Oh, Best Buy

Best Buy is an... interesting environment in which to play acoustic music solo. There are a number of drum sets and keyboards and things around to make noise. But amazingly, things were relatively silent throughout half of the 90 minute set I cobbled together. And the drive to play was back; last night was an aberration.

A few new songs were set out into the wild (two survived, one didn't); a few new covers were played ("Weary Kind" being the best of them); and VJ and I attempted to make good on my promise to cover Party in the USA, but couldn't decide to play it straight or play it sad.

Cafe Epicure and That One Show

There's always the show you just don't feel like playing. It can be at a great venue (it was!) with a great band sharing the bill (they were!) but your energy is just off and better turned inward or turned towards one person or a couple of people than out into an audience.

It was even a little tough to go into the venue. * and I hung out on the side of the building and -- I'm so sorry, Last Monarchs, you're amazing, and I'll catch a full set soon, I promise -- it felt sort of like skipping class, slumped in the grass beside the wall and not even really talking about important things, just being mellow, enjoying the breeze and lack of humidity.

*name withheld to protect the similarly guilty

We finally made it in at the set's halfway point, but the low energy thing was still sticking around. I could have played and sung a lot better than I did. But there's always that one show. Shame it had to be this one.

These Shipwrecked Words

It's in my nature to create false dichotomies, attempt to argue for their existence, and watch my arguments fall apart.

Still, I've been thinking about "These Shipwrecked Words" and the EP we'll be recording in the fall. "These Shipwrecked Words" is sort of all about the distances between people, isn't it? And its thesis -- at least until "At Your Door" -- is that those distances can sometimes be impassable and things can sometimes be impossible to change. Even "At Your Door" only allows for brief moments of connection. Attempts at communication set off from one shore, but end up lost before reaching the other. The way the title ties everything together wasn't planned at all, but it makes me even prouder of this recording and makes me feel like maybe we're saying something, however arguable and mopey.

But our next EP? All the songs that are going on it seem to be about *crossing* distances -- both metaphorical and literal -- and the ways one can and the reasons one should. "The Places You Call Home" is about tentative and awkward people discovering how to appreciate each other in tentative, awkward, and appreciative ways; "The Wide Expanses" about saying f*** it to the fact that there's not going to be a perfect moment; and "Remy" about stepping away from making art for selfish reasons and just experiencing things rather than feeling like you have to create and control them. The fourth song isn't titled and its lyrics aren't finished, but the feeling is already sort of the same: hope infused into melancholy, the beauty of motion and change, the wonder and necessity of getting from here to there.

So enjoy our prophecies of emotional doom while you can; we might surprise you with a bit of hesitant optimism later.

-sb