When I go on tour, I meet a lot of interesting people. After a show near Woodstock this week, a sweet man calling himself Star Blanket handed me a mysterious bag whose contents, he said, would make me … bulletproof. I opened it and looked inside it, and it was white willow bark, a cage necklace, and a …
Tag: poetry
living room music
There's a tempo they want. A sound quality they want. There are subjects they won't air. The music industry (like any other successful industry) is about formulas and rules. Follow them, and you will succeed in it as a songwriter and, for better or worse, likely remain a part of it for life. Incidentally, the formula looks like this: This Brightness plus that Tempo plus this …
how to tune a guitar
You go for a drive with the top down and let the guitar sit in the passenger seat. Make the first left, that way your destination is farther and the road to it prettier, the blossoms absurdly violet. Lose your location. Fiddle with the radio dial. Brush past the popular music stations to the one of choice. Pause there just to adore …
masterpiece
The thing I most dreaded when I began making up songs as a teenager was being struck down by an F-150 before the world could hear my masterpiece. Not so much anymore. These days I don’t sit and wonder if my next song will be liked by hundreds of thousands of people. I don’t care whether the world will …
messengers
Driving home from a show late at night with the windows down offers its own music if I’m paying attention: A frozen lake breaking apart in the middle of winter ... The angular song of an unseen screech-owl … Half-crying stars out on the interstate, semis blowing their horns below … The sound of the highway brushing against the car …
threads
My latest song was inspired by a lovers’ spat I witnessed outside the movie theater here in town. It’s about a terrible, terrible betrayal, and the possibility of moving from the brokenness to happiness, if only for a few moments. When you’re a songwriter living in a small town you hear more things, about all sorts of people — Those two parting angrily on the street, leaving their love affair hanging …
shadows and light
If I’m in a town and there’s somebody I like who has passed away, I’ll visit their grave. Sometimes I photograph it, sometimes I lie beside them and think about their work, their special loneliness now, or bring flowers. It’s nice to visit where people are or you believe them to be. Just because they …
signals
There’s a path behind the place where I live, and a black gum tree on the path. Up against it stands some big leaf aster. I don’t know if you know what that looks like, but this tall beauty has bluish flowers, and large heart-shaped leaves. It’s just a gorgeous color. Whenever I get to this spot where this tree stands, …
dream job
Sometimes I wish I had become a newspaper delivery boy. Or a milkman. Or a bridge toll-taker … do people still do that for a living? I love the routine of those jobs. Or maybe, the clown wielding the wide broom who follows the elephants in the circus. Or a carpenter … yes, a singing carpenter who dresses the plank in the …
simple lives
I give my songs such simple lives, they give me such beautiful tragedies. They seem to have a way of letting me know what’s going on. Each helps me tell the truth as I see and hear it at that moment. Two Winters is the oldest song on my little record. It's about a heart encountering, accepting, and learning …
