As I write this blog entry from my brand new iPhone 3G using the just released WordPress app (available in the iTunes App Store), I can’t help but wonder if this will result in me blogging more often or even sharing pictures of events that are happening as I am writing with greater frequency.
Truly amazing folks. More to come! Time to track my route on google maps with GPS. (Sooooo nerdy.)
I spent a good hour today sitting down with my new nylon string mini-guitar to learn an old classic restyled by (who else) Andrew Bird. The song is entitled “How You Gonna Keep Em Down On The Farm” and was originally written by Joe Young and Sam M. Lewis with music by Walter Donaldson in the year 1918 in the WWI era. The song, in my own interpretation and no one elses, chronicles the rise of modern cities as they came to odds with country/agricultural life or the traditional family unit and deals with a family whose sons had left to learn about early adulthood in the big cities of Europe and the world. As the mother hopes and beckons in a call/response dialogue with the patriarch of the family the reasons why her sons shall return home to help keep the farm going, the father sullenly realizes his own retirement is in jeopardy. Interestingly at the same the time, the listener hears a sunken disappointment in the subtext of the father’s woes; that perhaps the father wanted more from his own wild 20-something years, something that a more conservative society did not offer when he was still growing up. It’s clear the way in which his dismisses his wife’s hopes that he believes society will get the best of his boys and there is no way they will return to the dreary, dull life a farmer leads.
That being said, it was the chords in this song that really drew me to it. A sweet sound throughout most of the verses, Bird has a way of suckering the listener in to a fanciful tale only to reveal a dark, unsolvable subtext that is present not only in the classic story but in the chord voicings used.
The masterful use of A7 and G7 in this song make the song dive to new depths of muted pain, but the choice to use a D chord in an otherwise F major progression was a particularly adventurous path to choose. Still as I listened to it a myriad times over the last 4 months or so, its dissonance only whet my whistle and made me want more. Here is my interpretation of Andrew Bird’s version of “How You Gonna Keep Em Down On The Farm”. I hope you get as much enjoyment out of it as I did. (P.S. fingerpick it.)
As obsessive as I am about music, there are only a handful of bands that I feel I must patronize by actually buying their physical albums, or to another extreme, own everything they have ever put out. I felt very fortunate to come across The Decemberists on the recommendation of a friend a few years ago, and I have since gobbled up any release I could get my hands on.
You can imagine my excitement when I heard that Colin Meloy, (songwriter and lead singer/guitarist of the group) would be doing a solo tour stopping at the Fillmore in San Francisco next week. Colin has also released an excellent Tour EP that commits the shows experience to disc. He keeps the songs extremely tight and the dialogue with the audience extremely loose (his signature, I once saw his entire band eaten by a giant whale at the Warfield… long story). Think of it as Jack Daniels:VH1 Storytellers.
Pitchfork.tv just posted a video of Colin playing “We Both Go Down Together”, a lover’s lament with Romeo and Juliet-like themes that, of course, ends with a double suicide. Luckily its beauty detracts from the subject matter enough to not depress the listener to the same extent. Check it out here.
I know I have been gone. But rest assured I have been spending my time wisely, transcribing, arranging, and distilling down more songs for one acoustic guitar. Enough apologies, I have things to type.
About a month and a half ago, I was fortunate enough to not delete my daily email from LiveNation (Ticketmaster with a face lift), a habit that has proven only minorly less cumbersome than actually canceling my subscription to the newsletter itself. Hell, I was probably about to, and then I forgot what I was doing when I saw Andrew Bird was playing at the Fillmore. Ok LiveNation, you can live. This time.
It wasn’t long before I had my tickets. Now I had read about this curious man on the interwebs (you just have to pluralize that, chuckle) and I was intrigued. First you have to understand something: Andrew Bird plays with two other individuals. It sounds like he plays with the San Francisco Symphony. Martin Dosh (Drummer) will often have different cut-up, trashed polyrhythms going simultaneously while he plays keyboard with one hand. Andrew will have hand claps, accompany himself singing, whistle (and boy do I mean whistle, holy schnikies), play guitar, sing with a tone reminiscient of Jeff Buckley and play his ace card, the violin.
Now you are probably thinking, “…um I don’t want to see some clown playing over samples of himself he created in his studio to be perfect tempo and pitch! I can press ‘play’ the same as he can.” And right you are. Its the same reason I don’t get super amped off electronic acts and the live experience. But what about if you could be there in the studio to see his process in creating all these accompaniments? A little bit more interesting? You see, you cannot go to an Andrew Bird show and expect to hear the song the same way it is played on the album (this bothers some people, though I find it amazing to be there for something unique). What you will hear is a snapshot in time of how Bird and his small band interpret a composition at that moment: the imperfections of the room’s reverb, the guitar being a little bit out of tune, the hand claps layering too much that they form a sonic boom when Bird taps his shoeless foot (clad only in a dress sock) on his pedal to discontinue the sample track he recorded not 3 minutes ago in front of the crowd.
It’s quite a feat of composition and arrangement to be able to think of what loops are currently playing, what loops you still need to generate, what pedals and devices are holding what sounds, and most importantly, how many hands you actually have (he has two, but not from the sound of it). Check out this video of him playing “Fiery Crash“ from his latest album Armchair Apocrypha at a Amoeba Records store. I think my above description will become clear as you see him go through his process in creating this wall of noise and shaping it as if he had clones of himself at the ready.
And of course, I have prepped for you my own interpretation of this beautiful song. Without further ado, here it is.
Recently I received a preview of Radiohead’s In Rainbows Bonus Disc, which is included with the $80.00 discbox available through the now taken down inrainbows.com. I have to say, what a wonderful addition to an already stellar album (but really, who is surprised). Anywho, I am dog tired, but I wanted to share with you my interpretation of one of the most beautiful songs on this darker side of In Rainbows: it’s a slow burner of a song that deals with, in my mind, insecurity in social gatherings and how just one person who puts you at ease can make you feel at home and thankful to be there. The track is called “Last Flowers“ and was originally dubbed “Last Flowers Till The Hospital” during the era of Thom’s candlelight protest/vigil in front of Tony Blair’s estate. Many of the tracks from this Bonus Disc compliment tracks from Disc One in my mind; I find this one makes a nice contrast with “Faust Arp”. Without further ado, here is my arrangement for acoustic guitar of “Last Flowers”… it has a picking pattern much like a minor key “No Surprises” with a surprising tonal shift from Cmajor to Amajor/Amajor7. Enjoy!
