John Prine
Paul Westerberg
MJ Lenderman
Elegy
Tonight’s The Night & Pitchfuckery
About Mark and Myself, Music, a Label & Two Fathers
Paul Westerberg
Unsatisfied to Hands Together
I’m not sure whether Westerberg’s songwriting gets fogged out a bit by the context of his music career. For me, I embrace the poignant feeling that coexists quite effortlessly with the raw, unvarnished and achingly emotional creations he has been able to usher into the world.
There may be a yin/yang type of quality here since he’s known as a rocker/punk/iconoclast, But he is also a poet, an isolate, an elegant songwriter, and of course, a bit of a mystery. To be honest, I don’t want gory details, unless lucky enough to hear it first hand. His music gave me an experience and feeling quite different from other artists. I don’t think he didn’t give a fuck. Clearly, this is someone who is aware, sensitive, defiant, oppositional, defended and most likely requiring something to help him calm down. Songwriting and anxiety and depression and substance use may go hand in hand but that doesn’t make it easy to understand a person nor does it define an individual’s offerings. But I think this vulnerability combined with amazing crash and burn rock n’ roll made us all kind of fall in love with the music and by proxy, the maker. And the mystery, the Greta Garbo aspect, makes it much more interesting. Thank god he isn’t doing interviews and podcasts and what have you. His restraint may be characterological, but if so, we all need a bit of what he has.
Juliana Hatfield appears to have drawn him out of the shadows, and their album together is for me, a real gift. I started using A tunings after that record. I found the partnership in rock and the ballads, really beautiful. The production growls with contempt at correctness and says (and proves) clearly, this is damned good enough. And it is. Actually I’d say it is kind of the best.
I know Don Was, who was a great producer on his album “Suicaine” , will find however A/B-ing that version of Born for Me and the I Don’t Cares version, as a gut punch of not reading the song as the artist did or being slightly strong armed by a label.
Hearing Paul and Juliana’s version is what it was meant to be. The evidence is clear. I’m sure he would not disagree.
However, that might have been one of the only missteps on that amazing album. Don knew he could stand to the side here and let Paul play and sing some of his best songs. Tears Rolling up My Sleeves, Best Thing that Never Happened, Bookmark. And Born for Me, just not that version. Helping to make probably the best Westerberg solo recording is a testament to the fact that he’s a great producer. And sometimes that means doing less than more.
My title here is Unsatisfied to Hands Together – because the two songs are bookends (at least for now) for appreciating the full spectrum of Westerberg’s songwriting and performances and clearly, two that for whatever reason, speak to me.
An old friend who is now no longer alive played Unsatisfied on his “boom box” as we called them back in 1984, as we drank beer and made merry. It was unlike anything I”d heard before. I kept saying “play it again”. And After five or six times he wandered away. But that was one of those memorable moments where my music world shifted.
We all have them – I don’t know that it’s more earth shattering for someone who tries to play music or just listens. But unbeknownst to the artist, if you are like me, we become allies, brethren. We are from the same clan. When truly on board, it’s kind of ride or die. And it’s powerful, potentially delusional, but I think most can understand and appreciate that they are in a love affair with the music, and maybe with their own self as reflected through the maker. When inner emotions are touched and when the connection somehow sparks to life an unexpected and excited response, it is a great thing. We all know it.
My list of “clan” members has grown over the years, but the first cuts when you are young appear to be particularly memorable and dramatic.
However, Phoebe Bridger’s song Scott Street, will bring an onslaught of emotion and tears to this 60+ dude during the outro maybe 90% of the time. So much of the music that I’m naturally drawn to now later in life hits probably just as hard, but I no longer have the fresh neurons of a 17 year old. Though, if I work at it, listen more, I am always humbled by the talent and passion and innovation that exists. Music not only didn’t stop being good, it evolved and became something new, like the fractals in nature, it seems no different. No one ever criticized a tree for how it was growing – or if someone did, they were an asshole.
Maybe some can’t let go of their past loves or obsessions to allow new ones to inhabit their life. Though I carry the burden of a predilection for 3-4 major chords and one or two minor ones, I’m always excited when I can jump my harmonic fence and sample something else.
But I’ll still hold a candle for Paul.
In “Hands Together” he sings,
“ Dreams I had before, are too bored to even show up. And the blankets are embarrassed – it’s only me that they cover up. “
Be it in youthful disaffection or in one stop past middle age reverie – songs close to 40 years apart- he just fucking nails it.
For me he’s not an icon or hero or a legend. He’s a songwriter that did something unique, raw and real and emotional. Someone so innately in touch with something that he doesn’t need to revise, retake, ruminate or explain. Take it or leave it.
He is not precious but can’t help being a diamond in the rough that catches the light and needs little else.
MJ Lenderman
I’m Worried About MJ Lenderman
So I’m much older than MJ Lenderman. But that doesn’t really matter because his music makes me feel like I am perhaps twenty-five or twenty-nine or who really cares. I’m sure there can be think pieces about the nostalgic quality in the roots of the music, but that is perhaps not productive naval gazing for understanding why this guy’s music feels so splendidly real.
And I am going to spare you and myself trying to dissect what is so wonderful about it. My only goal when I write about music is to actually praise and extol the achievement that an artist has achieved. Yes, for me, there is a hint of nostalgia in his wonderful use of guitar and pedal steel and that beautiful balance between tight and slightly drunken arrangements.
But to be honest the shit just sounds and feels gold.
You might ask why I’m worried about Mr. Lenderman.
I am worried because this is a deeply talented, idiosyncratic, most likely alcoholic songwriter/musician who needs to be protected and fostered like soon to be extinct herons and egrets secreted away in marshy sanctuaries.
You’ll say “Tom, what are you saying?” And I’ll say, this guy is a treasure and I hope the world where he lives in and belongs to provides him what he needs to survive and prosper.
I like this guy. I don’t know him. But his musical spirit is so strong that it’s like a squall blowing through the forest, out of nowhere in the afternoon, knocking out the power and maybe knocking down a tree or two.
OK. Getting into the hyperbole of think pieces. But they’ll be some lonely music composition major who will write a thesis about this album that no one will read. And I hope MJ Lenderman can continue being this wonderful artist – but – I really hope he finds love, help, protection and care and whatever he needs to continue on.
‘On My Knees’ feels to me like an anthem that I’ve already heard, loved and lived with, despite being brand new. I love ‘Rip Torn’ and that beautiful descending fiddle line and the slightly out of tune instruments. I love ‘You don’t Know The Shape I’m in’. I mean, ‘Everybody’s walking in twos, leaving Noah’s Ark, It’s Sunday at the water park” might be TS Eliot or Robert Lowell in disguise.
A true testament to someone’s music is when you can’t help getting glimmers of the soul inside. I love the music, but in the end, I care more about wanting only good things for the person behind it, who is also a treasure and worth protecting.
A good number of months, perhaps a year, has past since I first wrote this and I realize, after seeing how remarkably active and consistent this guy and his band have been, that perhaps I took the bait and didn’t realize it wasn’t all real. Because it just feels real.
I saw MJ and the Wind play at Levon Helms’ barn in Woodstock and I brought my girlfriend who had never heard of him. She walked away a true devotee and even pensively said, “He would be a great boyfriend for my daughter.”
In a rare moment of not thinking at all about what I was saying, I simply replied, “she’s not good enough for him.” Laura, my girlfriend, wasn’t even mad. She laughed and said, “You’re right.”
MJ Lendermen takes on the world and I’m along for the ride.
John Prine
The Sadhu Next Door
There was a time like perhaps ten years ago or so where I thought John Prine had been forgotten about except by all of his many scattered devotees that remained somewhat anonymous though I had been one since my teenage years. Probably more than any artist, he inspired something in me that was definitely musical and about songwriting, but the other part was his deep wisdom about life that poured through in his songs in a manner I had never heard and felt.
I realize now, despite how much I loved his first album, that I did not know it was the masterpiece that it truly is – and it may be one of the greatest albums of all time. I think I focused a bit more on Diamonds in the Rough with its almost anti-production vibe and its many great songs that somehow also seemed a bit more adrift and lost than the master class of songwriting depicted in his first album. I think there was something more personal there and maybe that appealed to me. Anyone who loved John Prine music also loved John Prine. We couldn’t help it.
I feel like these two opening paragraphs illustrate the difficulty in trying to write about an artist who really opened up a whole new type of songwriting to the world, and for a while, I thought maybe it had fallen on deaf ears. It turns out it had not.
His death during COVID was horrific and deeply sad. I recall watching Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires doing a tribute to him from their barn and was so grateful that I could have this as a send off, an honoring and remembrance, of someone who deeply touched me but who I never knew personally like they did.
What I figured out later was that John Prine actually embodied the two main focuses of my adult life. One was music but the other one was a career in social work. His embodiment of humanity, there so plainly in his music, is for me one of the great wonders of the musical world. And I think it has brought that humanity, some of it deeply sad and even tragic, into listeners lives and let that be lifted up and regarded in an almost Ecclesiastical light.
He doesn’t dislike Sam Stone, or the child with two first names, James Lewis, or Me and Loretta, Donald and Lydia or our old woman in Montgomery. He loves them enough to tell their story and to let those stories just ring out the way they are.
You can see inside, smell, feel, maybe even touch some of these worlds he brings to life. The horrible sinking feeling of not being loved in return is framed like a concise play in three acts in the song ‘Far From Me’.
The revelation of a cold truth is much to bear, but here, too much for a wounded, lonely and sensitive boy in “Six O’ Clock News” who shoots himself in the head, and is later seen dead on the street on the evening news.
Addiction’s not a moral issue really despite the religious references ,but “Sam Stone”’s morphine habit creates a nihilistic universe for his family. Prine’s song is really about the harm that comes to others from addiction but he needs you to understand how wounded, hapless, despairing, Sam is too.
And who writes a song about old people? It’s an iconic song because it is rare and at times, not a lot of fun to listen to. “Hello In There” is epic because I believe a few of us said hello to someone older, on the street, because of this song.
I hadn’t planned to delve into those songs like that but I felt like the emotional intelligence and the artistic intelligence within those songs are a modern day sacred text. Prine didn’t do it again quite as perfectly as he did in his first record, but he recorded many amazing songs that I may treasure even more than the one’s I’ve noted. But I also was frustrated that his recording career didn’t really go as one might imagine it would.
I always suspected it got complicated. He put out seven albums between 1971 and 1980 and I have to think those circumstances weren’t the best in terms of writing new material, having the right production, or even having enough time to think much through. He wasn’t walking the mail route anymore coming up with songs in his head.
And perhaps thats what I love the most about Prine. He’s the everyman walking along, humble and polite, maybe a little devil may care in his eye, but you want him to help your mother across the street, or to assist your sister home after having too much to drink. And he’s also a swami, a master songwriter, someone who is enlightened in a way you would not think an everyday Joe could be enlightened. And that is the beautiful mystery to life. That John Prine is possible.
Like many, I miss John Prine very much. He has always helped me believe in the beauty and mystery of this life, and that having love, empathy, and compassion for one another will never be a bad thing in life or in art.
It’s like I can hear John’s boots click on the tar delivering mail in August heat, maybe humming, maybe day dreaming about a beer he wished he was drinking. A dog barks as he approaches a house, but this big mutt is quickly sweet talked into an affectionate puddle as he drops the mail into the mail box and John spends twenty seconds or so petting this fine guardian of the home.
The dog is sad to see John go. He hears John whistling as he walks away and the dog tilts his head listening, until even for his fine ears, the sound fades away.
Elegy
Day of The Dead
I was speaking to my Mom who is 97 and who gets so upset and emotional about the upcoming election, I have to make sure not to talk about it too close to her bed time. Luckily, the other night she texted that her heart was beating so hard watching the television. I put two and two together that there must be something going on. I tuned in and after chit chat that might make you want to turn your TV back off, Kamala gave a great speech. Well, I thought it was pretty great. I thanked my Mom for getting me to tune in.
This isn’t a think piece. It may well be an elegy. I can’t help but see another Trump presidency as just another extended, ongoing natural (unnatural) disaster. However it was also interesting reading how Republicans and Democrats hold a similar view of each other’s complete incompetence. So this is democracy – the will of the people will be expressed in whatever dysfunctional way the electoral college allows.. Que sera, sera. Live by the ballot or swing state, die by the ballot/ swing state.
I pine for the wise words of Noam Chomsky who has issued a consistent message ever since the sixties and now has trouble speaking due to a stroke – a man revered in other nations for his wisdom on intellectual thought and the moral responsibility to speak against injustice and clearly antidemocratic agendas. I relisten to George Carlin on Instagram and realize he was an angry, funny, caustic, very smart and enlightend man. I heard it when he was alive and I laughed and I nodded. I hear it now, and I’m like this guy was tapped into an understanding I didn’t fathom back then that only certain really smart outsiders have. They see the patterns, the absurdity, the inside job.
On the other hand, a ton of people really like Trump, and when I think of the masses voting for him, I’m upset. But when I think of a few individuals I know who I really like that I suspect will vote for him, that are lovely people that I might give a kidney to, I feel like, que sera, sera.
But I really do hope he doesn’t come for your neighbors, friends, family, or you, due to being or formerly being, a suspected non-resident alien, or whatever classification he comes up with.
Or that he doesn’t keep a list of every woman’s reproductive activity as if this was now a responsibility of the government to safeguard the life of a fetus, nor that he imprisons a woman who does not follow the said guidelines.
I also hope you or your neighbors don’t happen to get arrested while being black, brown, asian, latino, south asian, filipino or only whiteish, (you get the drift) because due process of law is going to be up for grabs and the guy had swastikas hanging in Madison Square Garden. That is the opposite of virtue signaling.
He’s coming for you. And that’s who ever he chooses, whenever he chooses it. That’s who you’ve chosen to have in power. Crazy, no checks and balances, totally disinhibited, openly states he wants to be a dictator, that elections are stolen and he likes Putin. He might wake up and want to round up people who like candy or those who smoke cigarettes, or maybe just the women who are lactating, or maybe just the people eighty and older who can’t walk so well.
And he doesn’t really like Social Security and Medicare because it smacks of socialism despite the fact you paid into it your whole fucking working life. You see, he’d like to cut the tax burden a bit more so the companies could rape and pillage the country a bit more thoroughly with even fewer taxes while the poor and working class die by the dozens. You know, because that’s how it was in the good old days. And he’s making America great again. Racist. Radically polarized between rich and poor. Attempting a new ethno-cleansing despite the pesky problem of America being a country of immigrants (rats), so he has to toe that line carefully.
And as in the days of old, raping of the land is also back in vogue, so have at it in anyway you see fit to fuck, suck, and felch the earth. Environmental protections will be eliminated, drilling, fracking, deforesting, dumping, release of sewage, nuclear waste, animal waste, will be rampant. Earth probably has less than five years.
So, this is the guy to close the show – final act – last looks every one – he is apparently what the populous wants. That and lower bread prices. So eat up, butter cup.
I mean, soon prices are really going to drop. Hope you have a big appetite. It’s going to be clearance, long time. Everything must go.
Including you. Bye Bye.
And while Trump is doing all this crazy shit and there is a ton of yelling and screaming, also from the people that voted for him who are now upset and want their money back, do you think the country, the economy, our position in the world, our environment, anything, is going to be better? More money in your pocket? More jobs for hard working Americans? More lube for the ass fucking? That he’ll give ya.
It will all be putting out fires because the guy is a fucking nightmare, like trying to guide Godzilla through the Louvre – but I guess that’s why many people vote for him. He’s so fun to watch. He’s the wrestler (or green lizard) in the ring that makes you laugh and keeps you engaged. Stokes outrage and releases dopamine. It is a bit like the Twilight Zone where part of “US(A)” has slipped inside the Entertainment Box and is no longer truly cognizant of the difference between what we see on screens and what is actually real.
Trump is a hologram, a logo, a hat, a bumper sticker, a decal, a meme, a video clip. He’s vapor. But I still don’t get the con. Or maybe it’s a performer/audience love fest that has no center except self interest and self adoration, entertainment and self satisfaction. However, clearly the Donald has nailed the connection with his audience who will seemingly forgive him anything.
Personally, I don’t understand that because instinctively I see the bully in him and believe every woman who has come forward saying he raped/assaulted them. I believe humility is an admirable quality and that braggarts are never people you want to be around. Lastly, I used to always assess people by who you’d want to go on a hiking trip with. Nothing elaborate, just a basic couple of days in the mountains, but it can rain, you have to get fire wood, there’s limited food, people get blisters, etc. And there are people that really suck to have on camping trips. Donald Trump would be one of them. A simpering, entitled pile of a human being.
Now to be fair, initially, I think Kamala might be a little annoying on the camping trip; too perky, too talkative, maybe too much of a “know it all”. But she’d end up being a “go-to” or should I say, the person you were “going to”; kind of the natural leader; and you might be sharing a cigarette and a swig from the flask around the campsite with her too. Unlike some fools, she’s disciplined with that stuff, so keep a confidence.
A week from today maybe we’ll know the outcome. I think what is painful is feeling like you and some of your other fellow citizens have come to such a different judgement call given basic facts. The irony of a democratic country electing a president who plainly states he wants to be a despot, a king, despite the USA ousting British royalty 250+ years ago and establishing its own independence, seems like a stunning display of amnesia.
And yet it feels like it’s done with a shrug of the shoulders. Come, kiss the godfather’s ring and he’s gonna take care of “your problem”. But what you learn, is this is just the beginning of a very bad deal. It’s not kindness, relief or mercy. It’s opportunity. For him. In your moment of weakness or deference or god forbid, belief in the Donald, where you buy his bullshit, the three card monty, you will now pay for that paycheck loan in perpetuity.
I suppose a handful might profit before the earth caves in. Elon is already planning to live on Mars, that fucking wombat. Have you seen pictures from Mars? And A/B’d them with Earth? Does that seem like a place anyone would want to go to?
Can you imagine Elon and the Donald on Mars together? They’d be dead in three hours. Donald would insist on going for a walk to survey for building sites, too impatient to be outfitted with any gear, and Elon’s space suit would only be Gen 3 and fail as he tried to rescue Trump’s freeze dried body pulling him back onto the Mars pod. I guess it would be a robot that would finally recover them from that deliciously freezing, inhospitable, rocky and sandy surface.
It seems like it might be a better idea to preserve the much better place that we are destroying, namely the earth. And just saying “No”, to two year-old geniuses, future tech bros, entrepreneurs, narcissists, neurodivergents, spoiled brats, princesses, influencers, star performers, athletes. It might not be the worst thing.
My bias is greatness is grounded in being completely average, being connected to the experience of the life around you and the people who live there.
I would hate for unchecked ego to be the downfall of the republic. I do think “old school” Republicans do not like Donald Trump. My Dad was a Republican for most of his voting life, but like my Mom, he would be appalled by Trump in every way imaginable. He would not care about the financial benefit, however alluring, and my Dad disliked taxes.
I also think he may have been moved by Kamala’s speech the other night, especially near the end, where she said I’m going to be your President even if you don’t vote for me, I’m going to be working for you, because its about one country and not division, and something to the effect that I care deeply about this, I will fight for this, I’ll work hard for this. I’l work hard for all of you.
And that’s what it’s about.
And that’s not what Trump’s about.
I don’t think he’s ever used the words ‘work’ or ‘care’.
And the final point is, I think people know he isn’t going to work or care while in office, but they still will vote for him. I can only imagine this mirrors their experience of not working or caring about their prospects, their job, their future, their life, their town, their world. Call it a type of slow burn out, an American nihilism, but it’s no longer subtle.
This is becoming a choice for the dark side, however ill-defined. I just don’t know if the reality of this choice has truly set in. It’s like Trump devotees are pushing the button without having a firm idea about what the explosion will look like.
I think they’ll be surprised about what gets set into motion, and like good audience members, they’ll watch in horror and fascination while taking zero responsibility for having helped create this monster.
Tonight’s The Night & Pitchfuckery
I saw a headline that Pitchfork had given their coveted “10” score review to Neil Young’s Tonight’s the Night. It’s been hours since I’ve read this and like a long build up to an eventual violent vomit, I still have no idea what consistency the bile and stomach matter will have since I haven’t eaten all day.
But I’m going to puke. This publication that’s been rating music with a panel of snarky, oddly opinionated and clearly ambitious, sonically open and culturally indoctrinated yet unwashed devotees to the lord of who knows what…are also ill-equipped to help grandma to the potty… but let’s give them a recording and a scale and they’ll give us 500 words and even a decimal point.
First off, Tonight’s the night is a delightful train wreck. They added a live cover because there wasn’t enough music. There’s a reprise of the opening song that isn’t that good.
The song commemorated on Decade was about a drug deal gone bad leaving dead bodies and bullet holes in a car’s mirror. Singing on “Tired Eyes”, Neil sounds so wasted and tired we definitely hear it.
And all through this album we feel it, whether we want to or not.
There’s a quiet chill to this record, the pedal steel so beautifully done, walks a line between a plaintive sorrow and a spooky and creeping fear, echoed maybe best by the line:
“Tell me more, tell me more, tell me more. Was he a heavy doper? Or was he just a loser? He was a friend of yours. “
Whatever this album is, there is a chaotic collective that also feels organic and raw, drunken, high and emotional, but the core musicianship, rhythm, amazing pedal steel and piano, and of course acoustic guitar and Neil’s quivering voice makes it something I hold in great regard.
But Pitchfork is grading this based on reputation now. Just like they do with other classics. Because, despite good and bad intentions, their whole thing is a disrespectful occupation feeding off the actual creators of music. Arbiters of taste and critics are serving whom? Distilling a vast volume of content and marketing it out their sphincter to the world – and getting what in return? Money – Or an empty narcissistic sheen of superiority? Or maybe neither given their well deserved demise.
I have a feeling Neil might be with we in saying “fuck you” to the 10, Pitchfork. We already knew the album was part of us at this point so we didn’t need your grade to grant us permission to like it in the company of strangers.
There is a reason you don’t measure and judge art because there is a sacredness to its creation and to listeners or viewers connection to it. And you defile it, daily, gleefully, like a masturbator outside a masturbation conference. You seek the jizz that hits a “10”. But maybe don’t do it in public. And get a sex toy and fuck off.
And to all the music you never rate and review – well, it’s lucky in one way that these artists don’t have to suffer the humiliation. On the other hand, it means these artists/bands are nobodies, unsigned or signed and unpopular or unrepresented or rejected on curation standards for reasons having to do with a general lack of popularity. They remain below condemnation. Have they already been judged by your indifference? Pitchfork’s lack of a review equals 0.0. How popular do you think Tonight’s the Night was when it came out?
You should hear the laughing in your ear, that you could judge music. The best “criticism” is a celebration and not a judgement. It is about opening eyes to the hidden beauty and insight that a creator has and that not all can see or witness. Or perhaps that’s what it was when we actually gave a shit. Media criticism serves only itself and the cache it believes it carries.
On the positive side, at least as a judge you aren’t sending people to jail for life. But I bet there are a few people who hate your guts with such intensity about what your words did to them, they might do a little time just to dress you down in a back alley.
Neil Young sure doesn’t care and it seems like he never did and maybe that is the key for artists to remember. I know affirmation is what we all seek. But life is more interesting with odd ducks, misfits and losers making music and art that no one ever hears. Or at least not in the moment.
What you create is timeless in a way. And it’s for you and not others, despite what we might tell ourselves. Remember when not getting invited to something actually made you cool? And Pitchfork might make a big deal next week and say their review of Abbey Road is coming out – and news flash, they’ve given it ………5.4. Those Beatles are such Losers!
Let it be remembered as Pitchfuckery. It’s going away and will be mocked relentlessly in the future. Your ‘taste’ Politburo has fallen. Now you’ll need to avoid the gulag by distancing yourself from it. Run far. I hear Chernobyl is hiring. The dogs have mutated and so can you!
About Mark and Myself, Music, A Record Label & Two Fathers
For a while after our record label had essentially made me miserable enough where I didn’t want to have anything more to with it, I pondered trying to write about the whole experience. Before I go on, I can feel you groan. Who would want to read that? And worse yet, I had a tirade of inarticulate shit to say, that yes, signified nothing.
I felt like an idiot. All of that pain, passion, money and time. Wasted. And as collateral damage, my marriage and new family was also over, somehow sacrificed over something I was hypnotized by but always on the outside of because perhaps I was a wannabe songwriter, wannabe musician, wannabe entrepreneur who ended up with a very real drop kick to the jaw after deciding to go all-in.
My partner Mark never did feel like an idiot. He’d been all-in for so long that he tried to make smart choices, but once he made them, he wasn’t going to question it. Even when in retrospect, his very hip friend back in 2007 had said “why would you start a label when you can get the music for free?”
We really didn’t want to think that way because we were looking backwards to a time where we grew up. For Mark, it was much more than that. He lived in a time of giants like Quincy Jones with renegades like Ray Charles who owned all his own masters. Motown session players that were mother’s milk to any musician looking for soul and rhythm and swing.
We knew our record label, Sojourn Records, would never be Motown. But in Mark’s heart of hearts, that’s what he couldn’t help envision. I’m not sure what I envisioned. I loved John Prine and Tom Waits, old Rolling Stones and anything by Paul Westerberg. I never had a desire to do A&R or promote or sell. I just wanted to help clear the way to make great music by good artists. Turns out that was like saying you wanted to walk into the jungle and feed the nice kitties.
I thought it was funny when Mark and I realized our mutual childhood connection to Godspell. I went to the musical with my family in Boston when I was ten years old but what happened was my little soul was shook, even by Broadway rock. I don’t think I’d ever heard live, rock music. Mark said he learned how to play drums by listening to Godspell, over and over.
It wasn’t Elvis. But ‘Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord’ and then the Finale with the counter theme is pretty outstanding. There is lots in between, but right there you have an amazing bookend musically – one I enjoy to this day.
And before that, it was discovering a random Pete Seeger album that no one ever played in my house. It was his Greatest Hits. My parents may have had it because he graduated from Harvard in the same class as my Dad. My parents were not big music people. But I’d play that album a lot as a kid. And Pete as you may know, is connected to any person who ever picks up a guitar or banjo.
It’s funny how we trip along. Mark who becomes a truly great drummer, got his first drum kit because he would always sit around tapping on stuff. At least someone noticed. Learns how to play through his own volition listening to Broadway recordings.
I had a friend pick up a guitar that was in my room before I knew how to play it. I’m not sure why it was there. He played ‘This Land is Your Land’ and ‘Blowing in the Wind’ and again, my little soul was shook. How did he do that with three chords?
The weird thing is when some people bump into music early on in their lives, are exposed or become infused with it through an experience, for some, for me, it made a type of impression that will sound cliche. The music hit me really deeply. It was a weird zero to sixty acceleration that also made me feel very self-conscious in the moment like blushing when a girl I liked walked into the room.
Music has a wonderful ability to go places and help us access places in our brains/selves/minds that is beyond our regular understanding. It is a component that unlike oxygen, we can technically live without, but if there are essential ingredients, like nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen that make up our air, I believe there is another level where there are additional essential ingredients. I’m ill prepared to go deeper than that. But I know music is one of those essentials.
And maybe it’s about bringing together the body and the mind. When you are playing music and it feels good, generally there is a sense of connection with oneself and with the instrument or the band. And what is that motivation, that pull to play this music alone or as part of a group?
There are spiritual folk and there are folk who just have good vibes and there are folk who have to pay the bills but they all started out, mystified by the sound and the feeling when they heard music seep into their lives, one way or the other. And that imprint is rarely subtle, whether as a listener or a player, the music is both wonderful and connective, transcendent, and a form you can feel through your whole body.
In the end, Mark and I weren’t wrong. We just were using the wrong words and got a bit turned around on the path towards trying to record great music. And the label is just a misnomer for ‘a form of fundamental dumbness’ that overtakes you when you can only sign ‘artists with liabilities’ that thought they were adopted, all expenses paid. What follows is ugliness as predictable as running mascara at a high school prom. So I will cut to the chase. It didn’t end well. I’m not even sure if it’s over. I wait by its bedside waiting for the morphine drip of time to lay it to waste.
However, I realize that it might be interesting to write about Mark, a guy I’ve known these twenty years or so, but who is still hard to know – a bit of a restless spirit, not unknowable in that he’s aloof, but that he’s in some ways a shape shifter or very malleable despite having strong values or feelings that may be in direct conflict with the affable persona he presents.
In all the time I’ve known him, he’s never gossiped or talked badly about anyone. Even when slightly baited, he just wont go there. He will be the guy who will show up at 3am if you really need him. He’s a perfectionist, obsessive, probably has ADD, is a musical genius, workaholic, best drummer you’ll ever meet, nicest guy you’ll ever meet, and yet sometimes, you can’t help but wonder, who is this guy?
I asked his wife once about him and she said “he’s fucking exhausting he’s so good. I can’t deal with it. I want to choke him in his sleep.”
I felt a bit better after hearing this. Though it didn’t necessarily lift the veil on the mystery. I think the one part that I’ve pieced together other the years is Mark’s true adoration for his father. I only know anecdotes. I never met him and feel very sorry for not having that opportunity.
But one story he told that I remember very clearly was when Mark lost all his music files for an artist in some weird hard drive melt down. In the midst of this crisis, he was lamenting what had happened with his parents and his Dad said “well, there has to be someone who knows how to get that back. Maybe you need to call NASA. There must be someone there who knows about this.”
Yes, Mark called NASA, and there was indeed a person who knew how to retrieve deleted files, because in truth, they aren’t totally deleted. Because there is a ghost in the machine. And this NASA wizard resurrected these files and mailed the hard drive back to him just minutes before the artist showed up to finalize the tracks.
It sounds like a Hollywood fiction but this is a true story that Mark could add so much more color to were he here to write about his own life. Hopefully, he will one day.
There are other stories, like when Mark told his Dad it was really difficult to get your demos heard by the record companies, and his father didn’t understand why you couldn’t just walk in and play it for the people in charge.
He took one of Mark’s demos and called him from the office of some President of a record label and said “We’re listening to your music right now!” To me, it sounded like his Dad just didn’t accept common knowledge, that there was always a way through if you didn’t take “No” for an answer.
And what a gift that is to bestow on your son. But perhaps, also a weight. I see that in Mark, the gift and the weight. So deeply talented and committed but also tortured by living in a world with artificial barriers if one just had the superpower that his Dad appeared to possess.
I didn’t have a father like that, I doubt there are many people who do.
My Dad was a good, decent man who grew up half-blind in an emotionally restricted family during the Great Depression. And my father’s father lost a ton of money when he attempted to start a business and his business partner died. He leveraged his wife’s stock for credit and when the stock plummeted, the bank sold all the shares that would have later made them millionaires.
And they went from princes to paupers. It turns out, it’s a short walk.
My father never wanted to borrow money because of this and was frugal to an annoying degree. But he was a great custodian of my mother’s inherited “nest egg” which provided for our family for many, many years. My mother, now 98, can still live comfortably because of his and her stewardship of this inherited money that was a lot back then but paltry by modern standards.
For some reason, the lesson I took away from all of this was to be more like my grandfather and I tried to put my money down on the table for the outcome you dream about but seldom materializes. Perhaps that’s an alcoholic fantasy, a gambler’s dream, that you can turn nothing into something.
With the record label we did turn nothing into something, but it was a something that was ill-behaved, unpredictable, and sadly, rarely sellable. I don’t think that means it was all for naught. Something happened in those five good years that made me feel alive and vital and not a middle-aged family man who is in service to a domestic reality, despite his years of quiet, musical ambition.
I was a songwriter and always wanted to record and document the good, bad and just plain songs I would write. I did love capturing it on tape and listening back, sometimes I would almost feel OK about myself. Like this isn’t so bad. It might even be good once in a while.
My mistake may have been in not understanding the nature of the gift I was given, to have music as a great source of solace and as an emotional outlet that wasn’t available to me in just plain words and actions.
Sometimes we just aren’t totally connected to ourselves. I’ve possibly never been connected in a mind/body way due to the chronic anxiety and insecurity that always plagued me. But music could cut through that, sometimes without me really even knowing what was going on. And I hate to use this trope, but it was healing. Or maybe more correctly, first-aid for the soul.
Mark and I have talked a lot about music over the years. In one of these early conversations Mark said something he would say repeatedly. Music is sacred. And when this comes from someone so immersed in the musical life, it feels like an affirmation. Like maybe I wasn’t wrong all these years leaning towards the sunlight – or I suppose the sound wave. There was an instinct there that was organic and reaching. Maybe celebrating, maybe lamenting, but always making sound, engaging what body and soul one could engage and kind of letting it out.
I think there is an engagement that can happen for anyone who is even mildly open to it. It can be like gazing at the fire burning in the fireplace or watching the wind sway the tree limbs and leaves. It’s hypnotic and meditative because there is something that lowers our defenses or inhibitions – it taps into a place that is elsewhere in our mysterious brain stem. And that experience is lovely. Like for this period of time, I locked step with being here, being alive, just kind of feeling with my odd human antenna.
Over the years, through osmosis or just subtlety aging and changing a bit myself, I began to feel a small iota of what I think Mark may feel almost all the time. I didn’t mysteriously get his mastery of drums and a plethora of other instruments, or the technical ability to engineer and build a studio that nurtures such a great sound. Nor did I learn the ability to shepherd and produce good, bad and indifferent artists with an almost mystical detachment and engagement that both helps the artist and maybe also maintains Mark’s sense of sanity.
Working with 99.8% of the people that he is so much more gifted and talented then doesn’t get him down, unless the musician/client is egregious. And even then, Mark would be polite and diplomatic.Though I was the trained social worker, Mark was a much better counselor, listener, consigliere, then I could ever be.
Most of that stuff you don’t get through frequencies, so I didn’t get any of that. But I got that music was sacred – or it went from just being an intellectual concept- to starting to feel it in my fiber (or my bones as the expression goes). Because that is where we feel it. Music can literally make “you fall out”. It’s like some thin layer is torn and you forget how to hold your body up with your legs.
And maybe it lets you forget how to be fake or unreal within yourself. Like, you look in the ”soul mirror” and try to fucking own it. Even for a few minutes a day. Or at least stop fighting it. Let go, even if it’s in very slow steps, over many years.
One day, I no longer felt like a stranger in my own music. I had finally settled in to this house that would be the only one I lived in for my whole life. I won’t torture the metaphor further.
Sometimes you have to look around and go “this is me. This is my life.” And not have either a wash of dread and denial or the “boo-hoos”- and just look at it. What I found is that there was a lot to like and there was definitely quite a bit that I kind of hated. But if you average it out – it’s actually ok.
I recall the rehab adage “Dare to be average” and that to this day feels like incredibly good advice. If like Mark, you exceed simply being average, it’s not necessarily because that was his life end goal. He might have high standards for himself or just God-given capability that other mere mortals lack. But he doesn’t wake up aspiring to be the best or the richest or the most famous or whatever else there is to be lured by. But he does work his ass off and always has.
I think for him it is a calling. And for most of us, we get only a fraction of the signal, or as I wrote earlier, the frequency. I once wrote a stoned thought that went something like “authenticity has a frequency.”
And unlike most stoned thoughts, I think this is on target. And I think you have to view frequency as being multi-dimensional, i.e. vocal melody and instrumentation, but also rhythm, beat, sway, feel and how that all sits together. It’s why when it is good, it can be exponentially better just because the players are locked in. They are aligned.
Mark is never not locked in. I remember one session where Mark seemed unsure, couldn’t find his way into a song. And Larry, my friend and collaborator, looked at each other and went “we’re fucked”. Mark is the guide, and sometimes also the sherpa. He carries so many lard asses up the hill just so they might get a glimmer of the glory they didn’t even really earn.
Playing and/or listening and connecting to music can feel like a religious, or more accurately, a spiritual experience. But this is the same form that can have the teenagers grinding on the dance floor. Might this music ask “what’s different about feeling lifted up and “getting down”?
I remember the line I heard growing up, “there ain’t no good and bad, there just is.”
But saying that or even trying to think that is actually of no consolation. But how about when you feel it? Those moments might escape us.
I listened to a commencement speech by David Foster Wallace and he used a “story” at the top of his speech that simply stated,
“Two fish are passing each other as they are swimming in opposite directions, and one fish says to the other fish,
‘How’s the water today?’.
And the other fish looks around somewhat mystified and says
‘What’s water?’
His point is much too eloquent and artful for me to pretend to even know what he meant. But I thought he meant we forget we are in water. We are in life. It’s happening now and then every nanosecond after the last now.
I recall he spoke about being in the grocery line and the person who is angry and agitated at a customer or the cashier or just that he/she has to wait. Maybe forgetting he/she is in a store/room full of other beings who are going through the same thing. Your sole experience does not exist at the exclusion of others’ experience and we are all in the water together.
You aren’t separate. You are precious, but only precious like every other frigging living atom is precious. But your life is already a grand slam. You are waiting around for the applause.
No man, you are the applause. And when you play and really feel music, you know that is true. It’s like a concert with 15,253 people being in love with the same ‘thing’ all at the same time. If a soul weighs 28 grams, that has to be at least a few kilos!
I feel like Mark is more aware of the water than most. He might be the one person I know who is most aware of the water. He’s a wise and deeply talented and lovely human being.
But I think he really wants us all to step up our game. Or be aware that we can step up our game/our outlook. He doesn’t really stop, for good and for bad. And I have the examples of the ‘bad’. Being business partners can be intense, and there was a moment when Mark and I were in different time zones. It might have been the only time I can remember really having an acrimonious phone call.
Mark never changed my mind. But despite how deeply I felt, I wasn’t going to completely abandon my post in our dying enterprise. This doesn’t make me anything more than someone not wanting to be a shithead.
But I did want to be better than I was in reality. For Mark this was, I’m sure, me still dropping the ball. But there was one piece I held onto. I remembered what Rozan said.
“Sometimes, I just want to choke him in his sleep.”
And I appreciate her saying this because it is really difficult to be angry with this guy. It actually hurts to feel that way. But we come at experiences from our own backgrounds, and as described above, they were very different.
Maybe I never really knew what I brought to the table other than enthusiasm and a rebellious disregard for going into a tremendous amount of debt. I had quite a few people ask me if Mark was “using” me, and it always felt like a slap in the face. Ironically, I may have felt more “used” in my marriage than I did in our partnership.
But even though this is a post-mortem on a label – and more importantly – a celebration of a truly original and inspiring human being, it doesn’t mean he is, in fact, perfect. He’s not. He’s flawed in his own ways. And in the end, I saw that as clearly in him as he most certainly saw that in me.
And that’s just fucking life. You can’t go very far with that in the end. With certain relationships, it is ride or die, for better or for worse.
I remember when we were wrestling with how to move forward in creative and new ways with the “label”, and I sat up in my house in Maine and simply stared at the fire, looking deeply into the coals, hoping for some clue to help us break this crazy coconut open; to be able to stand back and say “Look! Regard! This is what we have been saying for years. It’s right here, plain as day.”
But the fire just burned and I just continued to stare.
I do believe accepting failure would have helped us move on. I would say as much to Mark but he didn’t agree. And I’m sure he still doesn’t agree.
For me, I’ve lived with the failure – and spent over five years getting out of debt and struggling to get my credit score above 600. Of course, Mark took huge hits as well, probably worse in some ways since he had no revenue coming into his studio for five years or so. He was working for free while I was using all the credit I could conjure to pay for us to try to be viable while still having a ‘day job’.
But those are very different things.
I guess, in our own unique ways, we did go all-in and that’s a difficult pill to swallow for some, like me. There are those who make it work. But it seemed like we couldn’t.
My Dad, when in the throes of a passionate desire to pursue something, to buy something, to make some impulsive decision would say:
“Lie down and wait for the feeling to go away.”
His reticence and sober decision making had created the bedrock that my life had sprung forth from – just as Mark’s father’s ability to not accept common knowledge, and to see that the roadblocks encountered were typically only in your mind –
was the bedrock that Mark’s life had sprung from.
Mark has been one of the only people I’ve met who helped me believe in my self, to believe that I wasn’t just a hack singer-songwriter with a too lofty of a goal. He supported “ my strengths” and provided coaching when “my weaknesses” might appear.
He’s always helped me come back to the trail. He’s a good guide and mentor.
Though I’m older than him, I looked to his guidance and wisdom. But like me, he had his blind spots, there was fallibility in a guy who could just about hold up the world on his shoulders. Maybe at one point, I thought what I did offer was a way of helping him expand his reach, spread his deep musical knowledge and sensibility to a host of other people. Surely, that couldn’t fail.
The label failed. As he and I have discussed, Mark was the star and would always be the star. He still works on his album in the few moments he has. He’s the guy behind the curtain in many ways, and I wonder if he is afraid of revealing himself. Maybe for once, upstaging his father with gifts his Dad never had.