Diederrich. It's due out in December. We'll make some of the images available as prints and greeting cards. (Send them to the musicians in your life. They're all sad right now.) If I can't play much for a while...at least I can envision a monster metal session involving Lemmy, Vernon Reid, Doro Pesch, Tony Iommi, and Dave Lombardo.

Until next time, wear your mask, wash your hands, and stay safe. 

One of my more fulfilling lockdown projects has involved helping my BFF answer her daughter's questions about songwriting.

The first bit was about why we write songs in the first place, and different types of songs that reflect those different reasons. (Gregory Orr's discussion of lyrical vs. narrative writing is tremendously useful in thinking about this, fwiw.) This section turned into a little 18-page e-book, complete with a playlist. The list is loosely grouped into songs that imitate real-life sounds, lyrical songs, narrative songs, informative songs, nonsense/scatting songs, and instrumental compositions, with some examples of different instrumental ensembles.

I should also note—in case you're thinking about sharing this with kids—that a couple of the songs contain lyrics or references that might not be completely family-friendly. These are things that I know my BFF has discussed with her daughter. But not every parent wants to explain "Ms. Jackson" right now, in These Uncertain Times, so maybe just stay close to the Skip button, if you're not sure.

I think it's going to be a series, though for now I'm happy to road-test it with individual kids rather than trying to find a publisher. Next up: lyrics, lyrical structure, rhyme. I know one of the songs I'm going to discuss is "Freedom" (metaphor! imagery! allusion! and Kendrick Lamar's motif development is so good), but I would love to hear other suggestions. 

I've finished an album's worth of demos on this residency, so I'm putting them up on Bandcamp as a free download. It's not truly an album, in the sense of a coherent collection; many of these will be on our next studio project, but probably not all of them, and probably not entirely in these forms.

Songs change dramatically when they come to the full band. We cut a verse from "Badlands," which was a fingerpicked ballad at the time; there was some discussion about whether "Manhattan Up" would be acoustic; the demo of "Get Out" was so different that Charlie asked if we were going for a Monkees feel. So consider this a glimpse into the evolutionary process.

None of these recordings have gone through professional mixing or mastering (which is why I'm making the download free). Best listened to on headphones—both for optimal sound and to avoid irritating your lockdown cohort.

This was the year we got way ahead of the deadline and gathered to record a Tiny Desk contest submission in January. Can Tiny Desk concerts still happen with social distancing? Don't know! Does anyone still want to win airfare to DC? Not sure! Did we submit the thing anyway? Heck yeah!

If you want to watch, it's here: https://youtu.be/rR023OeWkg4. Look at those happy, naive faces, all crowded within six feet of each other. Dance like nobody's watching; drum like you'll never have to wipe down your desk, as the saying goes.

You will also note that we have taken to heart the fact that the internet is made of cats. I don't know whether Julie is taking requests on that keyboard, but it wouldn't hurt to ask.

The studio recording of the song is over on Bandcamp, as well as Spotify and other services. Bandcamp, btw, is waiving its cut of purchases on March 20, so that all proceeds go to the artists. We have plenty of ideas for albums you might want to buy, but it's a good day to shop around on Bandcamp if you like supporting indie music.

Here's a demo of a new one, "Asteroid." It is, as I said to a friend a few days ago, a risky song for me: it contains guitar solos that—as I'm working alone—I can't outsource to Charlie; it uses a part of my voice that easily veers into either Cher Impersonator or Slumming Opera Singer; it's about a vulnerable subject; and the whole thing is a structural experiment. AND the build really needs a full drum kit. (The percussion here is me hitting the guitar pickup with an open palm. Have I mentioned that I miss the band? I miss the band.) But now is no time to be shy about art—or anything, really—so what the hell, here it is.

And here's a new one that feels much safer in a lot of ways, "Cat at the Music Box Lounge." (I do not remember where that title came from; the song came from a very specific walk to Chicago's Montrose Saloon in October. That night's performer, Ken Rose, is indeed known as The Voice That Remembers, and you should see him if you can.) Melancholy country is definitely one of my go-to writing forms, and the genre somewhat limits the structural risks you can take. But that also means this one may not go on the new album, which seems to be making experiments all over the place.

Everyone's stuck at home and desperately browsing the internet, so here's some stuff to listen to. WITH THE IMPORTANT CAVEAT that I've been working in near-total isolation for a month and a half, and it is entirely possible that what I am producing is utter crap.

"​Ghostlight" is a demo of a new song. (The percussion track is tap shoes.) I came here knowing that much of what I'd be writing had to do with memory, the past, mortality, and ghosts...and then it turned out my casita was a little bit haunted. 

If you've seen us live, you may have seen a stunningly bad Replacements T-shirt at our merch table. It's made of shiny swimsuit fabric, and the logo looks like it was printed from a photo of another T-shirt (even retaining the original shirt's off-center fold line). It was from an Amazon seller who turned out to be fraudulent. "Polyester Shirt" is the result. This is a rough cut from one of the recording sessions for Highway Gothic. We've talked about a Mats tribute EP, probably incorporating this, "I.O.U.," "Whiskeyboots," and "Run for the Country." Charlie suggested the title Black Blanket Sun based on a comment Paul Westerberg makes in Trouble Boys. 

Here's another new demo: "Today, Today." I miss being able to record with the full band. My equipment here consists of the Ibanez, a Casio (which doesn't connect directly to the recording interface), and a mic. It's kind of fun to see how much one can play around within that limited range, but...yeah, I miss the band.

Stay well, everyone. I'll post some more songs this weekend.