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Trio Season 6 – Suite #6: Instants

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This Trio almost wound up being titled “Primer” because of the following three quotes:

On being primed:
If you’ve ever read an interview with a songwriter … you’ll hear a repeated theme: that you have to constantly be writing, and constantly be revising and playing. It seems sortof counter-intuitive, because at some point you’ve written a certain amount of material, and you feel like you should be playing or rehearsing that material. But … when you have a new idea it’s much more easy to capture that idea.

It’s funny that you can apply any kind of science to songwriting. You spend a lot of years as a songwriter thinking it’s just lightning that strikes you, but there are things you can do to make yourself more of a lightning rod.

All This Time
When the chorus came in my head I literally walked to the piano and played the entire song in one go and wrote the lyrics. It all happened in 30 minutes. … Effectively the whole song came at once. It was because I was primed. That’s the challenge, you know? You have to be working on songs to have other songs that work.

Will It Ever Come?
Much like “All This Time,” it came at this point that I was very primed, in the summer of 2000. I wrote a lot of what are still my favorite songs at that time … songs that I really still play very frequently. And this one was kindof in the middle, and it just got ignored. It was at the very beginning of Crushing Krisis and I blogged the lyrics. [Ed note: Literally; I wrote them out in nine minutes in the Blogger window. They were my 81st post.]

The next year when I went into the recording studio … I can honestly say I don’t know that ever played it before. And we did it in one take.

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Lyrics and chords for “Time Is Running Out” are behind the cut. Read more…


Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – returns for its sixth season featuring my original music, recorded live and DIY in my bedroom. You can download this Trio, grab the single of “All This Time,” or listen to a previous Trio:

Trio Season 6 – Suite #3: A Confidence Game

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Trio: Season Six, Suite #3: A Confidence Game
Unengaged, Tangling, Wonder

A sample of what I had to say in this Trio…

Unengaged
It wasn’t the lack of confidence in doing that thing, but the lack of confidence that came in the wake of that – like, “Oh god, what have I gotten myself into?” … It’s also about [lack of] confidence in performing it: I wrote that melody almost just as an exercise in getting it up into falsetto over and over again. I didn’t ever think I was going to perform it that way. … If it’s your song, and you wrote it that way, then there must be a reason it’s in falsetto.

Tangling
It was the anchor of this set … Somebody moves out of your life for some period … and you think, “wow, we’re so connected.” And then they get back and you don’t feel that connection immediately. And you wonder – was that connection so tenuous that it dissipated with the distance? … People change over a period of time, and you have to take some time to retune that connection.

Wonder
I think anyone can identify with that walking down the street – or, in the case of this song, in a train station – and you see somebody, and in your mind you have a whole fantasy about them in a split second … and then they get on the train. Or, maybe that’s just me?


Trio – the original singer-songwriter web session – returns for its sixth season featuring my original music, recorded live and DIY in my bedroom. You can download this Trio, or listen to a previous Trio:

I Might Explode (someday, soon)

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Everyone here has apologized for the rain. Waiters, even. As if i came all this way just to turn up my nose on Los Angeles just because it is soggy.

I have been tempted to write about it, but every attempt to pre-compose in my head has made it all seem so minimal. That’s why i have been taking pictures – better to show the moments that have made me want to write than fail to capture them later.

Returning from the airport, we turned up a street that offered a perfect, scenic view of the Hollywood sign, framed by a nearly doubled rainbow. Somehow, in all of my planning, i had forgotten that i would come face to face with this formidable national landmark. The moment was to rare to interrupt by taking a picture; i had arrived.

I don’t know what i actually expected from Los Angeles. I suppose a clue is that for the entirety of my first day i kept singing “Why You’d Want To Live Here” in my head. I expected the air to be dirty, the people to be surly, and the buildings to be tall.

Apparently, i’m not in that bit of LA. That’s the bit you don’t want to visit. I am in the bit roughly three miles south of Sunset & Vine. Every house looks different from the next; there are no cookie-cutter row homes. For two days we were down the 405 at the Manse where SL nannies. It was, of course, the nicest house i had ever been in; my favorite part was that the two story living room had a second living room that overlooked it from the top of the stairs. I just loved the idea of a house with an interior balcony.

It seems that my adventures to this point have been few, but i am a vacationer more than a tourist, so for me it is about being somewhere, not doing or seeing something. Aside from discovering my thirsty lust for Tanqueray Cosmos, so far i have shopped at The Grove, eaten sushi, walked through Ventura Beach, jammed on the mansion’s baby grand piano, had fresh avocado omelets, and went to Amoeba Music.

I am on my own now, in Laurel’s house; SL back with her children, and Laurel off to Costa Rica for vacation. On Saturday we made three small excursions to help me understand the lay of the land; no number streets here. On one i went to Amoeba music, which i adored and cost me more than it should have. On another we wound up on that same block, but by a different route, standing on Michael Jackson’s star. I was left with a rather imposing book of street maps and a small compass to aid me in subsequent adventures (which, as some of you know, is just the way i like it). All that’s left is to decide whether i brave it on foot, chance having Laurel’s bike stolen, or laze my way there via buses and cabs.

Finally: the entire time, from arrival at PHL last week, I have been reading Harry Potter books. I found them unimpressive up until five, which was the powerhouse i had been anticipating the entire time. Funny how popular mythologies are so similar; Rowling’s scenes are so similar to ones i penned in my never-finished pubescent novel, from the Hogwarts Express to encounters with the ArchVillain. Yet, i have been sitting here since i finished, wondering: Where is my opus?

I think the answer is that i’ve had a few already, and there still may be some to come.

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Asking an adventurous pesco-vegetarian, a finicky omnivore, and the master of Lipton side dishes and grilled cheese to decide amongst themselves what meal they can collectively cook and eat is somewhere between comedy and challenge. Last Tuesday Laurel came over to make dinner with Kat and I, and after a limited amount of fussing we wound up taking a stab at a spinach quiche recipe that my mother and i have been making for years now. The quiche met all of our pre-requisites … meatless, cheesy, and relatively basic in preparation. We added a side order of perogies and suddenly we had a healthy (and rather yummy) meal assembled within the span of an hour. While serving up the food i lamented that i wanted a cookbook that was “Vegetarian, but with meat. You know, like, a cookbook for lapsed and reformed vegetarians.”


We all got a laugh out of my meandering description of the perfect cookbook, and yesterday while wandering in and out of used book stores in New Hope with Elise i actually found what i was looking for. Almost Vegetarian is a smartly compiled book that veers between rare herbivore delicacies and more modest meaty fare, peppered throughout with tips on advanced preparation and vegetable shopping in green ink. I bought it immediately, for a surprising eight dollars, considering it’s in absolutely perfect condition.


I love those coincidental moments that life offers up, as though a bookstore was fated to carry a particular book on a certain day just because i was too inarticulate after baking for nearly an hour to describe what my ideal cookbook would really feature. Chalk one up for serendipity, i suppose.

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/03/75036195/

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Cast Parties are always an experience that involve nearly as much drama as the show they are celebrating, and last night wasn’t an exception. What was an exception was that i didn’t drink; i’ve never drank at a winter show party, and decided to turn the trend into a tradition. It was interesting, if only because everyone finally got the point that i am really a fucking lunatic whether or not i’ve got a couple of drinks in me. There was simulated sex with multiple cast members. There was a contest to see who could grab the most genitalia, both male and female. There was me singing along and bopping around to the entire Immaculate Collection.


Oh, and i might have attempted to kiss someone.

When i’m drunk i flirt, but i’m usually doing it in a generic drunken way. Being sober, last night i was flirting with some amount of purpose. And, oddly enough, i was being flirted back at. I still don’t quite understand what was going on, personally, but apparently Laurel knows the whole story and will explain it to me before the show tonight.

See, i’m a stupid fucking lunatic who can’t even manage to lean in for a kiss whether i’m sober or trashed. Don’t you love the consistency?

https://crushingkrisis.com/2002/02/9552150/