Just Another Man, Man

Listen to Just Another Man

So it's come to this:

Writing about Just Another Man, the last song on the Paper Arrows' record Days of Getting By.

Somewhat ironic in that just this week we rereleased Days of Getting By through Quell Records.

It's available here.

We have another record that's done and ready to be released.  Not sure when that will happen, but likely by the fall.  In the meantime, I'll be playing out on my own quite a bit, learning the ropes of being a touring musician, splitting my time between playing the ever-expanding Odyssey and trying to crack the code of bringing Paper Arrows to the masses.  Or at least the crowds.  Or at least a couple of enthusiastic listeners at a coffee shop in Canton, Ohio, on a Friday night.

With one such mini-tour under my belt, I've discovered the following:

When in doubt, Super 8 over Motel 6.  8 is great than 6 so this should be a no-brainer.

If you want to take a jog in Erie, Pennsylvania, make sure you have use of a car to drive to a place you feel safe jogging.

If you like the smell of sadness, go to a casino in Erie, Pennsylvania.  Or just Erie, PA, in general.

Man cannot live on hotel continental breakfasts alone, but he can damn well try.

I drink less on the road than I do at home.  Hmmmm.

AM Radio may be the bell lap of human decency.  Holy shit.  The AM stands for "All Morons."

It's lonely on the road, even for a couple of nights/days.  It's just you (or rather, just me) and hotel rooms and the car.  And a couple of hours of performing (if I'm lucky) a day.  And a whole bunch of logistics.  Logistics everywhere.

Even for a couple days, it gets a little strange being alone with your thoughts and especially alone with your material.

This is maybe the most important thing with respect to the song Just Another Man.

Just Another Man is essentially about... well, about the material of being human.  Recognizing faults.  Recognizing your own faults and your own errors and your own idiosyncrasies and doing your best.  And being honest about when you're doing your best and when you can do better.

Which is really about all anybody can do.

Recording this one was interesting (it always is).

It started as a quiet fingerpicker and we revved it up pretty good with a band arrangement.  I played the guitar during the verses (which I'm really proud of) and Darren actually played the guitar on the chorus, which was cool.  Luke's playing is typically tasteful and Jay stepped up with some more muscular bass playing than is typically found on the Paper Arrows stuff.

If memory serves, I cut the vocals very very quickly and we all gathered around one microphone to sing the backups as a group.

Love the way it turned out and love it as an album closer.

Back to the idea of being human...

The Paper Arrows catalog has been and always will be a reflection of me and my humanity.

Part of what (I think) keeps me from playing out behind the Paper Arrows name more often is the rawness and immediacy of the material.  I write it to get it out of my system in some ways, to record it and sort of forget about it, and playing (playing it well at least) requires me to revisit some of the stuff and feelings that motivated me to write it.

And that's just something I have to embrace and get over or at least embrace if I ever want this thing to go anywhere.

So here's to Paper Arrows, the road, and being just another man.

For better or worse.

But lately more better than worse.

JUST ANOTHER MAN

I want it to work
I want it to last
I want to find out what happens next
But I don't want to go too fast

I want to hear your voice
I want to touch your skin
I was to hold your heart in my hands
But I don't want to let love in

'Cause I found
Staying underground
Is easier than facing the day
I hope you understand
I'm just another man
Just another man

I want to feel the prayers
And I want to see the light
I want to know where we go in the dark
But I don't want to put in the fight

'Cause I found
Staying underground
Is easier than facing the day
I hope you understand
I'm just another man
Just another man

I want to fill up the sky
And sing into the blue
I want silver and gold in my soul
But I don't want to tell the truth

'Cause I found
Staying underground
Is easier than facing the day
I hope you understand
I'm just another man
Just another man

jbg

Hammer Down (Heaven Bound)

Days of Getting By

There are two more original songs from our last EP about which to write...

Which is interesting because just yesterday I heard the final mixes of our next EP (out soon on Slothtrop Records, natch).

So that means we're either really fast at recording or I'm slow at writing about what we've recorded.  Or most likely both.

But hey... things get done at their own pace and it seems kind of fitting to tackle the title song from one project as you start to figure out how the next one fits into the bigger picture.

Or at least that's what I'm going to go with here.

One of the benefits of waiting to write about these songs is that my ears and my brain (and my heart I suppose) get a little distance from them... which is almost always for the better.  When you wrap a project, you've heard the songs so many times, thought about them, obsessed about every detail, that you have zero objectivity in your assessment of how they sound and what they mean.

So this morning when I put on the song Days of Getting By it was probably the first time I'd listened to it in its entirety in 6 months.

And I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I liked it more than I remembered I did.  I was on the fence about even recording this song and then once we committed to recording it, I never felt like I was on firm ground as we pieced it together.

I changed the key a number of times, changed the approach, thought about using the band on it, decided against it... sang it one way, sang it another, went back to the first way, recorded a couple other instruments that didn't make the final mix.  It's definitely a tribute to the mix that it turned out as well as it did.

So why did I name the album after a song about which I was trending ambivalent?

Because the creation of it somehow captured the whole record both in substance and style.

When we started recording this group of songs, I had a grand vision of doing 11 of them, making a video for each, and then releasing them one at a time last year as something called "11 for '12" (11 songs for 2012).  At the end of the year we were going to collect them all with their videos and release them as an album entitled "11:12."

Which is a great idea in theory but then... the reality of making 11 videos (that is, the cost of making 11 videos) scuttled that.  Luckily, this was about the time Slothtrop came into the picture so we wound up having an outlet to release what we had recorded so far.

Because we had envisioned this group of songs as singles, we were recording them one at a time rather than as a group.  Which meant they had a little less cohesion than, say, In the Morning did, when we recorded all ten songs with the same 4 people in 3 days.

So when it came time for naming the record... it wasn't as obvious to me as it had been in the past with Look Alive, Things We Would Rather Lose, and In the Morning.

I've written before that I see the first three Paper Arrows records as having a thematic arc of loss, recovery, and redemption.

So naturally this record felt like the chance to start a new arc... but after listening to the seven songs that became this record, I had only the vaguest idea of what I was writing about.  I could tell I was wrestling with what comes after redemption, what comes after you work through loss... but I couldn't quite tell what that was.

And then, when I started writing the next record (the one I just heard yesterday for the first time), it clicked: I'm writing about love.  What it is.  How it is.  What it means.  How to shepherd it into the world and how to keep it close.  Not destroy it.  Fight for it.

Because love is what we're left with after we get rid of loss.  Love is what we're looking for when we're trying to get through loss.

And on this record, I can hear myself building the confidence to write about it in a more direct way.

So the tag line going forward for Paper Arrows (thanks to Slothtrop) is "Literate Love Songs."

And, as will become clearer with the release of the next EP, that's what this project Paper Arrows has come to be about.

(ed. note: for the first time I'm using Paper Arrows as a front for and synonymous with me, Joe Goodkin.)

If we have entire world religions dedicated to the concept of love, can't we have a middling midwestern rock band?

Sure, why not.

So Days of Getting By...

The second verse is where I'm seeing the truth of the matter.  After a quick telescoped run through loss and its ramifications in the first verse, we get to love is the second.  And then we get to the last line...

"Wait for spring like we used to sing in the days of getting by."

The "spring" is from "Look Alive" and the "days of getting by" is from "Skeletonskinandsky."

Strange how that comes full circle.

And speaking of strange, man, it's a weird sounding song.

The main instrumental track is three classical guitars with similar fingerpicking patterns played on different parts of the neck all layered over one another and then run through a rotating leslie speaker.  I think.  There's also some (heavily edited) glockenspiel played by me and some (heavily edited) piano played by me.  And then a high falsetto lead vocal with the lower octave  "harmony," also me.  At some point, I think the vocal gets run through a leslie speaker too.

The result is something weird, beautiful, and pretty striking I think.

And maybe just maybe almost by accident I captured exactly what I was supposed to on this record.

DAYS OF GETTING BY

The ice is grieving and what remains behind
This winter armor wrapped around a heartbeat, a pair of lowered eyes
The price of leaving is what remains ahead
This summer shame is thick as smoke and hangs about our bed

Take me

Love is seeing what stays in the dark
Is autumn's breath and midnight's blood, a sea of silent hearts
Love is needing to stay in the light
And wait for spring like we used to sing in the days of getting by

Take me

jbg

Only One

It's winter in Chicago and winter makes me think of quiet songs.

Every Paper Arrows album has had at least one quiet song.

Look Alive (the quietest of our albums) has Again and Again as well as Fight and also When You Left.  And you can even throw December Static in there.

Things We Would Rather Lose has Almost Gone (and an ironically titled One More Quiet Song).

In the Morning the most polished has Near.

And Days of Getting By has Only One.

The thing about choosing to record a song sparely is that you are essentially telling the listener that the lyrics are the most important thing.  There's nothing to hide behind, nothing to distract so the lyrics are front and center.

And that's appropriate for Only One.

Every once in awhile as a writer you go some place so far under your skin that it makes you uncomfortable.  But in a good way.  Because of the honesty.

Every once in awhile you get right down to the bone, right to the heart of what you're feeling and trying to say.

Jesus, maybe I could use one more cliched image involving the human body.

Fuck it.

Only One is that song for me.

I recorded the guitar part on a capo-ed 12 string acoustic.

The vocals are hard for me to listen to but, again, in a good way.

I can hear myself believing everything I wrote, which isn't always the case.

So here's to songs that capture the truth.

I guess even the loudest ones should be quiet at their cores.

ONLY ONE

She's out on the water
Wondering where he went
And if he's coming back again
And why she never left

But I am not a drinker
And you are not the one
Who walked away from what was made
Who turned your back on love

I am the only one
I am the only one
For you

He's out on the wire
Wondered when he fell
How he wasted what she gave
If he knew he'll never tell

And I am just a dreamer
But you are not a dream
Flesh and blood and skin and sky
And everything in between

I am the only one
I am the only one
For you

jbg

Love Goes On (Three Year Update)

You know what you can't fuck with?

Time.

It just happens.

And what marks the passage of time (for better or worse) more than anniversaries.  A year is an arbitrary time period from the standpoint of actual accomplishment but it does offer a chance to reflect on accomplishments and take stock of what improvements can be made.

Which is particularly relevant because yesterday was the third anniversary of my last day working at Baker & McKenzie, the so-called "day job."

Three years of pursuing a career in music head-on, full-time.

Let me sum up the last three years in one word:

exhilaratingexcitingdepressingreallyreallyhardrewarding-
wonderfulterrifyingdepressinghumblingbeguilinggloriousmoving-
crushingfrustratingmystifyingultimatelythebest

I think that covers it.

While it's easy to get buried in the details and the day-to-day of building success in music (and any career or business I suppose), I try to remind myself as often as possible of how lucky I am, how hard I work, and how far I've come as an artist and a businessman in these three years.

Truly, my worst day as a musician is better than my best day doing just about any other job and that gets lost in the noise from time to time.

The other thing that gets lost in the mundane side of music is the reason why I did this to begin with: the music.

So much of being a musician has nothing to do with music.  It's like any other business: administration takes up a disproportionate amount of time, a necessary evil for any measure of true success.

But at the center of this bizarre ride is and has to be music and my love for music.

One of my favorite songs ever is What I Did for Love from A Chorus Line.  So simple, so perfect.  Captures the common thread of love across so many different things in life, but especially the love for a craft or art, the sacrifices one makes, and the pain and failure one tolerates to pursue it.

That's the song I had in mind when I wrote Love Goes On and the idea of what love means and how it exists has become the subject of this next set of records we're working on.

Recording Love Goes On was a blast.  We changed very little from my demo version... added a little interlude and a double chorus and that's about it.  The core of the tune (including the rhythm guitar) is from the live tracking with the band.  The lead part was done on some weird electronic-infused guitar that was hanging around the studio... it was like playing a live cat.  The thing was just howling in my hands.  So much fun.  The background vocals and hand claps we all did in the big room together around one microphone.  The lead vocals I cut near the end of my sinus infection period (it's like Picasso's Blue Period only with less post-nasal drip).  And the mix was expertly handled, as usual.

As far as the lyrics... I think it's all there.

Love is love.

Love for people, love for music...

Love is going to face the same obstacles, the same challenges.

When you're weary and beaten up, when you're fighting doubt...

Love goes on.

I believe it.

No, I know it.

Because I'm lucky enough to live it every day.

**************

LOVE GOES ON

Walking the same roads
In these worn down shoes
Singing these worn down blues
Again and again

Waiting for new light
In a darkened place
With a belly full of broken grace
And remedy spent

But lines are drawn
From night to dawn
And in between
Love goes on

Digging the same hole
With a heave heart
Trying not to fall apart
In front of the kids

Leaving the light up
As the darkness crawls
From the windows to the pale walls
Of the heartache we hid


But lines are drawn
From night to dawn
And in between
Love goes on

jbg