No matter how unique and clever you think your idea is, somebody somewhere else has also thought of it… I have Doppelganger I did not see coming: Kyle Jennings in Honky Tonk Rome, doing as the Honky Tonk Romans do.
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It is time to say goodbye to all the promo from my previous, dozenth album, The Beast Is Back… It’s tough to make sense out of promo hype. They want you to list your influences, but after 30 years in the Biz, you don’t have influences anymore, just the work itself. “Influences” are now “Colleagues.”
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I experienced one of my most prolific songwriting stretches. I was in my mid-30’s, enjoying a confluence of skill, passion, and discipline. (Such is common for people at that age. The New-Agers, mystics, and other knowers-of-things call it “Saturn-Returning.”) …The only unusual thing about these songs is that there are 31 of them in the same package.
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Bringing Pollyanna and Cassandra together has not been easy. This is not a match made in Heaven. Limited time, limited resources, limited equipment, and unlimited naiveté. But true love is stubborn.
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“Pollyanna,” the derogatory nickname for a person who is optimistic so far beyond realism, that such optimism ceases to be a virtue. “Cassandra,” the Trojan prophetess of doom. I take to be some sort of archetype for a personality that is peculiarly intelligent, sensitive, but self-fulfillingly tragic.
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Most fields of endeavor are populated by “mediocre men.” They don’t “run things” so much as “maintain things” with gate-keeping, rites of initiation, rigid themes of expectation, micro-hazings and harassments that reserve places in the hierarchy for other mediocre men.
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Upon given her a solo section, he said, “Now’s the time you show your stuff. And you know you got a lot of stuff to show!” …Her solo was far from a sizzling show of “her stuff.” She played like she wanted to disappear. After rehearsal, she left before everyone else. And a moment ensued that I will never forget. The bass player said, “Man, you can’t talk to her like that! That’s sexual harrassment.”
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The pandemic created the most universally, mutually supportive environment for independent artists than I have experience in my 35 years of doing it…. One gig is worth a week of rehearsals.
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“That Bonnie Raitt song,” said my friend back in the late 80’s, “is so beautiful. But that old man who sings it with her kinda ruins it.”
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I’ve written only three “important” songs. What I mean is, in thirty years of songwriting, only three of my precious creative brainchildren might make a person stop and think about something they weren’t already thinking about. …If I can get away with delivering a line like “the burden gets lighter, and the love grows brighter,” it means that my skills are honed.
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The day after Thanksgiving, I released “A Song About This.” It’s the best song I’ve written in years, and I intend to not make a single dime off of it for myself. In the ongoing effort of equality and justice, all BandCamp and digital-streaming proceeds go to the Eugene, Oregon local chapter of the NAACP.)
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…”Hobo-Rock” anthem. Closing salvo at the spiritual fatigue and exhaustion from ever-digging deep and ever-fighting the good fight. You might say it’s a paradoxical surrender by simply raising the flag and declaring victory for no apparent reason.
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I’m not known for optimistic love songs -- an average of one per decade. So why now, when the country is burning with pain and division?
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