Grab the lyrics to the new Trio! “Unstrung” was initially written the night i saw Peter Mulvey, though i’ve been chipping away at it ever since. Anything in the Trio that isn’t in the lyrics i posted was ad-libbed (and probably is nearly what will be in the finished version). “Punk” has had official lyrics for quite a while now, but let’s not forget that it made it’s first appearance right here in an early Trio. “Make It Last” has plagued me ever since i first hammered out the lyrics in a blog window, but now that i changed the key it works a lot better than it used to (thought it’s not any easier to play). “Will It Ever Come” was the top-secret song on the demo because no one had ever heard it and the lyrics were tucked into the “relative obscurity of the second week of the page. Now the cat’s out of the bag, but no amount of online performances will truly ruin the wacky version that made it onto my new demo. “Other Plans is the oldie of this bunch; it predates this blog, Drexel, this computer, and lots of other things too. But i still like to play it, so it’s all good. “Other Plans” is the second oldest song on Relief, and only loses that title by a month (to “Bridge“). So, now that i’ve totally overwhelmed you (and me) with links, you ought to listen to the damned Trio so you know what i’m talking about. But, no matter what you’re doing, i’m going to sleep. G’night!
Creative
That almost wound up being a song about a lonely cat. It still might be. There was this line near the end “but the neighbors will come and feed you five times a week,” but i chickened out and replaced it with sappy relationship stuff. Wouldn’t that be a relief to hear me singing a song about leaving to my beloved cat instead of one of the random omnisexual characters that appear in the rest of my songs? But, on the other hand, then it would be a song about a cat. Hmm. Either way, i don’t really think it’s strong enough to make it onto an album, or even a Trio, so it’s sorta moot. But, i’m just happy to have completed it.
my suitcase has laid packed in the middle of the floor for two hours stacked on top of two days and i am sitting on the couch thinking it's just either/or as to whether i'm going or staying. it's kind of funny how shit like this goes down all hanging on what is essentially a flip of a coin but what's funnier is that i have found out that it's the only way i'll know where to go i've got my socks i've got my underwear i've got a picture of us tucked away with care between the folds of my memory where no zipper can let it out and that's how we'll stay for now my reasoning seems thin if i examine it too closely but i don't think i can even try to all i need is to hear the sound of the door closing behind me or i'll be in a jam, i'll be stuck in a lie to myself I've got my map of the united states and i've got my path exactly traced but eventually i'll point myself back at you and the sunrise to flatter my eyes i'll have my guitar in the back seat and when i hit the brakes i hear the hum of the strings through the case and i'll know i'm raising the stakes cause i left you behind i wasn't very kind and i'm worried sometimes if you're going to eat at all or how you'll fall asleep without me i've got a pocketful of quarters and i'll be seeking out each payphone on each desolate street corner to sing into the answering machine cause i hope you'll still want to hear my voice but either way i won't give you a choice so my suitcase is still packed lying in the middle of the floor the decison comes down to just a matter of either/or but i hear your key in the door
I think i’m trying to hard too write Ani DiFranco songs.
Let me qualify that. Ani gave some funny little interview in the last year or two where she said that “Out of Habit” is a bitch to play anymore because it has too many chords. All of her newer songs have less chords than “Out of Habit,” and so to make it match them she effectively chopped out half of the chord progression so now it sounds just like “Firedoor.”
It’s important to keep in mind after hearing this that “Out of Habit” only has eight chords in it, and they aren’t especially hard chords. And two of them repeat. The result of Ani’s elimination of 8-chord songs is that her music is much more hook-ridded then it first turned out, but disappointingly simple once you figure out what tuning and voicing she’s been using. Going through Relief the two most complex songs structurally are “Relief” and “Bridge,’ both of which just tack together several easy chord progressions and riffs to make one decent song. Am i becoming boring before i ever got interesting? Should i be striving for more complex and sprawling chord structures? Should i be looking inbetween the lines for the passing chords? Or, should i just stop second guessing what comes out of my head and enjoy it for what it is? One to think about.
An hour past showtime. I will never, ever, ever play into microphones outdoors ever again in my career as a bitchy little folk singer. The student tech crew could inexplicably not get either of our guitars to come in via our pickups, so we had to mic them both with microphones. Now, i dunno if you’ve ever seen me play before, but i shimmy around like a belly dancer with a cricket put down the back of my shirt, so giving me a stationary microphone to play my guitar at is the worst idea you could ever have. Furthermore, they couldn’t even get our vocal mics to come out of the monitors in front of us, so i couldn’t hear Gina singing anything directly, just from off to the side. After sitting there strumming a G chord for ten minutes while the sound guys did everything but get us any sort of monitor mix we could hear, we finally decided to start and see what happened.
“Punk” was a thankfully quick crash and burn, though at that point we were assuming the monitor problem would get fixed. In our naivety we managed to get some good harmony going. However, the set took a downturn during “Deadweight” when two obnoxious guys were standing directly in front of us having a conversation and we still couldn’t hear ourselves playing. I, of course, started directing all of the lyrics right at the conversationalists – which wound up getting their attention rather quickly (they especially looked up when i screamed “i can’t get rid of you even if i want to, cause your deadweight the way you serve no purpose”). “With or Without You” was quick and rather painless for me because Gina was singing, but i couldn’t hear her guitar so i didn’t know what the hell was going on. “Lost” sucked because i couldn’t hear my guitar over the reverb of our voices (which finally found their way into the monitor), so i basically just played it quick and angry (which generally works well). I stalked off to retune after that and Gina bravely attempted “Landslide” solo while the wind dueted into her microphone, after which i came jogging back onto the stage for a very brave attempt at “Under My Skin” (in which the solo was rendered totally moot because Gina had no pickup for her acoustic guitar so we couldn’t hear what she was playing). After that we were supposed to play another 20 minutes of songs, but i was basically just muttering “fuck” under my breath inbetween every lyric and Gina was totally frustrated, so we hammered out “Can’t Do” and walked right off the front of the staging area without even saying thank you. Yep… i’m a rock star in training; i’ve got the attitude and everything.
The next band’s instruments all plugged in fine and the band sounded wonderful, even though they had too much reverb. There was a chick guitarist in the last band, but i was too pissed to hang around much longer. Somehow i managed to sell fifteen demos in the midst of all of this, but that leaves me with mucho extra copies, so get your orders in now. Ugh.