Thoughts on a Life Without Chickens

On January 5th, I released a sixth album, Life Without Chickens.

The album was recorded in 1986, from the beginning of May to the middle of June, the fastest I've ever recorded an album's worth of music. For reasons unknown, I thought I'd spent most of the first part of the year making it, but was in fact recording No Love Here, it's predecessor. And as I did not stop in those days, I then moved right into Apologia, which I finished at the end of '86. Three albums in 12 months. I then took a break and didn't record in 1987; I don't remember why.
What I do remember is thinking that Chickens was something of an outlier and because it was on the opposite side of Apologia, which is my favorite from that period, on the master tape, I only listened to it now and again when I didn't want to rewind the tape- oh, to all the love people ascribe to analog!
It was only a decade later when I started listening to it; all of the recordings in truth after not listening to them much at all, that I began to better appreciate what I had done and what direction I was going in.

I know how strange that sounds.

But, my habits at the time were such that once a song was finished I moved on to the next; when I had enough for an album- this was gaged by having completed 45 minutes of music, give or take-I moved on to the next project. I didn't spend a lot of time ruminating on what direction or what kind of music to work on.
That's not entirely true but is representative of how memory deceives us.
I started recording on my Tascam 244 4-track cassette recorder in late 1983. From that point until 1991 I recorded 8 albums of music. By the beginning of 1985, I had a fairly good handle on how to get the most out of the machine given its and my limitations. And by the end of 1985/early 1986, I had decided to minimize the number of voices on any one song-voices being guitars, synthesizers, drums/percussion, bass, and vocals. I found I got a much cleaner, more open sound by limiting myself to basically being a quartet. This also made recording easier by limiting sub-mixes, bouncing tracks, etc. It didn't keep me from lamenting the limitations I was under however. I had also decided in late '85 that I would not be doing any love songs or songs that had to do with me personally; I wanted to write about life, society, social conditions; stuff like that, as well as expand my musical horizons.

Life Without Chickens is the truest embodiment of that. Musically, it is more of a jazz album than rock even though the instrumentation isn't classically jazz, no horns or pianos. This is evident from the first song, a 15 minute three part instrumental that is connected by a bass line. I was heavy into Miles Davis at the time and I subconsciously took a cue from his early 70's work. The following songs deal with AIDS and our fear of it; the artifice of relational presentation, in other words worrying about how we're perceived by others socially; isolation, war, and loss; religious hypocrisy; the idea that we must fall into or belong to rigid class structures, and the corruption of prophets.
Weighty stuff, all to a less structured musical pallet.

The more I listen to it the more I like it, which wasn't true 30 years ago, and for an 80's album, it doesn't sound that way, which pleases me as well.

This week's song, Do Unto Others, is from Life Without Chickens, and it is a meditation on walling ourselves off out of fear, of that leading to persecution, of turning away from kindness or care or knowledge. It was written in response to the AIDS epidemic which claimed the lives of too many, including friends, and our willingness to close ourselves off, to judge without knowing the facts, and be manipulated by fear mongers.

You can listen at mrprimitivemusic.com on the home page under This Week's Song.

The dreaded "Year in Review"

It was, given some introspection, a very good year! It's important to note that for nothing good can come from what I impart to you without that understanding! And yes, I'm ripping off Dickens.

Creatively, there was the new album, Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory), and at this point in life-I'm not exactly a Spring chicken-it's always good that there are new ideas and songs flowing rather than regurgitations of the past or, more politely, retreads of songs done better. Whispers, while not perfect, and what is that's interesting, allowed me to pursue different ideas and themes that would not have occurred to me all those years ago.

That said, I still like the old stuff and have continued to release it. Both PearceArrow and Ice Flows were released to wide acclaim or its equivalency and on January 5th, the prequel to Apologia, Life Without Chickens,

 will be released. I also plan to release Desperate Mothers and Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch this year.

But that's not all!

New projects include Primitive Desires, a meditation on life in the 21st century which will be all new music, and I'm finally going to record a releasable version of Winter, a album of songs from the early 80's that never progressed beyond demos, but are a favorite of mine and it needs to be finished.

I also plan to write about music and all that entails from my thoughts in general to what I'm listening to and cogent commentary on why everything new is terrible (wink, wink, nudge, nudge; know what I mean...) 

This week's song is from Whispers, To The Life. The song is about relationships and how they evolve over time through memory. The idea, as you listen to it, is that this could be about any number of relations; of those still together, of those apart; of those between lovers or between children and parents; that whatever we once thought, time has irrevocably changed how we see those relationships for good or bad. Lyrically there are impressions of moments past and present, of desires never quite sated, and of longing for a kind of closure and connection.

Oh, and may the new year be as wonderful as you can stand.

To Submit or Not to Submit

Tis the season of many things, holidays, political mayhem, and for those of us aching for recognition, opportunities to have our music, that indelible product of our souls and psyches, reviewed or offered for prizes in contests at the low low price of $35 a pop. In and of itself that's not a grand fee but if you  want more than one song considered, it adds up quick. A typical album would be $300 or $400 smackaroos! Not exactly chump change even for those of us who can afford it. And there are any number of different organizations putting on these contests, noting the industry and artistic talent doing the judging; it's all very exciting.

Unlike the lottery, however, they don't state the odds.

Despite the tone, I'm not necessarily against such things, so long as one is wide-eyed about the actual possible outcomes and what you expect those outcomes to be. The fee is, as they say, for administrative purposes and whether you receive any notice of how your music was received is dependent on whether those administrative costs cover an actual response. Then there's the reason they put on the contests to begin with. We all believe ourselves to be budding superstars, but stars rarely align and there's that whole image and age thing that blows most of us out of the water. There's also the genera of what sells and what does not, irrespective of its artistic quality, which is the bane of all artists!

The result then is a calculated evaluation, or just plain old hope, that what I've submitted meets a particular need given the general condition of the market to which my hopes and prayers depend. The upside is someone will love the song and want to buy it for, as it is delicately put, a known talent that can maximize its monetary value. Whether you profit by that is a matter of the contract you sign, but let's not get ahead of ourselves just yet.

I allow myself two per year, beginning this year and no more...as an experiment, of course, in primal reduction.

In other news, this week's song is Let Her Dance, from the recently released album, Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory). 

The lyrical theme of the song came to me at a concert last year as I watched a number of women, and I've seen this many times before and it is always women, dancing by and for themselves in the isles completely oblivious to those around them, most notably the men who brought them; lost to the music and where it takes them. The song then revolves around the monotony of life's routines and relationships, and how hearing a song from a time earlier when we thought life had more promise transports us back with that rush of memory and feeling. This also explains people grooving to a tune at the grocery store.

You can hear it at mrprimitivemusic.com, or at Spotify or any other fine streaming service.

Lyrical invention and the Inevitable Need to Move On

The inevitable high of finishing a project, of actually getting everything done and getting it out there is at some point followed by the thud on the head that it is most likely to go no further. There will be no worldwide promotion or tour. No ads during sporting events or on buses to support what desperately needs to sell or we're all out on the street. And much as it sounds like a great time, no mega-ego to sooth and massage. Nor will I be the subject of speculation on where the new songs fit into the constellation of my most recent romantic adventures.

No, unlike Taylor, the only path, save for a performance here and there, is to move on to the next project.
On the plus side, there's much to do on that end and to those of us not destined for international fame and fortune, it is the rites of creation that are the thing, the muse, the reason to exist!

So it's on to the Primitive Desires and Winter projects.

However, since Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory) is still a fresh and vital work, I thought it would be interesting to expound on what the hell I was thinking when I wrote a particular lyric, which in this case is from The World Won't Let Me Go, a song of memory and time and the foundational song in the song cycle that is Whispers. You can hear the song at mrprimitivemusic, it's this week's song.

The premise of the lyric revolves around the image of an old man in the place of his birth, of the place where his most formative memories were created. It begins:

Free me from this troubled longing
That drives the hunger in my soul
Take the light that shine all above me
Save me from the darkness down below

The lyric starts with the idea of loss, from outliving those you knew and loved; of not wanting to remember yet not wanting to let those memories die; of tiring of life, but fearing the destruction of memory by letting go.

All the houses now are empty
All those lives have come and gone
Ghosts, they stop and share their stories
Of a time when they belonged

The second verse is the echoed past, the sights and sounds that you hear in your head when you revisit those places that inhabited your past. I think it's inevitable that when you find yourself back on familiar ground there is the call of all the memories you have from having been there before. You see it both as what it was and what it has become as well as what you were and what you have become.

The flowers won't spare the grieving
The only thing I care to know
Please don't tell me you love me
When the world won't let me go

The chorus speaks of two things, the power of grief and the need to grieve for what is lost and of being left with only memory. Tokens such as flowers do not relieve the grief anymore than pronouncements of love.

Buried down inside these canyons
Rolling up along the hills
All these memories long forgotten
Yearn that they might be remembered still

The third verse is about those forgotten moments that capture you when you least expect it. I grew up in the burbs of Denver and for a very long time I rarely returned, so that when I did I found myself grappling with images and memories that I had forgotten and I was surprised by the power of some of them.

Children stare at me in wonder
They put their hands upon my clothes
They won't follow as I leave them
To a place they'll never know

The final verse is in some ways about the malleability of memory. The children are the original moments forever locked in their time. The idea of the verse is that you will change and that in that change they cannot go with you, that your younger self will be fascinated by the self you've become, whether for better or worse. That and the older self must reconcile himself to what he once was, hence the grieving.

Perhaps the more interesting aspect of my lyrical approach is that I don't analyze them till much later; in other words I didn't actually think these thoughts as I was writing the lyrics down. The lyric was writing fairly quickly then left to simmer on low. Usually the most immediate concern is do they work with the chords and melody I hear in my head. rarely do I write lyrics with a guitar in hand. I do consider the premise and the symmetry as I construct the lyric but not so much the meaning which is implicit to me because I already know the general theme.

Fun huh!

The Creative Process, Two Examples

With a new album coming out, I thought it would be fun to use 2 songs as examples of how I come up with this stuff. the 2 songs are The Day and The Eyes That I See, both from Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory). 

The songs can be heard here, mrprimitivemusic.com, just click on the This Week's Song ( yeah, I know, there's nothing like a little self-promotion).

The first song, The Day, came about while I was goofing on a descending A-minor chord. I've always liked finger picked songs even if I didn't do many if at all in the past, but when I picked up the guitar again back in 2010 I decided to mix it up a bit. I don't have an actual explanation or reason for any particular chord progression I hit upon other than I think it works, or to my ear, sounds good. Chord-wise, it's pretty simple, Am, E7, F#, G, D, and A. The lyrics came one day as the song was playing in my head and I thought it would be fun to have to verses that could be cross-sung at the end. Throw in a couple of bridges and there you have it. I know how that sounds but after all this time doing this that's really what happens.
The lyrics are meant to evoke a sense of endings and renewals; of the cycles that govern life and death; you know, upbeat stuff.
The production is also fairly simple. Two guitars, left and right, one through a chorus pedal, the other through a delay. On the workstation, which is a fancy term for a keyboard that does lots of different sounds and rhythms, I added a cello and vibes. For the intro and outro, a bright steel stringed acoustic guitar. On the vocals, I sing on the right and Nancy on the left; during the bridges, I used both of Nancy's recorded tracks to give us stereo Nancy.
The overall production was meant, as does the whole album, to be an homage to the sounds I loved from the 60's and 70's; think sensitive singer-songwriters.


The Eyes That I See, was a product of an impulse buy, a Seagull dulcimer.

I thought wouldn't it be fun to have one of those!

I didn't have an actual need for it and had no idea how to play it.
The dulcimer is tuned to D (DAD high to low with the high D double stringed). Playing it reminded me of Celtic music and after a while the melody that would become the song presented itself to me. I was intrigue by the idea of doing a song with a spritely melody and anguished lyrics. At this point, I knew that the album's theme was memory and how it interweaves itself into our daily lives. In this instance, and because I had the idea that Celtic music could be about a love promised that ends too soon. What I ended up with is a song of regret and longing for a lost love.
The production, like The Day, is fairly simple; the dulcimer, a Dobro left and right (also tuned to D), synth bass, and a Cajon, tambourine, and floor tom for the percussion. Vocals are a single voice as lead vocal and a building chorus as the song progresses with a new voice added following each of the verses and adding to the bridges. It starts with the beat, the Cajon, that represents the beating heart, then the Dulcimer, then a single voice, then the Dobros, the tambourine; always insistent. The chorus represents a building sense of loss and finality till at the end they are just an echo of lost promises and lost lives. It builds till there is nothing left but remorse.

I really liked how the songs turned out.


Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory) will be released on Nov. 10th, 2017.

Because Tom Petty is Dead!

The question that aligns with the answer above is:

Why am I doing this?

Two days before he died, Tom Petty gave his last interview to the LA Times. In it he detailed the many projects and activities he was looking forward to. Instead, his heart gave out and whatever those plans entailed went with him. On the plus side there is his catalog of music with the Heartbreakers, Traveling Wilburys and his solo work; not to mention production and other projects. The downside is we'll never get to hear what was in his head. That's where it all starts and until you get it out no one hears it but you.

That's why I'm doing this; to get it out.

I may not be in Petty's league, but I am a recording artist with a catalog I'm proud of. And I want that catalog to be there for people to hear. That won't happen if I sit on my hands or let it rot in a box in a crawlspace. Because you never know what'll happen tomorrow or the day after that. Tom Petty was only 8 years older than I am so I'm feeling just a little more mortal these days. I know we think the people we've listened to and admired for so long will live forever, but like us their time will come and that time seems much closer than it did before with Petty's death, not long after Walter Becker's, and let's not go too deep with the loss of Prince, etc!

In some sense all an artist leaves behind that matters is the art. I suppose I could put out a bunch of outlines listing the ideas I have, but seriously....

So there's an urgency that I didn't have all those years ago when I was going to live forever; don't waste time, don't let days go by without doing something, don't believe there will always be more time, because you don't know.

The new album, Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory) will be released on November 10th. We'll be having a release party for the album on the 11th here at the house.

The Creative Process

Inevitably, the question comes up, how do you come up with this stuff, and not just the tunes but the production which is the song as completed for your listening pleasure.

Good Question,

And I don't actually know.

Well, in any premeditative kind of way.

I do know how I begin, which has been my M.O. from day one when I was 15; start playing whatever and at some point something will happen. And that's the truth. It is also a tad glib. The process is, much as it has been these many years, for me, to start with a chord, either on the guitar, synth, or piano, and see where that goes, or I might create a drum rhythm on any number of devices or apps. From there I go over it again and again to both set the parameters and structure of the song as well as decide if I like the riff at all. I then put it away for a day or so to see if I still like it or not; I don't try to make anything 'meh' better, it doesn't happen.

But if it does, I then move on to what else the song needs, verse, chorus, bridge; is it a 'traditional' style pop song, or does it lend itself more to a Jazz feel or a groove that doesn't need say a consistent pop structure. It's also at this point where I figure out if the song needs lyrics, not all do. I like instrumentals and often include them on albums as bridges between songs or to set the mood of the album.

In the early days, the lyrics came not long after the basic song was finished, but as I got more and more into recording, the lyrics were the last things to be finished to the point where I was writing the lyrics to the nearly completed recording. The recording process starts in my head. As I write the song, I begin to hear it orchestrally in my head and I think of how, or in what style I might try, meaning does it lend itself more towards rock, country, jazz, pop, or none of the above.

That's where the fun is; finding what turns out from that sound in my head. Often, while trying one sound, I find another I like better, or I'll know I want a keyboard sound and goof through whatever I have until something goes pop. That doesn't mean everything falls in place right away, as I record I listen and listen, over and over, and if I have doubts it means I need to find something I like better. That's also why I have my own studio, apart from not being independently wealthy which is what you'd have to be to do recording this way in a standard professional studio.

This week's song, Traces of You, from the new album, Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory) is emblematic of this approach. It started with the groove. From there I built the main guitar part then added the bass and the electric piano. Next was the lyrics and the background vocals. Last were the lead guitar and piano. Mix and master and listen and redo till you consider it done.

You can hear it here: www.mrprimitivemusic.com