Black & Red

recorded 2010

black and red is all i see
it’s been known it’d come to this
and for all i can see
i’ve been totally blinded
pair of hands reached out for me
it was the strangest feeling

beg your pardon
i’m not done falling yet
it could be a moment
long i’ve waited
to set down my load
it could be a moment

it was 1979
all my dreams came true
through the glass
all i had to do
was reach and take hold
it was like watching a field
explode

beg your pardon
i’m not done falling yet
it could be a moment

i would come to run dance trip fall in love
sew myself into my woes
flicker like the light in your eyes at night
oh...

dylan sparks

here are some quotes and reference points i found noteworthy while
reading "dylan on dylan, the essential interviews" a collection of
interviews with bob dylan between 1962 and 2004.  it's a good read,
though frustrating at times, as you have to put up with some inane
questions as people repeatedly ask him about being the "spokesperson"
for his generation and about what certain things mean in certain
songs.  (mr. jones comes up repeatedly in various interviews: "who is
mr. jones?", "who is mr. jones?"...)  sometimes it feels like the
interviewer and dylan are standing in the shadow of this strange
amorphous creature that is american society and asking him to explain
it, and he's like, hey man, i'm just a musician.

on early influence:
"the first thing that turned me on to folk singing was odetta.  i
heard a record of hers in a record store, back when you could listen
to records right there in the store.  that was in '58 or something
like that.  right then and there, i went out and traded my electric
guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat top gibson."

on gut:
"if you know what's right and it strikes you at a certain time then
you can usually believe that instinct.  and if you act on it, then
you'll be successful at it.  whatever it is."

some of the musicians he referneces/listens to.  could be a good
reference for when you want to search out some music on a rainy day:

"i still listen to the same old black and blue blues."

woody guthrie
leadbelly
odetta
big joe williams
aunt molly jackson
buell kazee
scrapper blackwell
leroy carr
jack dupree
lonnie johnson
james ferris
jelly roll morton
buddy bolden
ian and sylvia
benny ferguson
tom rush
charley pride
porter wagoner
the clancy brothers
tommy maken
hank williams
buddy holly
tommy mcclennan
lightnin' hopkins
the carter family
the early carlyles
big maceo
blind willie mctell
robert johnson
om kalthoum
five blind boys
the soul stirrers
the suran silvertones
clara ward
the mighty clouds of joy
big bill broonzy
jean ritchie
dixie hummingbirds
highway qcs
the staple singers

on songwriting:
"it's like this painter who lives around here--he paints the area in a
radius of twenty-five miles, he paints bright strong pictures.  he
might take a barn from twenty miles away, and hook it up with a brook
right next door, then with a car ten miles away, and with the sky on
some certain day, and the light on the trees from another certain day.
a person passing by will be painted alongside someone ten miles away.
and in the end he'll have this composite picture of something which
you can't say exists in his mind.  it's not that he started off
willfully painting this picture from all his experience...that's more
or less what i do."

on the sound he goes for:
"that ethereal twilight light, you know.  it's the sound of the street
with the sunrays, the sun shining down at a particular time, on a
particular type of building.  a particular type of people walking on a
particular type of street.  it's an outdoor sound that drifts even
into open windows that you can hear.  the sound of bells and distant
railroad trains and arguments in apartments and the clinking of
silverware and knives and forks and beating with leather straps.  it's
all--it's all there.  just lack of a jackhammer, you know."

some of the writers he mentions:
blake
ginsberg
kerouac
chekhov
miller
rilke
donne
poe
dostoevsky

more on instinct:
"when you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue
it--don't back down and don't give up--then you're going to mystify a
lot of folks."

vesper

this is what it looks like when the trees go dormant in december
as the sun eliminates itself from all but an orange ember smear

the horizon a cloaked visitor with her back to us
in the foreground strings of lights have been strung like static satellites

in the park a murder flaps its cacophonous lot flying and hopping
from one branch to the next as if the leaves have suddenly become annimate

all of these bodies black against irreversible
notes hanging like vespers before stars

spread the word

bandcamp has done all of the technical work for the digital distribution of music, and they've done it for free. any musician interested in getting their material out there will be glad to know about it. it's easy as pie. and as far as musicians getting paid for their work, it blows itunes and other models out of the water.

Video not loading? Click here to go directly to bandcamp.com.

crabs and minnows

today i woke early, couldn't sleep. pushed aside the curtains of the hotel room window, the cloth cold from the ac. outside was the east bay in providence, still, flat, alive. the air in the hotel felt stuck and sickly and I took my guitar outside.

i sat by the river and while it slowly rose the day edged into itself. It was gorgeous. a crab made a ruckous down in the tide water either carrying another crab, giving it a funeral procession, or making love to it. I honestly couldn't tell. crabs are so funny. little minnows flitted by the surface, green and silver flashes. the water kept rising and threatened to touch my toes. the crab disappeared in the dark, I kept singing and playing, and the minnows were getting closer, it was almost as if they were listening. mind you, I was a bit delerious from lack of sleep.



a thai woman stopped by and talked to me for a while, taking a break from collecting cans. i told her there was more money in can collecting than there is in music, she laughed and looked incredulous, i insisted, motioned to the fish, told her they listen but don't pay. her broken English was like a chime blowing faintly in the early day. the breeze was strong and the air dry, water-draped clouds of all denominations in the sky.

wrote two songs. or two ditties and one song. one of them kept making me cry, so I tried to play it again and again to see if I could get used to it and I kept tearing up. so hopefully that's a good sign.

i'm facinated by tugboats and there were a couple in the water nearby so i walked over and tried to talk my way onto one. don't know if you've ever tried to do that but it's not easy. but now that I know where the challenge lies I feel even more revved to board one, which is an important personal goal of mine.

....d

just listen!

http://cdn4.libsyn.com/voodoofunk/danger.mp3?nvb=20100727050202&nva=20100728051202&t=0745f4546e1fc96f9b32a

pacaya

Reasons c.d. jewel cases are problematic

1. They're plastic.
2. They're a big waste of plastic.
3. They take up too much space.
4. They crack.
5. The book size is annoyingly small.
6. Did someone mention they're plastic?
7. The book is always hard to pull out, and seems to get almost instantly ruined.

Recycling is not a solution. We need to control our production and consumption.

blanket wall viscera steadies the pulse
of flatlanders pushing thier goats
over unknown prairies

Digital Horizon

Photo by Kevin Lang

Working on many new songs these days.
This is from one called "We'll Never Learn."

Church Ave Full Bloom

Sugar snow

Various clouds carry various storms across the world and country tonight. We’re not getting as much snow as I’d like to. Only a little. I want to get pummeled. Knee deep snow, snowing for so long you wonder if it'll ever stop, and what you'll do if it doesn't. And if it does. It’s a little warm (34 degrees) and what is falling is clinging to the trees. Every single little branch has an icy white coat. Walking outside, it collected on my coat, looked like I’d been rolled in sugar like a doughnut. Soft doughy and warm. Where was I?

...update. We got that kind of snow, 2 days later. I flew off the road into the woods at light speed. It was awesome.

...d

Year of the Tiger

Post Fall

In Upstate New York things are kind of far away from each other. If I'm not walking to town to the post office or something it means I'm getting in the car and driving, most times 15 minutes or more. The roads are full of steep curves and they can be pretty treacherous when it's cold. Snowflakes play tricks on the eyes. They're so vastly innumerable, I think each snow fall must have more snowflakes than space has stars. At night I stare into the trails they make in the air, illuminated by the headlights. Long strands like the stars when the Millennium Falcon makes the jump to hyperspace. The heat on, the black air, the countless white flurries spelling trances through my eyes.

Sometimes the snow is too light to see, especially without the brights on. Then a car comes over a hill in the opposite direction and it's like another world is suddenly visible on the edge of a black embankment. It lifts into the air and the second it might become discernible it's gone.

...d

snow fall