Hotdogs
/The Bellows was released one year ago today. I’ll write more below the numbered points for intrepid readers, but for those with little time to spare, a few quick things:
1. I made a video for the opening song, Carriage : Horse last spring, which I never released. Fuck it, why not? You can watch it here.
2. There is a new video up of me and my band performing one of the songs from The Bellows live at Ghost Hit Recording. This version will be out on an LP with a few other pieces in the fall. Much as I love what we did, I added vocals, which really brings it to life. To be clear, none of these folks are on The Bellows; they are my band now.
3. I’ve been archiving old work and getting things online. Not surprisingly, a bunch of music seems to have been lost in the shuffle of 25 years…I swear I’ll find the project that I did with Tim Keiper one of these days. If you’re interested to hear what I was doing in my twenties, you can find things here with my band Above the Orange Trees. If I had to pick favourites, my shortlist would be the following songs:
The Edges of the Earth
Sinners
Boats on a Hill
Knives Like Birds (on the soon-to-arrive ep titled Old Wire)
Maria and the Sea
The Insomniac
Wednesday Imperfections
Georgia at Least
I Am Not In Spain was/is based on Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, so if you listen closely to the record in its entirety, there are layers of meaning to unravel. I wrote out lengthy liner notes at one time, which I cannot find. Maybe someday.
And I am still, all of these years later, smitten with our covers of Wire’s Outdoor Miner and Will Oldham’s, Tonight’s Decision (and hereafter). I thought they would be available online by now, but for some reason it seems to be taking forever. Seek them out later if you’re curious. They were both released on compilations with other artists like Iron and Wine, Calexico, Mark Kozelek, Jolie Holland, Swervedriver, Lush, etc. I’ll send links next time.
Left behind in the dust. (Feel free to stop reading now if you’ve reached your limit.)
While I’m tempted to write at length about the crisis of the aforementioned music “industry,” my/our relationship to time and art, and my mix of joy, pride, and disappointment with The Bellows, I have decided not to do so. Or, not in much detail. I, like the music ‘industry’ itself, am at an inflection point. I am perfectly content making work that reaches an infinitesimally small number of people. But in order to maintain my own sense of elation, I must temper my expectations, and consider the ramifications of how I use my time and creative energy. I’ll spare you my rant about self-promotion and Instagram for now. Let’s just say that my days are numbered.
I naively and incorrectly guessed/imagined/daydreamed that The Bellows would be listened to about 100 times more than it has been. I suppose that could change, but I’ll not hold my breath. As of this writing, 2317 streams at Spotify. I despise Spotify for more reasons than I can enumerate, and I do not listen to music there, but I can see how the platform has become the default measure of some degree of ‘success,’ absurd as that may be. To be clear, I do not mean that I thought the record would be streamed 2417 times, I thought it would be streamed 231,700 times. Naive indeed. Optimistic? For that matter, I figured that my solo guitar record, “If I am Still Here Then This is How it Will Sound,”would also capture the hearts of many and that Shumoto and the Byrde would be renowned in the world of improvised, ambient noise. And yes, it all requires/asks something of the listener. Too much? Bring me fries and Coke!
I sold 4 vinyl copies of The Bellows, all to friends; I was planning to mail a free one to all of them, so hats off. I’m glad that I didn’t order 200. It must be a good feeling to sell out. Hell, it would probably even feel good to clear your tray of red hots at the ballpark and head back to the cement cutout for another pile. For better or worse, I’m not sure that I can justify spending money to press any more records in the future. Which makes me feel a bit sad. I love the medium and the physicality. I do not care for the vacancy and the ungraspable mist of digital music. I like to hold something in my hands.
I suppose I should be thrilled that anyone gives my work their time, when our lives can feel so fleeting, like a train moving too fast. A bad metaphor. You know how you’re in the kitchen, and you’re making five things at once, and alsotrying to set the table for dinner, and take the occasional sip of your Negroni? The notion of turning on the kettle seems almost impossible. I think most folks are too busy on Instagram and email and with their kids and their work to turn on the kettle. But the kettle is the music. Whatever happened to people lying on the floor, hugged by headphones, listening to an entire record front to back, in the low light of a candle? Every time I send out one of these newsletters, a handful of people unsubscribe, which I honestly find more funny than sad. It’s like a snake eating its own tail; at some point, I’ll just be sending them to myself. Self-promotion.
I read in a Wall Street Journal article recently, that four out of five songs released digitally, are never listened to by anyone other than the person who released it. Oh boy. It’s beautiful in a way, because we’ve reached a point where music cannot generate any measurable income for most people, which by default divorces music from commerce for 99% of us. If only there were a way to take it all the way back to ritual. To be clear, this does happen/is happening in some ways and in some places with some work; Pauline Oliveros and her Deep Listening retreats being a good example.
In the late 1990’s, fewer than 100 new songs were released every day. Were you a music journalist, you could, with some diligence, listen closely to all of it. The numbers now are a bit fuzzy, and some of it is entirely generated and distributed by machines (AI), but the rough estimate is 200,000 songs daily. Sometimes, I feel bad about contributing to this insane glut of information, but I haven’t a choice. I tried once to walk away from music and it proved impossible.
At this stage of my life, having worked at this craft for so many years, it is just a thing that I do. I play and/or write music every day, unless I am travelling, sick, or nursing someone else who is sick. Outside of the people that I love, it is the centre of my life. While this all may sound like the ramblings of a tortured artist or a bitter middle aged man, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I am aflame with sonic energy. That sounds lame, but that’s how I feel. If I had the means and it made any sense, I could go into a studio for a week every month and make a record that I would be proud of. Twelve a year. No problem.
I love what I do and I will not stop. I am lucky to be here making the work that I make ruined hand an all. I am thankful that a few people, some of them the most remarkable humans I have ever encountered, listen now and then. I am lucky to make music with people whose work I admire, and who remind me that that value lies within, not without.
My dear friend and collaborator Ben Jahn said to me last week, that many of the popular artists online are just “low level vibe mathematicians.” Like I’ve said before, I’ve always had the wrong pants. I fear a dark time in the future, when I have to submit all of my music to some AI tool before uploading to streaming services. Said services will begin to limit the amount of space that they are willing to store because we’re running out of water to handle all of the data. So the AI machine will determine whether or not my work passes muster, and it will not. The “hook” will arrive too late, or not at all, or the guitar bits will be too dissonant or too loud or too quiet, the vocal melodies too slippery. There will be too much “noise” and too many sections where things get "weird.” Too long. AI is all about predictability, and if my work isn’t predictable enough, then the machine will deem it unworthy. Ben and I are fascinated by how AI is swallowing up the past and turning it into the future. Another snake eating itself. I guess we’ll just stand aside and watch, like hangings in the old town square. Is someone selling hotdogs? Where is Ignatius?
Of course the beauty is, that maybe all of the new music online will be the most predictable, unlistenable shite, and everyone else will retreat back into the shadows, Ala 1647. We’ll all be dubbing tapes of the things that we love.
Meanwhile, I head into the studio with my band next week to make another…..
