Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

songwriting

the gift of me

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Photo shot by Ashley Hall, courtesy of Jump Philly.

Alright, how do I do this without being insufferably both maudlin and self-congratulatory.

Fuck it, it’s my birthday.

Over the summer I received a phone call. I was sure it was a prank or mistake. From what I could make out from the rapid-fire message, someone wanted to interview me for a magazine.

As it happened, I was jumping through a lot of life’s other hoops that week, so I didn’t return the call. But then I got another call. This was a real person, and yes she was looking for Peter the musician. She wanted to do a brief profile on me for a local indie music mag called Jump Philly – yes, a physical magazine, not just a blog.

Now, I’ve been featured in media before. Probably the best mention was during one of the Blogathons, when I was quoted on MSNBC. But that time and all of those other times I was being mentioned in relation to something I was helping to produce.

Photo shot by Ashley Hall, courtesy of Jump Philly.

This time I was being mentioned for producing myself – in particular, my songs for Eric Smith‘s novel.

I had an amazing, hilarious conversation with my interviewer Lauren over sushi on South Street. I coached myself on staying on-message before-hand, but it was no use: get me in front of someone who keeps asking me questions about music and see how well I stay “on-message.” I wind up telling anecdotes about Jem.

(Lauren immediately inquired with glee, “That was on the record, right? Because I am totally using that.”)

The one message I managed to hammer was spelled Dee Aye Why. Every answer dovetailed back to how I did something myself. Taught myself guitar. Got the keys to Drexel’s recording studio with just one term of classes. Self-recorded every song of mine ever released.

The issue came out around Labor Day. Before I could see it, someone at a wedding told me they had picked it up and seen a picture of me. Me!

The photos were taken some weeks after the sushi. Eric, Lauren, and I chased good light all over South Street with photog Ashley Hall until we found our spot.

She snapped away. I coached myself on staying on-message. With my body-language, I mean. I notoriously hate just about every photo of myself taken by anyone except for E and, apparently, MikeyIl. Everyone catches me in these gawky moments between moments. And I don’t like to smile with teeth, because it makes me look silly.

To say I was awaiting the issue with trepidation would be an understatement. There was so much message to be off! I’d probably come off sounding like an ass and looking like Goofy.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. And, let’s not misconstrue me here – I am not bragging about being phenomenally on-message in my interview and photo calll.

Photo shot by Ashley Hall, courtesy of Jump Philly.

No. First, I was in the hands of professionals who cared about getting my story right.

And, second, my life as a whole is what I want it to be, so what is there to get wrong? Lauren talked about my many musical endeavors, all true. Ashley shot a trim and – dare I say – slightly muscular looking version of me beside the ever dashing Eric Smith.

I had nothing to object to, and I have nothing to object to today. As far as I am concerned, thirty is a signpost on a road of awesome goals achieved and dreams realized. It means I’m old enough to call out petty bullshit for what it is, and for people to know to take me seriously even when I am proposing the most outlandish thing.

That’s a far cry from turning twenty, ten years ago, when I blogged: “The world is the container of a finite amount of possibilities both big and small, and i don’t think any chain of events will ever make me truly happy even if you substitute in all of the right jobs and friends and lovers where there are just empty spaces right now.”

Tell that to the guy in these photos.

30 for 30 Project, 1988: “Man in the Mirror” – Michael Jackson

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Sometimes the collective unconscious speaks for you. Sometimes you speak for the collective unconscious.

Case and point: as I write this, “Black and White” started playing on the radio.

In 2009 I was set on covering some Michael Jackson songs. Gina and I had been talking about it for a while for Arcati Crisis, and I finally ordered his “Best of” sheet music book at the end of 2008 and got to work.

It turns out, I wasn’t the only one set on covering him. First, Kris Allen broke away from the pack on American Idol with an acoustic “Man in the Mirror” – my first choice of covers – in the semi-finals. A few weeks later, American Idol’s first finalist round was – yes, Michael Jackson songs.

(Watch me cover “Man in the Mirror” on YouTube. For more info on my 30 for 30 Project, visit my intro post or view the 30for30 tag for all of the related posts.)

Heading into a summer free for playing open mics, I decided maybe I did want to have some MJ songs in my repertoire, Idol-be-damned. I started learning “Man on the Mirror,” per my original plan.

That week, Michael Jackson passed away.

That is how I found myself on my blog, broadcasting a video concert for a bunch of strangers, playing “Man in the Mirror” and crying. [Read more…] about 30 for 30 Project, 1988: “Man in the Mirror” – Michael Jackson

How Eric Smith rocked my world.

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Story time.

A few weeks ago Britt Miller, my partner in all things FAME, posted a link to the first segment of Eric Smith‘s “podiobook” – a podcasted audiobook version of his forthcoming novel Textual Healing with Britt contributing a special voice-acting appearance.

Eric Smith was one of those people that everyone I know knew, but I did not. Still, I occasionally followed his adventures on Twitter, which is what one does these days when you don’t know someone everyone else knows and you want to know why they all knew him already.

It turns out they mostly know him from running Geekadelphia, editing uwishunu, and working for Quirk Books (of Pride and Predjudice and Zombies fame). Eric’s also a professor and a music photographer who spent time touring with a number of bands.

I knew about a lot of those things separately, but didn’t know Eric connected them. I was intrigued – by Eric, by the idea of the advance podiobook, by Britt’s appearance in it, and by hearing Eric’s voice read his work – so I listened. And in the span of about an hour of my on-and-off listening to the podcast, a song popped out…


(watch the video on Facebook, where I sometimes demo sneak peeks of new tunes before releasing them anywhere else)

…so, doing what any DIY songwriter would do after midnight having just moments ago written a new song for a book by someone he knew only through his extended circle of friends, I recorded my first run-through, posted it to my Facebook page at two in the morning, and tagged Eric in it – off-handedly suggesting it was the first of a number of songs I’d write for his novel.

That resulted in Eric commenting “♥!” about eight hours later, which in turn lead to an email exchanges with the extremely genial Mr. Smith, who now I suppose I finally know directly instead of just knowing of via the knowledge of other people I know. Eric sent me an advance copy of Textual Healing and I am now committed (personally, not by contract or gentleman’s agreement or anything) to write at least four songs for the soundtrack of his book.

I just finished my second tune a few minutes ago, but this time there’ll be no insta-video. The phrases are so darn long that I’ll need to do voice exercise for a few days before I can get from breath mark to breath mark on the verses.

I’m happy to finally know who Eric is, and to have his passion project inspire some passion mirrored in me. Head to his blog, Eric Smith Rocks, to catch up on the first few episodes of the podiobook, and keep your eyes and ears open here for more tunes.

PS: About ten minutes after I posted this I wrote another song. Three down! One to go!

I’m a dreamer (but I’m no Paul McCartney)

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Last night I dreamed a song. It was not the first time.

I used to brag in grade school that I could memorize my bible verses by osmosis. I’d just practice them before bed and then sleep with the bible open next to my pillow.

I was joking, of course. It was just the good luck of a procrastinator whose talent for memorization outstripped his clear distaste of repeating maxims from centuries old dead guys.

Well, it turned out that I wasn’t entirely joking. My subconscious studying continued into college, as I would compose French essays in my head while asleep and then jot them down in the morning before class.

Ultimately, the brain – or, at least, my brain – has a lot of extra wiring that our (my) conscious thought can get in the way of. Resting opens those circuits, and when it came to bible verses and French homework it was installing a new stick of RAM into my biological computer.

I don’t recall when I first started dreaming songs. I know the first success was “Standing” which came in so powerfully that it literally woke me up! It also surprised the hell out of me, because the genesis of it occurred entirely while I was asleep. I didn’t have the basic lyrics or a melody worked out, resting next to my head like my erstwhile bible. Like asexual production or spontaneous combustion, “Standing” wrote itself.

If that sounds weird and implausible to you… well, it is, but I’m not the only weird and implausible songwriter out there. Allow me to present exhibit A, Sir. Paul McCartney, describing the genesis of “Yesterday“:

“I woke up with a lovely tune in my head,” Paul McCartney recalled to his biographer, Barry Miles. “I thought, ‘That’s great. I wonder what that is?'” He got up that morning in May 1965, went to the piano, and began playing the melody that would become “Yesterday.” At first, lacking lyrics, he improvised with ” Scrambled eggs, oh my baby, how I love your legs.” While he really liked the tune, he had some reservations: “Because I’d dreamed it, I couldn’t believe I’d written it.” – Betsy Querna, US News

There you go. It’s not totally unprecedented, because a Beatle did it, too.

Dream songs don’t always write themselves. Sometimes a dream person writes them for me. In one instance, Madonna sang me a song while playing it on an acoustic guitar, claiming it was a cover by REM or Wilco. I woke up really wanting to hear the song, but searching it’s lyrics and melody yielded nothing. Or, in the words of Sir Paul:

So first of all I checked this melody out, and people said to me, ‘No, it’s lovely, and I’m sure it’s all yours.’ It took me a little while to allow myself to claim it, but then like a prospector I finally staked my claim; stuck a little sign on it and said, ‘Okay, it’s mine!’ It had no words. I used to call it ‘Scrambled Eggs’. – Paul in Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

Of course, Paul didn’t have Madonna singing the song to him in his sleep claiming it was a cover! For a precedent on that, I turn to my resident loon muse, Tori Amos, talking about her ballad “Hey Jupiter” from Boys for Pele on VH1 Storytellers:

Let’s see, I was lying in bed. Um, strange things happened to you on tour, Like strange Englishman start sitting at the end of your bed – apparitions of dead guys. And they start singing songs to you. And this guy was definitely dead, and he was definitely singing to me. So I’m confused about the copyright laws. I’m not sure if I need to call his ex-wife and give him part of the song or not. But why should I do that! She’s rich, she’s not nice. So … I kept the copyright, and the song’s mine.

Thus, I didn’t have to credit my imagined Madonna (or anyone else) for the tune, and so the yet-to-be-recorded “Message” became mine.

I’m not sure about last night’s song, yet. It didn’t come with lyrics like “Standing” or “Message,” possibly because in my dream I was distracted by the effort of walking on stilts while I was singing it. However, it did provide a full, two-handed piano arrangement. I literally woke up, walked to the keyboard, and played the song without much pause.

I wonder, what is it I have to put into my brain to have it pop out songs like tiny ping pong balls from a lotto machine? Can it be predicted? Is it something I ingested yesterday? I’m pretty sure I’m not ingesting some of the things Paul and Tori have ingested…

Or, are Paul and Tori and I just wired that way?

Is one of your favorite singer-songwriters also a songdreamer? Please point me towards their story!

Funk-Breaking with Katie Barbato

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Well, here we are in March, with any February funkiness finally shrugged (even though the streets are still not quite cleared).

I have so much weekend to tell you about (Presenting at TrendCamp! Our first Arcati Crisis show of 2010! Another performance upcoming at Tin Angel!), but first I want to focus on my funk-breaking.

Even the cheeriest, most pro-active person (i.e., me, possibly you?) can fall prey to a crummy mood – where nothing we do seems to be worth doing. That was my February Funk.

Of course, funk is not exclusive to or contained within February. Nay, THE FUNK can capture you at any time of year. We’re just most susceptible when it’s dark and icy and we haven’t had a garbage collection for 16 days.

When you are me, and spend your spare time opening up your head and letting art out, THE FUNK is a pretty crippling condition. My internal editor is vicious enough already without any added incentive!

Luckily, I have the good fortune to be friends with many other people who have art inside of their heads, one of whom is Katie Barbato. Katie Barbato

I’ve blogged about Katie before. She is an outstanding songwriter, a typically flawless singer, and leader of The Sleepwells, one of my favorite local bands.

Katie, too, had fallen prey to THE FUNK, and invited me over to her apartment for a serious funk break-up session. There was fresh hummus, sugar cookies, a stunning view, and Katie and her amazing songs.

And calling it quits with THE FUNK.

Over several hours Katie and I curated our own special mashup of VH1 Storytellers and Rock Opera, following a narrative from the dumbest things we could do to contending with the apocalypse to the stories of what we had lost in 2009.

Sometimes I can be so insular in my shared songwriting space with Gina that I forget that there are others out there channeling their feelings into songs – and that their feelings can be pretty similar to my own.

Not only did Katie share feelings, but she shared some stunning tunes. A few familiar ones, as well as some brand new ones being birthed. Katie writes with such beautiful, intuitive voice-leading – it was a special treat to follow along from across the couch instead of from across the bar. I should have been jotting down the names of tunes as we went, because I came away with several new favorites.

By the time we made it to our last songs and I played the mated pair of “Shake It Off” and “Regenerate” their equal parts rage and resignation came hurtling through me so strongly that my whole body was trembling for minutes afterwards.

As I wrapped myself up for a walk home through twinkling flakes of snow, I realized that Katie and I had shaken off THE FUNK. It was replaced with the purpose and self-respect I had been missing.

Every day since then has been awesome. Thank you, Katie, for sharing your songs and having the sense to shake us out of THE FUNK!

Gentle readers, if you too find yourself mired in funkiness you should seek out the coolest person you have interests in common with and have them BREAK YOU OUT!

I have a bit more news about Ms. Barbato and The Sleepwells, but that will have to keep for another few days. Let’s just say, you’ll have a chance to see a version of our funk-breaking shtick for yourself very soon…