This week's ghost

In addition to obsessing over Time and the Sea (which is a working title for a future album), I also find myself leaning on the ghost... and what the ghost means and how it represents the relationship between the past and the future and the passage of time. Not a particularly groundbreaking lyrical convention, but a useful and effective one.

What raised the specter of the ghost this week, was that I'm starting to sort through the lyrics to all the new tunes and look for possible themes for the new recording project... most of the songs have been written over the last 6 months, with over half in the last 3 months, and that writing window lends itself to subliminal (or sometimes superliminal) overarching ideas and imagery.

One of the things I liked about naming the album Bottle Boy is that when I looked at all the lyrics, it seemed like an album about the past, about memories, and about, well, ghosts... things that continue to haunt you which you think are temporary but come to realize, after months or years, that they might just be a part of you forever.

So you have:

Nothing's Changed - that very idea of thinking you've escaped something from your past only to have it there again 

Revenant - almost exactly the same theme as Nothing's Changed... "coming back again..."

The Darkness - about those people (well, person) who help(s) you deal with time and ghosts

Four Words - sometimes, the ghosts get a little too loud and you give up

Bombs Away - walking that line between the past and future... trying to move forward

Fallout Grace - the wildcard... progress and the unknown... from all these ghosts come songs

Mermaid - as mentioned in previous entries, this song is the "ghost" of the album... seemed like it would haunt me until we put it out there.

The Soft Drown - overwhelmed by the ghosts

Seraphim do Mar - what's left when it's all gone?

And Bottle Boy... this song was on our first EP (a ghost of a song), and it's remained a bit of a mystery to me. It's about being between the past and the future, between the ghosts of the past and the ghosts of the future (I feel like I'm stuck in a Dickens' story now)... and that feeling of knowing that there will always be those ghosts there... so it seemed an appropriate title for the album.

When I wrote these lyrics, which I did in a cafe up in Madison, Wisconsin, on a napkin in 2003 (still have the napkin), I wasn't sure what they meant, specifically the choruses and the title. I'd had the phrase Bottle Boy kicking around for a bit, and really loved the imagery and what it evoked, but had no context in which to put it. And these fairly straightforward verse lyrics came pouring out of me in a cafe where I spent many a night during my four important years in Madison, and I was remembering all the ghosts, good and bad, and thinking about what they meant to me and how they made and continued to make me who I was on that day... and Bottle Boy was born.

Aimless AM radio, spinning through the dial I'm falling into silence, I've gone another mile When that feeling of suspense meets the skyline heading north Going down that road you've gone down many times before Like a moth into the light, I neglect the consequence Or perhaps it was the lure of electric eloquence One thing is for certain, the burn is something real The scar is just a shadow of the innocence I feel I'm in between the signal I'm in between the static I'm lightening in a bottle I'm thinking something tragic And on past the journey to the place where we were born On that quiet winter's night when the clocks had struck forlorn There's something stark and fleeting in walking down these streets There's something to the myth that quickens my heart as it beats I'm in between the signal I'm in between the static I'm lightening in a bottle I'm thinking something tragic I'm in between the moonlight The currency of strangers The noise is in the moonlight And the moonlight is the danger to me And back into the night, the sky is pushing me Back on down that road to the places I should be How can I forget the way you won weary eyes? Well I will not go dreaming as the days just pass me by ******* 

So now I can see that everybody's lives are made up of these choruses of ghosts... and maybe I'm just trying to get mine to sing in tune.

Cheers. Go Bears.

jbg

Melon Collie

You've heard the one about the cantaloupe and the dog getting it on? No? Maybe that's better for all of us.

Another semi-cloudy October morning at home with the animals, trying to get some things done around the house, failing spectacularly. If you're going to fail, fail spectacularly. I think that's a motto all musicians should live by. Maybe I can make a t-shirt with that on it, or a Demotivational Calendar or something.

This week is setting up to be work work work. A dozen students on Tuesday, a private student last night, eight students plus a private student today, and (as of now) fifteen students on Saturday.

Holy.
Crap.

That's a lot. Mix in the usual Monday, Wednesday, Friday downtown and it makes for some pretty serious exhaustion and a bit of a lull in songwriting. My goal is to have 12 tunes ready by the time we rehearse again, which'll be the week after next. I've got 7 completely done, and 2 more mostly done. I've also got about 3 tunes that have solid beginnings (i.e., nice guitar hooks, changes, etc.) so hopefully I can buckle down over the next 2 weeks and have a good batch of songs ready as we begin to think about our next project.

Harriet Miers, we hardly knew ye.

Really.

jbg

What's the plan, band?

It's a Nick Drake type of October Tuesday morning... as somehow my copy of Pink Moon has gone AWOL. Guess I'll have to score the day myself, with Mr. Drake as my muse.

Anyway, this past weekend was a good one, all around. Friday, we met up with a group of friends at Da Sero, a Mexican place on West Randolph, for some dinner, and proceeded to a wine bar for some drinks afterwards. The occasions celebrated were a visit from our friends Leslie and Matt (from Florida), and Matt's 30th birthday.

After a long day of teaching on Saturday, I took the Metra down to Grand Ave., and we met my parents, sister, and sister's boyfriend Will for dinner. The occasion celebrated was my sister receiving a no-strings-attached grant for a year's worth of college tuition and books. Good times indeed.

Sunday found me running a couple of errands and then settling in to watch the Bears defeat the Ravens. I also stopped by Aoife and Barret's to say hello and go over a couple of band-related things. The happy couple had just returned the night before from their honeymoon in England and France, and seemed happy with the trip as well as with finally being home.

We discussed (and I think decided) to adopt a slightly modified plan for Burn Rome Burn over the next six months. As I've mentioned a few times over the last few weeks, we've been having some professional disagreements with our manager about how to release Bottle Boy. We want to release it all, as is, as a full length album, whereas our manager wants us to break it into two separate EPs (shorter releases). He'd also like to see us spend a little more time tweaking it artistically, but that's not going to happen.

Anyway, he has his reasons for promoting the "two EP" strategy, and the best one is that he's going to be shopping our music to record labels, and if a label is interested, he wants to have more material to give them. Which is a sentiment I've heard a lot in the business: you always want something more in your pocket to show people.

So I was thinking (read: brooding) about this over the past week, and I hit upon this idea: by the time the album is in our hands, we have a "hard release date," put on a big CD release show, get CDs to record people, and have the record people actually listen to the CDs, it'll be 4 to 6 months from now. In that time, we're going to get back to working on new material, pick 2-4 tunes from the huge batch I've written, and spend a weekend in a really nice studio in Chicago laying down these 2-4 tunes, working quickly, trying to implement a lot of what we learned over the course of recording Bottle Boy.

So when all the record companies come to us begging for more material (wink), we'll have another EP for them to swoon over. Is it a risk? Sure. We've never written or recorded anything that quickly. But I figure the worst that happens is that we have a high-quality demo of new material. I'm hoping to lay down a couple of acoustic tunes, too, and maybe include one of them on the EP.

One of the big problems I've experienced in previous bands I've been in and seen in a lot of "local" bands, is that it's really hard to get going again after you finish a full length. You've put all your time, energy and money into this project and suddenly it's done and... it's hard to get back into the studio again. So this strategy should remedy that situation, challenge us to write and record in a new paradigm, and satisfy our manager's concerns.

Now there's just the little matter of actually making it happen...

jbg

It Will Always Rain

The sky was low and the Streets went on for miles and the Spires hung above the tracks but they Couldn't reconcile The noise from above with the Noise from the ground and the Choir began to sing as the Summer sun went down It will always rain It will always rain If you pray for long enough It will always rain He faced to the east with his Eyes fixed on a star and he Tried to put in words what he Knew in his heart The lightening touched his tongue and the Sparks began to fly and the Night sky opened up and the Angels began to cry It will always rain It will always rain If you pray for long enough It will always rain jbg

Awoke at 4 a.m.

I hate it when I live out my own lyrics.

I did, indeed, awaken at 4:00 a.m. this morning (after crashing at about 1:00), although I did not try to find the answer as the world began to end. As far as I can tell, at least. I instead worked on a new song tentatively entitled "It Will Always Rain" and then fell back asleep at about 5:30, just in time for our 6:30 alarm.

My hour plus writing foray yielded little worth reporting... the new song has only a chorus, and an unfinished one at that, but the music is pretty much there and the melodies have been flowing pretty freely. It's a simple, rootsy two chord thing and once I dial in exactly what I'm trying to say, I'd like to write the lyrics as quickly and honestly as possible.

Yesterday I also managed to finish December Static and I think once the band gets its fingers into it, it'll be something pretty good. It turned into a two part song with the first part as a quiet, folk tune with lyrics, and the second part as a dynamic electric long-form instrumental build, something we haven't really done. I also tinkered with another new tune called "Someday We'll Watch the Highway Burn." It's a real rocker that should go over well live.

SOMEDAY WE'LL WATCH THE HIGHWAY BURN Saw the light on the city behind Saw the firefight in your eyes Just another day coming on Just another restless dawn Someday We'll watch the Highway Burn Thought that maybe I would stay As the morning fell away Thought that maybe I would break The midnight spells you couldn't shake Someday We'll watch the Highway Burn

So we're still a good three weeks from the next BRB rehearsal, and by that time the new song list should be at least: Travesty in Blue December Static Ark Atlantis Why You Had to Fall Losing Kind Regret It Will Always Rain Someday We'll Watch the Highway Burn

Whew. We've got a lot of work to do.

jbg