Sorry for the delay in posting week 24. I was in New Hampshire with family last weekend, and it's taken me all week to do what I usually do in one weekend day.
The bright side of this delay is that this week's video comes from that New Hampshire stay. I took it from the dock on the morning we left. As you can see, it's a beautiful place. 
It seemed like the perfect complement to this little instrumental.
Enjoy!
P.S. I'll be hosting my first Livestream show on Monday, July 17th at 8pm. This show is only for patrons, but is available to patrons of all levels. If you haven't yet, you can become a patron for as little as $1/month. Chump change!

Executive Patrons (You Rock!)
Karen Schantz
Alan Bargar
Jonathan Hochberg

This song is a true product of the weekly song project. I mean a few things by that. First, this song simply would not have been written if not for the creative imperative of this project. Second, it was created entirely in this week. I wrote the bulk of it in the middle of the night between Thursday and Friday, reasoning that songwriting would be a better use of my time than the weird ticker-tape of anxiety that usually plagues me when I'm up in the middle of the night. I worked out the kinks and details on Friday and recorded it on Saturday. So it's brand spanking new. That said, I like it quite a bit. It doesn't feel like a song I slapped together because I had to, and I can already tell I'm going to enjoy playing it live. 

Also, this week I found myself reveling in the sheer creative license of being a songwriter. Sometimes I take for granted how just plain cool it is that I get to come up with these songs out of thin air. I love songs as a medium, mostly because they are tiny and need not be anything too special on their own (I have no talent for works of great length). But sometimes it just whacks me over the head how free the whole process is. Anything goes. I think writing the phrase "cosmic whack-a-mole arcade" really impressed that point on me this week. 
​
Songwriting is fun. End of story.

Executive Patrons (You Rock!)
Karen Schantz
Alan Bargar
Jonathan Hochberg


Lyrics
At the edge of town, boys running through the woods
jumping through the burdock snare, hiding behind sycamores
and then they count to ten, dizzy in the summer heat
deer trails and poison oak, and olly olly oxen frees

and they say ready or not
ready or not
ready or not, we're gonna find you either way

A woman rubs her eyes, playing back the night before
when the ten thousand tiny thoughts queued up by the bedroom door
in the early morning hours, desperate for a still reprieve
with the ferris wheel of house payments, oil changes, kids daycare toying with the dream of sleep

And they say ready or not
yeah babe, ready or not
ready or not we're gonna find you either way

Somebody slow this thing down
Somebody turn this car around
How did I get up here, can't even see the ground

Well it's a shotgun start, yeah and it's a hit parade,
a rose ride full of bumper cars, a cosmic whack-a-mole arcade
a splatter of light and noise, both chaotic and synchronized
to choreography you never learned, makes you wanna run and hide

Yeah but ready or not
ready or not
ready or not, they're gonna find you either way

This song began, as many do, while on a long drive by myself. I let about a verse and a half play in my mind until I got so nervous I would forget part of it that I pulled over so I could write it down and record a quick voice memo of the melody. I ended up pulling over in the parking lot of an abandoned adult bookstore on the shore of the Susquehanna River. Believe it or not, there was more than one such location on my drive. The rest of the song came together in less memorable locales. This past week I was at Casita Del Polaris twice for different shows. If you've been there, you know that the path to the restroom takes you down a long hallway and through a small flower shop. On my way through, I noticed this tray of succulents cultivating in a windowsill. They looked so beautiful and simple, so almost unnoticeable, that they seemed a good fit for this little song. 
​
When I began the weekly song project, this was what I was hoping would come out of it: songs and images that would likely have gone unfinished and un-captured if not for the creative imperative to find them. This week, it really happened like that. I'm happy. I hope you like the result

​Executive Patrons:
Karen Schantz
Alan Bargar
Jonathan Hochberg


Lyrics:
You live behind my eyes and in the silent slice before I fall asleep
which is to say you're everywhere though sometimes no more than a memory
and some nights I go crazy on a grail chase for a feeling that will last
drugging up on silver linings, drinking down the tonic of my past


But these days, my life is honest and it's clean
like a spare room where no one's ever been
and a lamp by the bedside that's always on,
no one knows why


I think sadness is the realest thing; sometimes I wonder
if every feeling's just a bedskirt, with another feeling swept right under
and I can see them peeking out, I know that there's so much more behind
But if you unwrapped all my layers, I can only guess what you would find


And these days I play a willing host
like a spare room where no one really goes
but there's a key under the welcome mat
and I just thought that you should know


I wish you'd visit me tonight
Oh, I know you shouldn't, I just thought you might
I'll probably fade out soon, but you know I'll leave the light on
I always leave the light


I tell myself that answers outweigh silence, matters little what they are
but I know better than to ask when one potential answer breaks my heart
Oh all the people that will move us, the people we will move
and I no longer live with the illusion that we get to choose


But these days my life is honest and it's clean,
Like a spare room where no one needs to be
but I come in from time to time to make the bed
and make my peace.

This work is made possible by the support of patrons. If these songs have been meaningful to you, consider becoming one! Thanks as always for listening. 

I wrote this song many years ago, but it never really made it into my regular repertoire. Why, you ask? The answer is silly. This song is in a slightly altered tuning, which means I have to adjust my guitar before and after playing it. I don't have many songs in altered tunings, but the few I do have are underplayed because I hate taking the time to completely retune my guitar when I'm playing live. Plus, I have this intense fear of breaking a string in the middle of a show. Not a good reason, but a reason nonetheless. 
Circus/Fair footage courtesy of pexels.com. The rest I took on a drive out to Groton this weekend. 

Lyrics
Invisible boy, why pretend
with your good looks and your rich friends
blue jeans rolled up, lines on your skin
lines where your dress socks have been


Invisible boy, nobody looks
can't learn how to love by reading books
Lila Mae lives across the street
you could send out flares, she'll never see


Let it roll, let it take you back
the past in smoke rings, you better take a drag
Let it flow, put your lips on it
you uncorked the bottle, better take a swig
Invisible boy


The silence falls like broken glass
streets cast in moonlight where you walked to class
Under the bleachers, climbing the fence
tie over your shoulder, a teenage aristocrat


Let it roll, let it take you back
the past in smoke rings, you better take a drag
Let it flow, put your lips on it
you uncorked the bottle, better take a swig
Invisible boy


Oh you're getting older invisible boy

First, a bit of housekeeping: I won't release a song next week, and will instead use the time to compile the last ten songs into a digital and physical album for patrons. This next release will be called Ordinary Magic. It's also time for me to design a limited edition lyric print, so if there's a phrase from the last ten songs that really jumps out at you (in the I-wouldn't-mind-that-on-my-wall sort of way), please let me know in the comments!
---------------------------

We're at week 20, which means that it's time for the last ten songs to take on new life as a limited release CD.

This project is, first and foremost, about creating and publishing at the weekly level. I don't plan out my recordings weeks in advance. Usually, I determine the song and record it within 24 hours of publishing it here. 

When I was working on my studio album, All These Dotted Lines, I had no idea what the track order would be until well into the mixing process. There were many drafts before the final order was decided. So these weekly song releases are not really conceived as albums in the regular sense. 

Still, I know that every group of ten songs will ultimately be standing on its own in some way, and I do give this fact some consideration as I plan which song to record each week. Mostly, I try to avoid placing two songs that are too similar or discordant side by side. But I also think about the beginning and ending of the album itself. 

Songwriting is such a subjective thing-- my best advice on the matter is to find the people whose songs you wish you had written, then listen to them talk about it. Josh Ritter, who is one of those songwriters for me, has clear opinions about the way albums should end that I've pretty much adopted. I'm paraphrasing very loosely here, but his take is that albums should end with a song that has a consistent emotion and is relatively static in its feel. If it's hopeful, all the better. By static, I don't mean slow or boring, but rather a song that ends pretty much as it began. A lot of my songs are very linear, with developments and builds and big fallout bridges where everything changes. And a lot of my songs deal with mixed or confused emotions, so there are not a lot of good candidates for album-enders among my repertoire. 
​
So when I wrote this song about a month ago, I knew pretty much right away that it should be saved for this final-track position. It's simple, consistent, and hopeful to boot. I think Josh would approve.

Executive Patrons
Karen Schantz and Alan Bargar

Lyrics
I hear you play and Lord have mercy
you make the weight of it all seem so easy
and when I am heavy, this thought pulls me through
there's got to be room for a few more like you

There's gotta be room for a few more
a handful of tokens and treasures in store
no matter the battle, no matter the score,
I know there's got to be room for some more

There were children running wild at the playground
a tilt-a-whirl of color and light
oh and a mother with tired eyes and kind words
There's got to be room for a few more like her

There's gotta be room for a few more
a handful of tokens and treasures in store
no matter the battle, no matter the score,
I know there's got to be room for some more

There's no shutoff on the park water fountains
and there's no shortage of bread for the geese
and the sun always rises with its teeth on the bit
there's got to be room for a few more like it
​
There's gotta be room for a few more  
a handful of tokens and treasures in store  
no matter the battle, no matter the score,  
I know there's got to be room for some more

Thanks so much for listening. If you'd like to receive a copy of Ordinary Magic when it's released, consider becoming a patron. Patrons get early access, limited edition stuff, and other perks. Starts at a buck a month. Thanks for all your support.

I've written my fair share of derivative and referential songs, but I've never written a song based on a single article. Until now, that is. This song was inspired by a piece by Manny Fernandez (with stunning photography by George Etheredge) titled"A Path to America, Marked by More and More Bodies"  published in the New York Times on May 7th, 2017. 

It is, at once, fascinating and heartbreaking. Please take the time to read it. 

The heart of the story is in the details, but the facts themselves are also staggering. For example: "More people have died illegally crossing the southwestern border of the United States in the last 16 years than were killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Hurricane Katrina combined." And yet, no widespread acknowledgment of this issue as a humanitarian crisis exists.

One wonders why.

I'm currently reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. This morning, I am contemplating how the lives we find valuable and the suffering we speak out against is largely determined by notions of culture, ethnicity, nationality, and other constructions Harari would refer to as myths that maintain the imagined order. Part of our uniqueness as a species (as Harai tells it) is our ability to create these myths that cause us to unite in much more coordinated ways than could be dictated by our evolution alone. This ability is probably the greatest double-edged sword of our existence. 

It is strange, and a little terrifying, to think that something powerful enough to influence how we value human life exists only in the collective imagination, essentially created out of thin air.

On the brighter side, I often think of songs in particular and art in general as being created out of thin air as well. 

And this thought, next to the one before it, reminds me of a Sally Mann quote I can never quite remember exactly but think of all the time. Something about capturing life's random, dichotomous swing: the full sails and the ashes as well. Maybe you know what I'm talking about.
​
All life, all thought is collage. Any given moment for any one of us is just a snapshot of our personal rabbit hole. This is the view from mine this morning.

Executive Patrons (Thank You!)
Karen Schantz
Alan Bargar

Lyrics
A red bandana stained his skull
who he was we'll never know
the water jugs that mark the souls
lost to the wilds of Brooks County, Texas

A brand new baseball, a rosary
a beaded bracelet, a green knot of thread,
a Spanish copy of Psalms and Revelations:
the precious cargo of the dead

In sandy soil not much can grow
the surest way around Border Patrol
the Ranchers know the bloody toll
the sun shows no mercy in Brooks County, Texas

No one knows about the wife and kids in Houston
or questions whether they'd prize family over law
no one knows the nightmares of the dispatch worker
who by fate or luck, received the fatal call


Does your passport earn you compassion?
Does your green card glorify your grave?
Does your citizenship make you human?
Are we all just gonna look the other way?
A red bandana stained his skull
who he was we'll never know
the water jugs that mark the souls
lost to the wilds of Brooks County, Texas
the lost souls of Brooks County, Texas
to the lost souls of Brooks County, Texas

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I really struggled getting a song out the gate this week. Sometimes it's just hard, between busyness, ambivalence, and white noise on the creative line. This week I faced all three, plus grappling with indecision about which song to record, a process which often feels like choosing the best bad option.
​
I forced myself to do some recording Saturday afternoon, but it was really slow-going and low-yield work. I kept second-guessing my song choice, started and stopped with various options, hemmed and hawed. Finally I just felt trapped and desperate, well aware that I also had no video and that the sky was very blue and the sun was out in all its glory. So I stepped away from the microphone and went for a drive.

As I pulled out of my driveway, my rationale was that I was looking for something worth videoing, some footage to use that might help me decide which song I could record. But here's the real truth: I went on that drive hoping it would inspire a completely new song.
Songs are small, and once they're finished, whether they're your own or someone else's, they feel light and easy. Good songs are good partially because they feel so simple and self-evident, as if they had been there all along. It never fails to mesmerize me, that a great song can be written in a sitting, after dinner and before folding the laundry. It really can and does happen like that. Songs are small, and that's why they can be so confounding when they don't feel right or aren't coming together or seem to be eluding you completely. The desire to force them into place or will them into reality can be strong. Unfortunately it usually ends up being a big candle snuffer on the whole creative process. 

So I went out for a drive, hoping that it would deliver me to or from something. Hoping that something new would occur, that I would find something I needed out there. A spontaneous spark. A little ordinary magic, if you will (wink, nudge). I knew I was pulling a play straight from the childhood game book-- avoiding the school project with the looming deadline by deluding myself into thinking that I'll just start it over, right after this quick break. 

Nothing extraordinary happened on the drive. No new masterpiece song was laying on the side of the highway. A couple herons flew overhead. I saw some baby sheep and goats, and the usual share of silos and meadows and country homes of all persuasions. I sped along roads I knew and didn't know, mostly avoiding the inevitable drive back home, the inevitable return to the work at hand. 
I ended up taking a video of the little rhubarb stand near Treman State Park. I've always thought this stand is adorable, but it is particularly cute when there is actually rhubarb to be bought. Then I came home. I put my headphones back on. I didn't write a new song, or start from scratch on a different one. I used takes I already had, and it all felt much less desperate than it had an hour before. Maybe it was the drive that eased my anxiety. Maybe it was the simple fact that a song needed to be completed by end of day, and this was the one in progress. Who knows. But everything came together and I felt much more at ease. I probably needed that drive, just not for the reason I thought I did. 
​
I wrote the song last fall in the middle of the night. Sometimes I do that when I can't get to sleep. I've never really played it out much-- maybe it's time to change that.

Executive Patrons:
Karen Schantz and Alan Bargar

Lyrics:
Late night, long drive, after dinner coffee
Full moon in spotlight, inevitable memory
and oh nobody knows
Twisting the fader, scrambling for a reprieve
just fire and brimstone and top forty country
and oh nobody knows


But I've been wondering if I took you up on that old offer
would you have really let me stay and could I have stayed my hands


Girl at the rest stop tying up a shoelace
and back in the car trunk, revolver in the suitcase
and oh nobody knows
And out in the backyard a great white oak tree
no need to debrief him, he knows the whole story
that oh nobody knows


and I've been wondering if I took you up on that old offer
​would you have really let me stay and could I have stayed my hands


Threw all of my bottles into a silent sea
she just says baby, I'm still a mystery
but up on the surface, life's just a big parade
clean-cut and shiny and faster by the decade


But I've been wondering how the years go by and all these questions draw me tight
never cross my mind in daylight, oh they keep me up at night
and I've been wondering if you ever want to knock the pieces from the game
when all the others were just stand-ins and replacements for your name
and I've been wondering if I took you up on that old offer
would you have really let me stay and could I have stayed my hands

This work is supported by patrons. Thank you for listening and for your continual support!

I spent the weekend on a flash trip to Virginia in honor of Mother's Day. Here's a recent snapshot: ​

This song came together during the first week of the weekly song project. I shied away from recording it for a while because I found it both creepy and hard to play. The first half of the lyrics are quite old-- I wrote them several years ago with a very different feel in mind (probably major key, with more of a country waltz feel). If the song had gone in that direction, I imagine the lyrics would have unfolded into detail on the "thought" itself, revealing it to be some kind of unrequited love or nursed heartbreak. As it is, the thought is never unpacked, and it is its persistence that gets the attention. I think the song is better for that. 

This weekly song project has forced me to regularly reconsider the fragments and partial songs I have rattling around in the toolbox. Many songs that I've written this year use bits and pieces of old lyrics. One technique that I've found very helpful in sparking new inspiration from old material is rewriting. This is as simple as it sounds: I find the old lyrics, pull out a fresh piece of paper, and write them down again, usually in the middle of the page so that there is room above and below for additions. The physical act of rewriting (as opposed to just rereading) forces me to really consider the rhythm and flow of the words themselves. Doing it by hand slows me down, which is a good thing. Sometimes new words occur, or a new musical feeling seems to underpin the lyrics. It's not much, but it's often just enough to get me rolling on the rest of the song. That's what happened with this one.
​
I took the video at the Pennsylvania welcome center north of Mansfield on my way south. The weather was a perfect complement for the song.

Executive Patrons (thankyouthankyouthankyou)
Alan Bargar and Karen Schantz


LYRICS
I've been carrying this thought
folded close in the back of my mind
I've been carrying this thought around
for a long time


It creeps awake in the morning
yawning and stretching and slow
then slinks off for a drink at the tavern
where the unwritten songs go


and I follow him sometimes to the window with the neon lights
but the bouncer won't ever admit me, I guess they don't allow my kind


Now the thought's in the kitchen
curling up like the steam from my tea
and I think I've got him right where I want him
but maybe he's got me


And I move round from room to room
and he always escorts me
tucks me in with a smile then sneaks out
after I fall asleep


And some nights I follow him to the river where all thinking stems
and I hold him down in the water but that goddamned thing can swim


So we sit in the parlor
and I let him take the better seat
yeah it's all I can do now
to keep this fragile, shaky peace of mind

Thank you for listening to and supporting independent music. This project is made possible through the support of patrons. Patrons also get cool and secret stuff. 

Here's something I've never done before: a one verse song.

I wrote this line a couple months ago while hiking in the woods near my house. I decided right then that it would be a whole song unto itself.

I don't think the line is particularly profound, I just don't see how I could add another three minutes of material to support it.

The beauty of the weekly song project is that I can make and release songs like this, songs that I ordinarily wouldn't share out of self-consciousness or a limited view of what a song should be.

I'm having fun. Hope you are too.

P.S. If you are a patron who receives physical CDs and/or care packages as part of your reward, those are going out this week.
Thank you so much!

Executive Patrons (thankyouthankyouthankyou)
Alan Bargar and Karen Schantz


LYRICS
​
If your gospel talks of love as an offer freely given,
without condition, open to all, I'll drink to that.
But if your gospel spends more time defending who it can deny,
well it doesn't take a genius to smell a rat.

This work is supported by patrons. If these songs have been of value to you, I hope you'll consider joining their ranks. 

For week 15, I'm returning to my habit of releasing old songs written in the Spring. This one isn't that old-- I wrote it last year. Still, much like Ordinary Magic, it came after a long dry spell, and I felt so relieved to have written it. 
It's a poppy little tune, probably the peppiest thing I've ever written, but I won't hold that against it ;) 
Lately I've been reading Charles Bukowski, one of those writers who everyone seems to quote but no one seems to read. One of my favorite Bukowski quotes about drinking (and there are many) is the following:
"Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same. It yanks you out of your body and your mind and throws you against the wall. I have the feeling that drinking is a form of suicide where you're allowed to return to life and begin all over the next day. It's like killing yourself, and then you're reborn. I guess I've lived about ten or fifteen thousand lives now."
This song wasn't directly inspired by this quote (not that I recall, anyway), but I'm sure that the notions of self-destruction and resurrection mentioned in the lyrics were first suggested to me by these lines.
The footage comes from the public domain archives at Pond5. As many of you know, I grew up in the suburbs of D.C. and the Tidal Basin cherry blossoms are the epitome of Springtime to me. 
Thanks for listening!

Executive Patrons (thankyouthankyouthankyou)
Alan Bargar and Karen Schantz

​LYRICS
Time is a table game, I beat the house with a winning hand
and then the sun rolled up drunk with the taste of summer on his breath 
so I went out walking with no intention of ever coming back
the sweet suspicion that I might never be heard from again

I'm coming in for a landing and then I'm burning the boats
Where I was I will not go, I will not go

Unencumbered and unaccounted for I'm no good
a well worn pattern, mistakes that fit just like a glove
I have my reasons for all the cautious time I take
but tis the season to give my decency a little break
I'm coming in for a landing and then I'm burning the boats
who I was you will not know, you will not

This bar is a Hopper Scene, you be the girl that's dressed in red
and we can play make believe and say the things we'll wish we never said
a self-destruction and resurrection of the finest kind
an introduction to my pathetic state of mind

I'm coming in for a landing and then I'm burning the boats
where I was I will not go, I will not
I'm coming in for a landing and then I'm burning the boats
who I was you will not know, you will not know

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