tangled up in blue

about a year ago my dear sister came into the city to spend a few days with me. denise and i can sit for hours and do nothing other than listen to music and talk about unimportant stuff for hours... this was pretty much the entire weekend.

anyways, at one point during the weekend i played mississippi by bob dylan. When the song was finished she simply asked, "do you think he even has to try anymore"? i thought about this for awhile and turned it over and over again in my mind over the last year. but then today i was walking down the block listening to tangled up in blue... when i couldn't help but ask the even more important question, "do you think he ever had to try"?

a friend of mine said to me a few weeks back, and i agreed with him at the time, that no matter how hard i try. no matter how good i am. no matter who i co-write with. i will never write a song as good as tangled up in blue. today i celebrated this. if we can reach the ceiling, we stop growing.

And every one of them words rang true
And glowed like burning coal
Pouring off of every page
Like it was written in my soul from me to you
Tangled up in blue

my uncle and his cursed house

my uncle seemed to have absorbed all the handyman skills ever to be bestowed to the family hawkins. my father and i, despite our best efforts, have never been capable of taking four evenly cut pieces of wood and putting them together and having a square emerge. at best, it turns inexplicably into a rectangle... or worse... an oddly shaped piece of modern art that is as destructible as a swan made of origami in a face off with a steamroller.

my uncle, however, could take the origami, the steam roller, and turn it into a remote control airplane that actually flies and is powered by wind.

no matter, his house was cursed. for nearly the entirety of my memories of my uncle he lived in the same house made of all wood and on a stunning lot outside of both orangeville and shelburn in ontario, canada. in that time it got hit by a few tornadoes. the advantage to him having all the handyman skills is that while this was a hassle to have his house torn apart, he was given a blank canvas to make improvements he'd likely sat awake at night thinking about long before the tornadoes would roll through.

anyways, last year he sold his cursed house and moved up closer to my folks just out side of flesherton*, ontario. i had more than expected another tornado to tear through and have its last affair with the old manor, however, i was more than surprised to see it succumb to fire. perhaps the new owners have the savvy to recreate this lovely abode, but my suspicions lead me to beleive it may have stood its last stand against nature. as the earth seemed determined to have her final victory over the structure just a few weeks ago. i hope the new owners are able to find a way to carry on living on this property as it seemed that only the house was cursed, not the property itself... and further that it was something of a wonderland when we would visit and play hockey on the pond and go for miles on snowmobiles**...

anyways, i'm rambling. check out the story here


*according to my sister, this is the town where no one flushes their toilet.
** as a child i thought cousin kris was surely to kill me time after time after time, but he proved rather skilled at operating these machines at racecar speeds.

A time for reviews

John Mayer impressed me!

the first track on his new record, battle studies, basically knocks it out of the park. The song is called heartbreak warfare and is a very forceful step into the direction mr. mayer seems to be going. He starts out at a distance where he's protecting himself with a reserved voice and stays hidden behind exceptional, but timid, guitar work.

i guess one of my criticisms of john boy in years past has been that he is a good enough guitar player that he needn't make himself vulnerable as a player. since he can marvel people without taking chances he really hasn't had a reason to take chances with his chops... for the same reasons, he has been able to keep his writing from having a personal touch.

that being said, something seems to have happened to him. coming out of an epic pause, he bursts forward with a chord, his voice, his passion, and all the music in him for the line, "I don't care if we don't sleep at all tonight Let's just fix this whole thing now" and this lays the ground work for the what the rest of this record is going to be.

there are moments on the record that i can do without. and there may be a little bit too much of an emphasis on his broken heart, however, he's broken through a pretty big wall to put a record like this out. this record is incredibly personal and I don't imagine it was easy for him to put on the old chopping block, but as far as what i can tell it seems to be the best record of his to date... and the guitar solos show a lot of nerve and really work throughout the disc*.

perhaps the most exciting thing about this album for me is that steve jordan doesn't annoy me to death with his heavy hand and constantly flat snare drum. the drums actually sound really good! i knew john had this in him, but the steve thing was a surprise.

while i'm hoping he keeps the personal touch and intensity of the guitar work i also hope he loses a little bit of the solitary perspective.

enjoy

*the one on edge of desire is absolutely brilliant!

self-destruction and the survival of the most fit

i have a little studio i'm very privileged to use. its up on 33rd st and its home to a few of my guitars, some effects, a laptop and an outboard digital zoom multi-track recorder. now, it seems, it is only home to a few of my guitars, some effects and a laptop.

in a panic to try and finish up the rough cuts for the record i rushed in and plugged in the zoom in hopes of getting straight to work, burning down some masters and touching up some of the vocals and guitar work. however, it is a 12V input and my laptop charger is a 19V output, so when i plugged it in, thinking it was the zoom power supply, it was, in fact, the laptop charger. for a brief moment the screen appeared as normal, and then it started blinking at me. realizing my error, i quickly switched the adapters only to be left with more blinking.

there are many things that blink that perplex me... the red stop lights atop a four way intersection, an open sign in a deli, the lights on a wireless router* and strobe lights**... this one just devastated me.

however, given my endless resolve, and the capabilities of my not so ipod mp3 player, i decided to record direct into the walkman. i suspect at this moment i'd thought i'd try my hand at the formula set forth by the jesus record, and since i don't own a jeep my battle with life seemed to indicate that michael w. smith would not be trying his hand at 'finishing' this disc for me. which is a blessing.

so now, as musicians will prepare to hear the ideas i've set forward, they are to be warned. its noisy, dirty, sloppy, weak at points, but it is honest. instead of going in with complete ideas, it seems that it has become an open book, with endless options for the musicians involved.

this album is becoming a sort of a living thing... lets hope it doesn't own a jeep.

*because they blink when it works and not when it doesn't
**because i always find myself staring into the light