Several songs are at a point where it would be lethal to discuss their processes instead of working on them directly, so instead here's a quick roundup of ideas that have been feeding into my creative process of late:

• Elisa Gabbert in the NYT Book Review on what poetry is and isn't
• Josh Terry on AI in music, with a killer quote from Nick Cave (and a nod to a great Emmylou Harris/Delbert McClinton song)​
• Austin Kleon on curiosity
• Ted Gioia on the Orphic quest
• Anne Helen Peterson on various lives in art

Things are chaotic enough this spring that an interesting pastiche might result from the chaos itself. Yesterday there were several phrases banging around in my head without any sort of clear form or creative imperative. I wrote them on sticky notes with a brush pen (a Pentel, another Austin Kleon recommendation for slowing down and focusing thoughts) and put them on the wall over my desk. I'm going to keep adding to the assembly and see what sorts of meanings arise from the new juxtapositions as the words become detached from their original contexts. (Part of me feels it's necessary to describe this process here just in case I die suddenly: to the uninitiated eye, this could easily look like some sort of terrifying conspiracy-theory psychotic break. I swear it's just art.)

I would be remiss not to discuss actual baguettes on this blog at some point. I usually opt for pain d'epi, the wheat-ear loaf—same recipe, more crust, easier sharing.

I can't take any credit for the recipe; it's the one in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Bread flour, yeast, water, salt. That's it: four ingredients. It does have to be bread flour, not all-purpose. And I might go a little heavy on the salt, but that scarcely counts as a modification. 

One thing I have figured out, though, is that you can use the flat side of a cast iron griddle as a baking stone. (Lodge has "use it in the oven" right there in the product description, so this is hardly groundbreaking kitchen science on my part.) This approach, in combination with a steam tray, yields the most perfect crusts I ever hope to achieve.

When we shared a lineup with Underwire in 2019, they brought cupcakes for the audience, as part of their band tradition. Should we start doing this with baguettes? 

Earlier this week, I flipped back through my notebook to find a song I started in January. (I put it aside so I could deal with, among other things, catastrophic car failure: I am now absolutely primed to work on country music.) I found it, and the main lyric and its melody came back immediately—always a good sign—but at the top of the page is the note "Old 97s-ish."

Uh-oh.

I have written this note at the top of more than one draft ("Okay Okay" among the new songs, "Candy" among older ones). The trouble is that the Old 97s have the ability to write songs that seem familiar on the first listen. And songwriting, regardless of genre, often feels as though I'm trying to recall something I've heard distantly—less I Am a Camera than I Am an Imperfect Radio.  So when I work in a form that's supposed to feel like a pair of broken-in jeans, and there's a clear point of reference, I start to get nervous about how much I'm actually writing myself, and how much I'm straight-up lifting from others: whether it feels familiar because I'm working well in the genre, or because it is familiar.

​At such times it's useful to remember that I have a bandmate with a near-encyclopedic knowledge of rock and pop. If I can finish the thing, I trust Charlie will let me know if it veers too close to any existing song.

I guess the anxiety of influence is the unintentional theme of the week. Perhaps I should not ever pretend that I have any idea what I'm doing.

How many modifications can you make to something before you get to claim credit? It's a complicated question in the arts (and a wretched legal issue for musicians). It doesn't seem much clearer in the world of recipes. In general, I believe in stealing like an artist. But owning up to the theft in writing, in public, seems nearly as stupid as leaving your wallet at the bank you've just robbed.

Which is to say, this recipe didn't start with me. I got it from a bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips, and then made a number of changes. Somewhere along the way, the modified version became my default cookie recipe, to the point that friends started referring to them as The Cookies.

So: Start with Clementine's Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies.

But then:
1. Use bittersweet chocolate (60–70% cacao), not semisweet. 
2. Skimp a little on the sugar and brown sugar.
3. Add a pinch of cardamom to the dry ingredients.
4. Use salted butter (the original recipe doesn't specify, but a lot of sweet bakes call for unsalted).
5. Replace the walnuts with dried Montmorency cherries.

I usually cut the recipe in half, which means 6. I make it with an egg white, not a whole egg.

Does this mean I can claim it? I doubt it. I think we're still in cover-song territory, but the sort of cover where you have to listen for a minute to be sure.

Notebook Thursday tends to focus on our own compositions, but today I'm thinking about the songs that shaped how I play guitar, and by extension how I write on guitar. Here are a few, in a short series of firsts.

First guitar: Little Girl, a Gibson LG0 from my mom's friend's garage sale. It was a perfect bargain: she didn't know what she was selling, and I didn't know what I was buying. Soon after, I got one of those guitar magazines that tabs out popular songs. I was in way, way over my head. But one of the songs in there was simple enough that I could muddle through. It was "What's Up" (it was the 90s, after all). For a lot of people, it's a karaoke default; for me, it's the first exposure to suspended chords. Joni Mitchell calls them "chords of inquiry...chords that [have] a question mark in them." I still like them a lot. 

"Something": the first song that made me understand elegance in songcraft. (We spent some time analyzing it in Charles Kim's theory/composition class at Old Town School, which I can't recommend highly enough.) The descending line within the chord progression is gorgeous, of course, but it's also incredibly playable. For a guitarist, the song is about as intuitive as it gets, with each chord placement growing naturally out of the previous one. There are plenty of songs that use variations on this structure (Dylan uses it in "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" and "Make You Feel My Love"), but this was the one that cracked it open for me. Without it, I'd never have written "Let Me Love You"—which is just about due for an updated recording with the full band.

I started listening to Big Star because they were important to the artists who mattered to me, and a couple of their songs turned into milestones. "Thirteen": first time fingerpicking and singing at the same time. (I was wrong on several of the chords, as I learned much later when I joined Butterbean to perform it at one of the Alex Chilton birthday shows.) "Ballad of El Goodo": knocked me over when I first heard it, even as I knew that it was beyond my abilities then. So reaching a point where I could play it comfortably counts as...sort of a long-delayed first, maybe? It unlocked other songs for me—for example, the four-note motif nested in the progression of the "Hold on, hold on" section is pretty close to the four-note motif nested in the chorus of "I Will Dare." 

There are others, of course; maybe I'll write about them some Thursday. They'd make an odd, chaotic playlist. You don't get to pick your revelations. 

At a recent rehearsal we were discussing the importance of food to our musical process. I try to bake something every time the band gets together; we had cranberry spice cake for the last Baguettes session and The Cookies for the last Unswept rehearsal. Summer rehearsals are for pie. Charlie is on the record as saying he wants some sort of baked goods if he's not getting paid. Anyway, we realized we could probably put together a decent cookbook of the Chicago indie music world. So, to our already haphazard blog rotation, we're adding #Baked. Like all cooking—and indie music—it's an experiment. Brad Brubaker, songwriter and veteran dessert blogger, kicks things off.

Brad Brubaker fronts the band Brad Bru & The Crowd Goes Wild, whose current iteration shares members with Liz + The Baguettes, the Unswept, the Whiskey Radio Hour, and Parasites. Their upcoming release of the 7-song EP Smiling Politely features musicians who have played with Pigface, I Fight Dragons, Jon Langford, and Even in Blackouts. The band plays Golden Dagger on April 25.

It is one of my family's classic stories. When the Brubakers first came over to America, they were on the same vessel as the Hershey family. Since a charismatic nature runs in the family, it's no surprise that the Hersheys were quite taken by my forefathers. In fact, the friendship blossomed so much that the Hershey family asked the Brubakers if we would be interested in joining them in the chocolate business they intended to start in the new world.

"No," we said. "We intend to open our own grocery store."

Both families would later settle in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. There is still a large population of Brubakers there and, well, you know about the Hersheys. The Brubakers actually would go on to experience prosperity as grocers, but, suffice to say, there isn't an amusement park erected in our image.

What does this have to do with corned beef, you ask?

Well, my brother and I were rehashing this piece of family lore some years ago and I said, "When the Brubakers came over from Germany on the same ship was the Hersheys..."

My brother stopped me. "Dad always told me came from England."

Dad always told me Germany.

We went to ask my dad for clarification, but got none.

It was at this point my brother decided we were Irish. And why not? He loves Guinness, Flogging Molly, and everything else Irish. He even named his kids Patrick and Erin!

All this is to say that every year around St. Patrick's Day, I make a corned beef and cabbage shepherd's pie, a recipe of my own making that celebrates two famous dishes often found at Irish-American restaurants.


Corned Beef and Cabbage Shepherd's Pie
Ingredients
3/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cheddar cheese
1 1/2 lb red potatoes (or any potato, really)
3 cloves of garlic (optional)

2 Tbsp butter
1 yellow onion
2 cloves garlic
4 carrots sliced, or approximate of baby carrots
2 cups cabbage
1 lb sliced corned beef (from deli counter), diced
3 Tbsp flour
1 1/2 cup beef broth
1/3 cup-ish ketchup
2 Tbsp-ish Worcestershire
1 Tbsp-ish hot sauce

Cooking instructions
Boil water in soup pot.
Boil Potatoes (and garlic) until soft to a fork and taste right texture.
Mash Potatoes with Sour Cream, Milk and 1/4 cup Cheese.

Preheat oven at 375 degrees.
Skillet at medium medium high heat.
Add Butter & Garlic, Onion and Carrots, 5-8 minutes or until onions are translucent and carrots softened a bit.
Add Cabbage and cook 4-5 minutes.
Add Corned Beef and cook 3 minutes.
Add Flour and cook 2 minutes.
Add Broth, ketchup & Sauces. Simmer 10 minutes.

Add Corned Beef & Cabbage mixture to a baking dish.
Top with Mashed Potatoes.
Sprinkle remaining Cheese on top.

Bake for 10-18 minutes. I don't take it out until the gravy is bubbling up.