Valentine's Day & Other Nightmares

I am not looking forward to a Valentine's day performance.

Two or three hours of love songs?! I'm unsure whether this is going to be fun or depressing.


Well, I finally started wearing headbands around the house. For practical reasons only! You will probably never see me wearing them, but Al, I finally took your advice. Thanks! I can at least work now without hair in my eyes.

Got some hard decisions ahead, some hard traveling. Life is a hard puzzle, a hard puzzle indeed. I think I'll go now and rehearse for tonight's gig. In fact, I'll put together a rough setlist while I'm here.

• "A Boy Named Sue" - J. Cash
• "Big Rock Candy Mountain" -American Hobo Song
• "Cape Cod Girls" -Sea Chantey
• "Come Away with Me" -Norah Jones 
• "First Song" -Poem by Galway Kinnel, set to music by Andrew Bird 
• "The Way" - Performed by Fastball, dunno who wrote it. 
• "Drunken Sailor" -Sea Chantey
• "Folsom Prison Blues" - J. Cash
• "Frog Went a-Courtin' " - American Folk
• "Gun Street Girl" - Tom Waits
• "Hallelujah" -Leonard Cohen
• "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum" - American Hobo Song
• "I've Been Everywhere" - Can't remember who wrote this 'un. Merle Haggard?
  
• "James Alley Blues" - Richard "Rabbit" Brown
• "Long Way Home" - Not sure whose this song is. Country standard, for sure
• :"Me Father's a Lawyer in England" - English drinking song that I rewrote for my own purposes.
• "The Times They are a-Changin' " - Bob Dylan
• "Cocaine Blues" - J. Cash
• "Oh, Darling" - The Beatles 
• "Nightingale" -Norah Jones 

Alright. Ridin' off into the sunset now. Got a mini-party happening tonight. Cheers!

An Arabian Storyteller Gives Me Blueballs

I've been flirting with Scheherazade's stories for a long while. Reading them seems a struggle, though a glad one.

My first contact with The Arabian Nights was an uncensored version of the story "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" when I was maybe fourteen years old. That's the famous tale from which the phrase "Open sesame!" originates. It contains a description of a man being carved into quarters and hung on a wall as a warning to that same man's brother. I loved it.

In 2007, back when I was a foolish young lad who didn't care to research different translations before embarking on one, I bought and read the Barnes & Noble bargain paperback edition. "Boy," I thought more than once, "I remember these stories being more gruesome." I kept reading. I had a great time... but it could've been much better; I learned after reading about a thousand pages that the version of the Nights I'd just finished was a neutered version of a declawed version of the original tales, and that many of the more explicit stories had just been omitted, censored entirely. Serious bummer; a thousand pages took a long time to read. I learned from the experience.

In 2008 I bought a CRW Publishing LTD incarnation of The Arabian Nights that uses a translation by Sir Richard Burton. It faithfully presents all the racism, violence, and eroticism for view. What I've read of it is already miles better than the B&N version that'd had its testicles removed. The problem is that this edition is enormous, not easily portable... and it still doesn't have all of the stories. Perhaps there are just too many to collect in one volume. Until I can afford a six-volume set, I guess I'm jolly well fucked.

Well, I'll leave you with a cute passage from a particular scene where a "lucky" porter has fallen in with some beautiful gals who're toying with him:

All this time the Porter was carrying on with them, kissing, toying, biting, handling, groping, fingering; whilst one thrust a dainty morsel in his mouth, and another slapped him; and this cuffed his cheeks and that threw sweet flowers at him; and he was in the very paradise of pleasure, as though he were sitting in the seventh sphere among the Houris of Heaven.

That's it for tonight. Goodnight!

Feels Good to be Understood.

A local photographer and acquaintance wrote today, responding to the comments I made on her college thesis:

"So, this is my e-mail thanking you for your inspired, insightful, devilish, indulgent, candid, smart-ass comments."

What a gal.

In exchange, she's taking my picture so I'll have visual material for music marketing & promotion.

It's supposed to be -10 degrees Fahrenheit tonight! Jesus.

Restless.

Literally and philosophically speaking. I'm restless.

Like grapes are hanging from the vine just above my best leaping grab. Like my fingertips just brush their skin. Like the grapes are swollen and sweet and just ripe enough.

And I can't for the life of me knock a cluster down.

Maybe a midnight walk will clear my head.

May I Groom You?

Jeff, a great conversationalist and entertainer that frequents the bar I played at tonight, said to the cook:

"Do you mind if I groom you while you eat?"

Snapped one of the gay men from down the bar:

"Do you mind if I eat you while you groom?"

Shot beer out my nose.

2008 Inventory

Every year I like to take stock of how I've grown, what I've accomplished, and where I'm going. What's my next move? It's inventory time.

2008, especially since late Summer, has been explosive.

Since October I've learned about fifty new songs, finished writing & composing five of my own, and expanded my repertoire by about three and a half continuous hours of guitar and voice. Learned Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, sea chanteys, American Hobo Songs like "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," blues tunes like "James Alley Blues," Johnny Cash covers, Tom Waits covers, and all kinds of other traditional music or new music in the old tradition. Reactions have been fantastic... I've got a regular weekly gig and I'm rapidly making contacts for more.

God, a few gigs were crazy. Frontal nudity, addresses scribbled on napkins and stuffed in the tip hat, hard-partying older ladies shouting along to "What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor?" What a great time.

Earlier in the year I wrote more fiction, but the past few months I've been steadily exploring what I want to do in music... by feeling my ideas out in essay form. I've been studying music theory, learning chord voicings, reading and writing sheet music more comfortably, even working on some musical scales from non-western cultures.

In October I wrote a twisted little book of Halloween limericks that'll soon be set to music.

Recorded about three hours of audio in 2008.

Read the massive first book of Don Quixote. I can't recommend that one enough. It's hilarious and profound.

Got three new students, aged 9, 11, and thirtysomething. They are simultaneous, a package deal: a mother and two daughters. It's been lovely.

Immediately on the horizon: a long-incubating short story, an album of improvised dronal music that blends traditional Indian and Jewish music with bass drones from my throat and from a heavily distorted (thus long-sustained) electric guitar. I'm also working on more conventional, lyrical songs. It's possible that I'll have two CDs out by Summertime, though I'll probably have to push them under different "band" names. One under my real name, probably, and the other under a pseudonym.

God, I love getting out of bed in the morning. Every morning.

Happy New Year!