Tag: maine music

• Essai: “I gripped it under my sweat”

  This recording actually comes from the discard folder. I wanted to get started with “essais,” or attempts, but when I went back to find something I had in mind, I found this better. I understand why I’d remembered the other: it has clearer dynamics, deft(er) movement between phrases, ties together more rationally. In my notes, I’d written that the words had a strong narrative pull. I didn’t feel that tonight.

  Maybe I’m just tender today, but what appeals to me is the softness of the lyrics and the frail run in the singing at the end. I sang:

  I slipped it
  Like a note in your pocket
  I gripped it
  Under my sweat

  And I meant it
  And I meant it
  And I m-ea-nt it
  Until I bent

  I’m not ready to lay out my goals for these improvisations, but I will when I’m feeling more analytical. I’ll simply say that I’m contending with having many phrases, rhythms, hand-movements—in other words, sonic meanings—at my disposal, but fewer words to make emerge. The singing feels the most tenuous and even sometimes dull. Words are so bound to communicative meaning and more difficult to make fit.

  2025.01.02

• Singing Neil Young’s “Razor Love” in a cloistered apartment in Maine

  When I first moved to Maine, it was the tail-end of the pandemic, January 2021, and the little bedroom I made inside an otherwise disheveled apartment was a strange refuge. I only lived there 8 months, but there was a certain peace to the room and it was possible to cross a lot of mental distance in the 10×10 space. I’d go from the room to the kitchen, to the porch to the neighborhoods, and that little corridor of movement was where a lot of things started, including l-o-v-e.

  As spring neared, I was recording things very offhand, just spurts of “feeling like it,” but they were turning out well. I’d add slide guitar accompaniment, drop a bag of white rice on the table for percussion, and a day later lip-sync and record my face on the laptop. These mini-projects felt more me than previous visuals, and more expressive than I’d felt with traditional songs in quite a while. I shared them on social media, especially in anticipation of releasing Raw Honey’s Riverbed album (see “Attic Stairs.“)

  I captioned them “Saturday night karaoke” or similar, so now I’m calling it a karaoke series. Here’s another one going up on the Big Web today.

  2024.12.28