“Keep It To Yourself,” a blackly humorous bossa nova song I wrote with my pal Amy Rigby a few years ago has been getting some attention lately. It’s the title track of the new album by jazz singer-comedienne Laura Ainsworth and the inspiration for a short story by John Harvey in the latest issue of literary-art mag Ambit. The song, by the way, is a revenge fantasy about knocking off an ex-boyfriend. Amy’s version is still the definitive one.
Keep It To Yourself
Split Screen Romance
As my nomadic existence continues, I’ve moved out of the guest house I was renting and moved in with my girlfriend. To be more precise, I’ve moved into Side B of her duplex. So we are living together, but with a wall between us. It’s kind of like something out of an old Doris Day – Rock Hudson movie. Except of course, I like girls. Ba dum bum.
If my girlfriend – I guess I should keep her name out of this, in the interest of internet security and so forth, but we’ll call her Heather – if Heather hadn’t brought it up first, I wouldn’t say this, but – this is kind of a great arrangement. Especially since we haven’t lived together before. It’s like a warm-up for co-habitation. We each have our own place, with our own stuff (except post-fire, I don’t really have any stuff), but we can spend more time together. We eat together, take walks together, do other stuff that couples do together too, of course, but then we can always retreat to our own side of the duplex. It’s been interesting to hear my friends’ reactions. One said, “You’re like Woody and Mia in the 80s.” Another said, “Dude, you’ve figured out the key to relationship bliss.” And a married friend said, “I wish I was you.”
Maybe we’re onto something.
Homesick
“Homesick” by the Kings Of Convenience is a song I’ve put on several mix CDs over the years. Not intentionally. But when I’m looking for that one extra something to round out a mix, there are a few go-to tracks I always seem to grab. “Homesick” is one. “Jenny Wren” by McCartney is another. “Never Going Back Again” by Fleetwood Mac is a favorite. Strange, those three songs seem like musical cousins, don’t they? Anyway, at one point, I owned the Kings Of Convenience album, Riot On An Empty Street, but “Homesick” is the only song from it that has endured for me. It’s such an obvious tribute to Simon & Garfunkel that I can’t help but love it. The close-miked acoustic fingerpicking, the precise vocal harmonies, and the feeling that the singers are wearing cable-knit sweaters and solemn expressions on their faces as they sing it. Even the opening lines make it clear who the song is about:
I lose some sales and my boss won’t be happy
But I can’t stop listening to the sound
Of two soft voices rendered in perfection
From the reels of this record that I found
“Two soft voices rendered in perfection” is a concise, poetic description of what Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel gave us over the course of their years together. I watched an interview with Simon on YouTube the other night where he was talking about writing songs in 1966. He said that he was twenty-four, he had an open heart, and his concerns were the same as most of the people listening to Simon & Garfunkel. That made it easy to communicate through his songs. Easier than it would ever be again, he said. That really resonated with me. It’s not so much that songwriting gets more difficult as you go on, but staying connected with an audience does. Especially when the audience has a tendency to wander off and care less passionately about pop records and your newest work.
I went to hear Paul Simon at the Ryman last week. It was an amazing concert, and Simon constructed his long, generous set with an ear towards pleasing everyone. He delivered the hits – “Fifty Ways To Leave Your Lover,” “Slip Slidin’ Away,” “Kodachrome,” Still Crazy After All These Years” and more. He pulled out some unexpected album tracks – “Peace Like A River,” “Gumboots,” “The Only Living Boy In New York.” And these he mixed with songs from his latest record, So Beautiful Or So What. But inevitably, whenever he played a new tune, the baby boomers seated near me would get restless and start to talk. “Is this another new song?” some guy said, with obvious annoyance in his voice.
On one hand, I understand this reaction. You pay $90 for a ticket to Paul Simon, and you want him to do your favorite songs. But remember why you loved Paul Simon in the first place. He’s an artist who constantly brought you new, interesting material. He brought you insights into your own life. And while the quality of work from many of his musical contemporaries has declined over the years, Simon is still making vital, compelling music. I think as a fan you owe it to him to pay attention and give his new songs a chance. The irony is that the songs that these restless boomers were ignoring were the very ones that would probably speak to them as they are now. Simon is writing about mortality and God and finding meaning in the smallest things. But I think a lot of people are looking to recapture a feeling they had in their youth. They’re nostalgic. To borrow the Kings Of Convenience song title, they’re homesick.
No big message here, just an observation, and a plug for that great Kings Of Convenience song and Paul Simon’s new album.
8 Reasons To Celebrate Wings
Here’s my latest MOJO Blog, all about Paul McCartney’s other band:
Postcards to our future selves
Sorry, it’s been a while since I posted. I’ve been busy with various things – magazine work, recording a solo project and dealing with the ongoing frustration of feeling like my entire life is in limbo. Seven months have passed since the fire and my condo is still stripped down to the studs. Some days I look in the window and want to weep. Other days I feel like cursing out (or strangling) the idiot who started the fire. He most likely has no idea of the amount of heartache, headache and frustration he has caused. The reconstruction has been hampered by everything from bad weather to red tape to delayed inspections. That said, it still seems like it’s moving much too slowly. I’ve watched four-bedroom houses be built from the ground up in two months. So what’s so difficult about a condo?
One of the songs I recorded for this solo EP is called “Looking For A Place To Live.” It’s a collaboration with my friend Daniel Tashian. The weird thing is, we wrote it a year before the fire. Of course, we’d both had the experience of apartment and house hunting, but the song has taken on a whole new meaning for me since the fire. It reminds me of something that Jackson Browne once said in an interview (actually it might have been Roseanne Cash who said it). “Songs can sometimes be like postcards to our future selves.” I’ve felt that to be true before, but never with such eerie poignancy.
What else? Molly and I are singing with the Long Players tonight. They’re performing The Beatles’ Let It Be album, and we’re doing “Two Of Us.”
I’m performing at the TED conference tomorrow in Nashville, as a finalist in their one-minute song competition. Wish me luck.
Oh, and I’m on an Albert Brooks kick. Watched Lost In America last night for the tenth time. So funny and real. What a masterpiece. If you’re on Twitter, you should follow Albert. His tweets are pretty much the funniest things on that site.
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