Crushing Krisis

The Newest Oldest Blog In New Zealand

mckeown

The Dots, They’ve Been Connected

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I’ve known Leigh Marble, or at least known of Leigh Marble, as long as i’ve played guitar.

Literally. The night i came home with that crappy Ashland i headed directly to Leigh’s AniTab’s, which still exists at the same url to this day, almost nine years later. The first song i played on my first guitar was “Dilate.”

Two years later and i was a pro at figuring out my own arrangements of Ani DiFranco songs, and a contributor (and argumentative corrector) of Leigh’s tabs. At the time he was splitting a 7″ record with Erin McKeown.

Five years ago this week I saw and heard Erin McKeown for the first time in 2001, on a split bill with Peter Mulvey, and it was from that perspective that i first connected the dots between my favorite inspiration (Peter) and my first (Ani), through Leigh.

Leigh’s self-recorded his first full-length CD, Peep in 2003. He gives an elucidating account of the recording process, as well as samples of his songs. Each one i’ve heard is a fresh idea laid over an innovative arrangement, none betraying his Ani affiliation than “Bucket Seat” does mine. I’m buying a copy; you ought to buy one too. (Also, Erin has a free four-song session up at the spectacularly neat Daytrotter, and an album of standards on the way.)

I think the connection is that we’re all doing it ourselves. And, nine years later, i just submitted the 101st tab to AniTabs.

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You would almost hope that if i wholly disappear for two days that i’m off experiencing something, unless maybe you are especially sadistic or disinterested – in which case you might be hoping that i’m having even more problems with my landlord or that my phone service was shut off. Either way you would be incredibly wrong, as the last 48hours of my life has generally involved a lot of boredom minus a couple of hours filled with jello shots.


Can i just discuss jello shots for a moment? They are colorful little bundles of deceptive joy. You swallow a jello shot and it doesn’t even hardly taste bad, and when someone offers you another one you gladly take it. And then, why not suggest a third? This all seems fine, but when people start groping for a fourth giggly cup of primary colour yumminess in under twenty minutes your brain should finally kick in and realize that all of that jello will eventually get melted down by your stomach, at which point the alcohol within would be released into your unsuspecting body.


So, that’s a word on jello shots.

I’m supposed to be making frantic last-minute arrangements to get my ass to folk-fest, and i am not. This is going to draw a lot of flack from a few friends of mine, but i honestly don’t care. I tried my bet to get involved with folk-fest and to make room in my schedule, and a certain friend decided i need to be on his committee and i had to leave early and stay late – and this was all well and good in theory, but everyone seems to forget that i work a full time job with full time pay and that i cannot just blow it off to live in a tent in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of hippy snobs who would string me up by my toes if they heard i skipped out on Erin McKoewn because i had tickets to go see Madonna. Long story short being that even in the middle of last week they were still expecting me to be at the fest until midnight on next Sunday, and even though they were willing to make exceptions for me i wasn’t interested in being the exceptions boy, so i’m not going.

I think i have all of that banality out of my system now. I just packed up a box of schoolbooks and papers and things that i never even touched this year, and i still have miles of clothes and sheet music and guitars and cds ahead of me. But, at least i’m not going to be stranded in careless folk-land for the entirety of the week, so i’ll actually have time to finish all of this.

Bleh, why did i even wake up?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/08/5174763/

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Have i mentioned that i’m going to the Philadelphia Folk Festival? Well, i am. In a tent. Well, i’m getting there via car, but once i’m there i’ll be very much in a tent except for when i’m not. And, there will be folk music – however, the Festival seems to be in Schwenksville and not Philadelphia. Anyhow, i don’t know quite how i managed to get myself into this, but i took off a ton of days from work to do it and i’m going to be working as some kind of volunteer and i don’t really know what to expect, but it all seems like it’s going to be very intriguing. Erin McKeown is playing on Friday afternoon. Other than that all i know is that i’m bring my guitar and enough mosquito spray and vodka to keep a small village itch-free and inebriated, and that Izabelle is lending me a six person tent that’s big enough to entertain in. Yes, nightly itch-free trios with Peter and perhaps a martini or two if i can score some ice. Sure. But, really, if i can find a cheap enough 4-track i’m going to be recording trios the whole time. Anyhow, i can’t imagine how i didn’t manage to mention my musical committment, but that sentence had some very nice consonance going for it, and i think i should go to sleep soon.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/07/4335974/

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Since i’ve been crushing heavily on Erin McKeown’s music lately, i just thought i’d log a little link to a prominent website about her at Imperfectly (which, incidentally, used to host the best Ani DiFranco web site on the internet). Erin fascinates me, because listening to her albums i can hardly imagine that these songs just come to her … it’s seems much more than she deliberately chooses a way for a song to sound and them molds it into the exact shape that she wants. However, no matter how she does it the results are completely arresting on record, even more so live.

Erin just graduated from Brown University last week with a degree in EthnoMusicology (she had to fly in from a UK tour with Peter Mulvey for the ceremonies), and she is touring the American folk-festival circuit this summer. I consider this success… whether or not she ever meant to be a rock star or a folk hero doesn’t really matter; what matters is that she has adoring audiences in each city she heads into, and that she heads out of every one with new fans (myself included).

Her long journey to this point started (apparently) with being named a semi-finalist by the songwriters’ association of washington dc before ever getting to Brown, and with gigging and selling tapes around Brown’s campus. At some point those tapes found their way onto a cd called Monday Morning Cold, and from the attention she garnered from that she moved forward to create last year’s Distillation. Five years. The difference between being a high school senior and a college graduate, and Erin McKeown is living the life that i would choose for myself above all other lives. She went to the school i wanted to attend, she writes songs i envy and adore, and she tours with Peter Mulvey (he was her opening act here in Philly!), and she’s not even 25. And i’m left, as i always am, wondering how she got there.


Of course, we all know how she got there. She had a relentless vision and an amazing talent, and she didn’t keep it a secret. However, it’s hard being relentless or anything else about music while i’m working every day and trying to line up an internship for next year and fretting about classes and paying my bills. Of course, musicians come from much worse all the time, but in the void of major label interest (that is, i wouldn’t be vaguely interested) i am in awe of the Ani DiFrancos, the Peter Mulveys, and the Erin McKeowns because at some point they decided that music was what was for them and that they needed to devote all of their attention to it. I think i need to make that decision or let the matter drop; if only i spent as much time on my music as i do writing for this website.

And therein lies the conflict: as much as i need to better myself musically, the time i spend writing for and administering this site feels like a definite way to prepare my voice and my patience for the world of journalism. I feel like having a successful blog (still an aspiration of mine rather than a reality) is the equivalent of Erin McKeown’s summer folk festival tour. Even if i got to write cd reviews for a local paper with a circulation of 100,000 – how many people read past the cover story? How many people read past the albums they want to buy to the reviews they aren’t really interested in, just to hear new & different opinions? Having your own successful website means you are in touch with an audience much more focused than any group your circulated publication could ever reach. So… to give this up would be to emphasize music over my course of study, when really in my mind they are equals now.

Somewhere in there i think i came to a conclusion that i’ve been working on for the last four years; I can tell because my stomach just dropped out of the center of my body as if i’m being spun on a tilt-a-whirl. Or, perhaps it is just time for lunch. I suspect that i’ll get back to you on this one…

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Yesterday i liberated a microphone and a stand from the Performing Arts Department and gave a little concert in my living room in preparation for my big event at the Benefit for the Philadelphia Dyke March tonight. While my setlist is still in flux, the covers i’ll be playing throughout the evening include “Material Girl,” Ani’s “Untouchable Face” & “Heartbreak Even,” Erin McKeown’s “How To Open My Heart In Four Easy Steps,” and (of course) Jill Sobule’s lesbo classic “I Kissed a Girl.” Given some extra time i was going to do “Least Complicated,” “I Touch Myself,” and “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” to round out the set, but even with these songs i’m going to have lyrics taped to the backs of my amps. What fun. But, anyway, it should be interesting because they’re nothing to fuck me up other than myself: i have all my own sound equipment, i’m playing by myself, i packed my equipment already, and i have backup batteries for everything. So, if this one goes as sour as the last one, i quit. But, it shouldn’t…

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/05/3590958/

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Wanna connect some musical dots? Would they just be tied whole notes, then? Well, last night i saw Peter Mulvey in concert from less than ten feet away for the sixth or seventh time. He and his sideman David “Goody” Goodrich turned in a short and moody set of favourites as well as a new tune, after which they chatted briefly with me a few different times. This has sorta become the defacto post-concert behaviour, because i’ve seen Peter so many times now that he’s grown to recognize me (and the wild war-whoops i usually let out from the audience when i’m not losing my voice). I gave him my demo cd last year and he told me last night that he and Goody listened to it on the way to their gigs and then he put it on a shelf of things he tries not to lose. I gave him my new demo (the first finished copy, so don’t think he stole yours away), and he gave me one of his discs in exchange and hugged me goodnight.

Peter’s set was (too) short because he was opening for Erin McKeown. Erin is a bundle of frightening folk/jazz guitar prowess and vocals that sliced the room right open. She was totally enrapturing. Erin was a student at Brown Univerisity not too long ago, which was my first choice school. Oh well. But, even cooler, Ms. McKeown (who i viewed from a meager distance of a yard or two) just got through with opening for Ani DiFranco, who we all know i love and adore.

Ah, but it gets better. Ani DiFranco has had (since before i could play guitar) a dedicated tabber named Leigh Marble, who i think was the first independent folk artist i had ever heard of back in those naive times. Leigh and i grew to sorta know each other by email – in that he’d tab something and then i’d send him some whiney little corrections i noticed from obsessively rewinding and replaying my tape of Ani on David Letterman. I think a few of my tabs might even be up on his legendary AniTabs page.


The most interesting element here is not that i know Leigh, though. It’s that Leigh split a 7 inch single with Erin in 1999 called Anticipation et Denouement, and listening now to the album i bought from her last night i’m vaguely recognizing songs that i first heard two years ago while restless surfing through Leigh’s site while waiting for him to post a new Ani DiFranco tab.


Yeah, it’s a small damn world. Even smaller once you pick up a guitar.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2001/04/3392757/