International Clash Day 2018: I’m So Bored with the U.S.A.

In honor of #InternationalClashDay I recorded I’m So Bored with the U.S.A. in the stairwell today on my lunch break. Long live The Clash!!!

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I’m So Bored With The U.S.A.

Yankee soldier
He want to shoot some skag
He met it in Cambodia, but now
He can’t afford a bag

Yankee dollar talk
To the dictators of the world
In fact it’s giving orders
An’ they can’t afford to miss a word

I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
But what can I do?

Yankee detectives
Are always on the TV
‘Cause killers in America work
Seven days a week

Never mind the stars and stripes
Let’s print the Watergate Tapes
I’ll salute the New Wave
And I hope nobody escapes

I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
But what can I do?

I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
But what can I do?

I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
I’m so bored with the U.S.A.
But what can I do?

MLK Day 2018: Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)

For Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday this year I thought I’d record this favorite from my Sunday singalong songbook, George Harrison’s Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth). So I took my Martin (guitar) over to one of my favorite stairwells on campus last week and recorded this song.

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Give me love, give me love, give me peace on earth
Give me light, give me life, keep me free from birth
Give me hope, help me cope, with this heavy load
Trying to touch and reach you with heart and soul

Ommmmmmmmmmmmm my my lord
Pleeeeeeaaaaaase take hold of my hand
That I might understand you
Won’t you please, oh won’t you…

Space Cakes and Cinescapes

[zoomsounds id=”cinescapes-2″]

I’ve come to love ambient music over the last few years, largely because I listen to it by default in the morning, meditating, and at work. So I was jazzed about joining Darrel in Gray’s music room a few times in December for ambient jams to improvise cinematic soundscapes.

Darrel and  I are mostly on our guitars, thick with effects and tricks, while Gray floats from keyboard to kit, guitar to Theremin. These are four of the more magical moments from our second session. Here’s what Darrel heard:

Tunnel Vision – making me imagine walking the streets of Tokyo just before Dawn. Won Morn offers lovely weightlessness – dimensions and intrigue, a first spacewalk? But change is afoot with Won Too – with its unsettling fields, dark skies… and battering. And the journey into darkness concludes with a visit with Edvard Munch in Halliday Ja.

Cinescapes 2X4

MANTRAS Update, Jan. 2018

 

HamsaI started MANTRAS in 2013 when I chose four songs (#s 1-4 below) that have a reggae/ska feel. I dreamed of a horn section for these and contacted a great local trombone player and arranger (of Grupo Fantasma/Brownout fame) to write parts and produce a horn section.

We went into Tonehaus studio and laid down drums, bass, and guitar. We went back a few months later and laid down a three-piece horn section of trombone, sax, and trumpet.

horns1
Dan Bechdolt (sax), Kevin Flatt (trumpet), Mark “Speedy” Gonzales (trombone)

I took all the tracks home, got lost in the weeds of editing it all, not knowing what I wanted. You know when you get your hopes and expectations up and then the details spin you around till you’re dizzy?

Spiral animation
Sometimes, it feels like this.

That was five years ago. Since then I have written new songs (and added two to the album that seem to fit nicely) but the unfinished MANTRAS has cast a shadow over my creative output. Now, as 2018 begins and I’ve got a bunch of new projects pulling me forward, my New Year’s resolution is to finish this album as an EP this Spring.

I’ll just keep repeating my mantra from I Have Arrived:

No more waiting for the stars to align
No more waiting, no more hesitating

Tracklist

Here is a rough-cut of the songs for the upcoming EP, MANTRAS:

  1. No More Shitty Gigs (4m)
  2. I Have Arrived (4m)
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  3. This Song Is Done (2:20m)
  4. I’m Not Gonna Try (6:20m)
  5. Bright Eyes Shine (3m)
  6. Outside (4:30m)

Favorite Books From 2017

Just MercyJust Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson

Bryan Stevenson has spent his life giving not just legal aid but himself to otherwise forgotten death-row inmates throughout the deep south. In his understated way, he reveals systematic injustice and dignifies his clients, creating a redemption so powerful that we feel it from just hearing these stories.

Fear and anger are a threat to justice. They can infect a community, a state, or a nation, and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous.

But simply punishing the broken–walking away from them or hiding them from sight–only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.

News of the WorldNews of the World by Paulette Jiles

Captain Kidd, now in his 70s, makes his living traversing post-Civil-War Texas reading newspaper articles to frontier people. When he has to escort a 10-year-old German girl back to her remaining family after having been in Kiowa captivity for most of her life, he seems to be the only one who can usher her precarious life between the two worlds. This vulnerable and unlikely pair proved extremely charming and heartwarming for having helped each other survive the unforgiving prairie

Maybe life is just carrying news. Surviving to carry the news. Maybe we have just one message, and it is delivered to us when we are born and we are never sure what it says; it may have nothing to do with us personally but it must be carried by hand through a life, all the way, and at the end handed over, sealed.

 

Continue reading Favorite Books From 2017