STILL WAITING FOR THE PHONE TO RING

Diary Of A Song: "Happy Birthday, Marty Ryan"

2011-12-16T08:06:00.000-08:00

Diary Of A Song: "Guy On Guy"

2011-12-07T07:56:00.000-08:00

Diary Of A Song: "Tell Me What I Gotta Do"

2011-12-02T08:44:00.000-08:00

Can We Kick Out The Jam?

2011-11-29T06:33:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched Cameron Crowe’s recent biopic Pearl Jam Twenty. I wasn’t sure what to expect. Like many confused young men who came of age in the early nineties, I once endured a phase involving very loud music, marijuana, piercings, cut-off trousers and embarrassingly long, unwashed hair. I had worn out cassettes of Ten, Pearl Jam’s debut, along with Jane’s Addiction’s Ritual De Habitual and Alice in Chains Dirt while delivering boxed lunches in my Honda Civic to the bemused office workers of Nashville. I envied the way Eddie Vedder’s unkempt good looks and soft, stuttering interview style contrasted the spastic maniac he turned into onstage. I could often be found standing on the precipice of something, smoking cigarettes and staring long and hard into the distance between Nashville and the Pacific Northwest.

In 1995, just after the release of Pearl Jam’s third studio album, Vitalogy, I joined a classic pop band that preferred the internal combustion of tight 60’s office wear to the undefined freedom of flannel and cargo pants. I lost interest in Pearl Jam. So did a lot of other people, but Pearl Jam, apparently, didn’t notice.

The single-most remarkable aspect of Twenty is how it illuminates this period of the band’s history. While the film does a fine job of documenting the tragedy of Pearl Jam’s beginnings and the glory of its meteoric rise to the top of the Grunge heap, it really comes alive as the band enters into the wandering years following the end of the Seattle mania. Finding themselves on the long path down from of selling millions upon millions of albums, conquering the largest venues in the world and having an unfathomable amount of money to show for it, the band ran up against the eternal question that eventually plagues all of us: What’s the point?

Most of us feel like we never get the recognition we deserve for the work that we do. Whether we are mechanics, stay-at-home mothers, accountants or singer/songwriters, we often find that our work goes relatively unnoticed, seems to be taken for granted and never really brings the approval or acclaim we are hoping it will. This frustration blurs our focus and, occasionally, makes us wonder why we even bother.

Pearl Jam, in spite of garnering more accolades, adoration and rewards than most of us could ever imagine, faced a similar crisis of motivation, albeit for slightly different reasons: The amount of praise they had received was so great that none of it felt very real. It didn’t even seem related to the work they were doing anymore. Think about it from Eddie Vedder’s perspective: When you perform in a coffee house, you can see the crow’s feet around the eyes of the women in the back row; in a stadium, you need glasses to read the signs held by the kids in the first row behind the crowd barricades.

But Pearl Jam didn’t quit; they tightened their focus. They dove into their work and the community that had built up around it, releasing a series of albums that struggled commercially but let their fans know that they weren’t going anywhere, that they were trying to make sense of everything, that they still wanted to produce something new and exciting. They began documenting all of their shows for their fans instead of releasing a single live album that might document them at their ‘best.’ Instead of kicking back and stroking each other’s egos, they turned all of their energy outward towards their fans. While remaining one of the biggest bands in the world, they somehow managed to create a real intimacy between themselves and the people who loved their music. They recognized that the band was not the point; the process was the point. Everything became about the experience of experiencing Pearl Jam. Everything became about the present moment.

I still don’t really care for much of Pearl Jam’s music. But I am very inspired by and slightly in awe of the way they have gone about making it. With the exception of U2, I can’t really think of a band that has been around for over two decades without graduating into the goofy realm of nostalgia acts. It’s easy to ruminate on the glory days, but life is about what we are doing now, what we are creating in this moment. Our bodies will eventually wear out, but we will never get old if we can just stay focused on today.

Oh, Oooooh, I’m still alive. Yay-yay-yay-yay-yeah.

Diary Of A Song: "King Of The Crosswords"

2011-11-28T13:47:00.001-08:00

Diary Of A Song: "I Can't Wait"

2011-11-21T06:33:00.001-08:00

0 Days to Dudes: Le Dudes Est Arrivé!

2011-11-15T06:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I returned from an 11-day jaunt through Europe as the support act for Fountains of Wayne. I played eight shows in six countries in four different linguistic regions (well, six if you throw Gaelic and Glaswegian English into the mix). The tour came about very suddenly, a by-product of having been provided a plane ticket (courtesy of Kickstarter patron David Morrison, for whom I played a house concert in Glasgow Nov. 12) and being tipped off by another Kickstarter friend (Ken Simpson) that my old buddies FOW just happened to be touring Europe around the same time. The entire thing fell together in such a serendipitous way that, in spite of occurring over the final weeks leading up to the US release of Dudes, I had to do it.

I normally spend the final weeks leading up to an album release buzzing around my house like a ferret with a big smear of peanut butter over its nose, so it was a little odd to be spending the release countdown thousands of miles away from the heart of the action. But the experience made me realize that the ‘heart of the action’ around Dudes is not, and has never been, in Nashville at all. From its inception, the energy around the album has been generated from enthusiasm and support that has come in from all over the world. From its financing to its recording to its current position at #9 on the ITunes singer/songwriter chart (Go team!!!), Dudes has grown because of the community around it, not me.

It is a supremely lucky thing to be able to have anyone actually hear and react to the music you make. There are many people in the world far more talented than I who never get this opportunity. I used to think that I and the music were the determining factors in this equation, but I have finally learned otherwise: The music is important, but your experience with the music is what really determines its value. My experience with the songs on Dudes has already changed dramatically; for example, it’s funny how different ‘Bocce Ball’ feels when performed in Madrid as opposed to Dublin. I expect these metamorphoses will continue to occur for me and hope that they will for you. The best I can hope for is that your experiences with Dudes are simply real.

Thank you all very much for participating in the process up to this point. The proverbial cat is now out of the bag. Who knows what happens from here? Thankfully, the fate of Dudes is in your hands now: Every five-star review, radio broadcast and late-night television performance in the world will never rival the importance of one friend simply telling another that a piece of music really meant something to them. If Dudes serves no other purpose than to initiate a bunch of good conversations between people who care about each other, then it has been successful. As my new friends in Belgium might say:

“Vous avez de DUDES!”

1 Day To Dudes: "Dudes"

2011-11-13T14:30:00.000-08:00

About a year ago I started a weekly gathering called Dudes Coffee. I figured that my friends and I had attained the appropriate age to justify a weekly gathering dedicated to discussion, some catch-up and a little bit of grumbling. I set a time and place, wrote up an email and sent it out to all of my male friends.

The word on the street is that men, for the first time in a long time, are having it hard. Construction, manufacturing and high finance, the worst hit industries of the Recession, are decidedly male-dominated. These jobs probably won’t ever return in their pre-Recession numbers. This news comes along with the revelation that this year, for the first time ever, women hold the majority of American jobs. To add insult to injury, America is laughing about the whole situation: Just turn on your television and start counting the commercials featuring some sharp-as-a-tack wife besting a clueless, overweight husband in a decision regarding which product to buy next for the family.

Maybe we had it coming. No one could argue that men, in spite of some pretty brilliant moments, haven’t made a lot of pretty dumb-ass moves in the past 100 years. Some serious gender equality was inevitable and should be welcomed. But men seem to be having a difficult time adjusting to their new status. Guys are great at popping beers and celebrating when things are going great; they’re even capable of some back slaps and words of encouragement when things go to hell. But, finding themselves stuck behind the proverbial eight ball, men seem to be faltering.

A lot of guys just don’t have enough back-up. Men are not nearly as talented at building the networks of friends that women seem to accumulate as easily as breathing. Women generally have little problem expressing their emotions; it bonds them on a level that most men never experience.

Now seems like a good time for men to drop the macho façades and start embracing reality. It is time for us to lose the egos and make an honest evaluation of our lives for each other. Our wives and girlfriends will only understand so much, and mama is not coming over to make it all better anytime soon. It takes a brave fellow to admit that he has no idea what the fuck he’s doing, but there is a lot of freedom in that admission. It’s a starting point.

Dudes Coffee has evolved into a small but battle-hardened group of guys ranging in age from 31 to 60. We have different jobs, different marital statuses and different sexual preferences. With some practice, we have reached a point of not being as concerned with the group opinion of our lives as much as the fact that there is a group of fellows who care enough to have an opinion at all. The gathering has had a profound effect on my life. As my buddy Marty Ryan once said, “You have guys in your life that are, like, friends. Then there are guys who are dudes.”
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2 Days To Dudes: "I Can't Wait"

2011-11-12T04:39:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid, I loved reading the Choose Your Own Adventure books. They books were the literary equivalent of a maze, novels that let the reader decide what the main character’s next move would be and then provided multiple endings that corresponded to the reader’s choice. The books were (and probably still are) enormously popular with children, which is no surprise since children generally don’t feel like they have much control over their lives.

When we are young, we dream of the day when we’ll be old enough to determine our own fate, to make our own way in the world, to seize days, to move mountains. But as we get older we begin to realize that, whether we want to admit it or not, the Universe does not revolve around us and is infinitely larger than our wishes and desires for it. We suddenly get a very real sense of our own insignificance and mortality. We think about the idealism of our youth and see that it was usually more a badge of identity than an actual intention. We look forward to our old age and see nothing, nothing except the examples our elders have set for us.

There are two logical paths forward from this point: Suicide or Acceptance. The first is obviously a quick, simple and relatively boring solution. The second probably takes more than a lifetime to truly achieve.

I used to think acceptance was the same as ‘settling for,’ i.e. giving up. But acceptance is simply acknowledging that you have very little control over things. You can plan, create, make goals, network, achieve, etc. as much as you want, but you will never really know what the outcome of any of these activities is going to be. You’ll never know what they mean to you until they mean something to you. It’s all up for grabs.

I once attempted to control my world through a lot of different means: creativity, exercise, eating, planning, drinking… let’s take drinking, for example. When I started drinking in my late teens, I thought I was expanding the boundaries of my mind, breaking down inhibitions, opening myself up to new possibilities. And I probably was, at first. But when I found myself still abusing alcohol in my mid-thirties, it finally occurred to me that there was no more mind expansion going on, that, in fact, I was merely repeating a behavior because it was familiar and it gave me a sense of control over my environment. Getting loaded was as sensible for me as creating a revenue report would be for an accountant. I drank because I couldn’t accept that I ultimately had no control over my life.

I used to wake up and be immediately gripped with worry and fear about how I was going to control the day, which was quickly followed by shame and guilt about the fact that I would, most likely, fuck it up. I am done with that shit. The idea of not having control is frightening, but it is where the real adventure begins. “I Can’t Wait” was meant to be an acknowledgement of the fact that every day is a story, one that we are not writing. In real life, you don’t have to choose your own adventure; just jump headfirst into the one you get handed every morning.

4 Days To Dudes: "Twenty Girls Ago"

2011-11-10T15:49:00.000-08:00

I spent a lot of 2007 on the road, playing keyboard in my friend Emerson Hart’s band. One day we pulled into Albany for a radio show at the Palace Theatre. Upon arriving for sound check, we met our opening act, an up-and-coming singer/songwriter named Ingrid Michaelson. Ingrid and I struck up a quick friendship that would blossom through the Autumn months, mostly via late night instant messaging sessions from hotel rooms in disparate locales all over the country. The nights were always bad for me, blurry drunk anonymous hours that felt lost forever until Ingrid would pop up on the computer screen with some smart-ass remark. She got me laughing at my sorry predicament, made me laugh about feeling so sorry for myself. She made me want to hit back, to start moving forward. She was the funniest girl I had ever met.

Ingrid invited me to her family’s Christmas Eve party on Staten Island that year. I baked an apple cake, fired up the Honda and set out towards the Verrazano Bridge. Her family’s three-story Victorian was wrapped in blinking lights and pine boughs. A Christmas tree glowed in the bay window and revelers overflowed onto the front porch. Inside, the house was crowded with family and friends in various combinations of brightly-colored sweaters. The whole place smelled of apples and mulled wine. One man wore a reindeer hat.

Later in the evening, Ingrid’s father began playing carols at the piano. A group of sweaters gathered around and began singing along. They were really enjoying themselves. Ingrid beckoned me to join them, but I couldn’t. It was all like a Norman Rockwell cartoon. Or a scene in a snow globe, one that I happened to be outside of.

Over the next few months, Ingrid and I lost touch. I moved back to Nashville and she got very busy. I haven’t spoken to her in years, but I sometimes I think about her Christmas party, the sentimental swirl of holiday music, the warmth of family and how wonderful and frightening it all was. It was, and it mattered. I have since learned to never miss an opportunity to lock arms with people, to sing around a piano, to be in the cartoon.

To wear the reindeer hat.

There was a sparkle and lightness to Ingrid; she was the kind of girl who knew how to throw a Christmas party.
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5 Days To Dudes: "Last Train Home"

2011-11-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

Bill and I wrote “Last Train Home” after he returned from a visit to his parents’ house in New Jersey. He showed me the first verse of the lyric at his piano one day and I got the basic layout of the music pretty quickly. It was good. I assumed the lyric was a nice reminiscence about two lovers spending a day in the city but, as we began honing the individual lines, Bill sheepishly confessed that the song was actually about being on the train back from Manhattan with his mother. During the ride she had fallen asleep against the window. The fluorescent lighting cast a certain pallor on her face, and Bill was hit with the realization that, someday in the not-too-distant future, she would be gone.

I love it when a song begins to feel like it matters, like there is no longer an option to not write it. After Bill revealed the true intention behind his lyric, we couldn’t just make it another cute nostalgic ditty about young love. It had to be more immediate, more relevant. Approaching “Last Train Home” as a history of a mother and son’s relationship moved the song out of the past and into the present tense. Everyone’s parents die. I had barely processed my own feelings about it; suddenly I needed to write the song as much as Bill did.

This all had a huge effect on how I would later approach writing the songs for Dudes. It showed me that, by getting more detailed and specific about an experience, it was possible to actually expand the possibilities for emotions a listener might experience with the song. If “Last Train Home” had been written as a simple love song, it would have only resonated on one level. But because it stayed true to the specifics of Bill’s experience, it became a love song, a memoir, a tribute and a rather comforting dirge, among other things. To wit: ABC eventually used the song in one of its programs, specifically in a sequence featuring people arguing and then ending up in bed together. Go figure.

I don’t claim to understand how all of these interpretations connect. I don’t really want to understand it; as a songwriter, it’s not my job. If I put something into the world that is honest, it will most likely attract honest responses. This is all I can hope for. This is success.

6 Days To Dudes: "Rainy Weather Friend"

2011-11-08T06:38:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure why it took me so long to start writing songs with Bill DeMain. We had known each other for the better part of a decade before we ever got around to making music together in 2006. I had no idea what an important relationship it would turn out to be.

Bill and I actually tried to write a country song the first time we got together at his condominium in West Nashville. Mercifully, this effort deteriorated in about half an hour, and we ended up composing a fun little murder ballad called “Goodbye Marie” instead. The process was alarmingly copacetic. Once we stopped trying to write a ‘money’ song, we freed ourselves up to draw from our deep well of common reference points. Bill actually liked Harry Nilsson more than I did. Bill understood the connection between Richard Rodgers and Elvis Costello. Bill loved to play the ukulele and, on occasion, wore ascots. He was my kind of fellow; he spoke-a my language, bebbeh. It was as if I suddenly had someone finishing my musical sentences for me.

Good writing partners don’t just create good songs together; they also inspire each other to become better writers. At the end of our first session, Bill gave me a manila folder of lyrics to take home with me. Among others, it contained “Little Boats” and “Rainy Weather Friend.” I loved how sparse the lines in these songs were, how delicate yet powerful the imagery was. Bill had a real gift for extracting tiny details and using them to maximum effect. I needed this. My life was overwhelmed with large, amorphous issues that never seemed to get resolved. While songwriting had always been a way for me to control my environment, if only for three and a half minutes, I had lost my focus in a blur of touring, alcohol, credit card debt and marital tension. Working with Bill’s lyrics was like a meditation practice for me. I put music to “Rainy Weather Friend” in about fifteen minutes at home one afternoon. It was that easy; I can’t explain it.

Sometimes people show up in your life at just the right time. Whether he knew it or not, Bill DeMain showed me a way forward. It is very easy to get overwhelmed and disoriented in the swirl of life. Bill reminded me that the best cure for dizziness is to keep your eye on one single fixed point.

7 Days To Dudes: "Reminded #1"

2011-11-07T04:41:00.000-08:00

The Voices Of Fessey Park was a short-lived vocal quintet comprised of Brad Jones and myself. Our only paying gig was on Tangerine, our existence called forth into being when I made a late-night decision to do an a cappella arrangement of a song called “Reminded #1.” We disbanded shortly thereafter.

TVOFP is the only fictional element of the song, unfortunately. The rest of it was culled directly from countless ‘morning after’ conversations between my first wife and myself that occurred in the house we shared in Nashville, circa 2005. These talks were generally the product of a misunderstanding, namely my own inability to comprehend exactly why the Olympian drinking binges that I regularly undertook with my friends made her feel unsafe and alone. I could never get my head around the fact that, when I was epically inebriated, I was basically useless and unavailable to her. When the topic arose I would suggest that, at these unfortunate times, she should simply function as she might have before we were together. When she would point out the fact that she married me in order to avoid having to function the way she might have before we were together, I would roll my bloodshot eyes and make an insensitive comment. At this point she might tear up. Or leave the room.

After a brief reprieve, I would change tack and attempt to reassure her that my excessive consumption had nothing to do with her. That it was just something I had to do occasionally to get back in touch with myself. That, in fact, it reminded me of the horrible hole I might have dug for myself had she not appeared in my life. That, in a roundabout way, my drinking was actually a tribute to her goodness and grace.

It pains me to attribute such a pretty song to such blatant narcissism. But “Reminded #1” is basically a first person account of addiction, and addiction is basically a highly evolved form of narcissism. If you’ve ever wondered why artists often seem to do their best work during their most fucked-up periods, remember that most artists are born narcissists who might excel to great heights when given permission to indulge themselves freely. It is their most natural state of being.

I used to say that I would never regret anything. Why bother? Everything that happens in life is useful experience from which some kind of wisdom can be gained. But that is only half the story: You can learn something from any experience, but you can never reverse the consequences your actions have on other people. Those consequences take on a life of their own, they move away from you and they are gone forever.

Some things are worth regretting, if only to ensure that you don’t repeat your mistakes. And there are things that I deeply and most definitely regret.

8 Days To Dudes: "Hallelujah, I Was Wrong"

2011-11-06T01:01:00.001-07:00

“Hallelujah, I Was Wrong” once had a twin called “Hallelujah, It’s A Girl.” The latter was a letter of encouragement to my first wife when I once thought she was pregnant. The former, a different lyric set to the exact same melody and music, was a missive of comfort in case she was not. If ever more flagrant musical opportunism has bared its ugly teeth, I am unaware of it. (As I write, a long and luminous bolt of lightning is approaching me from a great height.)

"Hallelujah, It's A Girl" Demo, 2005

"Hallelujah, I Was Wrong" Demo, 2005

I am finishing this in Valencia, Spain. For the past three days I have been enjoying the multiple entertainments that arise from encounters between an American who speaks little Spanish and Spaniards with no interest in speaking English. Spanish appears to be a much more contextual language than English; multiple meanings can be derived from very similar grammatical applications with the most subtle variations. The devil is in the delivery. Sometimes seemingly identical phrases may only be differentiated by whether or not they are delivered with a raised eyebrow, or a shaken head, or a shrug. Viva!

I appreciate this. Songs can also mean entirely different things on different nights. So can proclamations of love, expressions of affection, firings of missiles and cries of infants. Some people say that the greatest thing we have going for us is our ability to adapt to new situations. I would not disagree, but would add that our inclination to interpret things in a unique fashion is also an essential, if underrated, survival skill. None of us see things in quite the same way. It takes different strokes to move the world, baby.

¿Qué estoy hablando? I don’t know, Pedro, you lost me at ‘missiles.’

9 Days To Dudes: "Chatterbox"

2011-11-05T09:17:00.000-07:00

Some of the finest advice ever uttered about conducting a healthy heterosexual relationship comes courtesy of the comedian, Chris Rock:

“Men, ya’ll have got to learn to listen. And women… ya’ll need to learn to shut the fuck up.”

Tangerine was intended to be a concept album about marriage. As a new husband, I was just beginning to understand the unexpectedly odd circumstances I had landed in by signing up for the most iconic of conventional institutions. I was also acutely aware of the dearth of pop music written about the interior of connubial bliss, that infinite space between the beginning and the end. Itching for a fight, I was determined to melodicize as much of it as I possibly could.

The result was a pretty eclectic album, one that changed the way I approached music forever. In fact, Tangerine is still probably my favorite album in my catalogue. I like how its musical polish counteracts its lyrical weirdness. This dichotomy probably sums up my first marriage about as well as anything: An afternoon drive through the country on a perfect Spring day, the floating hours during which things are said and more things are left unsaid.

Regardless of its conceptual intentions, Tangerine seemed to leave a fair amount of people wondering what the hell had happened to the soft, acoustic intimacies of Indiana (A conundrum probably not helped by the intervening release of the Wherever You Are EP). The album sold poorly and, to this day, hardly any of of its songs ever seem to get requested at shows, streamed online or put on anyone’s favorites list.

This is something that still bothers and befuddles me. But I think I have come to understand it better as the years pass. In retrospect, Tangerine, for all of its musical gregariousness, might have been too intimate on the lyrical level. I wonder if the whole thing came off as a closed conversation, full of inside jokes and references that very few listeners could have been expected to understand.

It did, however, include some of the poppiest moments I have ever had the pleasure of getting on tape. “Chatterbox” actually grew out of a song that I had submitted to an A&R guy from Jive records some years before called “The Words Of A Woman”. It sounded too R&B for me, too obvious, too catchy… so I gave it away. To the best of my knowledge, no boy bands ever cut “The Words Of A Woman.” “Chatterbox” was my attempt to reclaim the best parts of it for a worthy cause.

10 Days To Dudes: "Chutes And Ladders" (Outtake from Indiana)

2011-11-04T04:38:00.000-07:00

There is a wonderful time in a romantic relationship that is commonly referred to as The Honeymoon Period. When human beings fall in love with each other, very specific chemicals and hormones are released into the brain and body, jacking up our serotonin levels and generally making us goofy and slightly unpredictable. This period can last from three months to a year.

This may or may not explain the motivation behind a song that attempts to proclaim a deep and undying love by explaining away questionable past actions and employing a very loose metaphor involving a children’s game. To the creators of “Chutes and Ladders,” I offer my humble apologies.

I met my first wife, Natalie, in September of 2002. We were married just over one year later. At the time, I relied heavily on the songs I wrote for the expression of sentiments that I was too cowardly to convey in actual conversations. To me, this was a charming manner in which to behave. It seemed especially appropriate to The Honeymoon Period.

Almost a decade later, “Chutes and Ladders” sounds fun, if a little foolish. I realize now that I enjoyed playing the fuck-up back then, that it was an integral part of how I presented myself to Natalie: An incorrigible man-child who was up for being redeemed by her sweet powers of persuasion. At the time, it did not occur to me that I was also handing her a tremendous burden to carry and signing her up for a job that no one besides me was really capable of doing.

That said, “Chutes and Ladders” is a funny little song, and new love is a funny little thing that generally makes fools out of all of us. For some reason, the Honeymoon Period seems to get the most ear time in popular music, narrowly beating out the Break-Up for the ‘All-Time Most Written-About Period In A Relationship Award.’ All of the in-between stuff… Reality… never seems to be as catchy.

11 Days To Dudes: "Lease On Life" (Outtake from Indiana"

2011-11-03T05:04:00.000-07:00

In November of 2002 I went to the doctor for the first time in eight years. Those eight years had passed during a very personal engagement spent in the entertainment business, a life lived off the grid of normality, one in which I had only dreamed of being allowed to indulge. Temporarily assured of immortality, I had gone out of my way to indulge heavily in more debauched activities than I would ever remember, among them the ingestion of an impressive array of chemicals and poisons that were never really intended to function harmoniously with the human body.

And, with my 30th birthday less than a year away, I was beginning to notice a few things: Besides a gnawing sensation that my liver might have shriveled to the size of a raisin, there were night sweats and a tremor in my hands that never seemed to subside until a few whiskeys were sloshing in my gullet. It was time to pay the piper, to get a clear evaluation of the damage. To make some adult decisions about making adult decisions from here on out.

I made the appointment and hoped for the best.

“David, you are strong as an ox and healthy as a horse,” the doctor smiled at me over his wireless bifocals. “We’ll have to wait a few days for the blood tests to come back, but I don’t expect to see anything abnormal.” He peeled of the latex gloves that had, moments before, probed the interior of my rectal cavity. “I would, of course,” he tossed the gloves into an odd-looking container, “encourage you to stop smoking.”

“Thank you,” I replied, as if he had just offered me a plate of canapés.

“As far as alcohol is concerned,” he turned on the tap and began to wash his hands, “keep in mind that the effects of abuse in our 20’s and 30’s often don’t manifest themselves until our 40’s and 50’s.” He turned to look out the window as if contemplating my uncertain future, then craned his neck to face me. “I would encourage you to begin moderating your intake now.”

“OK.”

He looked down and addressed the sink. “Do I need to say anything about hard drugs?”

“No, not really. Yeah, I’m finished with all that.”

“Excellent.” He dried off and offered his hand. “Very nice to meet you. See Patty at the front desk to schedule a follow-up.”

I burst out of the medical building and into the overcast parking lot like Maria Von Trapp across the Swiss Alps. While the diesel engine of my beloved 1985 Mercedes 300D warmed up, I poured a generous shot of whiskey from a flask into a Styrofoam cup of reception room coffee, lit a cigarette and set out for a long drive across the late Autumn back roads of Nashville. “Lease On Life” was pretty much finished by the time I got home a couple of hours later.

12 Days To Dudes: "Indiana"

2011-11-02T05:37:00.000-07:00

My father worked for the 3M Company from 1977 until his retirement in 2003. He was a salesman, starting out in copy machines before moving into facsimile machines in the 80’s and then graduating to medical products in the 90’s. He traveled 2-3 nights a week for most of my childhood. During the summers, he would take my mother and I along on business trips, especially the ones featuring a hotel with a nice pool and cable television. Occasionally, he would pull me out of school and just the two of us would set off in search of commerce in some struggling Alabama city: Huntsville, Montgomery, Anniston, Florence.

I loved these trips. I loved the wide-open landscape of Interstate Highways, the anonymity of being in a different city, nights spent in hotels, maid service, the strange salty textures of restaurant food and unscheduled stops at Dairy Queens. It was the sex appeal of business travel, that particular sensation of having a far-off destination and a job that needed doing upon arrival. My father and I were joining up with a wider partnership of ambition, claiming our place in the silent fraternity that ran the world, dreaming beyond our house in a quiet suburb of a second-tier Southern city.

In 2002, after the major label tour support money went away with my major label record deal, I began hitting the road by myself for the first time. The tour managers, side musicians, 15-passenger vans and long nights of after-show fraternal debauchery were suddenly replaced with economy rental cars, meals taken alone in anonymous restaurants, weird conversations with truck stop cashiers and an empty hotel room at the end of every night.

This change in circumstance brought its own particular sense of glamor, one hopelessly connected to my appetite for nostalgia. Whether I wanted to admit or not, it all bore a near perfect resemblance to my father’s career. I found that the best way to approach solo touring was to think of my tiny audiences in each city as clients, the venues as businesses and the world as my sales territory. Fortified by a certain measure of talent, suburban work ethic and gallons of alcohol, I was on the road, exploring the elusive romance of my father’s absence.

All sons are curious about the secret lives of their fathers. Most dads try to put on a brave face for their families, exposing the frustration of their unfulfilled ambitions in only the most fleeting moments: a quick bout of aggressive driving, some seemingly random cursing over a building project gone awry. As boys grow into men, the general plot of everything thickens, and even the most eloquent fathers are often incapable of verbally communicating to their sons exactly what the fucking point is, why you keep chasing something down, something shapeless and migratory, that need for purpose that is hard-wired into the male DNA. I don’t envy fathers trying to explain this to their sons, all the while knowing that, at some point, they will just have to go out into the world and figure it out for themselves.

I always thought of “Indiana” as a pretty straightforward whining session that played out over one particularly boring stretch of the American highway. But on a subconscious level, beneath the hangover and bloat and mild depression of another day spent driving to another solo job, it is simply a version of that eternal question that boils in the male gut: “Why, Dad, why?”

13 Days To Dudes: "Nashville"

2011-11-01T07:38:00.000-07:00

“Honey, wake up.”

I began to emerge from an allergy-induced Saturday slumber. Sunlight streamed through the bedroom blinds. Screams and music were chirping out of my wife’s laptop speakers.

“Honey.” She grabbed my elbow and gently shook it.

“Baby, respect,” I grunted. “I am ill.”

“Wake up! Taylor Swift is playing your song.”

Well, then. I opened my eyes and beheld a blonde siren sitting under a purple tree while playing “Nashville” over the din of 15,000 very enthusiastic people. It was one of those crappy videos shot with a phone, the image bobbing up and down in a sea of silhouetted arms and heads. I couldn’t hear the music that well over the whoops and hollers, but it sounded like she was laying into it pretty good. It sounded like she meant it.

I wrote “Nashville” in 2002. It was a farewell salute to one chapter of my life and an admission of complete ignorance regarding the next. I started it on a 20-hour, amphetamine-fueled drive in a U-Haul from Brooklyn to Nashville via Pittsburgh and finished it a few months later on a train between Rhinecliff, NY and Manhattan. I remember thinking that the phrase ‘Goin’ back to Nashville’ sounded impossibly goofy, like something only Ryan Adams could get away with singing. But nothing sounded better, so I kept it and tried to make the rest of the song especially sparse and haunting in order to contrast with its stupid chorus.

It was a little odd, nine years later, to hear this person with whom I most likely had very little in common making “Nashville” her own. My experience with the song had always been very intimate, very small. I had always thought of it as the kind of thing that might be spoken softly during a midnight phone call. It never occurred to me that it might serve as a rallying cry for an arena full of people.

A song is defined by its singer. Unlike paintings, buildings or sculptures, songs don’t fully exist in static form. The words and notes written on a page are only part of the work; the rest of it is the experience shared between the song’s interpreter and an audience. The identity of the song changes with each new performance, and this constant state of flux extends its lifespan. This is why music is a living, breathing art form: It requires engagement to achieve relevance.

I don’t know Taylor Swift, but she seems like a pretty extroverted person who happens to possess a gift for expressing very intimate emotions in a way to which a large number of people can relate. This is rare. As I watched her performance of “Nashville,” I felt, among other things, a sense of relief that she had taken it upon herself to perform it to so many people. I doubt I would have ever had the chutzpah to attempt such a thing.

The video ended, and the tiny screen was immediately flooded with multiple thumbnail images of other Taylor Swift performances, an infinite number of experiential options, a bottomless cauldron of digital possibilities. I was suddenly exhausted, happy to be watching from afar as one of my own finally made its way out into the nether-reaches of that dry and endless Universe. I farted, snuggled back into my wife’s armpit and sank into the sleep of the dead.

14 Days To Dudes: "Patience" (Outtake from Wherever You Are)

2011-10-31T05:15:00.000-07:00

Somewhere Around Regensburg, Germany, January, 2002: You are riding on a regional bus traversing the Teutonic countryside. It looks exactly like Indiana in December, endless fields blanketed with snow, occasional golden spears of dead grain defiantly shooting up through the cover. It is one of those fairly dreary European days when life seems ordinary no matter where you are and no one can muster the energy to speak English to you. You could have picked up a few phrases before you arrived, Dumbkopf. Auschlau.

The bus stops in a small village that seems like as good a place as any to disembark. You have sworn to yourself that you will not repeat the mistakes of previous solo vacations during which you neglected to venture out enough, to get a taste of the place on your own terms. Now you are in a village you cannot pronounce the name of. Now you are speaking pidgin German to a kind-faced bar maid. Now you are opening the small notebook you have brought along in order to capture these Moments Of European Inspiration. You take a sip of the hilariously tall Weissbeer in front of you and write something in the notebook. It appears to be Uninspired. You finish the Weissbeer and order another.

You remember a few nights ago in Paris. Things got heated between your friends and you over the timing of a meal; your blood sugar was dropping like a rock and you lost control of yourself. You broke off from the group when you saw a crepe stand. The hash you’d reluctantly partook of back at the apartment really kicked in about this time and you found yourself hideously stoned, devouring a cheese and ham crepe on a street, a street in France, which happened to look a lot like a street in Covington, Kentucky, at least when you were really high and incredibly hungry.

By the time the crepe was gone, so were your friends. You didn’t know how it happened. You attempted to appear indignant while hailing a taxi, barking out the hotel address to the driver, as if it were all his fault. Perhaps it was, in a roundabout way.

A few days later you are standing in the snow in a village you cannot pronounce the name of. Now you are examining the timetable on the side of the bus shelter, attempting to figure out when the bus might depart. You are not concerned with its time of arrival, for you are not certain what the name of your destination city is and, even if you were, would not be able to pronounce it correctly, anyway. There is an old man in a fur cap and earmuffs standing a few feet away from you, smiling in your direction. He rubs his hands together and blows into them.

“You,” he points. ”Patience.”

15 Days To Dudes: "Little Sister" (Outtake from Wherever You Are)

2011-10-30T11:07:00.000-07:00

Ethan, Whynot and I began performing “Little Sister” on a tour of the UK’s infamous ‘toilet circuit’ of clubs in 2001. It always felt so good live, you knew it was coming, you couldn’t wait for the first drum hits to bring in the lead guitar riff and start the whole thing bouncing along. This was long before we took it to the studio in Woodstock, made it strain under the weight of a hundred useless overdubs and the possibility of becoming a duet with Michelle Branch. Long before my A&R guy declared it ‘flawed’ and long before Tchad Blake finally applied his laser-like focus to clear away most of the sonic bullshit that had been choking it to death.

Yes, this was back when it was just a fun dumb song, poppy to the point of utter ridiculousness, a guilty pleasure inserted into the middle of the set to alleviate the pressure of ‘proving it’ to another new audience in another new city in another new part of the universe.

Manchester, Coventry, Middlesborough, Glasgow, Aberdeen… In spite of its multi-syllabic ports of call, there was an unacknowledged sense of finality to that tour. The three of us spent the majority of it awash in lager and the dwindling optimism of pirates evading capture on a distant shore, happy to be there but knowing that, as sales of Mine and Yours were beginning to slow down, the possibility of a return visit under similar circumstances was looking more and more unlikely. Without the benefit of RCA’s enthusiasm and tour support dollars, it would be next to impossible to facilitate a follow-up trip. Ahoy, Matey: I do believe we are damned and doomed.

Every couple of years or so, a soft drink company resurrects the ‘road trip’ advertisement, a long-form spot featuring a group of just-graduated teenagers making a mystical run into the American frontier, apparently sure of nothing but their friendships and the comforting allure of high-fructose corn syrup. Ethan, Whynot and I were all well into our twenties by the time we hit the UK, but I would like to think that someone, someone possessing the cinematographic magic required to transform the MI into Route 66, might have been able to shift a couple of cases of Red Stripe on the strength of our predicament.

Major transitions in life always look so appealing in retrospect. From the vantage point of omniscience, we can see the full arc of the story, the lead-ups, the let-downs, the rallying points and the ultimate triumphs over debilitating obstacles. The reckoning presents itself, tied up neatly in a red ribbon. We sigh, hit the mute button on the remote and look off into the distance, wondering when and why life became a bit more predictable, conveniently forgetting what it was actually like to be barreling headlong into the dark and seemingly endless void of possibilities that required navigation before our current state of contentment could be realized.

My favorite moment in the ‘road trip’ ad is when one kid, his eyes glazed with sugar, a dark sparkly beverage in hand, smiles at the others and cranks up the volume on the car stereo. The camera cuts to a wide angle, showing their crappy car shooting down the Interstate into a beautiful twilight as the music crescendos to an ear-splitting level:

“Heeeeeeeeyyyyyy, little sister…”

16 Days To Dudes: "Hold On"

2011-10-29T07:49:00.001-07:00

After watching the Twin Towers collapse from my rooftop on 13th St., I made a beeline to the Gristedes and bought ten gallons of spring water. (“We’re going to nuke somebody for this shit,” my friend Will had said on the phone after the second plane hit.) I deposited the water in my kitchen and pondered my options. The subways out of Manhattan were still closed. I did not have access to a boat and the prospect of being herded along with the masses on the bridges seemed terrifying. As the sonic trails of F-14’s ricocheted off the surrounding buildings, I found myself getting nervous. I did what I normally did in these situations and headed down to the saloon on the 1st floor of the adjacent building.

Bar 13 was hopping for a Tuesday at 11 AM. The pure white light cascading in through the large windows bounced off the ancient white tile and into the wide eyes of the patrons, prompting at least half of them to don sunglasses. I ordered a beer by pointing at the tap. The bartender passed it to me and we both turned back to the television without saying a word.

Three beers later they opened the subways again. I hurried back up to my apartment and packed a bag. I walked down to the 1st Ave. F stop, passing the ghostly white ash-covered figures streaming uptown, hearing snippets of their stories and avoiding their panicked eyes. Underground, the subway platform was packed. I managed to squeeze onto the third train that came through. The only free space in the train car was a small area where two kids played with trucks on the floor. Strangers stood around watching them, dazed.

Brooklyn looked remarkably normal. As always, Ethan tossed his key down from the second story. It stung my palm when it hit. After I dropped my suitcase in his living room we climbed up to his roof watched the river of paper and smoke blowing over the East River, a death current slicing through the perfectly blue sky.

I had been working on “Hold On” for about six months before September 11th. I felt like it was probably good and had been scared to finish it in case it actually was. Like many things, I stopped putting it off that day.

17 Days To Dudes: "Wherever You Are"

2011-10-28T09:15:00.000-07:00

I love Paul Westerberg. He is the most empathetic American songwriter to have emerged in the past thirty years. This is remarkable, given his personal background and the fact that he came out of working class Minneapolis bashing and clanging along in a group of musical misfits aptly named The Replacements. Anyone else in this situation might have found their avocation in merely spitting venom and pissing blood, but Westerberg was at his best when writing to or about someone else, bringing all of his considerable lyrical talents to bear on a solitary subject (“Skyway,” “Black-Eyed Susan.”). He was almost as good, but not quite, when singing in first person (“I Will Dare,” “Unsatisfied”).

I always wondered how he wrote these empathetic songs so well. In interviews, he always came off as something between a drunkard and a curmudgeon, not the sort of guy who would ever sit you down and ask you how you were feeling. But if you were to ever find yourself in the shit and, for some magical reason, Westerberg felt compelled to write about your situation, you might find yourself completely fortified and redeemed in less than half a verse based on the sheer passion and commitment he committed to your struggle.

As it turns out, Westerberg’s trick was fairly simple, as he revealed in an interview after Don’t Tell A Soul. He mostly just wrote about himself, then changed the pronouns: ‘I’ became ‘you,’ or even ‘us’ if he felt the need for some imaginary cronies to have his back. It turns out that the most empathetic American songwriter of the last thirty years was actually projecting his own self-loathing, self-pity, self-sabotage and, occasionally, self-love onto his subjects.

This might sound like an underhanded move. But not so much when you think about how much of this kind of projection actually goes on in real relationships. We oftentimes don’t make the effort to really see someone else for who they are because we are too busy trying to see pieces of ourselves in them, things that are familiar, things we can identify with. We like mirrors, especially the pretty ones that reflect an improved image back at us.

Does all this take anything away from the power of Westerberg’s music? No. The act of effectively disguising an ode to oneself as a tribute to someone else still requires a level of mastery that is unfamiliar to most. Westerberg is the King. I would like to think that, if he were ever to hear “Wherever You Are,” he might crack a crooked grin of sly recognition before ejecting the cassette and throwing it out the window of a beat-up cargo van, that battle-weary beast he shall forever be driving through the thin and tired American midnight.

18 Days To Dudes: "Didn't I Warn You"

2011-10-27T09:07:00.000-07:00

I love the great male/female duets of the 70’s and 80’s: Stevie and Tom, Linda and Don, Mike and Anne, etc. “Didn’t I Warn You” started off as a pretty passive/aggressive first person kiss-off that became a lot more digestible when re-imagined as a stilted conversation between two people incapable of communicating with each other.

Once the concept came into focus, Adam Schlesinger and I began looking for the right singing partner. We wanted to find a female artist that had serious chops but was not really known yet. My booking agent, Marty Diamond, sent over a few discs of his artists to help us out. After a few listens, the choice was clearly between Nelly Furtado and Shannon McNally. Although she was cute as a button and probably on a faster upward trajectory (I remember hearing “I Am Like A Bird” and thinking it sounded like a hit), Nelly’s voice didn’t seem to possess the requisite smoky worldliness that Shannon’s did. Luckily, Shannon had not begun touring yet and was still living on Long Island. She came to TMF studios on 12th St. one night and put her vocal down pretty quickly. I found her so unbearably sexy that I could barely be in the same room with her.

What if Nelly Furtado had sung the song instead? Her career took off like a rocket about the time that the marketing campaign for Mine and Yours was coming to an abrupt halt. I can only imagine how RCA might have reacted, possibly grabbing “Didn’t I Warn You” off whatever shelf on which it was sitting and throwing it out into the world on a wing and a prayer. Or not.

I prefer to remember the way Shannon McNally smelled while I stood beside her at the microphone: Almonds and vanilla, with a trace of honey.

19 Days To Dudes: "Slow Night" (Outtake from Mine and Yours)

2011-10-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

I knew three people in Manhattan when I moved there in 1999. I spent a lot of nights walking the island by myself. Some nights I would go to the 2nd Ave. Deli, order beer and matzoh ball soup and write letters. Or read. (A whole lot of Milan Kundera, if the ‘Life is Elsewhere’ line in “Slow Night” can be trusted.) On others, I would walk across town and see a movie at the Village Cinema. One of the better ones was La Vie Rêvée des Anges, which featured an enchanting young actress named Elodie Bouchez.

Occasionally, I would spot a pretty girl and follow her, from a distance, for as long as I could. Sometimes she would go into a restaurant or a bar to meet friends. Sometimes she would just stop off at the deli for some groceries and go home to her apartment.

One night I followed a girl with honeyed skin and chestnut hair all the way to Astoria, Queens, the last stop on the N train. A few blocks down Ditmars Blvd., she stepped into a barbershop with a big window across its front. It was full of men and women that all appeared to be at least 40 years older than the girl; they all smiled and hugged and pinched and kissed when she came in. Eventually she removed her overcoat to reveal a embroidered white dress and blue stockings. Then she wrapped a white kerchief around her head and began to instruct the elderly people in some kind of traditional dance. From the opposite sidewalk I watched them twirl and laugh for about half an hour as frenetic accordion music leaked out onto the street. Then I walked back to the train. By the time I got off at Union Square, I had married the girl, sired three stout little Scotch-Greek children and fallen into a pleasant habit of sharing baklava and Ouzo with her father on Sundays.

This was well before broadband Internet or a 3G cellular network was a daily part of my existence. I had not even brought a TV to New York. I figured, hey, I live in New York now; why would I possibly need a television?

It’s been a long time since I had any nights as slow as those first months I lived on 13th St. Now, there is always something handy to alleviate the boredom, the loneliness, the unexpected thoughts that naturally pop up when I find myself with a few solitary hours or minutes. And sometimes, when I’m checking my email while waiting in a line or streaming a movie instead of going out for a night stroll, I get a sinking sensation that an unbearably light and beautiful opportunity is receding into the distance, moving out of focus, while my eyes stay locked on a tiny little screen.

I don’t always find it comfortable to be where I am. But I sometimes miss the days when there weren’t any other options.

20 Days To Dudes: "Comfort"

2011-10-25T08:23:00.000-07:00

When I was 16, my parents decided to separate while living in the same house. My dad moved upstairs to the guest room and my mom stayed downstairs in the master. Many evenings I would come home to the sound of soft rock emanating from the clock radio in my mother’s room. I would stand outside her door and listen: Christopher Cross, Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac. I imagined that she had somehow selected the songs, a playlist of encoded messages to anyone who passed close enough to hear them. Often the things we never mean to say carry more weight than our best-rehearsed lines.

Many years later, during the touring cycle for The Luxury Of Time, my life became a blur of disparate locations, hangovers and adrenaline rushes. The relative speed of it all complicated things, especially my first long-term relationship with a woman, which began to deteriorate at a speed directly proportional to the length of time I stayed on the road.

It was all getting a little difficult to explain over the phone. Cities had begun to take on emotional identities; they all made me feel certain ways based on an intuitive equation that factored in weather, urban infrastructure, population density, current economic conditions and overall walkability. Pittsburgh felt like disappointment, L.A. was freedom, London… complete and utter insignificance.

I once saw a news feature on a female business traveler who, upon landing in a new hotel room, would immediately begin decorating and personalizing it with pictures of her family, recent magazine clippings and other detritus that reminded her of home. She was a very successful advertising executive or graphic designer or… I can’t really remember, but I do recall that she claimed to loo-oove to travel. To decorate hotel rooms by taping magazine articles to the walls. She wore stretchy pants, and she seemed very lonely to me.

Why do we want to impose a memory, a familiarity, onto the adventure of the present moment? Nostalgia is nothing but a goddamn dirty trick, one that never really works. Whenever I choose the past over the present I end up cheating myself out of a new experience. I was once taken to a Brazilian restaurant in New York that was known for its fantastic meat preparation. I ordered a beet salad because I was homesick and it reminded me of my wife’s cooking. It was terrible.

Cheap comfort can be found in a lot of places while traveling: a photo, a TV show, Facebook, a phone call, a barstool. But true comfort comes in being at peace with the fact that nothing ever stays the same for long. Wherever you go, there you are. Life is about adapting and evolving and knowing that you have the strength to handle whatever the present moment is throwing at you.

Selah.

Full disclaimer: I stole the title “Comfort” from my buddy Matthew Ryan. I hope he’s forgiven me.

21 Days To Dudes: "Girl On The Roof"

2011-10-24T09:11:00.000-07:00

In the 18 months between the recording of The Luxury Of Time and the first sessions for Mine and Yours, I wrote and demoed 34 new songs. I thought a lot of them were pretty good and I was excited to start recording. RCA, however, still wanted to hear some more single-ish numbers that might help make a dent in the impressively negative balance accrued by the promotion of The Luxury Of Time. This hurt my feelings a bit.

But one day, while I was out on a marathon walk through Manhattan, a very perky piece of music appeared out of nowhere, instantly hummable and possibly annoying. I worked it over in my head as I made my way down the Hudson, from the boat docks on the Upper West Side to Chelsea Piers, then crosstown through the Meatpacking District, across 14th St. and Union Square. The little musical nugget was the sort of thing I normally might have written off as being hopelessly derivative: It sounded like a cross between “Obla-Di, Obla-Da” and The Archies. But, in light of the recent comments about producing some hit material, I thought that something with familiar ring to it might come in handy.

A few evenings later a friend and I happened upon a suicide in progress. A massive crowd of people was gathered around 2nd venue and 10th St., watching a girl standing at the edge of a roof. Behind her, a policemen made slow gestures with his hands, trying to talk her down. Despite the potential ugliness of the situation, the air on the street was electric with anticipation. You couldn’t bear to watch the girl a second longer, but you couldn’t take your eyes off of her, either.

I wonder if, with a different twist on the lyric, “Girl On The Roof” might have been a hit. It’s a little scary when a song appears out of the ether. Especially when it already has a very definite shape and seems to know exactly what it wants to be. A good writer will recognize this and gently help it along; a less mature writer will insist on imprinting his own experience on the song, even if it might ultimately limit its potential.

It’s tough to get out of your own way sometimes. By imposing the suicide scenario onto the fun little musical nugget, I think I sabotaged “Girl On The Roof,” injecting it with enough lyrical ambiguity to ensure that it would probably never become its fully-realized self. It was more comfortable for me, more familiar, to cloak the song in a little bit of misdirection, a thin layer of melancholic smoke that might obscure its inherent joyfulness. This wasn’t necessarily the wrong decision. But it probably wasn’t the best one, either.

Sometimes I am not as interested in being successful as much as being comfortable. Being comfortable is about creating a sense of familiarity, so I try to alter unfamiliar circumstances to resemble those to which I am more accustomed, even if those familiar circumstances are not particularly healthy. This is why I used to drink a lot. This is why I fall asleep with the television on when I’m alone in hotel rooms. This is also why “Girl On The Roof” is about a suicide and not about sex, or flowers, or kittens.

In spite of my best efforts, “Girl On The Roof” ended up doing fairly well in the UK, getting A-Listed at Radio 2 and charting in the Top 20. Among other questionable media outlets, the song later appeared in National Lampoon’s Van Wilder, a film that featured a bulldog with very swollen testicles.

22 Days To Dudes: "Claws" (Outtake From The Luxury of Time)

2011-10-23T03:24:00.000-07:00

As Part of the '25 Days To Dudes' promotion, I will be posting an entry here about each of the 25 featured songs every day until DUDES official release November 15. If you have not already, please download the collection from the widget to your right. It's free!

Like a lot of suburban kids, I was perpetually unsatisfied with my beginnings. My family moved around more than most but, whether in Atlanta, Saint Paul, Birmingham or Nashville, we always ended up in a calm neighborhood where the houses, cars and people were rarely indistinguishable from each other. A big reason I wanted to get into the show biz was to shed what I perceived to be the boredom of a middle-class upbringing, the eternal weight of sameness and White America’s general lack of notoriety.

I had became aware of Rufus Wainwright in 1998, falling hopelessly under the spell of his debut album about eight bars into the lead-off track. Rufus and I were the same age, but his songs were about a world that I had only dreamed of living in, a far-off universe populated by neo-Victorian dandy’s traipsing the streets of New York, Montreal and L.A. A lifetime devotee of opera, Rufus was fluent in a complex melodic language that I had grazed the surface of but never fully grasped. He was good-looking, he dressed like a champion, he was friends with celebrities and seemed to be everyone’s favorite new version of The Real Deal. On top of all this, he was openly and flagrantly homosexual, which seemed to me like a pretty brave and mysterious way to be.

“Claws” was my attempt, by imitation, to gain entry into Rufus’ private musical universe. Like a teenage girl who dresses like Justin Bieber, I thought some accomplished mimicry might lend me some of his street cred.

After moving to New York, I ended up running in some of the same circles as Rufus for awhile. I even socialized with his family on several occasions, one of which was a late gathering in a room above a bar called Nightingale following the release party for his second album, Poses. There weren’t many people there, just Rufus’ band, his sister Martha, his mother Kate, and a few hangers-on.

It was a long night. At some point, someone put Schubert on the stereo. Rufus abruptly stood up, took his mother’s hand and expertly waltzed her around the grimy room, weaving in between thrift store couches and fold-up chairs, both of them laughing, brown cigarettes dangling from their mouths.

There was something so effortlessly cool about this, so easy and genuine, that all my suburban envy simply drained out of me. Suddenly, I had nothing to covet anymore. Rufus and Kate, with a few lazy turns around a makeshift dance floor, showed me that nothing real will ever be accurately imitated.

Everyone has their own story to honor, their own truth to live out. Life is too short to waste energy attempting to be anything other than yourself.

23 Days To Dudes: "Jonathan Barnum, Talk Of The Town"

2011-10-22T06:11:00.000-07:00

I loved Woody Allen long before I ever saw one of his films. At the tender age of 10, I purchased a GQ magazine that featured his horn-rimmed visage on the cover. After spending far too long absorbed in an article about cunnilingus techniques, I read the piece about this tiny man who never left an island called Manhattan. About his relationships with actresses bearing exotic names like Keaton and Farrow. I didn’t understand why he seemed to dislike himself so much. I assumed he was not familiar with Step #8 of "Ten Things She Wants You To Do In Bed But Is Afraid To Ask."

Creating alternate universes is a vital part of writing. Oftentimes, these parallel existences are not original ideas as much as lovingly distorted mirrors of their author’s existence, fictional worlds that feature rearranged elements of the author’s own reality that become moralistic obstacle courses for his characters to navigate. This offers the author multiple options by which to test out various solutions to his own problems. Kind of like an existential focus group. Or a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.

Charles Dickens was a master of this. Woody Allen is pretty good at it, too.

I guess we can’t help but become a little bit like our idols. We love them because their achievements give us incentive to imitate them, anticipating similar results. If Ernest Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson unknowingly encouraged my headlong charge into alcoholism, Woody Allen most certainly demonstrated for me the terrible power of passive/aggressive writing, unwittingly giving me permission to take my own life, apply the slightest of twists and call it a pop song.

“Jonathan Barnum, Talk Of The Town” is basically a 23 year-old’s thinly-veiled cry for help, a not-so-tall tale in which I get to leave town, abandon my relational responsibilities and be discussed in favorable terms afterwards. Oddly enough, this is exactly what I ended up doing a year after it was written, minus, most likely, the afterglow regarding my departure. As to why the musical version of these events ended up sounding suspiciously like the closing number of a Liza Minelli revue, I still have no idea.

Like more than a few of my original demos for The Luxury Of Time, RCA considered “Jonathan Barnum, Talk Of The Town” to be too Broadway for a debut major label release. I remember my A&R guy saying that it sounded like a 70’s television theme. He was not wrong. This being the case, I’m not really sure how it ended up being properly recorded at all. But I am glad it was. I appreciate its bombast, and I find Peter Collins’ suggestion to modulate all the choruses up a whole step very endearing. It also features a mind-bending guitar solo from Joe Pisapia, the indefatigable leader of my former band, Joe, Marc's Brother.

I wish I could make a video for "Jonathan Barnum, Talk Of The Town" featuring Woody Allen and Hunter S. Thompson chasing Mia Farrow through the streets of Manhattan on tricycles.

24 Days To Dudes: "Touch Of Mascara"

2011-10-21T05:46:00.000-07:00

The United States’ Interstate Highway System has existed since 1956. It services nearly every major city in the contiguous 48 states. Once you spend a fair amount of your life on it, as I have, the entire thing begins to feel like a network of veins and capillaries, a vascular web in which you are merely a passive participant, one lone blood cell being carried along on its way to yet another bodily destination.

Whether you do or do not jive with this particular analogy might have a lot to do with your personal driving technique. To many Americans, our automobiles symbolize freedom. Most of us earned our driving licenses at age 16. To a teenager, the license to operate a motor vehicle offers, for the first time in life, the option to go wherever one wants, whenever one wants, however the fuck one wants to go there. If any feeling encapsulates The American Dream, this might be it.

Many of us carry this sense of vehicular entitlement into adulthood. Despite receiving tickets, enduring accidents and going into debt paying for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance, we cherish and nurture the idea that we own the road. “Screw those highway fatality statistics,” we tell ourselves as we careen into the left-hand lane, writing a text while abruptly stopping in front of a line of traffic behind us. “I want a burger.”

We think we can control things. We make goals, set deadlines, plan, execute, overachieve and triumph. And then a mini-van comes smashing into our rear bumper, pushing us out into oncoming traffic, right in front of the goddamn Burger King.

I wrote “Touch of Mascara” when I was 22 years old. Originally, it was intended for Trisha Yearwood, the country singer. At some point I realized that there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of her ever recording it. Awash in disappointment, I came to the conclusion that, although there were plenty of macho ruminations about The Great American Road, very few dudes had sung about the highway and the application of cosmetics. I thought I could corner the market. This was well before the appearance of the hit television series, ‘Queer Eye For The Straight Guy.’

25 Days To Dudes: "World Of A King"

2011-10-20T06:11:00.000-07:00

As Part of the '25 Days To Dudes' promotion, I will be posting an entry here about each of the 25 featured songs every day until DUDES official release November 15. If you have not already, please download the collection from the widget to your right. It's free!

WORLD OF A KING

“World Of A King” was the first single off my 1999 debut album, The Luxury Of Time. A couple of weeks after it went to radio, I was asked to go back into the studio and re-record the word ‘forked’ in the first line because people had begun calling stations, insisting that the word sounded like ‘fucked.’ At the time, I remember engaging in an argument with the record company about fixing the line, something about whether or not it would mess with the integrity of the lyric. I was extremely invested in my own opinion of the song.

These days it’s tough to pull your head out of your ass. We are constantly reassured of the importance of our own opinions and encouraged to express them as much as possible. Update your Facebook page. Tweet. Link-in. Etc. As I write, there are untold numbers of programmers creating more even social networking sites that will offer us even more ways by which to express our individuality. These sites will, of course, also create even more space for advertisers to sell us products that, ultimately, encourage us to buy and do the exact same shit as everyone else. But that’s another story.

Listening now, that first line of “World Of A King” does sound like I sang ‘fucked.’ I don’t think there is an inherent problem with the word ‘fucked’ but, in context, it created the wrong feeling for that part of the song. It sounded gross, vulgar, and seemed to be ruining the whole thing for some people. So why would I have wanted to endanger the possibility of someone enjoying the entire song to preserve one little mispronounced word? Because I was utterly convinced that people had to hear it my way or no way at all. I thought that my experience with the song was more important than theirs. This was a terrible mistake.

It is easy to shout our opinions from the top of a mountain in a desert. It does not matter if they are good or bad, relevant or passé, because no one ever hears them. But the satisfaction of having an opinion is not found in just having it; it is realized by seeing how it interacts with other people’s ideas, how it becomes part of a larger, collective discussion and how it ultimately affects the collective consciousness. This is friction, this is progress, this is evolution.

I have to respect other people’s opinions because all of mine are built on, or around, theirs.

“World Of A King” pretty much tanked at Top 40 radio. Later, after “Robert Bradley’s Postcard” had been officially released as the second single from The Luxury Of Time, an influential radio station in Chicago inexplicably added it to their play list. This inspired RCA to pull back its entire marketing roll-out of “Robert Bradley's Postcard” and re-release “World Of A King.” So, “World Of A King” was actually the first and second single from The Luxury Of Time, I guess. It was the 90’s.

Dudes' Facebook Chat, September 22

2011-09-22T16:07:00.000-07:00

5:31pm
W: how do I get dudes. just a quick answer. pls.

D: NOv. 15 it's everywhere. Dude.

W: awesome can't wait. 2 sentence description?

D: "Music worth getting sued over." Right up your alley, Esquire.

W: that's 1 sentence.

D: "Music worth getting sued over, spat upon and licked like a kitten. Like a shaved kitten, that is."

W: sweet that shit is usually my JAMZ!

D: I knew you'd be down.

W: you know it brosef, I've been outta the loop working two jobs to try and save up for school for the past year and a half so I was bummed that I missed out on all the DUDEs hype and kickstarter.
just started seeing info. about it when school started and I was spending more time around computer.

D: that's what they all say. brosef, that's strong

W: listen here scooter britches me and the ol' lady is up to our eye-balls in babies and I had to do something quick so I had to get a couple of jobs that were awful.
in addition to the job that I kinda liked.

D: sweet jesus you are fertile bunch. I applaud your move towards the decent life. and more ginger offspring.

W: thank you, I've always been interested in law and if I felt like music could support my family even just pay the bills I'd still be doing it.

D: tell you what, i'll trade you a copy of dudes for one of them carrot children.

W: done and done.

D: sweet. can ya'll fedex that shit?

W: actually we only have one ginger but we might have another one cooking we'll know in a cupla months.

I just opened the door and put a brown bag in his hand and pointed him the direction of Nashville.

Tell you what he'd probably appreciate it if you met him half way.

D: Tell him there's a good titty bar on the west side of knoxville...

W: he's already crying...sweet moses...that's gonna be a looooonnnng walk.

D: I can be there in a day or so

W: contact I can call at the titty bar? he's got his name pinned to his shirt.

D: Mona 347-666-PONG

W: perfect. there's no holes in this one its air-tite. Listen you don't feel the need to put the hurry up on the disc. I know yer good for it.

D:10-4.

W: peace. Oh...WAIT! did t-swif call yet?

D: 23 goddamn times. think it means anything?

W: as your lawyer Imma tell you DON"T answer her calls. Text her these words: "paper. you get the song when I get my paper."
she's industry savvy she'll know what it means.

D: sounds air-tite. You know what that means.

W: I don't.

D: Aaaiiight picklenuts I gotta dash off a piece about that very thing for AMerican Songwriter

W: for the mag?

D:this has been damn enjoyable
yeah the mag

W: What's the best way for me to keep in touch?
as far as what you're up to?

D: Imma bout to release a holy onslaught of shit that will be impossible to ignore
you got my everything, hit me up whenever you feel blue
and thanks

W: I don't get blue. Imma future lawyer I just clip coupons and smile dawg.
lates.

D: over and outs

W: peace.

Whoa Whoa

2011-09-20T05:44:00.000-07:00

Woah

2011-09-20T05:42:00.000-07:00

Shoot No One

2011-09-09T14:06:00.000-07:00

My wife is a social being. I have never met anyone so completely comfortable with the process of going outward. After a spending a sizable chunk of my life alone in rooms, endlessly chewing on my own thoughts, desires and ideas, the arrival of her ability and willingness to create situations in which I and other people feel comfortable engaging with each other has truly revolutionized my existence. The sheer amount of fascinating folks that came through our house over the last month is mind-blowing to me. What did I do to deserve such enjoyment? My wife has made possible for me a salon existence that I would have never been able to create for myself. The world spins at the speed of good conversation and mine is a buzzing blur.

Ethan Eubanks swaggered into the Nashville August like Ron Jeremy entering a sauna full of poorly-shaven women. As always, I was happy to see him. We had a day to catch up and eat ice cream before I put him to work, and work he did, laying it down on eight of my songs for a live video shoot at Joe Pisapia’s studio on Sunday before drumming straight through Monday and Tuesday on an EP I produced for Ken Simpson. By the time I dropped him at the airport Wednesday morning, we were both haggard, our linen suits wrinkled and sunglasses fogged in the unrelenting heat radiating off the tarmac. “Later,” he admonished, before summoning a porter to deal with the fifteen boxes of cheap cigarettes, La Hacienda hot sauce and Moon Pies he had procured for several black market transactions to be conducted that evening in New York City.

I spent the rest of the week in the studio with Ken Simpson, pride of the down and dirty Northwestern Suburbs of Indianapolis, Indiana. I first met Ken through the DUDES Kickstarter campaign. He sent me some of his material and we agreed it might be a good idea to record it. After a very satisfying Vietnamese meal, we commenced recording and managed to knock out, with the help of David Henry and Mssr. Eubanks, pretty satisfactory versions of six of his songs in five days. Ken turned out to be a lovely guy, surprisingly ego-free and completely up for trying anything. His EP marked my first attempt at producing another artist. I made some mistakes, but enjoyed the experience overall, and would definitely be up for doing it again. What an interesting sensation, to have someone else trust you with their musical fortunes. I admire the sense of adventure required for such an undertaking.

Somewhere in the midst of all this, Elle Macho decided to expand from being a rock band into

being a rock band and a TV station. For legal reasons, I cannot go into too much detail except to mention that the deliberations involved a lot of unfiltered tea consumption and some heated mud wrestling in Butterfly’s basement. This all seemed perfectly logical, at the time. Perhaps it was the completion of our debut full-length, Import, or perhaps just the joy of consuming multiple barbecue tacos with Lindsay, but I have lately felt a renewed sense of optimism about the band and its potential to change the world as we know it.

I drove to the suburbs of Atlanta to see my mother August 13th. We spent a nice three days together hopping around various businesses and places of interest, hanging out and catching up whilst attempting to exhaust her seemingly endless supply of Groupons. She treated me to an early birthday dinner of fondue as well as a full-body massage administered by an African-American woman named Connie, a muscular artisan of considerable gifts who reduced me to the consistency of an overcooked noodle in a mere 50 minutes. Afterwards, my knees still shaky, I bade a long goodbye to my mother, who would be departing for a six-month stint in Hawaii a few weeks later. The woman has finally retired from a lifetime spent bettering children in classrooms all over the country and will soon be staring back at it across the Pacific, evaluating the next chapter of her life, hopefully with something cool and coconutty in her hand. Sail on, Mama, sail on.

Kip Krones is in fine form, for those of you who have been asking. He has been managing a band called NeedToBreathe for the past five or six years, successfully guiding them up from the Southeaster college circuit to selling out the Ryman Auditorium and opening up for Taylor Swift on her current tour. He was in good spirits when Mark Nash and recently I trotted out our current business plan for DUDES for him. I was overcome with a pleasant wave of nostalgia as he, for Mark’s benefit, summarized the eight years he and I spent working together. After reassuring us that we were not completely out of our tree with our new-fangled ideas, he gave us some excellent pointers and sent us on our way. I parlayed my good feeling upon departure into a particular gusto for the consumption of a taco salad at Calypso Café.

On the evening of August 21st I performed with Peter Groenwald and Brad Jones at Flyte

restaurant in Nashville. The occasion had been billed as a three-year anniversary party for our friends Mark Montgomery and Joanna Stansfield but took on a higher significance when, after dinner, Mark proposed to Joanna and, after she accepted, proceeded to further shock his guests by scaring up a person of authority who married them on the spot. Suitably chuffed by the unexpected turn of events, the fellows and I took to the stage with a new level of enthusiasm and performed a very enjoyable set composed (mostly) of tunes that Mark had selected for the occasion mixed with some of the DUDES material. It was a really nice way to revisit the solo giggering after so long away from it. The sense of love and anticipation in the air was intoxicating; all we really had to do was lay back and enjoy it.

After an excruciatingly long delay courtesy of American Airlines, I and the rest of Phanni Pac winged our way back to Key West on the 22nd. The normally steamy days and nights had been pushed inland by the disturbances of Tropical Storm Irene, that fickle maiden who had blown a dry and suspiciously warm breath over the island. The palm trees were drunk with pleasure, swollen and swaying like sailors on leave. Small charter jets zipped through the granite sky from the mainland, rife with purpose, their tiny blinking lights and sound trails emanating the possibility of illegal activity. On the back deck of the band house, tiny chameleon lizards darted to and fro across the slippery planks, unsure as to what action to take next in the face of such sensual Armageddon. I had thought we might get a taste of a real deal Category 4 hurricane, but Irene had decided upon a different course of action, abandoning me to an odd nostalgia for the tornadoes of my childhood Alabama. Severe weather engenders a strange affection. Meteorological Stockholm Syndrome, I guess. One day I dreamily pondered the possible effects of a tsunami on Key West before Scotty reminded me that seismic activity on the floor of the Gulf would be required for such lunacy. Logic poops on desire, every goddamn time.

The Summer of 2011 had been a karmic minefield for The Pac, leaving various band members to deal with the first and second hand effects of (in alphabetical order):

1. Cancer of Gall Bladder
2. Drug Addiction
3. Erectile Dysfunction
4. Excessive Credit Card Debt
5. Hemorrhoids
6. Leukemia
7. Marital Problems
8. Onset of Recurring Migraine Headaches (or) Brain Aneurysm Engendered By Sexual Intercourse
9. Theft of Personal Property

To wit, everyone had been looking forward to this trip a little more than usual. Let’s face it; dudes need a fucking break. A week in Key West can take you in two directions: Some trips, you’re into it, the sun kisses your forehead and jiggles your molecules into orbit. On other weeks you find yourself hammered between the eyes with crippling disappointment, the sort of osmotic disillusionment brought on by too much proximity to the vacationing masses, those poor lost souls spiraling downward under the influence of sweet alcoholic beverages and stupid t-shirts.

While there, I had managed to just squeak one last “How To Make The Whole World Sing” column for American Songwriter before realizing that it was probably time to knock it on the head and make a semi-graceful departure from the world of songwriting analysis. A very intelligent person once commented that, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” This is not entirely true; I have, on several occasions, found it incredibly liberating and wholly intuitive to break into the Charleston right in front of the Guggenheim. This has, unfortunately, ceased to be the case with writing about songwriting. Though I sometimes wish that the magic of producing a great song could be reduced to a 600-word explanation, it is truly a task infinitely more complicated and simple than that word count, or any word count, could ever summarize. Can any creative endeavor ever really be taught? Who knows… Regardless, many creative people will, until their proverbial Carnival Cruise liner comes in, continue to generate auxiliary income based on the presupposition that people can be taught to create. I suggest not listening to any of them, myself included, and reading David Lynch’s Catching The Big Fish instad. (I have not had the pleasure yet, but my step-brother Jason’s explanation of it this morning was strong enough to send me scurrying to the Amazon.com). As for "HTMTWWS," I hope that my contributions over the past two years have shed some light on a couple of things for some aspiring tunesmiths somewhere. I wrote it for as long as I enjoyed it and not a goddamn minute more. It lives here, if you are interested.

The arrival of September always brings with it the beginning of another year on earth for me. So far, 38 feels like a winner. My father treated me to a scrumptious birthday dinner at Eastland Café followed by an exceptionally satisfying Mock Turtle sundae at Nashville’s premier ice cream emporium, Jeni’s. My wife paved the final steps to 40 with auditory gold in the form of a Crossley turntable and a whole bunch of top-notch vinyl she snuck out of
her parents’ house. (I am listening to Roberta Flack’s Chapter Two as I write; mmm-mmm-mmm, like buttah.) An unexpected maturity bonus came in the form of a visit to Nashville by Alan Wallis, a 22 year-old Berklee student who had supported the Kickstarter campaign at the NASHVILLIAN level. We spent the day together palling around town before sitting at the piano for a few hours, talking about all kinds of things musical. Alan is a sharp kid with a plan, and the opportunity to impart a few words of something-resembling-wisdom made me feel like my time in the world has been worth a thing or two. Thank you, Alan.

Autumn has swooped down upon Nashville in a cool, clean fury. This is the kind of weather that keeps me here: sunny, crisp, the cause for, as my buddy Bob Bradley has written:

cheeks flushed with the faint blush of apples
in heavy autumn grass

This morning, while reviewing my calendar for inspiration from which to write, I came across this entry from August 25th occupying the 4-5 PM time slot: SHOOT NO ONE. I still have no idea what this referred to, but I can only hope that it was a moment of subconscious prescience that occurred in the middle of last month’s heat wave; a call to serenity, a mantra for the dying days of unbearable, fiery heat from which we have now emerged, wrapped in long sleeves, springing our morning steps, basking in the slanting sunlight while coffee warms our throats, stomachs, fingertips. It’s all available. Caress it, suckle it, never let it go; today is the day.

Shoot no one. Why ever would I?

Key West, Remembered

2011-08-31T16:14:00.001-07:00

A Brief Visual Encounter: July

2011-08-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

On Cargo Shorts And Other Dangerous Weapons

2011-08-01T10:22:00.000-07:00

The blue Paul Smith ‘Byard’ suit haunts me. The auction will not end for two more days, but the bids have already inched up within spitting distance of my personal limit on what should be spent for a beautiful-yet-unnecessary suit. I could torture myself a bit, check the bidding history, theorize about who will and who won’t be willing to go to the mat in the final seconds. I could attempt to chill with a quick trip to my closet to examine and admire the 13 suits that already hang there, several of which have been worn no more than three times. But I remain in a dream state, buoyed by a promise of faux aristocracy, of fine fabric draping my shoulders like a coronation cape.

Dream on, Levon; the day is young. Lest this all seem like an exercise in frivolity, I should mention that I buy my suits exclusively off of Ebay. I have a price ceiling of $175.00 that I generally adhere to, busting my budget only when a truly exceptional piece comes up on the block. That said, I have never paid more than $250.00 for a suit. In spite of the fact that the retail value of my current collection is somewhere in the $13,000 range, I, through careful channeling of my mother’s bargain hunting acumen, have amassed it for little more than a tenth of that figure.

But to what end? Needless to say, my wardrobe does not suit my natural habitat. Men in Nashville generally dress for comfort until held at sartorial gunpoint by the occasions of certain religious holidays, funerals or appointments with loan officers. Even at my recent nuptials, the sheer volume of open collars and denim was remarkable. The man arriving at a Nashville event in (what appears to be) an expensive suit is generally regarded with suspicion and a certain amount of contempt, as if he is attempting to upstage everyone else or is simply too consumed with his own vanity to get with the damn program and put on a pair of cargo shorts.

I own a pair of cargo shorts. They are incredibly comfortable. I wear them around the house and for work in the yard. When I walk Stan in the morning, I do it in cargo shorts. And occasionally, when the heat index has pushed all Nashvillians beyond powers of reason, I venture out to public establishments in cargo shorts. When working in Key West, I can usually be found in little else besides the cargo shorts. I am pro-cargo shorts. I advocate the ownership and proper use of cargo shorts. When worn in the appropriate context, they are a useful thing.

This does not diminish their inherent danger, however. Cargo shorts don’t destroy lives; people who use cargo shorts improperly destroy lives. Let’s make a corollary examination of a particular clothing chain called ‘Life Is Good.’ I have never actually set foot in one of their stores but, by the lay of their window displays, I gather that they specialize in every item of clothing ever designed for total comfort and minimal upkeep: faded t-shirts sporting goofy slogans and cartoons, several varieties of flip-flops, sun visors, baseball caps, mu-mu’s, rhesus monkey pelts and, of course, cargo shorts. I find ‘Life Is Good’ to be a bizarre moniker for such a place. Perhaps ‘I Give Up’ would be more appropriate.

To frame the discussion in a more suburban context, let me expound for a moment about a particular neighbor. This fellow… I’ll call him Dick, to protect his long-lost innocence… thudded onto my shit list a couple of years ago after making a particularly snide comment regarding the length of the grass in my front yard, alluding to the fact that, in case I hadn’t noticed, ‘Other people have to look at that.’

Fair enough, I reasoned; I had been out of town for two weeks and had indeed allowed the grass to flourish well beyond the length considered to be ‘Belmont Appropriate.’ But as I watched him waddle back to his property, a large sweat stain inching down the center of his ample posterior, I reflected on the multiple times I had seen him leaving his house clad in an old t-shirt, crappy flip-flops and some variety of baggy, shapeless short pants that sagged well below his donut knees. I imagined a brief admonition that might be considered less than Belmont Appropriate:

“At least put on some pants, a belt and a button-down shirt, you fat fuck. Other people have to look at that.”

Attention to wardrobe is not an exercise in vanity; it is a condition of mutual respect. If we cannot get our sartorial shit together, it not only reflects badly on us but also on our ability to take those around us into consideration. Yes, I realize it is your right to wear whatever you want, whenever you want. Now, stop picking your nose, go stand in the corner for five minutes and don’t come back until you’ve learned to play nice the other children. And work on that attitude, kid. Remember, Life Is Good.

Meanwhile, the bidding on the blue Paul Smith ‘Byard’ suit has spiraled upward and out of my reach, $272.00 and climbing. I shall humbly delete it from my watch list, make another cup of tea and head out to the back deck for a smoke and a quick examination of the hosta blooms. The late morning is burning hot, steaming up yesterday’s rain from the ground, a hot breath bathing my lily-white ankles. In the alley, Spady and his demon terrier are passing by. He cracks the gate and sticks his head in.

“Looking good back here. Hosta’s are really coming up.”

“Thanks. How’s the book coming?”

“31 chapters with a bullet. Almost there.” He gives a thumbs-up sign. The terrier growls and begins pulling violently towards the street, most likely in pursuit of a poor, defenseless animal. Spady demurs. “OK, better get moving. Have a good one, buddy.”

“You too.”

“Nice shorts.” Another thumbs up.

“Yeah,” I agree. “I thought you might like them.”

Don't Call It A Comeback

2011-07-29T05:39:00.000-07:00

Morning blasts the windows lining Belmont Blvd., flashing the panes into a thousand runway lights, a suburban invitation to chaos and opportunity. I have been waiting, Martha; waiting weeks for a goddamn spark of inspiration. I wonder why the Universe keeps beating the hell out of my friends, driving the dinner dogs into mad frenzies over rawhide bones, the Congress getting nowhere in Washington, oblivious to any obvious conclusions.

Squinting back at it all, I slip on a pair of Air Force sunglasses and evacuate my bowels, heartily. The coffee is still warm in the French press and smoke permeates my fragile lung tissue. The back yard sun feels good on my bare chest. You could sweep all of these limbs and dead insects off the deck or just live your life, I reason. Three long moves into my catalogue of online Scrabble matches and suddenly I am 37, standing on my back deck, staring into a mobile device, clad only in sunglasses and a pair of patterned bikini briefs.

“Fuck it.” An hour later I am following Deakin through channels of furniture into the kitchen of his 80 year-old Tudor. His two children and three dogs are all gathered around Spiderman on a laptop, the kids eating sliced fruit, the dogs wagging and panting. “Davey, all I can say is, I’m alive.” A tattoo crawls over his deltoid like black ivy. Posting up behind the counter, he folds his arms and scrunches his shoulders. The turtle. “I’m just alive, you know? That’s all I can guarantee anybody at this very moment.” The smaller child lets fly a strawberry that lands on the floor about two feet from the closest dog. Deakin gives him a look. The kid raises his arms in triumph. “Fuck it!” screams the child.

Virgomama367, you dirty whore. My recent gaming successes have attracted a certain amount of attention in the online Scrabble community, the sort of acclaim that accompanies elevated win/loss ratios and the search engines that feed on them. I have been punching throats up to this point, handily discarding a series of anonymous guest players along with the jfreiberg51’s, the nmolgren’s and wurdkitten069’s of the world. These have been small triumphs, unseen by most, shots never heard round the world.

But virgomama367 is a different breed entirely. She attacks even my most ingenious 3-letter multi-word plays, birthing strange, Welsh-looking words, her disjointed consonants enveloping my vowels like a pair of Gypsy thighs. She refuses to take the bait of a juicy H laid in careful proximity to the Triple Word Score. She, most likely from the comfort of a well-organized cubicle in Nebraska, is currently beating me by 21 points. And then… HWYL. 42 points. What?

“Nice hat.” Tommy, now arranging himself in the chair across the table, is a pillar of my existence, six feet one inch of immaculate grooming. Eyebrowing the mobile device I have just tossed into a condiment caddy, he blows across the surface of his coffee. “What seems to be the trouble?”

“Chicks are smarter,” I reply. “Always have been.” I register an approaching pair of milk-heavy breasts swaying in a pink tank top. “They are superior, evolved…” The mammaries come to rest at a table of children with sticky buns. “The givers of life. What have we got?”

“Disappointment,” smiles Tommy.

“Prostate cancer,” I counter.

“Erectile dysfunction.”

“I am officially switching my allegiance from Jelly Belly’s to Good n’ Plenty,” I say. “It’s the mature thing to do. It’s an age thing. We get older, we care more about definition, specificity, noticing the details.” At the table next to ours, a pack of Christian indie rockers in cut-off’s and fedoras join hands, bow heads and begin to pray. I continue, “Jelly Belly’s are clearly the adolescent choice: over a hundred different flavors, millions of potential combinations. These days, I can’t make it through a bag of Jelly Belly’s without feeling completely overwhelmed. It’s like a gang bang in my mouth.”

“Hmmm.”

“Good n’ Plenty, however, is the pursuit of purity. Two colors. One flavor.” The Christians break from their huddle and noisily tuck into their breakfasts. “Things like freshness, environment, even the quantity of consumption… yes, three Good n’ Plenty in your mouth at once is totally different than five, or one... The finer details are not overwhelmed by the total onslaught of artificial flavoring and sugar.”

“Good n’ Plenty: the Dao of Candy,” Tommy offers, his teeth gleaming.

“Jelly Belly’s remind me that the good times are fleeting. That I’m going to die.” Suddenly, I feel better. “Good n’ Plenty… well, the journey is endless.”

The Key Wester

2011-07-21T10:02:00.000-07:00

THE KEY WESTER

I spend about six weeks a year in Key West playing in a cover band with my friends. Breakfast is a very important meal in the Conch Republic; I have found that it can make or break the entire day. The trick is to get just enough protein to supply the long, slow kind of heat-resistant energy that the day will undoubtedly require, but not so much that you feel pinned to the couch, compelled by nature to watch yet another episode of "Law and Order: SVU." Additionally, you need a little bit of carbohydrate to help massage the protein through your digestive system, to add that touch of pizazz without leaving your belly feeling bloated and tragic. After much trial and error, I feel I have arrived at the perfect Key West breakfast solution.

Imaginatively, I call this thing THE KEY WESTER. It’s calorie-to-protein ratio is about as good as you can get while still actually calling something breakfast, and it’s goddamn tasty, to boot. Try it our for yourself at home or on your next foray to the islands:

Ingredients

2 eggs
2 pieces of Udi’s gluten-free white bread (it’s like having bread without getting that super-full bloated feeling)
2 slices of cheddar cheese
2 slices of organic turkey (yeah, get organic and make sure it doesn’t have any bullshit ‘filler’ in it. Trust me, it’s worth it.)
2 tsp. olive or favorite nut oil
Bragg’s Organic Sprinkle seasoning

The Process

Pour 2 tsp. oil into medium sauté pan. Bring oil to medium-hot heat. Crack two eggs into pan, close together but not quite touching. With spatula, gather whites into shape roughly equivalent to square inchage of toast before whites solidify too much. Leave to sizzle for a moment.

Drop two pieces of bread into toaster set to medium. Toast.

Set a medium-sized plate, the one from which you shall dine, on the counter.

Remove cheddar slices from packaging, leave on plate. Remove slices of turkey from packaging, leave on plate. Return both packages to refrigerator. Take a moment to insure that you have either disposed of egg shells or given them to the dog. (Egg shells are great for animals’ calcium.)

Flip eggs in sauté pan, taking care to not splash any oil. That shirt cost $12.99, for god's sake. With the corner of the spatula, poke two small holes in each yolk. This allows the yolk to spread a bit within the confines of the rapidly-solidifying egg, saving you from future mouth pain. There is nothing worse than having hot lava-like liquid yolk spray the inside of your mouth as you bite into the Key Wester. Be sure that yolk is mushy-to-hard.

Place slices of cheddar over each egg. Melt for one minute.

Place pieces of toast (they should be done by now) on plate. Flip egg/cheese combinations onto toast (cheese side down). Scrunch slices of turkey on top of eggs. Sprinkle with Bragg’s seasoning.

Serve hot with a cup of unfiltered apple juice. Best consumed with knife and fork but hands are fine if you don’t mind a touch of mess.

The Categorization of Days

2011-07-20T18:25:00.001-07:00

Some days just don’t fit into a category or a to-do list or a goal-accomplishment metric. No, they don’t. Some days you just wake up and wonder, hmmm, what the fuck? Time’s a wasting here, what am I doing about it? I’m 37 years old, maybe halfway done, where’s the old carpe diem? Some days it takes so much strength to not dial up more Law and Order episodes on the Netflix that there is little gusto left to accomplish anything else except, possibly, throwing down some wandering language about that very fact.

This morning I passed Spady and his killer Scottish Terrier on the Belmont Blvd. dog walking circuit. He’s apparently 25 chapters into a novel. I wonder about Spady. He kind of reminds me of the Key West dudes, the tiny Hemingways who seem to have surrendered to the pointlessness of it all and are more than content to be carried along on the whims of existence. Experiencing his presence in Nashville is akin to witnessing a dried starfish washed up at the entrance of the Whole Foods Market. Anyway, Spady told me the plot of this book when I saw him out a month ago. Not much about it sticks with me except some allegory relating to numerology and a murder… it all gets hazy in the early-Summer humidity.

Doesn’t it, though? This document can stand as a testimony to the scatteredness of it all. Some days the Universe finds it goddamn funny to pour a vat of molasses straight into your skull and watch you stumble around the house in a sorghum daze, thinking one thing whilst doing something completely different, like trying to come up with a two-letter word that begins with ‘C’ as you take what will hopefully be the first of several dumps today. There is no two-letter word that begins with ‘C,’ you remind yourself, just as there is no particular dietary regimen that will guarantee more than one dump per day at the age of 37.

Men, I tell you. Let’s ponder the endless derogatory remarks made by women about men in certain comedic entertainments these days. If they could only peer into the gooey brains of the species itself… my goodness, the thoughts that men actually have about men. Like women, we are constantly comparing, and perhaps in not too different of a manner. Take Spady vs. Me. I don’t really have any particular desire to beat or one-up Spady in any specific area, but I can’t pass the motherfucker on the street on a perfectly good Wednesday morning without wondering whether or not my life is measuring up to his by some indeterminate scale of which I have little comprehension or mastery of. 25 chapters into a novel? Really? I have nothing to compare to that, in my mind, and here’s why: I feel completely unable to focus on anything that requires the dedication and commitment a novel demands. I have been focused on things that last for three-and-a-half minutes for quite awhile now, as well as the means by which to foist them upon the world, which are probably best suited to people who with even shorter attention spans than three-and-a-half minutes.

Meanwhile, I have male friends whose marriages are falling apart. The dark hours of abandonment and disappointment these folk are currently experiencing crush my piddling piddliness with an iron fist. They are being drawn towards real man-child moments, those seething encounters with the ego that find a dude waving a fist at life one moment and curling up in a corner like a baby the next. Jesus, Buddha, Allah, Ernest… just please make it go away and I promise to either beat it so far into submission or nurture it like a lost kitten, if only to prove a point.

Years ago I was motoring around Bristol, England with my radio promotions guy. We crested a hill in the city and were greeted with the site of hundreds of students sunning themselves on a lawn that sloped down towards the city center. A lawn, that glowing, illuminated green that only occurs when the sun comes out on certain days in England, setting the grass pulsing, aglow with all the stored-up chlorophyll generated by days and days of endless moisture.

Neil (the radio guy) and I had been riding around for days at this point, hopping from station to station, plying my new single. Neil was eternally sparky and blissful, always happy to be doing his job, to be cresting another hill in another city. I was depressed, completely absorbed in the slightly confusing process of attempting to gain acceptance at radio stations and with the British public in general. Had there been a forest, I would not have been able to see it for the crab apple trees. Truly, there was nothing but grass, centuries-old buildings everywhere and young, nubile people relaxing and enjoying themselves. The moment escaped me. I imagine I was wondering how long it would be until we could stop off for our afternoon pints.

Today I have a yard that is in desperate need of cutting and flower beds that could be weeded but should probably just be completely dug up and begun again. I have what feels like an endless list of administrative tasks to do, most of which seem daunting and mindless. I am writing from the confines of the nicest house I have ever lived in, one that needs some attention here and there but is remarkably perfect. Yes, something is telling me that I am, once again, missing a great moment here, but I feel incapable of reaching out and grabbing. Recent experience has taught me that taking small steps towards the goal is the best way to proceed. I suppose that this little missive is the first one of these. However, I am still thinking of Law and Order: SVU and wondering how they will solve the next hideous crime they are faced with. I would still very much like to get through at least one computer Scrabble match. Neither of these tasks would involve engagement with the world on any level and would, I fear, only draw me a little further into a particular hole.

And thinking back on what seems to have been written so far here I am taken with how completely self-absorbed it all is, how I will never care to read it again and how it probably serves no purpose whatsoever. About how Social Media, the most tempting outlet for these labors, would actually accept this load of hooey with open arms as something worth sharing, having contemplated and commented upon. I just can’t get with the ide of airing these thoughts for consumption. We really have to rise above the idea that this crap is worthy of sharing with each other. That is the problem with art today, I believe; we have become utterly convinced that these type of musings constitute a relationship with an audience, an interaction when, in fact, these kind of musings are exactly the shit that we should keep to ourselves, the grist that will (hopefully) propel us to creating something higher, something infinitely more useful, for our compatriots in existence to chew on and to share.

Did someone mention breakfast? Since moving in with Liz three years ago, I have become infinitely more attuned to the needs and goings-on of my body. I know that part of the issue with getting this day going is merely the fact that I have given myself nothing to work with on a cellular level besides caffeine and nicotine. I need protein mixed with just the right amount of carbohydrate to achieve a roper balance that might assist in seeing things in just the right light. That solidity that sets in after a couple of eggs or even a fat dose of almond butter. Meat is a possibility but some days you just don’t feel like thinking through the reality of the death, the slaughter of innocents, the very real possibility that you could just as easily be eating the dog you were so tenderly walking only hours ago. Goddamn meat. Why are you so tasty and wrong.

Our friend Emily Leonard is a startlingly good artist. She gave us a gorgeous print for our wedding, a gorgeous print that I have yet to have framed. A plane of happiness that currently sits furled up on a bookshelf, its joys hidden from me. It is a painting of a forest, oddly enough, one rendered impressionistically enough so that there is not really a hard option of actually seeing individual trees so well. It’s like the perfect existential rendering of woodlands. Just merge with it, don’t let the small stuff get you down. Asshole.

One of my favorite avoidance pastimes is reading The New Yorker. I don’t recall at what point in my life this magazine took hold of me, but goddamn it, it did. Its promise of weekly sophistication and high-mindedness has driven me toward of number of unrealized ambitions, such as being an eminently cool musician, a well-regarded writer, a long-time resident of New York City. All things I have touched upon at various junctures in life, none of which I would say that I have ever really achieved. But the New Yorker still comes every week, still promises and idealized frame of mind that seems achievable somehow. I don’t know why, anymore. I have finally reached a stage in life where I feel comfortable not reading every goddamn word of it; yes, I am now capable of skipping ahead after reading a few paragraphs of the 15,000 word piece on Ugandan sheep hymens without feeling as if I am cheating myself out of some seriously necessary life knowledge… or merely not getting my money’s worth. It’s a step.

I am beginning to question my newfound allegiance to the IPhone. I waited ages until my Verizon contract was up last October to jump on board but, once I did, I was shocked by how it immediately influenced my life. Everything seemed to get infinitely more organized and categorical: blobs of unintelligible ambition aligning themselves into brightly-colored squares on my ICal, legions of unforeseen needs suddenly met by the acquisition of another smartly-programmed app, badly-written emails from other IPhones instantly replied to with my own badly-written email.

But in recent weeks I have begun to wonder if all it has, ultimately, been for naught. If all these perfectly-scheduled new events (with reminders) are actually getting me anywhere or merely serving to fill up all of that undefined white space on my calendar. If these apps that get used maybe once a month are really just filler to camouflage the Scrabble and FIFA 11 games that get most of the action. If those badly-written emails are just going out into the universe attracting more half-baked thoughts and ideas.

I love to look at the IPhone. It brings me pleasure. I won’t be getting rid of it anytime soon; the transition would be way too much of a pain in the ass. Nothing is really that big of a deal, anyway. This I should know by now. All things get done eventually, just don’t get too stupid about it. Right now babies are being born, children are starving, divorce papers are being served. Life is coming to a series of very hard and immediate conclusions, whether I am paying attention or not. You can’t get an app for that shit, no way.

Tune Yards

2011-06-04T12:36:00.000-07:00

WOW. Now this is interesting: http://youtu.be/_wjrmjvfsa8

Where did she come from? Where is she going?

Gathering Steam

2011-05-28T15:46:00.000-07:00

The 13-year cicadas are dying off in droves, and I will miss them. They are the rock stars of the insect world, germinating underground for the aforementioned time period before emerging for a very brief (days, my dear) period of singing and fucking. And then it's over. Their offspring, in egg form, will fall from the cracks in trees into which their mothers laid them, make their way back into the ground and then grab onto some root system to find nutrients for the next incubation period. A long time will pass; governments will be toppled, technology will advance, many many dinners will be cooked, cars will be exchanged for newer models, bands will form, bands will dissolve, children will be birthed, children will become overachievers, or junkies, whatever... the cicadas will not care. They will reemerge from the ground again in May of 2024, completely unaware of how the world has changed around them, going right on with making the absolute most of their tiny little lifespans, their song, their sex. Shine on, you red-eyed subterranean commas of nature. It's been emotional.

My new bride and I took a long hike at Percy Warner this morning, breaking a sweat and stimulating our endorphins to a mad wiggle. We saw a crimson skink with an embarrassingly large head poking out of a tree. We passed a couple in their late 50's running up one of the many hills like teenagers on meth. There was light dappling all along the trail in the shapes of hickory and hackberry leaves high above our heads; I noticed the blotch of perspiration between my pectoral and abdominal muscles and wondered if there was a connection there.

Later on at the Nashville Puppet Festival, Davey Ukulele and the Gag Time Gang took the stage at 2:00 and whipped the young ones into a frenzy. My old friend Jill and her husband Chad were in attendance. Jill sat fifteen feet in front of me with her two kids Ollie and Coco and, as I announced that it was time for everyone to do the Rainbow Dance, locked eyes with me for a fertile moment. We shared a good smile about how they time does fly. Professor D.'s song about allergies was particularly effective today, as was Uncle Louis' spoken word about his adventures with cruise ships and meatballs. The ions at the Puppet Festival was bouncing all over the place; it reminded me of the first festivals I ever played with Joe, Marc's brother. There was no pot and no jam bands but the vibe was just as crazy, if not crazier.

Our friends Hal and Kim are cooking us a major dinner this evening. It's a wedding present, and a good one, for what lasts longer than a belly full of beef and a night stuffed with chuckles? Well, fuck me. It has been a royal May in Nashville, one I hope to not forget come next February, when shit goes dark and dingy and moist and morose. I got married to a woman who is, quite literally, the finest specimen I have ever come across. I never quite expected good fortune of this magnitude and my heart verges on the bursting when I step back and get a take a good look at it all.

Video Session : David Mead : LaundroMatinee

2011-05-28T15:40:00.000-07:00

I finally found this today. I love Bill DeMain and his pickin,' and I think the guys in Indianapolis did a fine job of capturing us in pretty good form.
Video Session : David Mead : LaundroMatinee

New Album, "Dudes." Let's Do This.

2010-11-20T10:50:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, my buddy (and sometimes drummer) Ethan Eubanks called from New York. He wanted to know when I was making another album. I told him that I had a concept and bunch of new songs that I was pretty excited about, but wasn't sure about how to get going. Within three days of our phone call, Ethan had enlisted our pal Adam Schlesinger from Fountains of Wayne (who also produced my album "Mine and Yours") and Andrew Sherman (one of my favorite keyboard players), booked a studio and found a place for me to stay in NYC. Suddenly, we were on our way.

Now, the only missing ingredient in the process is YOU. I am asking you to consider pre-purchasing the album in order to help raise the funds for its recording, manufacturing and promotion. If you want to help even more, there are eight more levels at which you can participate, all of which give you access to additional stuff like autographed copies of the album, video footage of the recording sessions, access to the demos of the songs and a say in which ones go on the album, a visit to the studio while we record, a personal song written and recorded by me for you... even a concert at your house.

I am very excited to be taking this project straight to you, the very people who have been so supportive through the years and enabled me to keep making music. Most of the funds that you help raise will be used to pay studio and musician costs. The rest will be used for manufacturing and a small amount of promotion. (I am hoping, of course, that you all will be the best promoters.) To find out more, please watch the attached video and visit my Kickstarter site here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1613935496/david-meads-got-dudes

Sincerely,

David

More Photo History of October and November

2010-11-20T08:30:00.000-08:00

More Photo History

2010-11-20T08:20:00.000-08:00

I Got An IPhone. Finally.

2010-11-20T08:13:00.000-08:00

Sorry I have not posted for so long. Here is a photographic look, in three parts, through some highlights of the last two months:
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2010-05-23T08:13:00.000-07:00

A clear Sunday morning finds me back at an old familiar post: the lacquered anonymity of a hotel room writing desk in a city far from my own. I played piano last night with my friend Jason White at the historic Beachland Ballroom in Cleveland, Ohio. This after a week of recovery and scrambling following a seven-night stint at the Hog's Breath Saloon in Key West. It is remarkable how time flies these days; insert your favorite cliche here and know that I am happily living it out with the all of you.

The Super 8 parking lot is alive with the exuberant voices of African-American day laborers getting their Sunday started right. The Mardi Gras atmosphere suits me just fine as the rest of Cleveland seems to be under a dark cloud inspired by the possible departure of LeBron James and the final acidic run-off of Reaganomics. You might say that there's a bittersweet magic in the air. Or perhaps it's just the odor of a paper mill not quite far enough away.

It's one of the many mornings I have experienced over the past two-and-a-half years on which I am supernaturally thankful to be without a hang-over. Suffice to say that I have, in my years on the ever-winding road, been blottoed beyond recognition in Cleveland more than I can, duh, remember. In fact, there was a time when I was quite sure that its liberal attitude towards alcohol consumption was the best reason to visit the city. Cleveland, like most burgs in the Rust Belt, never really took to my brand of popular melodramatic song. The Winters are hard here. There is not a lot of work to go around. Perhaps the metrosexual trillings of love lost and opportunities squandered are not really essential when one walks out and stares into into the cold phosphorescence Cleveland every day.

So, in my own particular way, I always thought of a gig in Cleveland as a good opportunity to wash down the failure of another lost performance with some locals who actually had something important to drink about. One freezing night in 2005 I ventured far into the demon hours with a nice fellow a few years younger than me who had a kid or two, a job at UPS and a young wife who did not seem particularly happy with him. I attempted to dispense some soldierly advice, to cross the gap between what he perceived to be the supreme difference in our lifestyles. We ended up at a sport's bar downtown that seemed close to my hotel. I think I was still operating on the pretext that I actually had my shit together and was, ten drinks down and slurring, in some sort of position to offer real direction. The fact that I have no memory of what I said or if it made any sense probably testifies to the overall sanctity of my judgment.

What I do remember is wandering off into the snowy Cleveland morning for what I assumed would be a short walk to the hotel. After a few wrong turns the biting wind began cutting through the whiskey. The streets of Cleveland are rightfully deserted at 2 AM on a Winter morning; there was no one around to ask about anything. In a drunkard's sudden rush of distorted reality, I began to panic. Was this how it all ended? Frozen stiff in a gutter of Cleveland for nothing even resembling a romantic reason?

I began to jog. The rustle of my collar around my ears and the dead quiet of the once-mighty metropolis started to skew my sense of auditory perception. I kept running through the fog of my breath in front of me, confused even by the machinery of my own body; the little engine that couldn't. Everything was concrete, all contrast in the muted white of dirty snow and geometric shadows. Everything looked the same and nothing seemed familiar.

The next day I rode out on the city's grand decaying avenues and back onto I-90 towards another Midwestern locale. Probably Michigan.

Doryce, the Super 8 cleaning lady, just stuck her head in the door and let me know that it's time to get moving. The woman has work to do, and who am I to stop her? I leave Cleveland with a light heart and gratitude for the lessons she has taught me. Cleveland, you steely bitch, you tough lover, you strapper-onner, you puss-in-boots. Miss you already.

"The Happiest Day"

2010-05-08T07:27:00.000-07:00

Another sunshiney jingle for this unbelievably gorgeous day:

Mort n' Lucifer

2010-05-07T07:56:00.000-07:00

I spent the first three hours of yesterday assisting Bob in the shoveling of approximately two and a half tons of flood-induced landslide off of a hill behind his house. The offending mess looked and smelled like what might have happened if, after consuming a steady diet of huevos rancheros for the last millennium, the hill had decided to relieve itself, mightily and without reservation.

As I was about to thrust in for my 219th shovelful of funky earth, a small and oily patch of something on its surface caught my eye. The something began twitching, then wriggling, slowly working its way out of the mud and into full view. It was a frog. Once freed of its earthy prison, the amphibian froze and regarded me with one bulbous eye.

"Allright!" I cheered like a mother at a soccer game. "You made it!"

With a pithy look worthy of George Costanza, the frog hopped away.

For a moment, I reveled in this small victory. In the face of the destruction and despair that has swept through the Middle Tennessee over the past week, any sign of life amongst ruin was cause for some celebration. Then I reconsidered: That frog might have really been enjoying himself down there. Maybe he was already happy. As I got back to shoveling, I imagined a conversation that may or may not have occurred a few weeks earlier:

"Gotcha!"

Mort had been in mid-flight, stretched out to Olympian lengths above the surface of the pond, milliseconds from contact with the water, when something odd happened. Instead of the cool familiar slap of the water on his belly, he felt rough, hot ridges, callousy and crinkled. His entire body was squeezed by hot fingers, tight enough to constrict any movement while allowing just enough room to breathe.

Mort opened his eyes to find two very large orbs staring at him from a close distance.

"Hello, Mort," the voice assaulted him on warm, garlicky breath. "Going for a swim?"

"What. The. Fuck." Mort glared into the big eyes and urinated with all his might.

"Well, then." The man set Mort down on the bank of the pond and shook the liquid off of his hand. "I see you're staying hydrated."

"Actually, no." Mort collected himself. "It's been getting hotter and hotter. Short Spring this year."

"Ah, you don't know hot, my little friend," smiled the man, his face creasing into a hundred tiny wrinkles. The eyes glowed crimson under the brim of a ratty porkpie hat. Black hairs curled out from his wide nostrils. A black wool suit with ragged sleeves wrapped around him like a sarcophagus, revealing a shiny black shirt unbuttoned at the neck. His skin was chalky and, in spite of the sweltering heat, bore no hint of perspiration.

"Excuse me," said Mort, turning to leap back into the pond.

"Don't move." The man's voice took on the rumble of thunder, the shades of hell. "I need to speak with you."

Mort slowly turned himself to face the man again. "OK, I'm listening."

"I have a proposition," drawled the man. He extracted half a joint from the breast pocket of his jacket and breathed on the black end of it. It immediately ignited in a tiny burst of flame.

"You shouldn't smoke that stuff," said Mort. "It will make you emotionally unavailable."

"Huh," the man snorted before taking a long, searing hit off the joint. "Imagine that. Listen. I've got a little something planned for Nashville in a few weeks, and I'm going to need your help."

Mort noticed that the man never exhaled any smoke.

"I'm going to take care of your little hydration problem, lickity-split. This is going to be big. Water everywhere. You'll love it." He held the remnants of the smoking joint down towards Mort. "Want a hit?"

"Uh, no thanks," said Mort, closing his eyes against the cloud of smoke suddenly surrounding him. It was a pointless exercise; the amphibian's highly-porous skin absorbed the THC in the air like a wet sponge and, within seconds, Mort was high as a kite.

"I'm talking flood, little fellow. Apocalyptic shit, as much as I hate to use the expression. Now," the man paused to flick the joint into the woods, "you may not think that a tiny little frog is going to matter much in the middle of all this mayhem. But if a butterfly can set events into motion, you certainly can. Mort? Mort. Are you listening?"

Mort did not say anything.

"Mort!"

"That's correct," said Mort.

"Sour Jesus," said the man. "OK, so. Here's the deal. On May 1st you're going to see a lot of rain. On May 2nd, it's going to get really crazy. You'll need to be positioned at the top of that hill," he pointed to the hill behind the house. "About three in the afternoon, a good portion of that thing is going to go running down the slope like chocolate pudding. I need you to be smack in the middle of it."

"Pudding," said Mort. "Puuuuhddd-eeeeng. What is it?"

The man snapped his fingers on either side of the frog's head, eliciting slow, mucousy blinks from both. "Come on, Mort! Pull it together."

"OK," said Mort, sleepily. "Why am I doing this?"

"Mud, baby." The man grinned. "The sweet, healing properties of earth. You'll be under for a couple of days, max. You'll be nourished by the abundant minerals, the comfortable flow of moisture. Think of it like a weekend in Sonoma."

"Been there," yawned Mort.

"My ass."

"I just mean, like." Mort rolled over onto his back and let the sun warm his yellow belly. "What's the purpose of my participation at all? Like, what does it mean?"

"No one knows what any of it means, little guy," said the man. "I don't really do meaning. I've always been into chaos, misdirection, smoke, mirrors, that kind of thing." He rotated his chin and cracked his neck. "Meaning is for humans. I gave it up a long time ago. Look," he poked Mort's shiny belly softly, "just be there on Sunday."

"Cool," said Mort, turning, with a little difficulty, back onto his belly. "I'll let you know how it goes."

"Don't worry about it," said the man, repositioning his hat and dusting off his trouser legs. "Word gets around."

And, with a loud sizzle, he dove into the shallows of the pond and vanished.

Our First Flood Refugee

2010-05-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, Bill DeMain, our guest indefinitely. Bill has been without electricity or running water for four days. I think he looks pretty good, all things considered. Welcome, Bill.

Water Conservation: Keep It Cool

2010-05-05T05:57:00.000-07:00

Due to this weekend's flooding, Nashville is currently undergoing a shortage of drinking water. Two of the city's water treatment plants were compromised because of their proximity to the now-mighty Cumberland River. The call is out to conserve. Adapted from a very informative list on CoolPeopleCare.com, here are some quick and fairly painless ways to cut your consumption, possibly in half:

1. Don't wash your car. Splattered grass and dirt are, reportedly, "flood chic." Think of your car as one of those ridiculous t-shirts at Urban Outfitters. Get out there and make something of yourself.

2. Cut off your sprinkler system at home and at work. Again, culture has been trending toward Middle Asia for the past couple of years; a little brown on your ground will only enhance your street cred.

3. Don't shower unless absolutely necessary. This, a decidedly French affectation, is not particularly cool nor pleasant but at least your house didn't float away down the river.

4. Don't wash your clothes unless you're out of underwear. Or, if you are of the "freeballing" persuasion, simply wait until the crotch of all of your pants take on the texture of a well-used dish sponge.

5. Let the dirty dishes stack up. Nashville's restaurant industry could always use a good kick in the pants. As always, be wary of spending more than $13.00 for an entree anywhere except Margot, Marche or 1808 Grille. This town runs on cheap local indigenous and immigrant fare; get into it, and give that money you would have spent at J. Alexander's to these people.

6. Use and reuse the same drinking glass all day. Enjoy the unexpected blending of flavors, the aroma of surprise, the texture of pure "otherness."

7. If you must shower, get in and out in four minutes. Set a timer. Be diligent. Yes, you might be thinking, "I'm, like, French now; what do I know about managing time?" But we know you can do it.

8. Don't shave. Armpits, legs, face, back, crotch or knuckles. Pretend you're running amok in a Hustler shoot from 1977.

9. Don't let the water run in the sink. Think when you turn the faucet on. See how little water you can allow to go down the drain. It's a little game, like Parcheesi.

10. Don't use a hose to clean off debris and dirt from your sidewalk. Let it dry and use a broom. Again, tres chic. If you missed the brooms on the runway at the Dolce Gabbana show in Milan recently... well, seriously, what were you thinking?

11. In regards to toilet etiquette, let's quote the Eminient Ed Koch: "If it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down." Let's take a moment to reflect: Actually, if it's brown, you just ate it four to ten hours ago. Don't hate it so much. But, you know, go ahead and flush it.

Heartbreak Weather

2010-05-04T19:57:00.000-07:00

As many of you have probably heard, it was a pretty horrific weekend in Nashville. The Cumberland River swallowed a good portion of downtown before finally beginning to ebb today, officially shedding its status as a minor waterway generally ignored by the city's good citizens. To the West, the Harpeth performed a similar feat, leaving us with weird aerial depictions of unfamiliar things like a Publix grocery store sign barely protruding from its brown water. All over the city, smaller creeks and forgotten tributaries flowed freely into basements and home studios, quickly overwhelming rusty sump pumps and destroying mountains of memorabilia. The official body count stands at 19 so far.

As my friend Matthew Ryan once sang, it's heartbreak weather. Facebook walls are chock full of despairing reports of loss, reassurances and general offers of help. News channel sites are purring along with multiple amateur and professional videos of the general mayhem. The Internet is an oddly isolating environment in which to be commiserating over a natural disaster occurring right outside your door, but at least it's dry.

Me and mine were fortunate enough to be shacked up in a sturdy bungalow positioned on a favorable angle to a downhill slope. It was kind of amazing to watch the waters run around us, through the back yard and into the alley, which began to resemble a really ugly and powerful water park ride by Sunday afternoon. Besides a loss of electricity and a few trickles of water in the basement, we were completely untouched. Even the new brick sidewalk remained intact. Nature is a finicky lass.

There's no easy way to clean up such a massive pile of shit, but donations never hurt. Please throw some cash Nashville's way here if you feel inclined.

I had planned on posting some new sunshine songs this week, but I think I'll give it a couple of days out of respect for the victims of all this. Let's hope the eerily gorgeous weather predicted for the coming week dries this nightmare up sooner than later; 'til then, please join me in staying dry and being thankful.

David Henry Braves The Flood

2010-05-04T08:51:00.001-07:00

The TrueTonian spotted in the vicinity of yet another flooded basement. Photo by Rann Russell

"சுன்றிசே"

2010-04-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Wow! No idea what is happening in the title of this but it is pretty cool and entirely unintentional. Cyrillic? Five bucks and a box of Jelly Belly's to the first person to figure it out.

Anyway, I just wanted to post another jingle called "Sunrise" from the Vitamin D collection. I think it would be good for a Folger's ad. Or maybe Trojan? Lemme know what you think.

Opinions

2010-04-30T07:57:00.000-07:00

(Ed. Note: I write a bi-monthly column for American Songwriter magazine about independent music called "Under The Radar." The following will, hopefully, appear in the next issue.)

UNDER THE RADAR

By David Mead

We are happy to report that, after two years plagued by complaints from concerned neighbors and Democrats, the UTR staff’s annual Spring Bunny Fry-Up went down without a hitch this year. Afterwards, suitably chuffed and covered in rabbit remnants, we hungrily sat down at our Remington’s and got down to the business of reviewing us some records. The gamey taste on our lips had us in the mood to be pushed around a little; we required immediacy, a few aural quickies, some serious jiggery-poo. It was not to be. All of the music was charming in a slow-burn, when-can-I-meet-your-family sort of way, but none of the discs were really grabbing us by the throat.

Thankfully, during an extended visit to the Gents, I happened to notice the new Ghostkeeper album, seemingly abandoned in the magazine basket. An hour later, I was seated at my desk, positively GROOVING to the fresh cassette dub that our tech guy had just handed me.

“Who left this in the crapper?” I screamed. “I LOVE THIS!” I turned it up until the speakers on my Panasonic boom box distorted.

“I KNOW,” said Kenny, hopping up and down on one foot. “It’s like the Velvets meets Grandmaster Flash meets…”

“Shut Up!” I smacked him across the cheek. “It’s like Dylan doing Black Betty’s with the Hell’s Angels. You moron!” I frantically shuffled papers on my desk, looking for the press release. “Damn it… what’s the name of the album?”

“It’s self-titled. Eponymous (Flemish Eye).”

“DAMN IT!” I was scattering papers left and right, looking for any information on the band. “Where are they from?”

“Canada. Alberta, Canada,” said Kenny. I looked at him and noticed a string of rabbit meat stuck between his third and fourth incisors.

“Well, that figures.” I was suddenly exhausted. I slumped into my chair and let my mouth hang open for a few seconds. “Fine. Let’s make them famous.”

“Let’s!” Kenny hopped off in the direction of the candy machine.

This month’s winner in the Conceptualization category was a no-brainer: Bradenton, Florida’s very own Have Gun, Will Travel. Their handsome sophomore effort, Postcards From The Friendly City (Suburban Home) is almost as notable for its ingenious design and packaging as its organic, infectious brand of Americana Pop. We here at UTR are big fans of bands that claim their hometowns with pride and, like the finest local produce, HGWT’s music has a refreshing immediacy to it that can only come from a innate connection with its native environment. Like a Sunshine State-sanctioned answer to New York’s Fountains of Wayne, the band expertly canonizes the displacement of suburban existence on such gems as “Land Of The Living” (We belong to the land of the living/ but we don’t live there anymore) and conjures up a disturbingly cheery dystopia in “Maritime Rag” and the aching “Salad Days.” And, really, in these days of managed expectations and digital-only releases, not enough can be said about the great lyric insert in the album package, cleverly reproduced to look like a folded miniature copy of the Bradenton Chronicle from 1955. Excellent work, fellows.

Finally, let’s not forget the fine forthcoming effort from Snow & Voices, Anything That Moves (Electric Ruby). This is the sort of record for which the “warm, ethereal and ambient” modifier would be tempting to use, but there is something inherently edgier here that reminds us of the more interesting and unpredictable aunts of the Lilith’s; Maria McKee, Johnette Napolitano, ‘Til Tuesday, The Hotels. There is no yogic serenity in vocalist Lori Kranz’s fragile state of mind. She sounds like she’s singing beautifully because beauty is the last thing she’s got. And we believe her.

"We Are The Sunshine"

2010-04-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

Another sunshine jingle for a commercial, please to like:

Hardwood

2010-04-29T15:51:00.000-07:00

The weather in Nashville really doesn't get much better than today. Sunny, breezy, just a hint of crisp in the air, a touch of moisture, everything blooming and swollen with life. Eureka!

I spent the day in Joelton working at Bob's house on Clarksville Highway. The drive out of town was fine, early Spring light washing over everything. Upon arrival, I grouted a tile backsplash, installed some light fixtures and sanded and sealed the new floor in one of the bedrooms.

I am crazy for wood these days. I really like working with it. Bob and Raymond taught me how to lay hardwood floors last year and I have come to find the process very rewarding. Laying the planks is pretty hard on the back, but there is something magical about building this really strong organic surface out of a lot of individual pieces. I like to try to coordinate the different grain structures of each piece into some kind of harmonic visual pattern when possible. When I stare at it all for awhile the grain starts to look like water, like the boards are kind of flowing together.

I used to dislike the sanding process because of the unwieldy nature of the sander, but I've grown into it. It requires a certain kind of patience that a lot of other activities in my life do not. The trick to doing it correctly is performing multiple passes with different grades of sandpaper. It looks like a brutal process with the sander whining away and dust flying everywhere. But it is kind of delicate, in a way. It's like I'm rubbing off all the dirty fingerprints and grit and general Home Depotness the poor wood has had to endure since it left its original condition. I like the way the friction of the sander reforms the wood and seems to kind of seal the surface. I have to go fairly slowly, doing six passes in three different directions with 40 grade sandpaper (the roughest), then six more with 80, then four with 100 and 120 (the finest). Then I go around the edges of the room (Where the big sander cannot reach) with the small orbital sander, repeating all of the grades there.

By the end of it, the wood is gleaming. It looks supple, almost flesh-like. I vacuum it very thoroughly with the Shop Vac and then apply a coat of oil-based sealer with a roller. This leaves the surface very shiny for a minute or two, like a girlfriend that just stepped out of the shower. Then the grain of the wood starts to raise up a bit as the sealer seeps into it. Yes, it is a little disillusioning to watch the smooth texture disappear, but I take comfort in knowing that, once it dries, I will go back with an even finer grade of sandpaper, knock down the raised grit, vacuum, and then apply a couple of more coats of varnish. I'l take a picture when it is finished.

"Let Your Sun Shine Out"

2010-04-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

I'm currently over at the Bug Music studios on Music Row in the 'Ville, putting vocals on some of the sun songs. Earlier I was writing lyrics for a new one and found myself short of sun verbs. I Googled "sun poetry"to see if anyone had a few I could borrow and came across this jewel by allan james saywell:

"Here Come The Sun"

Sun, Sun, Sun, here it come
The dark becomes light, why?
Because Sun, Sun, Sun, here it come
Sun, Sun, Sun, here it come
At the end of the night
The light is bright, Sun, Sun, Sun
Here it come,
Here come the Sun

I was tempted to just throw in the towel. My flowery language will never hold a candle to shit of this magnitude. If you, like me, need more saywell in your life you can find it here.

And if you require a humble soundtrack for the experience, here's another freshie from Vitamin D called "Let Your Sun Shine Out:"

Well, damn it. My MP3 player is not happening but I don't have time to mess with it at the moment. Will post this afternoon, all apologies.

"On A Sunny Day"

2010-04-26T16:58:00.000-07:00

As promised, "On A Sunny Day," the first selection from the forthcoming album for advertisements, Vitamin D:

(By the way, I found this little player here http://www.blogcastone.net/player.php just in case anyone else is looking for one.)

No Rain Today...

2010-04-26T16:17:00.001-07:00

... but check the brick work:

VITAMIN D

2010-04-26T07:41:00.000-07:00

I awoke at 7:10 in this morning, this weekend’s 21-mile near-marathon still pulsing in my thighs. I am scheduled to work on a brick walkway with Bob, but kind of hoping the rain will finally burst through the cloud cover and keep me indoors. My hamstrings need not suffer any more indignity and I can use a free day to work on my latest catalogue stiffener, a new album of sun-themed music called Vitamin D.

Advertisers, when looking for aural backdrops from which to ply their wares, most often search for music that leans strongly on the noun ‘sun’ and the verb ‘shine.’ This is an undisputed fact; look it up if you don’t believe me. Undisputed fact 2: advertisers pay out the wazoo for these innocuous bits of hokum. Undisputed fact 3: I am currently laying brick sidewalks to pay the bills. Do the math.

Over the years, I have been urged by various publishers and songpluggers, towards the cause of providing a more respectable income, to write more music that dallies in these themes. Up to this point, reality has kept me firmly grounded in more earthly pursuits. But the eternal drudgery of the Nashville’s coldest Winter in 31 years has finally brought out the glow in me. The sky’s stayed gray for most of December, January and February. I literally had to write myself out of a serious case of Seasonal Affective Disorder. I feel that I can now pursue the project with my balls tight and precious integrity intact.

But I like these little ditties, all short and limited to one subject: Vitamin D euphoria. Vitamin D is produced by our bodies when we are exposed to sunlight. It makes us happy. Until we are burnt to a crisp. Here are the songs I have finished thusfar:

1. On A Sunny Day

2. We Are The Sun

3. The Sun On Our Shoulders

4. Sunrise

5. Let Your Sun Shine Out

6. The Happiest Day

7. Let It Shine

I think I should do three more to make it a proper piece.

I will soon be posting some of these songs here when I can figure out how to get an MP3 player posted. If anyone has suggestions regarding this maneuver (posting an MP3 player to which I can upload music) I would certainly welcome them.Thanks.

The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part VIII

2009-07-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

I pedaled hard all the way back to Division Street. I hurried into our building and carried Stan up two flights of stairs to the apartment. I made him drink as much of a bowl of water as he could hold down, then put him on his bed with a blanket and one of my old t-shirts. I went to the bathroom to look for Epsom salts and, by the time I returned, he was fast asleep.

Our apartment was tiny, an efficiency built in the early 20th century to house students from a nearby seminary. The hardwoods in the 14X14 main room were stained and warped, the plaster on the walls cracked and falling off in places. The room had a large window on one exterior wall and a decrepit set of French doors overlooking Division Street on the other. I had managed to fit a desk, a bookshelf, a piano, a sitting chair and a bed into it without making it feel too cramped. During the day, it had a light and airy quality. At night, a strategically placed array of thrift store lamps turned the potential claustrophobia into coziness.

There was small kitchen off the main room, its best feature a large bay window into which I had built a seat. This was where Stan spent most of his time in the apartment, perched on the soft red cushions, smoking his cigarillos out the window, watching the world pass by on the street below. The bathroom was located down a small hall off the kitchen that I had converted into a walk-through closet.

I opened the French doors and let some soft night air into the apartment. From my vantage point, Midtown looked even less appealing than it did on street level, a mess of incongruous rooftops and power lines skewing angles and spreading cancer. Bordered by Music Row, Vanderbilt University, the Charlotte Avenue housing projects and I-40, the neighborhood had managed to become a bathtub drain of sorts, sucking in the worst qualities of each, respectively: middle-aged career angst, budding alcoholism, drug-related crime and traffic overflow. Despite its exceptionally centralized location, Midtown felt more like negative space than a neighborhood.

I checked on Stan again, locked up and walked over to JJ’s Market. I grabbed the last tub of soft Australian licorice from the shelf and ordered an iced coffee from the girl behind the counter. While the espresso machine began belching steam, I picked up a copy of the Nashville Scene, an ‘alternative weekly’ hold-over from the 90’s that had long ago ceased being an real alternative to anything except, perhaps, a deli menu. From the cover, a mildly homoerotic photo of two familiar faces, foreheads touching, fake sweat rolling down noses and chins, was tucked behind a giant headline that read “I Can’t Go For That: One on One Redefine the Meaning of Music in Nashville.”

“Large iced coffee!” the girl behind the counter shouted.

“Thanks.” I dropped a dollar in the tip jar and walked outside. I sat down at a wrought iron table, lit a cigarette and began reading about my new clients.

For the past sixty years, country music, Nashville’s most famous export, has remained unchallenged by any other genre of music currently written and performed in the city. Although many acts from the city's surprisingly robust rock, indie, pop and jazz scenes have signed to major and independent labels, none of them have ever come close to touching the big ‘C’ in terms of commercial success. For years, there has seemed to be no end in sight to the legendary ‘Nashville Curse’ for non-country acts. But, thanks to a new onslaught of so-called ‘tribute bands’ in the Music City, that may be about to change.
“I think that country music is tribute music,” claims Jonathan Trebing, lead singer of Nashville’s hottest tribute band, One on One. “Those dudes are, like, paying tribute to a tradition, a lifestyle. The only difference between them and us is they sign about, like, the good old days, and we sing about shit in the 80’s. I don’t know about you, but my life was way better in the 80’s.”

From a few different points in the distance I heard the bursts of sirens coming to life. Within moments, two fire trucks came barreling down Broadway, the din of their horns bouncing off the buildings like banshees in a canyon. They disappeared in the direction of downtown, soon followed by an ambulance from Vanderbilt hospital. A trace of chemical cut the air, probably from the excited truck exhaust. Once the hub-bub died down, I turned my attention back to the paper.

One on One rose from the ashes of singing/songwriting duo Fenton and Arbuckle, once a fixture on the Demonbreun Street bar scene. Comprised of Trebing and writing partner Peter Bradley Adams, the duo started off starry-eyed and optimistic but eventually grew frustrated at audience’s seeming indifference to their original compositions.

“We tried everything,” admits Adams. “Melody, melody with lyrics, spoken word, chanting, melody with lyrics in Portugese, drums, no drums, matching outfits, soprano sax player... Nothing really clicked until that night.”

"That night" was a bar mitzvah gig in Belle Meade at which the 12 year-old guest of honor had requested Hall and Oates’ “Family Man” for the traditional dance with his mother. The duo, whom had at first been hesitant to learn the song, were stunned by the crowd’s reaction. “Dude. It was magical,” says Trebing. “People of all ages responded. The dance floor came to life. And I’m looking around and I’m like, dude, it’s just me and Pete up here with a drunk djembe player. What the fuck?”

“It was the song, dude,” answers Adams. “We knew then and there that there was no way we were ever going to write anything as good as ‘Family Man,’ so why spend the rest of our lives trying? All we ever wanted was to connect with an audience, and that night we realized that the quickest way to get that connection was through the songs of Daryl Hall and John Fuckin’ Oates. End of story.”

Another fire truck came blaring by. Although I could see my building from where I sat I knew that, in his beleaguered condition, the sirens were probably making Stan a little anxious. I folded the paper under my arm and walked back to the building.
In the vestibule, I realized I that I had forgotten to lock up the bike and trailer. Turning the lock combination numbers into place, I noticed the chemical smell again, stronger this time.
I unlocked the apartment door and immediately noticed that Stan was not on his bed. I checked the kitchen, the bathroom. He was gone. Going back into the main room a second time, I saw that the top sheet and bed spread had been stripped from my bed. I walked to the French doors and looked up and down Division Street before noticing the missing linens knotted into a rope that hung down to the front porch of the building. Even in the best of health, Stan couldn’t tie a knot.
I walked back into the kitchen and looked under the window seat cushions, as if Stan could possibly be hiding there. When I stood up again, I saw the Post-It note on the table. In perfect architectural script, tiny as liner notes on a CD, it read:

I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING. IF YOU WANT YOUR DOG BACK, STOP IT. STARTING TOMORROW, YOU WORK FOR ME. IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE DOG AGAIN, GO TO THE MUSIC CITY CENTRAL STATION AT 7:45 AM. TAKE THE #21 BUS TO THE EAST SIDE AND GET OFF AT THE CORNER OF CHAPEL AND BENJAMIN STREET. WAIT THERE. FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS PRECISELY AND I WON’T HURT THE DOG.

RIGHT NOW, GO TO THE TRAFFIC ROUNDABOUT.

I was halfway up the hill on Division before I even realized how hard I was pedaling. A policeman was diverting traffic onto 18th Ave., so I turned there and cut through an alleyway to reach the roundabout. The fire trucks lined its circumference, their hoses all pointed at the top of the multi-headed Musica sculpture. The water seemed to have little effect on the fire, occasionally blotting out a patch of it that would immediately reignite as soon as the stream was redirected. The fire had consumed the shrubbery around the sculpture but seemed safely corralled by the pavement around it. An impressive crowd of onlookers had gathered to witness the carnage. I pushed my bike away from the crowd, got a number from my notebook and dialed it on my cell phone.

"Hello?"

"It's David Mead."

"Oh, good. How's it going?"

"Deaderick," I sighed, the full weight of recent events coming to bear on me, "what the fuck have you gotten me into?"

The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part VII

2009-06-29T17:36:00.000-07:00

The cool night air whistled past my ears, drying the patina of perspiration on my forehead. Eighth Avenue North was nearly deserted but for a couple of cars that slowed down as we passed them. Whether they paused for the humidity or merely the sight of a man on a yellow bicycle pulling a drunken dog in a child’s trailer, I couldn’t tell. I signalled right with my arm and turned into the Bicentennial Mall.

“The trestle, the trestle. Let’s go see Wally,” Stan called out from behind me.

“No.”

“Balls,” he replied. I heard tin clanging away on the asphalt behind us.

“Goddamn it, Stan.” I leaned hard to the left and turned the bike around. A few rotations of the pedals later I stopped to pick up an empty Bud can and put it in the saddle bag under my seat.

‘Ya’ll need somethin’ tonight?” From across a manicured lawn, a skeletal figure clad in a drooping plaid cowboy shirt and a grimy Nashville Predators cap emerged from underneath the railroad trestle and approached us with an uneven gait.

“Wally!” Stan hopped out of the his trailer and loped over to the man. “Lovely evening, isn’t it? Puts a spring in your step, as I can see. Yes, indeed,” he licked his chops and looked around. “And not a park ranger in site. So...”

“White or green, son?” asked Wally.

“White, please, white as my mistress the moon...”

I crept up behind Stan and clasped the leash onto his collar.

“Motherfucker,” he said, and sat down on his haunches, deflated.

“Wally,” I said, “great to see you, as always. Sorry, but Stan’s had a long day.”

“Hell, don’t I know it,” laughed Wally, stuffing a tiny vial back into his jeans pocket. “I dun seen ‘em down at Stanky’s three days runnin’.” He crouched down and extended his hand toward Stan. “You been hittin’ it a little hard, son?”

“Away from me, cretin,” said Stan, recoiling.

“Gettin’ grumpy!” said Wally, standing back up, with a little difficulty. “All of ‘em do.” He smiled at me, revealing a lovely set of gums. “How ‘bout them fahrs? They go’n burn all them damn statues down for the damn day’s over.”

“There’s been another one?”

“Hell yeah, don cha’ll watch the tay-vay?”

“Only Law and Order,” sneered Stan.

“They dun burn ‘attun up ahr,” he shook a hand in the direction of Capitol Hill, eyes closed in thought, then snapped his finger and pointed at me. “Andrew Jackson, that’s eet. Jackson’s on fahr!”

We all three turned to look up the incline behind us, at the top of which an impressive orange glow could be seen flickering against the sky.

“Andrew Jackson,” Stan opined. “7th President of the United States. Also a racist slave owner. Sexist, too.”

“Damn sexy,” agreed Wally.

“Nathan Beford Forrest,” I pondered aloud.

“What ah lak ta know is how they settin’ a damn iron statue on fahr. Cain’t burn no metal.”

“Military grade acetone,” I informed him.

“Huh?”

“Jackson thought the world was flat,” said Stan.

“Huh? Ya’ll talkin’ ‘bout that global warmin’ bullsheet? Hell.” Wally hunched over and lit a Benson and Hedges 100.

“We gotta get going, Wally,” I countered. “Take care of yourself.”

“Dave, Stan. Go with God.” He waved and walked back towards the shadows from which he had emerged.

We rode figures-of-eight around the Court of Three Stars, a stone pavilion near the 7th Avenue entrance to the park. A thin layer of fog had settled on the mall, the cooler night air merging with the day’s heat still rising from the grass. The smoky nip of barbecue drifted down from a restaurant in Germantown, just North of us. On the granite, I watched our shadow stretch and collapse, stretch and collapse as we passed through different shades of shadow and light, the tiny rhythm of the bearings in the bicycle crankcase soothing us. In the distance, Andrew Jackson continued to burn, a tiny dot on top of the mountain like a sun about to rise.

“It’s nice to be working again, right?” I knew Stan was still sore about the leash incident. “It feels like a long time. Are you ready to start?”

Silence from behind me.

“You know,” I continued, “we don’t exactly have all night. So far, we’re nowhere on finding Heusenstamm and no one seems to have any idea why she slapped Deaderick. We have to get a gig for One on One by Friday for the plan to work. I don’t know about you, but the last gig I booked was an autograph signing for Trace Adkins at an ice rink ten years ago.”

From a passing car on 7th Avenue someone yelled ‘faggot.’

“I don’t know.” I watched the car peel out onto Jefferson St. “Do we have anything, really?”

“The scent,” said Stan.

“Right,” I agreed. “So why wasn’t it on Liz Workman? She’s Heusenstamm’s roommate. They probably swap clothes.”

“Get your mind out of the gutter,” Stan admonished. “We’re smack in the middle of a goddamn conundrum and I’m about to come down with some serious DT’s.”

I squeezed the brakes and turned to examine him. He looked gray and tired in the wash of the street light.

“Allright, Buddy, just help me to the next step. Then we’ll go home,” I said.

Stan yawned and shivered. I walked back to the trailer, pulled the small blanket around him and zipped the mesh front panel shut. We needed to get home, and sooner than later.

“The next step is Tashian,” Stan croaked. “And his damn dog.”

“Come on, the dog seemed nice,” I said, remounting the bike and starting to pedal. “Energetic, but nice.” I clicked the derailleur up to third gear with my thumb.

“Mark my words,” Stan called, raising his voice to combat the rising volume of the passing air, “that dog is one crazy bitch.”

“And what fun would life be,” I replied, ringing my hand bell a couple of times as I turned left onto 8th Avenue, “without a few crazy bitches to spice things up?”

The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part VI

2009-06-24T09:50:00.000-07:00

“Rachel hasn’t come home for a week,” said Liz. She lay on her side atop a picnic table in Sevier Park, dunking cucumber rolls in soy sauce and dropping them into her mouth like grapes at a toga party. “I mean, she’s OK and everything. Sometimes she just goes off by herself for awhile.”

“How long have you been roommates?” I asked.

“Mmmm, let’s see... she moved in after the workout party...”

“Excuse me?”

“She threw me a workout party for my 30th birthday,” she laughed, sitting up Indian style on the table top. “Everyone wore workout clothes. We had sit-up and push-up contests.”

“Sounds like a dream come true,” said Stan, supine on the grass, sweating out his hangover. A small thermos top of gray liquid sat on the grass near his nose.

“You keep drinking that coconut juice, Stanley,” warned Liz, “or I’ll make you run laps.” She threw a piece of cucumber roll at him. It bounced of his rib cage with a hollow thud and landed in the grass.

“I love you,” he groaned.

“So, she left right after the wedding?” I asked.

Liz put her plastic sushi container back into her backpack. “Pretty much. She’s been acting a little strange lately. Keeping a crazy work schedule, staying up late. If I don’t make her food, she doesn’t eat.”

“Sounds intense.” I flicked an insect away from my nose. “I heard she slapped a guy at the wedding.”

Liz laughed and and rolled her eyes. “John Deaderick! That was probably just Rachel’s way of showing affection.”

“Charming.”

“You know, like in elementary school,” she lay back down on the table. “If you liked a boy, you hit him.”

"So she likes him?"

"Oh, who knows, I can't figure that girl out anymore. You know, she once wore one-piece jump suits for an entire year."

"Why?"

"Why not?" Liz traced her finger along an old pair of initials scratched into the wood of the table. "Rachel has her own set of rules. I just try to have fun watching her."

The sun had finally sunk behind the trees, leaving the park bathed in luminescent pink afterglow of the day. A breeze was pushing the air around, breaking up the humidity a little. For the first time since that morning, I felt like I could breathe freely.

“Liz,” I said, “I didn’t know what to expect when we showed up at your studio today.”

She rolled over onto her back and examined the clouds. “I kind of thought you were more the ‘not showing up’ type.”

“Uh... I quit drinking.”

She turned her head towards me, eyebrows raised. “Really? How do you feel?”

“Better. Why aren’t you mad at me?”

“Oh, leave it alone already,” Stan grunted, picking himself up off the grass and waddling over to the table. “She’s not mad. All’s forgiven. Blah blah blah.” He indicated with his nose that he wanted a cigarillo. I handed him one and lit it for him. “Would it have hurt you to mention all this before we met her, though?”

“I figured you had enough on your mind already,” I said, “and I thought you’d understand. I kind of took you for the ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em’ type.’”

“How touching. All this tragedy is making me thirsty.”

“OK, but no more brandy today.” I popped the top on a Budweiser from the six pack I’d bought, poured it into my empty Starbucks cup and set it in front of him. “Go easy on that.”

“Just enough to take the edge off,” he agreed before sticking his snout into the cup.

Liz shook her head. “How can you not drink but feed Stanley booze all the time?” she asked me.

“He can’t help me until I want to help myself,” Stan replied, licking his chops. his tail began wagging and he wrinkled his nose, squinting into the distance. “Cockapoo, nine o’clock.”

Down the grassy hillside three figures were now approaching the table: a stout man in a baseball cap, a bearded fellow trailing behind him and the aforementioned black Cockapoo, who was sprinting towards us for all she was worth.

“DANIEL!” Liz shouted.

“Friends of yours?” I asked.

The Cockapoo leapt from the grass onto the table top, nuzzling Liz’s neck and licking her face.

“Women,” said Stan, shaking his head at the spectacle. “Christ.”

“Well hello, Elizabeth,” said the man in the baseball cap, arriving at the table, slightly out of breath from his trek up the hill. “I see Pasha remembers you. What an intelligent animal.”

The Cockapoo suddenly bounded off the table and took up pursuit of a chipmunk that had just emerged from a hole twenty feet away.

“David, Daniel Tashian. Daniel, David. Stanley,” she looked over towards Stan, who had killed the beer and returned to his bed in the grass. “Daniel.”

“The groom has arrived,” said Stan.

“Gentlemen, Lady, it is a pleasure to meet you awl,” Tashian intoned in an approximation of a Savannah accent, throwing back his head and opening his arms as if addressing the Senate floor. “The reason I have gathuhd you here today...” He broke the pose and chuckled, then turned to the bearded man, who was standing about eight feet behind him, a pencil poised over a small notebook. “Goodman,” he said, in his normal voice, “did you get that?”

“I got it,” replied Goodman.

“So, Daniel, how was the honeymoon?” asked Liz.

“The missus and I took a week of respite in the colonies,” he switched back to the accent. “We adopted the mores of the natives as our own, dining in their primitive fashion and gallavanting about upon their lily white beaches wearing no garment or trifle. In such fashion, the marriage was consummated on numerous occasions.” He smiled into the distance and waited.

“Got it,” said Goodman.

Tashian continued, gesticulating with his hands, “Every morning, a brown man appeared with a steaming carafe of brew squeezed forth from the java bean...”

“Daniel...” Liz interrupted.

“... and a bowl of ripened figs. PASHA!” Tashian’s eyes suddenly widened and he jogged off in the direction of the Cockapoo, who was happily writhing on her back in what appeared to be the remains of a dead animal.

“Nice to meet you,” nodded Goodman, who set off behind Tashian at a leisurely pace.

“Oh boy,” I sighed, watching the procession continue across the lawn. “I guess we’re going to need to talk to him, too.”

“Why are you so interested in Rachel, anyway?” asked Liz.

“Well...” I bought some time by lighting a cigarette. “Do you know the band, One on One?”

“Of course. They’re the hottest band in Nashville.”

“Well, I’m kind of representing them now. Stan and I. We’re going to be booking their gigs.”

“Really?” smiled Liz.

“Anyway, they need a new bass player...”

“... and Rachel plays bass...”

“... Exactly. Stan thought it would be a nice touch to have some feminine presence in the band.”

“Actually, I think they’re doing fine on their own,” added Stan. “Those haircuts.”

“Totally,” said Liz.

“So I just wanted to ask around about Rachel. Make sure she’s solid.”

Liz smiled and hopped off the table. “David Mead,” she said, “you’re a terrible liar.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not a big problem in the detective business,” cracked Stan.

Liz grabbed her backpack from the table and pulled it over her shoulders. “You know, it’s really not so bad to see you,” she laughed. “I’ve had a few visions of this moment that involved a semi-automatic weapon and an enema bag...”

“I love you,” said Stan, nodding off in the grass.

“... but this was pretty pleasant.”

“Look, can I call you?” I asked. “I’m... we’re probably going to need a little more information at some point.”

She considered it for a moment, then pulled a Sharpie out of her backpack, grabbed my hand and wrote her phone number on my palm. “There. It’s permanent. You can’t forget this time.”

The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part V

2009-06-23T11:38:00.000-07:00

The line of cars waiting to negotiate the traffic roundabout at the end of Music Row stretched for three long blocks.

“My god, how much further,” Stan asked, trading barks with a German Shepherd in a pick-up truck beside us. “I gotta piss.”

Constructed five years earlier, the Music Row Roundabout was a valiant but vain attempt at auto vehicular cross-culturalism. Its intended purpose had been to ease the intersection of six streets at the top of the Row, the pair of avenues on which the majority of Nashville’s recording studios, record labels and music publishing houses resided. On paper, the Roundabout must have seemed like a fine plan but, in reality, its requisite winner-take-all approach to motoring, so exciting when circumventing the Arc De Triomphe or Parliament Square, did not suit the city's motorists, a particularly passive/aggressive group long accustomed to engaging in superfluous head nods and hand signals for communication with fellow drivers. The consequent brou-ha-ha during rush hour was a cacophony of car horns and obscenities blurred by the unmistakable tang of burning brake pads. Not helping matters was a sculpture entiled 'Musica,' which rose 60 feet from the island in the middle of the Roundabout, obscuring sight lines and attracting tourists with its ten naked lizard-like nymphs, their oversized genitalia swaying in the wind. In spite of its posted 15 mile per hour speed limit, the Roundabout had become the city's number one location for accidents and moving violations.

Up ahead, the traffic began giving way. I could just make out the nipples on one of the female nymphs. “Almost there,” I reassured Stan. “Maybe you should ease up on the brandy.” He was halfway through the bottle of E&J he had opened this afternoon at the barn.

“Maybe you should go suck an egg,” he grimaced.

Ten minutes later we parked in front of Cummins Station, one of the first in Nashville’s long line of former industrial manufacturing buildings now renovated into office space. After Stan noisily relieved himself in a flower bed, we made our way inside and took a freight elevator down to the first floor. We followed the scent of Nag Champa incense to the end of a massive corridor and stepped into a bright room with large windows overlooking an abandoned rail yard. The floors were cork, the walls lime and orange, and the hypnotic drone of sitars and synthesizer floated in from an adjacent room. A large shelving unit containing multiple rolled rubber mats of various colors stood to our left; in front of us, a reception desk of birch, glass and soft angles was empty and completely free of clutter save for one tall white orchid, swooning to one side as if overcome with emotion.

“I smell pussy,” whispered Stan, his nose twitching.

I stuck my head around the corner of the wall behind the bookshelf. A group of twelve women in a rainbow of form-fitting clothing was spread around the room, each of them balanced on one leg and bent over at a ninety degree angle, arms out at their sides, their free legs stuck out straight behind them, like a squadron of Lycra swans about to take flight.

A chestnut-haired Jewess walked amongst the group, correcting the angles of legs and arms, intoning in a sing-song voice, “OK ladies flat backs, flat backs now stay here, stay here, breathing into the pose, now we’re cultivating our attention, cultivating our attention to the present moment. Good. Now on the next exhale bringing the right foot back to the floor, Warrior One, arms in prayer position over your head, now arms down to your third eye, your forehead, third eye, yes, that’s good, now feet back to Mountain Pose, hands to your heart...” The canned melody of a cell phone suddenly cut the air in the room. One of the women broke position and scurried over to a corner to answer it.

The Jewess barely acknowledged the distraction. “Outside Trina, outside,” she pointed towards the door, then paused to pull gently on one of the student’s shoulders. She walked back to the front of the room. “Now inhale, lift you arms over your head, fold over your chin, your truth, yes, inhale, bending your knees, now your right foot back, left foot back, now into Downward Dog, let your knees kiss the earth, now fold back into Child’s Pose...” She spotted me. Her face registered surprise for a moment, then softened again. She held my gaze and continued speaking to the class. “OK. We’re going to stay here for awhile, we’re breathing, we’re breathing...”

Moments later she walked into the reception area and stopped in front of us, her hands on her hips. “David Mead,” she apprised, folding her hands across her chest. “Nice of you to show up. You’re about seven years late.”

“Woah,” said Stan.

Liz Workman had soft, almond-shaped eyes and the body of a dancer. We both lived in New York once. In between classes at Columbia and commuting from the Upper West Side to my apartment in the East Village, she had usually managed to burn about 4,000 calories a day. In a gym, on a bike, at the running path around the Central Park reservoir, in a yoga studio... Liz was all action.

“This is my dog, Stan.” Stan hated it when I used him as a social lubricant. I hoped he could see that I was in a bind.

She crouched down and stroked his head several times. “Stan. That sounds like a detective or something. Would you mind if I call you Stanley?”

“You can call me Doryce,” said Stan, his eyes half-closed under the pleasure of her caresses, nose twitching uncontrollably, “if you want.”

“What a big nose you have,” she said.

“Ahem. So,” I began, “I know this is kind of awkward, and I really hate to bother you.”

“It’s no bother,” she replied, standing back up. “Look, I’m not mad at you anymore. You can stop hunching.”

I straightened my back and cracked my knuckles.

“Whatever happened, it’s fine. Let’s be in the present moment. You have come here for a reason, Grasshopper” she smiled, spreading her arms, “ now talk to the fucking Goddess.”

She was radiant. “Could I still buy you that sushi I promised you seven years ago?”

“Ha.” She considered for a moment. “How about this. I will allow you to chaperon Stan and I to dinner. I get to choose the place.”

“Great.”

"And you can pay," she added.

"Fine."

“‘A woman is like a tea bag,’“ quoth Stan, “‘you cannot tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.’“

“Sylvia Plath?” asked Liz.

“Nancy Reagan,” cooed Stan.

“’Baby, you can drive my car,’” she smiled, and walked back into the studio to finish her class.

The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part IV

2009-06-16T10:16:00.000-07:00

The digital clock in the Honda read 3:17 as we merged into the mess of Southbound traffic on I-65. According to WPLN, the local NPR station, someone had set the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue near the Harding Place exit on fire. The Northbound lanes of the Interstate would be closed until the blaze, flames from which were reported to be fifty feet high, could be contained. The commuters in the Southbound lanes were engaged in enough rubbernecking to slow traffic to a crawl, so Stan and I were able to get a long look at the spectacle as we approached.

The statue had long been a source of controversy, as much for the racist subtext it offered as the sheer absurdity of its execution. For the recreation of the infamous Confederate general was not a traditional rendering involving carved granite and a somber expression but rather a wildly cartoonish, forty-foot tall exaggeration featuring Forrest, the future Imperial Wizard of the KKK, madly waving a pistol while riding an oversize horse rearing up on its hind legs. The general and his steed seemed more poised to charge into straight into an animated segment of Hee-Haw than the Battle of Gettysburg.

Now completely engulfed in flames, the effigy resembled a demon sent up from the gates of Hell. Eight of the twelve Confederate flags that surrounded it were also on fire, adding a certain amount of pageantry to the slow procession of traffic now creeping by on the highway.

“It’s about time,” Stan opined from the passenger seat before cracking the seal on a fresh fifth of E&J brandy.

“But how do you set a statue on fire?” I wondered.

As if on cue, the news announcer on WPLN cut into Fresh Air to report that a break-in had occurred at the nearby National Guard Armory sometime the night before. Twenty gallons of military grade acetone had been stolen, birthing a theory that the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue might have been doused in the chemical before being set alight. Depending on how long the the highly-flammable solution had been allowed to soak into the porous clay of the statue before ignition, a local fire chief stated, the fire might burn unabated for quite some time.

A few miles after negotiating the log jam near the burning statue, we got off the Interstate at the Concord Road exit. After winding through several miles of pasture dotted with gated clusters of faceless suburban mansions, we turned into a dirt road hidden in a clump of poplar trees. We followed the bumpy drive for another half mile before coming to a stop in front of a plain white clapboard farm house with a barn behind it. Stan hopped out of the car and immediately vomited on the grass. I took in the surroundings and began making my way toward the barn, from which the unmistakable sounds of classic soft rock were emanating. We paused by the door to listen.

You’re a rich girl
And you’ve gone too far
But you know it won’t matter anyway
You can rely on the old man’s money
You can rely on the old man’s money

“What the hell,” said Stan.

“This is getting weirder by the minute,” I agreed.

The barn’s interior was fairly traditional, a long, dusty, rectangular space with hay lofts running along each side, its only incongruity a decidedly non-pastoral sound stage that had been built at the far end of it. PA speakers were stacked on either side of the stage and a rudimentary light scaffolding holding eight or nine gel pots was hung over it, suspended by the hay lofts on either side.

Two men, blond and brunette mirror images of each other, stood front and center in a group of four backing musicians, the brunette strumming an electric guitar and singing background vocals, the blond holding a microphone and singing lead, his hips gyrating ever so slightly to the beat of the kick drum. Both wore black shirts with military epaulets on the shoulders and striped skinny ties, loosened, I assumed, because of the heat. They were tall, both over six feet. And both sported hair styles featuring long, wispy bangs that recalled several female leads from early Burt Reynolds films.

The song they were playing suddenly halted for a beat, then kicked back into a dramatic new section, prompting the blond man to bend at the waist and wave his right hand in the air while singing:

And don’t you know! don’t you know?
That it’s wrong to take what is given you
So far gone! on your own
You can get along if you try to be strong
But you’ll never be strong

“This is terrible,” yelled Stan from the bale of hay upon which he had situated himself. He began barking uncontrollably, then broke into long, ear-shattering howls. Onstage, the blond singer opened his eyes, looked around him, then squinted out into the barn.

“Hold it,” he said into the microphone. The band kept playing, egged on by the dark-headed twin, who was now turned back towards the drummer, shaking his head back and forth as if afflicted with an unpleasant condition.

“STOP!” The blond singer shouted into his mic. The band stopped.

“Hi,” I waved towards the stage. “I’m Andrew. I spoke with you on the phone earlier?”

The entire band was squinting out into the barn now, some shielding their eyes from the stage lights as if staring into a blinding sunset.

“This is a closed rehearsal,” the blond singer said, his voice booming through the PA, dripping with reverb.

“No man, it’s cool, it’s cool,” said the dark one, waving his arms as if guiding a plane into a gate. “Come on up. We can’t see you out there.”

I approached the stage. “Sorry to interrupt. I thought we had a four o’clock appointment.”

“Yeah, totally,” said the brunette, who promptly took of his guitar, jumped off the front of the stage and extended his hand. “I’m Peter.”

“Peter Bradley Adams?”

“P-Bra, if you’re nasty.” He giggled and winked. “Did you bring your assistant?”

I pointed at Stan, still on the hay bale, sniffing the air intently.

“Oh,” Adams laughed, “the dog. Right. That’s totally cool. What’s his name?”

“Stan. And this must be Mr. Trebing?” I pointed toward the blond singer, who was still onstage, leaning on a microphone stand, eyeing us warily.

“Right. Hey Jonathan,” said Adams, “this is the guy from CAA. And his dog.”

"CAA?" asked Trebing.

"The booking agency, dude."

Trebing straightened and jumped off the stage, jogged over and shook my hand. “Jonathan Trebing,” he smiled, pumping my arm, “great to meet you.” He looked at Peter. “Dude,” he hissed, “you didn’t even tell me he was coming today.”

“Dude, I totally forgot. It was, like, totally last minute.”

Trebing relented. “That’s cool, man. Don’t worry about it. So, Andrew, you, like, want a beer?”

Stan had come up with the idea of impersonating a talent agent. It wasn’t much of a stretch for me as I had spent my first year in Nashville interning at Buddy Rich, an old school Music Row booking agency. The deception was necessary as neither Adams nor Trebing, or Deaderick, for that matter, knew our real motives for being there. The situation would require a certain amount of finesse.

“Why must you play that shitty geriatric music?” asked Stan, reclining on his elbows, halfway into his first E&J.

Trebing and Adams, seated together on a bale of hay, looked at each other and laughed nervously. “Uh, dude,” said Trebing. “No disrespect, but Hall and Oates did not make shitty music.”

“12 top ten singles in four years,” added Adams. “That’s like, our whole set.”

“I think what Stan really wants to know,” I interjected, “is why you stopped playing your own songs and formed One on One.”

“Oh, that,” said Trebing. “It was an aesthetic choice, really. I mean, like, dudes with acoustic guitars are, like, just not fashionable anymore. I mean, like, leave it alone already? Gordon Lightfoot had that shit totally wrapped up back in the 80’s.”

“70’s, dude,” Adams corrected.

“Whatever. Like, I’m not a fucking historian. The point is...” Trebing smoothed his bangs across his forehead a few times. “Um. We’ve totally found our audience now.”

“One on One is the premier Hall and Oates tribute band in the country. We’re unchallenged,” claimed Adams. “I mean, unbeatable.”

“Yeah,” agreed Trebing.

Stan let out a deep belch, then added, “I heard you guys really tore it up at the Tashian/Fish wedding.”

“Oh yeah, man, that was, like, an amazing gig,” said Adams.

“Dude, that gig was totally like, an artistic high point for me?” Trebing took a swig from his Miller Lite. “I’m a sucker for fat girls in tight dresses.” He stared off toward the horse stables.

“That reminds me, I think you guys know a friend of mine. Rachel Heusenstamm?” I lied.

“Oh yeah. She was my roommate before we bought this place. Not fat,” said Trebing.

“So hot,” said Adams.

“Yeah, Peter’s been so into her for, like, forever,” laughed Trebing.

“Really?” I prodded.

“Yeah, like, I totally thought I was, like, in there at the wedding, right? I was at her table during a set break, like, totally vibing with her? It was so intense. Then...”

Trebing broke into a monotone giggle that sounded like a short-circuiting fog horn.

“Shut up, dude,” said Adams.

“Then what?” I asked.

Adams placed his elbows on his knees before continuing. “I don’t know, man, it was so weird.”

“She went totally mental,” giggled Trebing, leaning to his left and almost falling of the hay bale.

“Like, this dude? John Deaderick... you know him?”

I shook my head.

“He comes up to the table to say something and, before he can even open his mouth, Rachel just, like, turns around and slaps him? Like, as hard as she can.”

“Really?” I feigned surprise. “That’s odd. Why?”

“No fucking idea man, no fucking clue,” Adams shook his head. “We thought it was funny but Deaderick got all red and walked off. I think he was, like, really pissed.”

“She creamed him,” said Trebing. “Had to hurt. We were totally laughing and shit.”

“ ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,’ “ Stan added, then continued to sniff a large pile of horse excrement in the corner of the barn.

“Dude, is your dog high?” asked Adams.

“So,” I redirected, “do you think you might have said something to Miss Heusenstamm that made her hit Mr. Deaderick?”

“No way. I was, like, reciting the second verse of ‘Did It In A Minute’... which, by the way, always works with chicks, you should try it sometime.”

“Totally,” Trebing confirmed.

“Interesting. So you’re telling me that Miss Heusenstamm was totally, um, absorbed in your conversation, didn’t even see M. Deaderick approach the table?”

“Uh-uh.” Adams exchanged looks with Trebing. “Dude... Andrew... Like, no disrespect or anything, but, like, can CAA get us some corporate gigs?”

“Yeah man,” Trebing added, “that shit pays!” He and Adams high-fived and drained the rest of their beers.

The sun was just beginning to set behind the farms along Hillsboro Road. It was on this road, seven years ago, that I had driven Stan, an innocent, six-month old puppy, back to my apartment on Belmont Boulevard for the first time. The girl at the rescue shelter had described him as having a real “personality,” which he had quickly demonstrated by pooping on the passenger seat and then speaking his first words to me: “Can you do something about this?”

As I watched him staring out the passenger window, surveying the wide-open farm land, sniffing all of the scents of Summer through his adult nose, I wondered if it all might have been a mistake. Stan could have been ended up on one of those farms, running and carousing to his heart’s content, a healthy, vibrant animal untainted by the seamier aspects of urban life, herding sheep instead of chasing criminals, sleeping under a warm eiderdown with a freckled child named Jimmy instead of waking up in a dive bar with immigrant prostitutes. I could only hope that the over-socialization to which I had exposed him had not left him completely jaded, had not totally diminished his proximity to the eternal possibilities of the human race.

“What a couple of whack jobs,” he muttered, slumping back into the passenger seat. “I’ve shaken down Bull Terrier’s with more talent.”

“Well,” I reasoned, “it wasn’t a total waste of time. At least we know now that Heusenstamm wasn't reacting to something that Adams said. Unless she is habitually driven to violence by Hall and Oates lyrics.”

“Not unheard of,” said Stan.

“Did you get anything?”

“Of course,” He leaned over for me to light his fresh cigarillo, “although it was a exceptionally difficult to decipher much through the goddamn barnyard stench. However,” he continued, blowing smoke through the cracked passenger window, “I can tell you that, A, the horses have too much corn in their feed, B, the drummer has a bit of a cocaine problem, C, the wiring is faulty in the lighting rig and, D... Adams and Trebing both have traces of a very particular aromatic oil on them.”

“Well, they have the same haircut, too.”

“No, no,” he waved a paw in the air. “This was an olbilatum/lavender/sandalwood mix. A custom blend from Aveda. Distinctly feminine. There’s no way those two bought it for themselves.”

“OK, so...”

“The scent was old. I would say it had been there for a week, maybe a little over.”

"You don't think..."

“I need to get close enough to Heusenstamm to find out if it’s her scent.”

“And if it’s on both of them...”

“... this thing is darker and dirtier than I first imagined.” He flicked the cigarillo out the window and yawned. “Heusenstamm. Never trust a Kraut.”

The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part III

2009-06-14T13:49:00.001-07:00

The Hermitage Cafe was one of Nashville’s last surviving greasy spoon’s. Perched on a hill overlooking a power plant, an industrial dump and, almost as an afterthought, the Cumberland River, The Hermitage served up such Southern staples as biscuits n’ gravy, steak n’ eggs and, on occasion, and when the customer provided the necessary ingredients, a Vegemite omelette.

“I love this place,” said Stan, as our waitress slid a plate bearing the stinking omelette in front of him. “Thanks, Sweetie.” The waitress glared at him as she moved to the next table. He rose from his haunches, put his snout to the plate and began devouring the omelette in noisy gulps.

“OK, here’s how it breaks down,” I began. “Our principal is a Caucasian male, mid-thirties, name John Deaderick. Lives on the East Side.”

“Ah, the East Side.” Stan chewed his eggs and looked out the window towards the river. Terrified of water, he had never been able to bring himself to cross the Cumberland despite the glowing reports of debauchery to be found in the city’s perennial bohemian enclave. “Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection.”

“Deaderick claims to have been assaulted by a woman, Rachel Heusenstamm...”

“Goddamn Kraut,” said Stan.

“... at a wedding... what did you say?”

He finished his omelette with one last slurp and nestled into the Formica bench. “I’m just saying, you should never trust a German.” He gave his ear a few tentative scratches with his hind paw. He was obviously still drunk.

“What is this, 1944? You don’t even know if she’s German.”

“Well, I think we can safely assume that she’s not Irish.” He grabbed a fresh cigarillo from the table with his teeth. “Light, please.”

I touched the flame of my lighter to the tip of his cigarillo and pressed on. “As I was saying. Deaderick claims Heusenstamm, totally unprovoked, slapped him at the wedding of,” I checked my notebook, “Daniel Tashian and Lillie Fish.”

“Fish, now that’s a good Irish name.”

“She hit him hard, apparently. He’s got a sore jaw and a bruised ego to show for it.”

“’A sore jaw and a bruised ego to show for it’,” Stan mocked. “Someone has been hitting the Law and Order re-runs a little hard in my absence.”

Well, maybe I had. “Just trying to give you the whole picture. I went to Deaderick’s house this morning.” I gave a brief but detailed summarization of the visit. “Something’s not quite right over there.”

“I’ll say,” said Stan, dropping the butt of his cigarillo to the floor. “Anyone with that much vintage Danish porn should definitely not have a Doberman in the house. So you’re thinking that Deaderick isn’t giving you the full story?”

“He’s definitely hiding something.”

“What does he want us to do, anyway?”

I told him.

“Sweet Christ.” He stuck his snout into his coffee cup and finished the last of the crappy brew in four dunks of his tongue. “We’ll need more information, then. You have to talk to everyone that was at that table.”

“I know.”

“And the Kraut. Music Stand.”

“Heusenstamm.”

“Whatever. So who’s first?”

I checked my notes again. “Two musicians. Jonathan Trebing and Peter Bradley Adams.”

Stan farted loudly against the formica, turning the heads of several diners in our direction. “I wonder,” he mused, “if it will ever be possible to get to the bottom of any questionable circumstance in this town without having to consult,” his tone hardened, “musicians.”

“Probably not,” I surmised.

“Music City, U.S.A.” He hopped down from the bench and stretched his shoulders, then popped up, tail wagging. “Alright, then. Duty calls.” He walked toward the door.

Two guys in mesh trucker’s hats sitting at the counter clocked as we passed. “You better git that dawg outa here ‘fore I shoot it,” one of them cackled.

“We were just leaving,” I said.

“Go fuck yourself,” added Stan.

The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part II

2009-06-14T08:36:00.000-07:00

Dickerson Pike was one of the last streets in Nashville to officially qualify as ‘no man’s land.’ By 2009, you could drive into just about any beat-up neighborhood in the greater metropolitan area and find a few young upwardly mobile couples renovating an old Victorian, planting a new bed of chrysanthemums and establishing a Neighborhood Watch program. A string of surprisingly progressive mayors had extended enough corporate tax credits to free up discretionary funding for improving the decaying urban infrastructure. It was all very pretty on the surface, but the bike lanes, greenways and multiple Whole Foods locations had not yet covered up the city’s dirty underbelly. A few hidden pockets of serious deviance could still be sniffed out, most of them in the vicinity of Dickerson Pike. And my dog Stan, quite literally, could smell a fresh pile of shit from miles away.

“He’s in the back,” said Carmen, the afternoon bartender at Stinky’s. I nodded my appreciation and began picking my way through the alcoholic obstacle course of sagging chairs, wobbly Formica tables and random drunks passed out on the floor. Stinky’s was an agglomeration of three gutted mobile homes yoked together in the shape of a horse shoe, lit exclusively by decrepit beer signs and a few fluorescent black lights with flickering bulbs. The air was heavy, humid with the swell of cigarette butts floating in cheap beer.

I found Stan in his usual booth, comatose on his back, his pink tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. An Albanian hooker named Svetlana was tenderly stroking the length of his furry white belly.

“How long has he been here?” I asked.

“He write za zong to make za young girl cry,” Svetlana sang, blissfully out of tune, “Schtan write za zong, Schtan write za zong.”

I slid into the booth across from her, right next to Stan’s head. “That’s nice, Svetlana.” I placed my hand next to his mouth. He was still breathing. I pinched his nose between my fingers and gave his snout a firm but gentle shake.

“Stan. Stan, wake up.”

His eyes opened halfway, blood-shot and crusty. “Svetlana, Svetlana,” he murmured, “ ‘we loved with a love that was more than love.’ “

“Oh, my schveet bootiful bebbeh,” said Svetlana, moving her hand from his belly to the white folds of skin around his collar.

“OK, that’s enough,” I pushed her hand away. “Stan, get up.” I gave him a light slap on his jaw. “We got a job.”

He opened his eyes a bit wider and twitched his nose back and forth a few times. “Ah,” he yawned, the toxic fumes of his breath making my eyes water, “the drought has ended.” He rolled over and fell from the booth to the dirty carpet, landing with an impressive thud.

“Oh, Schtanny,” cooed Svetlana, peering under the table.

“He’s alright,” I assured her.

“Oh what a beautiful morning,” sang Stan, padding out from beneath the table, “oh what a beautiful day.”

“OK, buddy,” I encouraged, “let’s go to the Hermitage and get some coffee in you. This one is important.”

“Aye Aye, Cap’n,” he said, raising his leg to urinate on a wall of fake pine paneling. “One more for the road, then we’re off. Svetlana? Another chardonnay?”

“Ooooh, you dirta dawg.”

“Stan.” I pulled a red leather leash out of my jacket pocket and held it out towards him. “You’re leaving me no choice.”

He lowered his head and stared at the floor. “You bastard. How dare you,” he whispered.

“Svetlana,” I said, reaching for my wallet, “how much does he owe you?”

“Oh, eetz OK,” she smiled. “Ee buy za drinks. Dee rest eez eazy,” she confided, blowing a kiss toward Stan as he waddled towards the back door. “Eee ash no ballz.”

The Roundhouse: A Crime of Passion, Part I

2009-06-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

By the droop of the dogwood tree in the front yard and the beads of sweat on the foreheads of passing housewives, I could tell that another steamy Nashville Summer was officially upon us. I had been staring out the front window for twenty, maybe thirty minutes, thinking of nothing in particular, wishing for a storm front to blow in from Wisconsin. There hadn’t been any action in the office for weeks. The outbox was piling up with unpaid bills and Stan had been on a bender for the last three days. Something had to give.

My cell phone began pumping out a popular European dance remix. Blocked caller. I assumed it was a collection agency but, feeling the need to explain something about something to someone, I hit the little green button and hoped for the best.

“Lifechangers. This is David speaking.”

“Uh, hello. May I speak with Stan?” A male voice, over thirty, Caucasian.

“Stan’s indisposed,” I lied, knowing full well that he was most likely holding court at Stinky’s, a fresh shot of E&J brandy by his left paw and two lines of Bolivian Marching Powder on the bar in front of him. “Can I help you?”

“Oh, I see. Um. Well, I have an issue.”

“OK. What seems to be the trouble, uh...”

“Marty,” he said, a little too quickly.

“Right. Marty. So what’s on your mind?”

He sighed. “I’ve been assaulted. By a woman. At a wedding.”

Two hours later I was pulling into the gravel driveway of a house in East Nashville, a gray vinyl-sided rancher with a bright red door. Before knocking I checked the name on a fresh copy of Dog Fancy that was poking out of the mailbox on the patio. John Deaderick. John Marty Deaderick? Doubtful.

The door opened to reveal a tall, thin man with broad shoulders and an intelligent forehead. He thanked me for coming, extended a firm handshake and led me back to a medium-sized kitchen. The dishes were neatly filed in a draining rack, the counter tops were spotless. A picture of a Doberman Pinscher was pinned to the refigerator with a John Deere magnet. Behind the scent of citrus Fabreze, the slightest tang of burnt coffee and recently-emptied ashtrays hung in the air like a bad memory.

“Do you like dogs, Marty?” I asked.

He looked confused for a moment, then remembered. “Oh yeah,” he replied. He pulled a glass bottle from the refrigerator and poured two glasses of pineapple juice. “That’s Latetitia, right outside.” From behind sliding glass doors that opened onto a back deck, the Doberman from the fridge was peering at me. Deaderick walked to the door and did a quick little jig in front of it. “She’s my sweetie, my honey-pie, my rag time gal,” he sang. The dog began pawing the glass with considerable force, long strands of saliva dripping from its jaws to the decking.

“So, Marty, got a wife, girlfriend?”

“Nope. Here, try some of this pineapple juice.” He grabbed the glasses from the counter. “It really wakes you up. It’s good for toothaches.” He sat down at the dining table across from me.

I pulled out my pad and pen.“Your teeth are bothering you?”

”My teeth are killing me.” He tapped a finger on the left side of his jaw. “This is where she popped me.”

The ‘she’ in question, he had explained to me on the phone that morning, was Rachel Heusenstamm, a 29 year-old graphic designer from Laguna Beach. The previous Saturday, at the wedding of Daniel Tashian and Lillie Fish, Deaderick, after consuming two Pina Coladas and taking several turns around the dance floor, had approached a table at which several of his friends were seated, ostensibly to make a humorous comment.

“I’m a real wise-ass, a funny guy. People expect me to be funny,” he explained.

He was on his feet in the kitchen now, demonstrating for me how he had leaned on the table, palms down, taking a moment to establish eye contact with everyone at the table, who were, he assumed, waiting for him to say something funny. By this point, all of the guests were looking at him except one, the woman seated to his immediate right, exactly where I was now.

“... and then, out of nowhere, she turns around, barely even looking, and slaps me as hard as she can. Roundhouses me! I mean, it was crazy. Crazy!”

“And you had ever met her before?”

“Never!”

“So she had no obvious reason for hitting you.”

“Not unless you call crazy obvious. Crazy. Obvious. Nah.” He shook his head and considered he two empty juice glasses. “That shit was crazy, man. That’s obvious.”

“You said on the phone that you’re not interested in pressing charges.”

He put the glasses in the sink and turned, waving his finger in the air. “Hell no. I just want her to know what it feels like to get popped and not be able to do anything about it. Goddamn. If I’d hit someone that hard at the wedding they would have arrested me. But what’s gonna happen to her? Fuck all.” He finished washing the glasses, put them on the dish rack. “Assault! It’s not fair.”

“OK. So where does Lifechangers come in?”

“Who?”

“Lifechangers. It’s the name of our company.”

It took him five minutes of pacing and fingernail chewing to tell me what he wanted Stan and I to do. It would take a lifetime to forget doing it. But our cash flow had trickled to nothing. And I knew that Stan’s liver wouldn’t hold up under much more inactivity.

“Marty. What you’re asking me to do is not a task that will bring me any pleasure.” The pineapple juice had gone straight to my gums. I was edgy. “Our fee is non-negotiable. I require half up front, the rest to be paid upon third party confirmation that the deed has been done.”

“Fine with me.” He pulled a velcro Dixie Chicks wallet out of his back pocket and put five one hundred dollar bills on the table. I folded them into my money clip and settled back in my chair.

“First, we have get a few things straight. This kind of thing is going to require total honesty from you. We don’t need any bullshit clogging up the communication pipeline.”

“I know. I know.” He was back gnawing his fingernails again.

“Say, you wouldn’t have any coffee, would you... John?”

He stopped chewing a fingernail and raised his eyebrows at me.

“Look, Mr. Deaderick,” I began. “You don’t run this racket for 12 years without picking up a trick or two along the way.” I pulled a cigarette from my pack and lit up. “I’m a patient man, John. I eat black liquorice for breakfast. I ride a yellow bicycle.” I paused to exhale and ash on his floor. “Please don’t test my patience again.”

“I had to know if I could trust you.” He pulled a marble ash tray from behind a discreet stack of vintage Danish pornography and placed it in front of me. “I use Prell shampoo. I’m a Capricorn.” He looked out the glass doors, where Latetia was quietly pulling the head off of a dead squirrel. “My grandfather’s name was Marty.”

A Morning Trifle

2009-06-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

I was awoken this morning by the gnashing of 'Stephen,' the alter ego my that dog Stan occasionally inhabits. The transformation usually begins with a couple of quick jerks of his head, followed by a roll in which he vigorously rubs his rather impressive cranium on the floor before flipping onto his back and gyrating uncontrollably, moaning and mawing in tones not heard since pornography was outlawed in Mogadishu.

"Stan, please, it's 7:45," I soothed. The growling and jerking continued.

"Stan, you're bunching the rug."

"STAN!"

"Oh, fuck you too," he retorted, rolling to his feet while emitting a not-so-tiny fart. He walked out of the bedroom.

I lay in bed for a few more minutes, then grabbed my Summer robe and headed downstairs. The unmistakable smell of cigarillos and cheap brandy was emanating from the music parlor. I found Stan there, reclining on the Moroccan fainting couch, the offending vices somehow balanced on each of his paws.

"Jesus, what's wrong with you? You can't smoke in the house." He could have at least made coffee, I thought.

"Open a window."

I turned on the ceiling fan and sat down at the piano, riffling through the opening chords of an old Ink Spots' song, "Java Jive."

"Well, here we are. Another day in paradise." He looked out the window and barked twice at a mother pushing a stroller down the sidewalk.

"How about a song, Stan?" I glissed up to the suspended five chord and gave him an expectant look.

"Oh, stuff it. I'm not your monkey."

"True, you're my dog. Now come on, you take the high part..."

"Seriously, what's the point?" He put his snout into the brandy snifter and dunked his tongue in and out of the brown liquid five or six times. "I'm turning seven in a couple of months. And what have I done with my life? What have I done?"

God, not this again. "You're living it to the fullest, Stan. You're right where you need to be. You snap at flies, you stare down opossums. You are one of the most prolific sleepers I have ever known. Most importantly, you make people happy. And you've got a lovely singing voice. Now let's do this, from the top..."

"I'm thinking of taking a lover," he sighed.

I turned back to the keyboard and picked out the opening trills of "Evergreen" with my right hand. "Stan, you forgot again," I said, "you've got no balls."

Dropping his drink to the floor, he rolled onto his back to examine himself. "Oh. My. God." He took a long drag on the cigarillo and blew a putrid plume of smoke towards the ceiling. "Then there really is nothing left. Nothing."

"Buck up, little buddy," I said, retrieving his glass from the floor and refilling it from the half-empty bottle of E&J. "How about I make you a Vegemite omelette?"

Still on his back, he eyed me warily. " 'Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.' "

"Sylvia Plath. You dog."

"Takes one to know one." He hopped off the couch and stretched deeply. I could smell the liquor on him from four feet away. "Now make me some eggs, shithead." He padded off towards the kitchen.

The Importance of Being Earnest

2009-06-11T17:08:00.001-07:00

My friend Jay Odenbaugh blew back through town earlier this week. I was able to catch him for breakfast and a hike on Tuesday. As we crested the Mossy Ridge at Percy Warner Park, he informed me that he had recently attained tenure at Lewis and Clark University. I was damn near misty-eyed as I contemplated the ramifications and the long road to his achievement: At the age of 15, when I had known him for three or four years, Jay stated his desire to become a Doctor of Philosophy, a feat he achieved quite handily in the subsequent decade. After countless exhibitions of pride and determination, I can't say that I was surprised to find out that he had finally grabbed tenure out of the hands of defeat; I just wish I could remember more of the details about his rise to the top.

This morning I met my father for breakfast at the Pancake Pantry. I had not seen him for a month or so and there was plenty to catch up on. He and Vicki have sold their house, not before winning a Nashville Historical Society Preservation Award for their fine renovation/restoration efforts. They are soon moving into another house that Dad has renovated, a Cape Cod that was on the verge of collapse this time last year. We went to look at it this morning, and I was truly stunned. It is one of the finest home renovations I have ever seen anywhere; the floor plan flows beautifully and old and new aesthetic details have been married with nary a flaw. It is the seventh house my dad has renovated in my lifetime, and by far his crowning achievement. I am looking forward to visiting and, as always, very happy to have such a sweet place to hit rock bottom, should the need ever arise again.

I went straight from Dad's house to Bill DeMain's apartment, where we wrote a new song called "Philosopher Dog," recorded the two remaining demos for 1908 Division and then mixed all of the demos. Listening back, I am pleasantly surprised. The songs are alternately more complex and deconstructed than most previous efforts. The implied apartment building narrative allowed for the use of various styles and dynamics that I would normally not include on one album, but all in all it holds together pretty well. Then again, what wouldn't sound good to ears tweaked on high-grade organic peyote? Before the carpet began slithering up my ankles I was able to detect a few arrangement issues here and there, but nothing major, nothing that won't be easily dealt with the minute these goddamn fruit bats stop flying out of my nostrils.

Word on the street is that I have my third home-cooked supper of the week to look forward to this evening. Liz is on a real culinary tear and I am supremely grateful. Tonight is Quinoa and vegetables, I believe. I would like to go for bike ride in the meantime, but feel obligated to hang with Stan for a bit; he endured a terrible thunderstorm today alone. He seems shaken but did managed to avoid relieving himself on the floor, which is certainly what I would have done in his position.

The Price of Adulthood

2009-06-09T11:56:00.000-07:00

Last night, Liz and I rode the yellow bikes to a restaurant in Germantown called City House. I had visited the establishment on three other occasions with mixed results, and this occasion was no different: for every five things the restaurant gets right, there is one element that seems slightly off, just enough to tweak a particular synapse that may or may not affect the vibrational frequency of everything else. Which means nothing at all, really, and, since most things don't, I will continue with the pride and determination of a little band you may or may not have heard of: Fognode.

The occasion was a festively grim one: our friend and confidant Peter Bradley Adams was, and still is, moving to Brooklyn, of all places. As a send-off dinner, it was a fairly disappointing experience, as there was exactly one toast to the guest of honor and almost no storytelling or 'This Is Your Life' kind of moments, of which the ensuing embarrassment is one of my favorite elements of a proper 'send-off' dinner. However, as a dinner honoring Peter Bradley Adams, it was a complete success, as Peter Bradley Adams had apparently expressed no previous desire to be properly 'sent-off.' In fact, he will be leaving most of his belongings in Nashville, taking only a suitcase and his now infamous collection of shrunken Doberman heads. Theories abound that the entire migration is merely a method by which he might construct an appropriately bizarre and disappointing set of circumstances that would propel him straight back to the Music City for the recording of an award-winning album.

Ah, Peter Bradley Adams. P-Bra, to his friends. Two glasses of Chablis into the dinner, he acquired a particularly giddy air, seemingly befuddled by the flood of non-attention being paid to him at his last Nashville hurrah. Someone had seated him smack in the middle of the table, the unwilling bifurcation of two incongruous sets of friends who, as the evening unfolded, seemed to express no interest whatsoever in getting to know one another. Firmly planted at the non-alcoholic end of the table, Liz and I were unable to follow the thread of his slightly-impaired logic, the cut of his jib. At a loss, we continued making fart sounds with our armpits until the pasta course arrived.

The heartburn and gas had begun to set in, so we said our goodbyes and hit the road on the yellow bikes. We navigated a slightly different route home, one that took us over the Demonbreun Street Viaduct just as mighty freight train was passing underneath it. "Look Liz," I pointed, "two paths intersecting, like strangers in the night."

"What?" She was too far behind to hear me.

"That broccoli was divecting, this gas like a knife," I shouted as she pulled up closer behind me.

"Just let it go, Honey. Let it go."

Peter Bradley Adams, this one's for you. Ahh, that's better.

The Hulabaloo

2009-06-07T07:40:00.000-07:00

I love The Week. It's a thin magazine that shows up in the mail every seven days, containing most of the relevant stories from the States and around the world, summarized in the words of different journalists from several sides of an issue. It is extremely well-edited and always gets me about as up-to-date with events as I probably need to be. In our house it is referred to as 'The Crack.'

Yesterday was a fine one. I began by heading over to Brad and Keri's house to check out some new Raleigh's Brad had purchased on EBay. Brad is a collector of Raleigh bicycles, most from the 60's and 70's. He is particularly fond of the Sports model, which he usually purchases and then re-sells to his friends. I bought one off of him upon arriving in Nashville last year, a bright yellow specimen that came in very handy before and after I was able to bring the Honda down from NYC. Yesterday, I intended to buy a smaller gold model for Liz, who has coveted mine for quite awhile (and is out of town this weekend), but it turned out to have some previously unnoticed problems in the gear hub that Brad wanted to address. In the meantime, I noticed another yellow model that he had recently acquired. It was in even better mechanical condition than mine, with more aesthetic points intact, not to mention a rack and leather saddle bag. I had to buy it. Oh, what a beautiful morning; say hello the the Twins.

Upon returning home I was picked up by Lindsay Jamieson and his brood, Walker, Rainier, Schaeffer and Emerson. We had an excellent late breakfast at one of the 73 local Cracker Barrels, then attended an open house for a film school for which Lindsay had done some branding work. After that we met his wife Molly and a few of her friends at a residential salt-water pool, the loveliest I have ever seen or jumped into. After trouncing Lindsay at water polo we left and I was deposited back at my house. Our roommate Rachel arrived home soon after and she and I went to Shintomi for for Sushi. We stopped by Blockbuster on the way home and got some movies, one of which turned out to be a BBC television series called State of Play. Talk about The Crack; we watched four straight episodes. I began falling asleep during the last one and had to retire.

Which was a good idea as today dawned bright and early. Stan and I took a stroll to Portland Brew. I finished a bagel at home while reading The Week, started this and then hit the road to White's Creek to work at Bob Workman's farm. He and I moved a refrigerator, then drove to another rental property he owns on Clarksville Highway, where I proceeded to spend the rest of the day mowing grass on a nifty little tractor. It was nice to pass seven hours outdoors in a field with a powerful piece of machinery underneath me. Cut grass and open expanses of country landscape make me feel tiny, in a good way.

I was pretty tired by the end of it so I grabbed a salad on my way home and promptly hit the couch to watch more of the TV series. I took a break after two episodes and rode the new bike to Blockbuster to return some movies, then looped back to the Circle K for some cigarettes. There is something surreal and circular about riding a bicycle through the empty streets of your hometown on a Sunday night. Combined with the dog walk and the day spent in the country, I feel as if I have spent the past 14 hours being eleven years old.

Schedule Of Events

2009-06-04T15:06:00.000-07:00

SCHEDULED:

7:00 Tennis with Paul Deakin @ Maryland Farms YMCA
9:30 Breakfast with Jay Odenbaugh and unknown lady friend
10:30 Songwriting session with Jason White
3:00 Lunch with Jay Odenbaugh and unknown lady friend
6:30 Dinner at Peter Collins' house

ACTUAL:
7:00 Arrived MFYMCA seven minutes early, stretched, chewed fat with Deakin, proceeded to lose 7-5, 4-6, 6-4. Serve impressive, ground strokes horrible-to-professional, with exception of lob, which is nonexistent, allowing Deakin, the shithead, to execute weird drummer monkey-run to net with no fear of serious retribution. Draw small amount of pleasure from estimate that Deakin has dropped somewhere between $500-600.00 on new gear, apparel and lessons since becoming interested in game six months ago. My expenses thusfar: $19.72, for one can of balls and court fees. Suck it, Deakin.

9:30 Breakfast canceled. Back to house to check on the ill and complain about various things over which I have no control.

10:30 Rode bike to J. White's. Started something vaguely Henley-esque that eventually transmogrified into Randy Newman/Leon Redbone-esque song about canine's: "A Dog's The Nicest Person You're Ever Going To Meet." My favorite song I have written in awhile, truly lovable and catchy as a cheerleader. Drank fresh apple juice, ate beef jerky from California and Gouda from Kroger. Smoked. Observed vegetable garden, very impressive and inspiring.

3:00 Rode bike to Fido to meet Jay and Karen, his friend from San Francisco. They are driving across the country in a U-Haul moving things. Karen is a dancer, very enjoyable. Odenbaugh better get his game right on this one. Ate chopped salad called 'Chop Salad,' very good.

6:30 Dinner at Peter's, heartily anticipated. We're bringing a bottle of port and some flowers that Liz bought. Looking forward to telling more people to go see Anvil: The Story of Anvil, the feel-good movie of the decade.

Chickpeas

2009-06-03T06:43:00.000-07:00

Stan and I have officially begun our new installation of the annual 'Summer Walk' series. We began the series last year upon landing back in Nashville amidst financial ruin and general heaviness of heart. As my body was still readjusting to the physical realities of not awakening with a quart of liquor still coursing through it, I would inexplicably rise at 6:30 every day, unsure of what to do with myself besides stare at the walls of my father's basement guest room. Daniel Tashian began inviting us to go on his 7:00 AM dog walks, rather ambitious affairs that really got the blood pumping. Suitably inspired, Stan and I soon initiated our own particular routine involving the creation of a portable cup of coffee for me and the installation of a plastic poop bag device on the business end of Stan's leash.

I quickly began to appreciate the mind-clearing effects of a good Summer morning constitutional, that wonderful amble through the steamy awakenings of nature, the universal coming-to, the infinite uniqueness of every single pile of animal excrement. Predictably, Stan was more than happy to establish a circuit of the surrounding streets and parks on which he could definitively make his presence known to the other canine inhabitants of the neighborhood. We were, in short, re-establishing a presence on the local scene. People were beginning to talk. More than once, at the coffee shop, passing the playground at Dragon Park, we heard the unmistakable whispers, the clandestine mentions of a 'comeback.'

A year later, we have graduated from the paternal basement, once again leading relatively 'adult' existences on the first and second floors of a house that we actually pay rent for. Surrounded by new and old friends on a regular basis, we have managed to resist the occasional temptations that would beckon us back to the darker corners of our history. This morning, proudly observing Stan raining down a great yellow disaster upon the neighbor's chrysanthemums, I was struck by the triumph of it all, the deafening trumpets of restitution. As the Dalai Lama once said, "We're back, motherfuckers. Watch out."

Strawberries and Cheese

2009-06-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

Today started with a pretty painless meeting with one of my attorneys, Chad. I had to get some papers signed and notarized. A woman he shares an office with said that my hat looked like something K-Fed might wear to the beach.

After thanking her for boosting my self-esteem, I hit the road to West Nashville for a session with Bill DeMain. We wrote a song called "Raggedy Man" and recorded four demos for a new album called 1908 Division. I was supposed to do an interview with a blog but the call never came. Bill and I soldiered on, through crackers and cheese and some nice organic strawberries he had picked up at the Farmer's Market.

I am hoping that the songs for this new album are as good as I think they are. It's about my old apartment building; the songs don't have titles, just apartment numbers. The lyrics are Little stories about the people that lived there during my tenure, a surprising number of whom seemed to have since been evicted or just fled of their own volition. I believe that the building is now condemned, but I could be wrong.

I am now back at the house, entering here to warm up for another batch of prose writing. I think I finally have a good idea for a novel. I wrote what I think is a good first chapter last night and I would like to finish a second today. I am trying to heed the sage advice of the one and only Robert Bradley: write first, edit later. This is difficult for me as I am naturally more attuned to style and rhythm than actual content. Many a well-paced manifesto has fallen prey to the basic incongruity of pizazz over substance. But this time I have a good plot that seems to hold up until the very end... which is, of course, fuzzy. I am, however, confident that if I start plugging away at the first 27 chapters the end will reveal itself. I am probably wrong but the exercise seems worth the risk, if you know what I mean.

I am not expecting anything too nuts from the evening. My girlfriend Liz and I are going to make dinner and maybe go for a bike ride. Tomorrow night we are meeting some friends at The Belcourt to see Anvil: The Story of Anvil, which I have heard is really good. I am bacheloring this weekend as Liz is going to New York. I am supposed to go to Franklin with Lindsay for some kind of film festival on Saturday and I think I am working with Liz's father at their farm in White's Creek on Sunday.

Stan was hiding in the bathroom when I came home this afternoon. I am not sure if a thunder storm came through or if he just needed some 'alone' time, but he seems fine now and rather sociable, to boot. He seems to have gained weight this week. But I could be wrong.

Blogger.com; What A CrapFest.

2009-06-01T13:43:00.000-07:00

Imagine my surprise when I was finally able to beg my friend Brannon to post a
"splash" page for me on the internet at davidmead.com, complete with link to a "blog," only to be notified that my new "blog" was no longer in existence. I would say "goddamn these people" but they seem to control the keys to this particular "kingdom" and I will endeavor to not offend them again.

Anyway, welcome to the newly refurbished blog. I hope you like it.

2009-01-26T18:54:00.000-08:00

I was sitting in a restaurant today across a table from my former manager. At a particular lull in the conversation and menu perusal we both allowed our gazes to drift up to the television hanging over the adjacent bar. Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, was giving a press conference of some sort. His halo seemed to have dimmed the slightest bit since the inauguration; his hair appeared to have been given the slightest bit of darkening. But his jaw was set with a new rigidity. He had a suppleness about him. He didn't just look presidential. He looked thoroughly consequential.

Early last year I fled New York and ended up staying with my father and his wife for a few months in Nashville. One of my favorite activities to share with my father during this time was the afternoon viewing of various political punditry available on digital cable. We would surf between the favorites, talk back to the television, argue and agree while consuming questionable quantities of Blue Bell ice cream. The election was swinging into high gear and there was plenty of steamy, fabricated discourse to digest.

Having not watched a lot of news programming in the years leading up to this, I would find myself occasionally hypnotized by the complexity of the swirling banners and embedded messages that constantly introduced the programs and surrounded the main frame of their broadcasts. When I was a child, my mother used to tell me that there were Satanic and otherwise hedonistic messages recorded backwards on the vinyl albums of rock bands. This was 25 years ago. The possibilities for subliminal mind control in this network cable swirl of pageantry made Led Zeppelin seem like the TeleTubbies.

Well, that was a heady time. Now, I have my own apartment again, but I do not own a television. So I was particularly struck today by the solemnity that seemed to surround President Obama's remarks. Even more, I was knocked out by the soundbyte primers that underlined his muted speech: "OBAMA TO SAVE ECONOMY AND ENVIRONMENT" is one that comes to mind.

A Different Sherrie

2008-12-27T15:43:00.000-08:00

Last night, in an exceptionally odd instance of life imitating art imitating life, I was introduced to a girl who appeared to be of Persian decent.

"David, this is Sherrie."

"Hi Sherrie, it's nice..."

"Oh, I know you, " she said. "You went to David Lipscomb, right?" She said, referring to my sinister alma mater.

"Oh yeah! Sherrie -----..." I remembered a warm Summer evening, a year or two after high school. I had run into her at a friend's house. After several-to-many beers, we ended up in a bedroom together. It was one of those moments in which you assume you are inspiring the tender loss of innocence but, years later, realize that you were merely developing into another set of bad habits.

Smiling, I leaned in to embrace her.

"Oh! No, I'm Sherrie ------."

Which led to an altogether awkward scene that can more eaily be imagined than described. The even stranger thing about all of it was that my good friend Daniel Tashian had once had the exact same experience with the same two women (incriminating circumstance need only be supposed, not assumed). He actually wrote a song about it, a fine version of which was eventually recorded by his band, The Silver Seas. I was fully prepared to provide you with a link for streaming but cannot locate it anywhere.

Don't Be Afraid

2008-12-26T07:49:00.001-08:00

When I was three, my mother took me to various coffee houses around Atlanta to watch her and her friend Patricia perform. They both played acoustic guitars and sang in excellent harmony. I admired them from the audience, usually posted up at the table of one kind stranger or another. It was odd and thrilling to be in a dark performance space with music.

Soon I knew most of their songs by heart; I had not yet learned to read and my memory was unbelievably uncluttered and accurate. All of the songs were of the gospel and inspirational variety and my mother and Patricia were very convincing in their performance. I remember one in particular entitled, "Rattle Me, Shake Me," a song about a girl who is suspected by various authority figures of being under the influence of one narcotic or another but, in fact, is merely high because 'she got the spirit inside.' Another favorite of mine was "Be Still And Know," a directive from God himself to 'stop runnin' through the streets and alleys of your mind, for all your hurried, worried runnin' only makes you more blind.'

It seems important to note that all of these songs were delivered in a very relaxed manner more Judy Collins than Jerry Falwell. Mom and Patricia were not of the hellfire variety of Christian entertainer that so often seems to get the headlines. They were the evangelical mirror of Joni Mitchell, Linda Rondstadt and Juice Newton. They probably got hit on after the shows. It was the mid-70's. There was a real electricity to the performances, the hormonal angst of twenty and thirty something people of the opposite sex stuffed into a room with no options available besides coffee sipping and bible verse quotation. People yearning to burst out, to get their game on, stuck having to squeeze their ambitions into tiny little messianic packages to be thrown at the wall and hoped for. It was very rock and roll.

After the shows I ran around the adjacent bookstore, or church sanctuary, or whatever institution's activities supported the coffee house. Sometimes I walked on the stage and strummed my mom's guitar while she talked to other adults. She taught me how to pack it up. It was too heavy for me to carry.

And So It Went...

2008-12-25T11:24:00.001-08:00

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On Christmas Music And Other Delicacies

2008-12-25T07:20:00.001-08:00

One of my more frequent moonlighting experiences over the past couple of years has been writing music journalism for a couple of different 'culture' magazines. One of these, Paste, has twice asked me to write a round-up of Christmas albums. A nice little box of CD's shows up in the mail around September, from which I get to pick and choose which albums I think are most notable. Over the past two years I have added the most exceptional moments to my Christmas playlist. I got some good ones. For sure.

My favorite is Marvin Gaye singing "I Want To Come Home For Christmas," the plight of a POW stuck in Hanoi for the holidays. Following Marvin is Tanya Tucker singing "Christmas To Christmas," then Bootsy Collins' "Chestnutz." It is important to have a diversity of genre in your holiday playlist. By the time Over The Rhine launches into "North Pole Man" the potential schmaltz of the holiday listening experience has been completely eroded. Christmas is a different experience for everyone. Gibbidy-gabbidy-goo.

In an hour or so I will hit the road for a ten mile run, heading north for a loop through deserted downtown Nashville then shooting West along Church Street out to the old neighborhood in Sylvan Park. When I was a little younger I was in such a hurry to accumulate history, to have thins to look back on and ponder. In such a hurry that I probably didn't enjoy the present experience nearly as much as I could have. But I did it the way I did it, which is fine.

This year I have found that running is a great way to relive time and place without getting too mired down in the potentially difficult melancholia of them. On a long run, my brain becomes so discombobulated and shaken about I find myself incapable of dwelling on one particular thought for too long. It is wonderful to run through places with which I associate painful or sad memories. It feels as if I am reclaiming for the present, and that I never have to live those old versions of them again. They sparkle anew, and I feel energy surging through my body, so much more lithe and adaptable than its alcohol-ridden former incarnation of only a few years ago. On my last tour, I did the running reclamation a lot, successfully making Chicago, New York, rural Virginia and Charlotte my bitches, each and every one.

So I can think of nothing finer than to revisit some Nashville history today with a nice long run. Extra endorphins pumping are good. Marvin, Tammy, Mindy and Bootsy bouncing around my head like matzoh balls, decomposing, digesting. I like how the city empties out: no traffic, vehicular or pedestrian. There is something about dwelling on the negative space and the absence of people that makes them seem nearer and dearer. I will push through it like a hot spoon in chutney and let the sugary remnants drip from me, so many moments that will never be again.

Library Thing

2008-12-24T09:03:00.000-08:00

And so it is Christmas Eve, a day generally adrift in melancholy for myself and a surprisingly large number of Americans. Nashville has presented itself in dull grays and muted ochres for the occasion, seemingly as non-plussed about the situation as I am. Rejoice! And, in a funny way, I do. Stan and I are supine in the living room, fresh back from a walk around the neighborhood that was fairly uneventful except for a completely chance run-in with Peter Collins, the producer of my first album, and his dog, Dave. This, of course, is what the holidays are supposed to be about, old friends and good cheer.

I checked in with a long-lost cyber portal of mine last night to find that I had all but been erased from its memory. Library Thing is a web site that has been in its beta version for over two years now. I stumbled onto it in 2006. It allows you to catalogue all of the books in your library online. Or all of the books you have ever read, if you like. Whatever you want to do, as usual.

Upon first finding the site, I hastily set about adding all of the books physically in my library as well as every one I could remember ever reading. This process was long but very satisfying. My books are the only material possessions that have remained with me from my adolescence. As much as I strive towards complete unattachment to things, I cannot let them go.

I hang onto my books because they are my history. The wonderful thing about my scrappy little library is that I can pick up any volume in it, read a few pages, and suddenly remember when I was first read it, where I was and what my general mood was at the time. This experience is unique to books, surprisingly; I usually lose most memory of similar circumstances surrounding a creative act within a few months of its occurrence.

Sometimes I wonder if this strange literary sensation is some sort of compensatory sub-conscious balance for my lack of powerful olfactory functions; I have read that smells are one of the most powerful agents of recall, but never really experienced the sensation myself. I liked to blow my nose a lot when I was a kid... perhaps I did some permanent nerve damage, I'm not sure.

So last night I checked in with my Library Thing page and realized that, somehow or another, all but ten of my previously added books had been deleted from my collection. I was shocked for two seconds, aggrieved for one, then pleasantly elated at the prospect of adding all the books again. Because the adding, the accumulation of books is the most enjoyable thing about the site. It allows the cataloguer to relive the experience of reading all of these wonderful and shitty books again at warp speed. The total number piles up in front of your eyes, the covers are all displayed in front of you, the rich melancholy of all that information stewing somewhere in the recesses of your addled psyche washes over you like a warm vat of honey. This is mine, you think. This is me.

But, as with nearly everything online (this blog included), Library Thing tempts with the short term gratification found in the further display of oneself for the perusal of others. 'Look at me, I've read this, and I liked it so much I read six more by the same author.' And, like nearly everything online, it also offers the opportunity for complete and utter fabrication. Which is where things get tricky.

For example, before I began writing this I was adding all of the Norman Mailer tomes I could remember reading in the past 35 years. An American Dream, cool. The Executioner's Song, yeah. Harlot's Ghost, sweet! Marilyn, of course. Tough Guys Don't Dance... loved it! Wait a minute... Marilyn? Mmmmm... I cross-reference a few other Monroe biographies and realize that Mailer's was not the one I read at all. Well, shit. There's an entire week of my life misplaced, in the literary sense. I confused Mailer with some crappy thing I probably picked up in an airport on a long layover! What does it all mean?

It's survival, bitch. I have a supremely annoying tendency to canonize all aspects of my life, the triumphant, the mediocre, and the downright shitty, into capsules of grandeur. It's only natural that the legacy preparation assistant in me would inject the tawdry knuck-a-knuck of an airport paperback into the form of Mailer, for the sake of preservation for future generations. What can I say? I like the night life, I love to boogie.

But it does raise a slightly disturbing possibility: How much of my life have I modified to fit into the hardcover limited edition autobiography that will, surely, any day now, be published to great acclaim and interest?

I will never, ever know. I release it all into the goddamn cosmos. To swirl around my head like so much dirty water in a high-school toilet bowl and then evacuated to the long, grey sea.

What Is The Average Price Of A Gallon of Gas?

2008-12-23T15:54:00.001-08:00

For no particular reason, this title popped up in the window. Should everything be capitalized like that? I am not sure, but I am sure that it appears authoritative. Like, 'Yeah, gas, go suck on a nut.'

So, this is the first installment of the heretofore dreaded blog experience. I write these knowing all too well that they will now have to be copied and pasted to multiple locations and shit. I find that maintaining a miniature online empire is not nearly as fun as conceiving one, even less than creating its reason for being.

I have come to realize that I seem to write best with the assurance of an audience. And I would like to be a better writer. So I'm going to blog. My friend Andrea is a great writer and a great blogger. I am told that, in order to be a writer, one must write, not just sit and opine about the slim possibility of actually doing so. I'm going to blog, and it will make me a better writer.

Friends, Welcome to the legacy.