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first day

today is my first day of work. well, orientation, which is really probably just fun and games, but i am required to be there. and that, my friends, is the mason-dixon line between work and play. here is a song i found this morning courtesy of the matt nathanson blog.

still hard at work on the christmas album!!

To a Hammer - Erin McKeown

paste magazine's 50 best albums of the decade

this is a pretty neat collection. you can listen to every cd on the list, and there are quite a few i would recommend. sufjan stevens took the #1 spot with the illinois cd.

the dirty projectors

just home from the best show i've seen all year. the dirty projectors hail from new york city and are composed mostly of mad scientist musical geniuses. numbering among them are four (4) great vocalists.

here is the song 'fluorescent half dome' from the newest album, bitte orca.

Fluorescent Half Dome - Dirty ...

When I've had enough, when I've heard enough from police and pretenders
When I'm ready for my whole world to open up and surrender
I'll look for you, I will be searching the garden and the street
I will look into the eyes of everyone I meet
And when I finally find you, will I know?

Far beyond here, far removed from the sneering of the crowd
My eternal love sits smiling, sphinx-like and proud
Cross that disguise, I am glancing with needles in my eyes
Birds of infinity glisten, shimmering for the rest of my life
And I conceived them, not what they mean

adventures in musicianship

stephanie and i are booked to play a country western show this friday. i don't know too many country songs, so this puts me in an unusual position, singing in a faulty southern accent while adding lyrics about horses to songs that aren't even about horses.

the catch? we'll be playing with a professional drummer. that's enough to get me excited and maybe, just maybe, i will follow my instinct and buy a fake rattlesnake to put in my cowboy hat/belt loops.

early winter

october has only just arrived, but you wouldn't know it from the deluge of christmas music that has manifested itself on my ipod playlists, early. this is part of an annual, more monumental course of change, during which i prepare myself mentally and physically for the idea of winter.

the season (which began, as it does every year, at first sight of a jacket) encompasses a broad spectrum of emotions for an individual like myself. in a hot climate, it carries a semblance of the weather i grew up with. commercially, it ensures the presence of pumpkin spice lattes, seasonal lights of varying quality, and of course, overwrought holiday jingles.

this year finds me recording my own versions of some of these jingles as a means of exercising my home production skills and growing creatively. it's too early to share them, but expect a wintery demo come november.

looking forward to the cold season!

mariner's waltz

it's been said that folk songs are generally written about shipwrecks. such is the case with my newest demo, which touches on the subject. it was written and recorded in its entirety today. you can hear it here.


the words:

"gone but not forgotten
only lost among the waves
our father far away still sails
for an old town on the coast
given up for higher hopes
so many years ago our home

and oh the wind
it never carried him
and i stood there waiting then
alone watching the boats come in"

bqe

sufjan stevens- the writer, composer and multi-instrumentalist who in recent years is the most-studied of my musical influences- is issuing a new release. this comes after his more than two years of dormancy that have found me scouring the internet for b-sides, live performances, short stories, essays, interviews, and lead sheets, among other avenues of fastidious study that have often trumped my college academic pursuits. almost nothing in 2009 has excited me more than this news, to which i am dedicating my 20th blog post.

THE BQE- A Film By Sufjan Stevens

the best songs you'll never hear, pt. 1

Herman Dune - "1-2-3 / Apple Tree"



this single manifests all the instrumental half-seriousness of the simon and garfunkel catalog to underscore the plain honesty of the lyrics. i wish there were more songs like this one.

guitar

from a winery gig with stephanie k:

>

michael jackson

it was probably naive indifference that moved me to brush aside the anomalies of his youth or the unique damages inherent with child stardom to focus instead on the tumultuousness of the personality they fashioned. but when examining an individual so burdened with dysfunction as michael jackson, what matters to me today is to consider the enormity of his triumphs in the context of his deficiencies. in doing so i hope to gain at least a semblance of empathy for what will surely be a misunderstood emblem of my generation. to misapply his idiosyncrasies would be errant, and to discard his accomplishments would be in vain, and perhaps for now that's all that matters.

hbs!

happy birthday to sister Leigh, and to sister Regan (today!) in the wonderful-weathered month of june! good work!

sonoma

lots going on this summer. most recently, a trip to wine country. redwood forests. huge vineyards. the ocean. vacation amidst a vacation.





and i've been writing. some new songs to come. the single is written about constantine, but you might not gather that from the words, which are a cryptic lament regarding his maltreatment of christianity and its inevitable recurrence thereafter in the hands of the wrong people, us.

also, my diploma came in the mail. some words i wrote recently on graduation:

There are some things we learn to accept as given and permanent fixtures in the formula of the everyday routine, and not one of them more prominent right now than school. Most of the people I know have spent sixteen years (or more) of an only slightly longer life under a system of rigorous structure that has in many respects engulfed us, shaped us as individuals with the understanding that someday our own contributions might make us worthwhile. I dreaded it for years and years, the bus rides, the lunch lines, long division, the inimitable introspection of alienation, the unfathomable task of learning cursive. But today, finished and without the comforts and hassles of perpetual order, I find myself for the first time in the absence of all certainty, of all itinerary, and for once considering the life in front of me on my own terms, where every question is unanswered, every day is new and there are no guarantees. Nothing in the world could be more frightening or necessary.

in transition

There are just weeks left before graduation and the gradual move home. Arizona must have been a territory the last time the job market here so was so volatile.

I played a couple shows in Tucson recently. I'm still getting the hang of it, but everyone has been very receptive. It's an ego-builder when cars stop and 20 people on a street corner collectively ask for an encore. I'll dig up some pictures soon.

Discarded lyrics I found from high school:
"There is nothing at all to do in Phoenix
And it has nothing at all to do with Phoenix"

Hoping for some fun employment in hard times!

more wedding fun

this weekend:

Ben and Leigh's wedding!

plus a hard-rocking rehearsal dinner!

with sangria!

featuring STK and his Big Brass Band!
featuring String Quartet!
with Woodwind trio!
featuring Weston!

wedding season

Congratulations to my good good friends, Logan and Hillary, on becoming the latest of several handsome couples to tie the knot in recent months!

this year in music

Like most fourth-year college students, i am an outspoken enthusiast of music and inexpensive things. This is a position which compels me to advertise some means of acquiring a great deal of music at little or no cost.






Pandora is a free, easy-to-use web site that plays music based on the musical qualities of the bands you like, and chooses new songs based on your feedback. It is startlingly accurate and a fun way to spend a few hours. www.pandora.com







Rhapsody is a convenient service that lets you listen to 25 songs, like this Hall & Oates song, free each month, with no membership required. www.rhapsody.com

More later!