Man!
I wrote some songs about what it was gonna be like to be a jaded, burnt out old rocker who had had minor success.
When stuff started to take off for the band after the first record I was like, ‘All right, but I know what’s gonna happen.’
Used to Play {What? Music? 16} is from the perspective of someone who got caught up in the idea of themself as a musician from the perspective of a young fan with the refrain, “You used to be” at the end. Sheesh.
This one rides the same character also from the second person with the added detail of a young music professional coolly gently tugging the fame-is-this-way chain from the other side of the ocean at the start.
I had a few examples of the kind of success I was interested in- recognition and respect but not TV fame. I was just starting to make those kinds of distinctions in a way. Greg Brown and James McMurtry and if I sat and thought about it a bunch more singer songwriters who were having careers but were not household names (Ani DeFranco) were my examples. They played in big rooms in major markets and some bars and small halls. They had a string of records that people liked- Bob Mould. People who were not writing catchy pop tunes or touring a big production around- working musicians who were putting the rewards of their success into their own pockets, people I could see from close up if I wanted to - Richard Buckner.
All of the pursuits I had toward my continued financial fluidity at the time were dead-end. I worked in kitchens. I was a young thirty something looking at old forty-something line cooks drowning themselves in beer and whiskey to medicate their knee and back pain. No one I knew had prospects for retirement or healthcare, but we all felt pretty bullet proof. We ate well. We drank too much and we knew why we all felt bad when we did.
It's a whole lifestyle.
The prospect of being a musician for a living long-term had the same insolvent financial future with the benefit of a near absolute permissiveness for drugs and alcohol and what we’ll simplify to womanizing for the sake of brevity here.
I loved the idea of becoming the songwriter whose job was songwriter as a romantic notion, but I was aware enough of the responsibilities of real adulting to tell stories about what a s**t idea it was.
Here's one now.
When you've been to every roadsidea joint and captured every heart, been down every two lane black top, freeway, gravel and dirt rut road, you can roll onto that soft shoulder and turn into the night.
When you’ve given up your days and turned your nights into religion, given up your mind and changed your eyes it’s your decision to heed the law of the winner’s word, and take the show down.
And you're not free you’re just more liquid so you've got to stay out of the cold. It’s never not now, just downshifted and you’re old.
And you’ve got no guns to stick to cuz you’ve got no row to hoe and you’re pissed cuz you’ve been licked by a girl who plays guitar with a bow you can roll onto that soft shoulder and turn into the night.
And you’re not free you’re just more liquid so you’ve got to stay out of the cold. It’s never not now just down shifted and you’re old.
It's never not now, just down shifted and you’re old.
There’s some irrelevant double entendre that just seems mean spirited to elucidate from now and here.
Suffice it to say that I thought more of my own songwriting than I did that of some of my more famous contemporaries from the same scene. I hadn't yet started telling myself it's not a meritocracy.
Maybe I already knew I was a homebody. I still have a romantic story I tell myself of being on the road to play, and I love hotels, but I need some kind of anchor, a steady, to hold off the pressure of losing money on the road like a minor hit or foot pics on only fans, some commodifiable virality. I don't need to win the internet and I prefer it to be something that fits within how I see myself, but no one is buying today. Traditional P.R. firms don't even work with music anymore.
Oh Spotify.
It's like you read that quote Jim Musser used to close his column with-
“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”
-Hunter S. Thompson
And I'm old.
This is the Bandcamp link:
https://samknutson.bandcamp.com/album/gone
