Where is the song for today?! It is now tomorrow and no song?! What!?
Just got home from Philly with Pearl and the Beard. Drove 2 hours and now just home at 3:30 am, but didn’t post song for today… truly behind. But where is the song?!
Sit down in a comfortable position. (No, really: this is the song. At least try it once…)
Close your eyes.
Rest your arms.
Be quiet.
What are you hearing?
(It’s a John Cage moment today: the YOU song. Wherever you are is what your song is…)
Love,
me.
(Did work on a song about a wish-fulfilling Frog…will post soon!)
Okay, okay… now that you did that, here is the song for the day on my side of the fence:
Attributed to: Guy Capecelatro (main vocal), Mike Wolstat (harmony), EHP (harmony)
This is part of the RPM Project (writing and recording an entire album in one month). This is one of Guy’s starts, then he sent it to Mike, then he sent it to me. I added a simple cello bass line.
Nervous
My hearing in the night
Is keen as an owl’s
But how can I be certain
That what I see is real
Maybe it’s the drugs
But think I see my mother in her robe
Walking through these woods
I suddenly grow nervous
I know that it’s not like me
It’s a little scary
Maybe it’s her ghost
Coming here to chide me from the grave
Sorry how I am
Sorry how I’m living
But it’s nice to see you mom
I hope all is forgiven
I realized I didn’t have you hear this…it is a part of the RPM Challenge I did with Guy. This song was written by Mike Wolcot. He did guitar and vocals, sent it to Guy Capecalatro who added 2 tracks, then I got it and added two tracks.
I feel this song is appropriate for a Saturday morning, as you may have experienced this event even last night: who knows! (*Those of you with sensitive ears- there is one f-word in this song. If you’d like, you can master the art of censoring by using your mute button with a quick hand…or cough on cue.)
My favorite line? We both have opinions and both of them stink…
I hope your weekend is shaping up to be a tremendous one! Working on multiple songs can make you forget what you’re really working on… but it’s a good mental workout. Have you seen Tim Burton’s Alice and Wonderland yet? I can’t decid whether or not to see it. I’ve got some mixed emotions about the trailer, but I felt that way about Avatar’s trailer and loved the movie… But, man, that Johnny Depp…
EHP
Get Out Of The Car
Get out of the car, let go of my hand
On the hook forever
For every mistake that I made in the past
You’re stalling for time now
Taking cheap shots trying to cover your ass
Our place is like quicksand
The harder we fight here the lower we sink
You never listen
You’re talking so much I can’t hear myself think
CHORUS
I’m so fucking angry
I’m trying to leave without working this out
In less than a week’s time
I won’t recall what this fight was about
When something’s on fire
We both have opinions and both of them stink
I never listen
You’re talking so much you can’t hear yourself think
Anyway… well, Jonathan and I have had a long few days. I just returned home from driving him to the airport. While he was still at work today I bought him a ticket to San Diego where his dad is in the hospital in the ICU hooked up to a ventilator. It’s all very sudden and worrisome. I hope you understand me being so late in the posting today… Some things take a back seat when things like this happen. I have never purchased a plane ticket on the day the flight was to take off: what an exciting purchase… if you can call it “exciting”. I packed him a bag, he rushed home from work, and we were off. Luckily, the cheapest ticket to San Diego was leaving from Westchester Airport: a very clean, tiny, tiny, tiny, airport with absolutely no traffic. So, now, I am home. With Lacey. Thinking. Trying to work. We have just eaten turkey sandwiches and a black and white cookie. I concentrate on why the white icing on the cookie is so hard and the black icing is so soft…
This is a song from the RPM Challenge I did with Guy. I spent a ton of time working on a song-study on rhythm and perfect fifths, and then this whole thing kind of collapsed on us. I will finished that song today and get it ready to post: on time! I have the whole weekend alone with Lacey. I will get her to help me on a song, too.
Pearl and the Beard have a show tomorrow night at Webster Hall and then we leave for tour on Monday! Jonathan will still be gone…I will keep you updated on life’s progress as I post…
Oh, Life: you are a cruel, yet tempting mistress.
Recording: I made 2 tracks of cello loops and sent them to Guy and Mike. Guys lyrics are always so appropriate and haunting. I like them. Mike’s piano is perfect… I mixed this one because I initiated it. I wanted to bring Guy’s voice up front: he has a tiny insecurity about his voice and usually pulls it back, but I love it, and think it’s right where it should be. Thanks Guy and Mike!
I Miss The Snow
Down here the trees look weird
And the leaves don’t turn to copper and then fall
I put whiskey in my coffee
Just to take the edge off
Because around here the days are sharp enough to cut you
On Sundays I feel so listless
Cause no one here prays the way we did
Though I don’t know your phone number
I still dial to hear them talk the way we do
If I could just hear even a moment
Of you breathing I might somehow be all right
I miss the snow and I miss Melissa
I miss her sister who screams in her sleep
Whoever said best friends can't be purple was totally wrong.
I have a friend named Bea. She has a beautiful little girl named Olive. Is Olive five or six? I can’t remember right now. Olive plays the violin and ukulele. She also has some really cool multi-colored bells that are from the Lilian Vernon catalog in 1984! She has kindly let me borrow them to write some songs! I have been working on a few songs that have these bells in them.
I used them for this song on the RPM Challenge. Mike Wolcot started this song with 2 tracks (he who starts it, names it), Guy added 2 more and I added vocals and bells. I recorded both in my bedroom very comfortably, so it went quickly. I feel like this song should go into a movie. No? I liked this project so much because it helped me think differently about instrumentation. What do you add to a song? What does it need? What don’t you add? I also liked it because I had to wait for my song at the other end of a production line. I had to give free reign to what might happen to my song. It was a really great exercise.
In any case, this is a bells song… I have been working on several others and will post them soon! This project has become very automatic for my brain. It’s become a constant companion: one that I know will always be there when I wake up no matter what happens the night before. It’s a good and bad feeling, actually. Sometimes accompanied with dread, other times excitement. I write every day even thought the songs I’m posting might be a few days old.
I had a show last night at Mercury Lounge. I was the only female set the entire night. Everyone following me was male with guitars, guitars, guitars. I only mention it because there was as slight feeling I had of being out of place, but I played my set with Abbie Gardner and felt better. We had to represent the Boobs! So, all went well. I had a really nice chat with a big touring band out of Austin called Wade Bowen. Since Pearl and the Beard is leaving on tour next Monday, we chatted it up about touring life and such. This band tours 200 days out of the year, has INTENSE merchandise (girl’s boy-style underpants and $400 guitars with Wade Bowen’s face on it). One member we talked to was 30, married, with two kids at home. It’s an interesting look into the way life is for some musicians. This is their job. They play music and live out of a bus: and they love it.
Until tomorrow! Hope things have been going well this week for you…
7 pm. 365 Songs! and Abbie Gardner is singing with me!
Opening for Dan Torres!
$10. Be there or Be absent and squarish.
This is a red barn. But not at dusk. But I think it’s okay that way.
Red Barn At Dusk
Am I the talk of the stage? No.
Am I the bride or groom? No.
Did you leave me? No.
Am I the talk of the stage? No.
Did you see my name in lights?
Like they foretold?
I liked you then more.
Liv, come back!
Liv, come back!
Don’t you know I have your shoes on my back porch?
Am I the talk of the stage? No.
Am I the talk of the stage? No.
Did you show your age for my back?
Oh, every time.
Every time.
Every time.
This is the last song I completed for the RPM project. It’s over! Guy Capecelatro started the first two tracks of this song, then sent it to Mike who added two. I got it yesterday and worked on it last night. I added two tracks of vocals. These lyrics are improvised. The crying in the end was a weird glitch in my brain that said to me as I was singing, “Hey. Cry here.” Ha! It was funny and when I was done I thought, “Can I really send this?” It was the first take of those vocals and the eleventh-hour was drawing nigh, so I didn’t do them again. Guy wrote back after I sent it to him, “This is so very awesome and unexpected. I’m entranced by the singing. Have you heard Cocorosie? Has a little of that going on, particularly in the near sobbing ending.”
I had not heard of CocoRosie. I LOVE IT!!! And now you can know about CocoRosie, too!
I am tired. I have a show tonight! Yay!
Once again I am feeling great, huge heaping amounts of gratitude for you. Thank you for coming over. Have a spectacular day.
EHP has an early Mercury Lounge show, TOMORROW NIGHT! Monday, March 1 at 7 pm! With Dan Torres. She starts at 7 pm and is doing some 365′s with special guest Abbie Gardner from day 36! Get more info here.
I know what you need: A random picture of the kissing scene from The Godfather. Yes. Exactly.
The past week has been a whirlwind. The second I get home, I’m off again. Yesterday was a crapshoot: lost the charger, computer died, and drove from Maine back home all day yesterday. The snow in New York has been piling up, and it’s making everything take a little more time than usual. Pearl and the Beard played an awesome show at Hog Farm in Biddeford, ME (my favorite venue so far!), and we leave again in just short of a week for our tour to Austin. I’m tired already.
The RPM Challenge is ending TODAY, and I’m rushing to finish tracks… here is a finished track I’ve done for the RPM Challenge with Guy and Mike. (For more information on the RPM Challenge, see day 46.)
I love electronic, experimental, indie-bandish, dance, etc. music. I write acoustic ballads sometimes, but in my heart I love this stuff and wish I could put out stuff like it. Broken Social Scene uses a weird sound-catalogue song, and I like their impressions and quirks. Animal Collective is another band with a cool indie-electronic sound collection that has gotten a lot of press lately. (There are more, but it’s already 9 am. Let’s post already.)
Anyway, for the RPM I put together beats and a bass track from Garageband and sent it to Mike Wolstat and Guy Capecelatro. We are, each of us, at the mercy of the others to put whatever they want onto our original tracks. It’s been so interesting to see what the others have come up with this. I worked on this yesterday and today. It’s been hard to know what to pull out and back and find clarity and a focus, but it is what it is, and it’s groovy, which I like most of all. What you’re hearing here is a collaboration of two tracks from each of us to create:
Please Delta Airlines: Let me on with my cello today so I can get to Florida for my shows in peace and non-anxiety. Please.
Good morning. I understand the need for a break. I’d like to have one right about now, but it’s not really an option. So, here we go:
The RPM Challenge: Held every February and people from all around the world get on it. The Challenge: “Record an album in 28 days, just because you can. That’s 10 songs or 35 minutes of original material recorded during the month of February. Go ahead… put it to tape.”
I was approached by Guy Capecelatro about collaborating on an RPM project for the month of February. The collaboration in Guy’s words:
The idea: writing 3 to 4 songs with just 2 things on it then passing it along for the next person to do 2 things and then the final person and their 2 things. What you start with can be anything at all as long as you’re okay with free rein from myself and Mr. Mike Wolstat.
This has been an interesting endeavor, and I would suggest anyone stuck on something to give it a try. It’s an interesting process also because as I’ve received each original version of the proposed songs, I’ve had to remember that another person has yet to add 2 more tracks to it. It’s a good lesson in listening and planning out your attack.
The past 24 hours I have either worked on existing or written new material for 8 songs both for myself and other people. I leave for Florida today (Feb. 18th) at noon and then run to play a show tonight at 11 pm in Miami. Today, I would like to show you just a few incomplete songs within this RPM that will be completed by the end of the month with more tracks on them added by Mike Wolstat and Guy Capecelatro. When the song is completed, I’ll update this with the new version so you can hear the finished product.
#1 Give Me More in Color (Original Version): WEIRD! But I’m over myself and will show you anyway. It’s funny. (A little of both “funny ha ha” and “funny weird me out”). I sat with my tenor uke and started playing with the beginning motif, pushed record and improvised the rest of the song. This is the first and only take of the uke part. The vocals were recorded immediately afterwords and are completely improvised. I thought I would just use this first improvisation as a map and write the rest of the song from it, but as I went back and re-recorded it, the performance was so weird and unlike me, I decided to just use it. So, there it is. I have sent this song to Guy to add whatever in the world he wants. We’ll see if he can make any sense of it… and good luck to Mike as well!
#2 There’s a Fire (with EHP only): This is a song Guy wrote and sent me that I worked on yesterday. His original parts are the thumb piano and vocal. I really like almost everything about this song. I went against my instincts with the additions I did to this song. I was actually hearing female vocal as an accompaniment to Guy’s lead vocals, but did tambourine (one of my least favorite instruments, actually) and a cello line. Mike still gets to add 2 more tracks to this and it will be complete! I like the cello line, but question my use of tambourine. What is this life but to learn?
#3 Bachelorhood (with Guy only): What you’re hearing here is a tiny loop of the beginning and end of a track I received from Jeffrey McKenna of Canada. He and his brother put this track together and sent it to me as a 365 hopeful. It’s cool, and I’ve been working with it for a few weeks. I used the first 2 seconds or so of the end and the beginning for this song as well as manually playing an old recording from my record player from The Best of Steve Allen’s “What is a Wife”. I sent it to Guy and he added toy piano and nature sounds. Mike Wolstat will add two more tracks. We’ll see what happens!
The 365 continues…thank you for coming back again and again… see you tomorrow!
This is a red barn. But not at dusk. But I think it’s okay that way.
