I have always been a quitter.
I have successfully quit smoking cigarettes nearly a dozen times. I give up. A thing that I value in songwriting is the kind of connection you get to an artist who has decided to be fully honest in spirit if not wholely. You can tell when something comes from the middle of a person, from inside them. People have a subconscious understanding of the intimacy of an unspoken truth.
This recording is old. At the time I was gathering the things that ended up on this collection my friend Andy and I were exploring stairwells and halls for the reverb there was in ‘em by rolling in with a four track cassette recorder and a mic or maybe two mics and setting up to perform. We didn’t ask for permission we just went in and did it. Somewhere there are hours of tape with people walking through. Its not like a camera. People will wait out your shot and walk through after. This was taken more like, ‘what the f**k are you guys doing in here?’ I had long hair and I smelled and I was high. It kinda figures.
There was a songwriting thing happening here then in the late nineties and early 2000s. It was self referential and tight and there were a gang of us who liked each others work and played on each others shows. This guy Dave Olsen had this record called #80. I’m not sure if I remember correctly that he was in a long distance relationship with someone a days drive down interstate 80. I hadn’t yet ever owned a car when I wrote this song so the idea of trying to do something like that, like maintaining a long distance thing that involved a drive had a completely foreign quality to me, but I could imagine it. And I was learning about heartbreak by throwing myself into things with the kind of ideals that someone raised on eighties movies and TV brought to relationship experimentation. I didn't make any bones about writing songs that were more serious and maybe darker than what everybody else was doing.
And I was the kind of kid who was really effected by the emotional pal of real life. I did things with a romantic’s abandon but suffered like a boxer after. I’d get down and then just drink about it. There aren't really places where it’s proper to emote with the furvor I was inclined toward.
I went in dumb and thrashy and then came out sad and dumb and thrashy or catatonic with grief. I knew myself to be like this but when you are young and down on the scene everybody is a stranger so no one expected it of me.
I could still get in.
So this song is me leaving the place of an imaginary relationship and just sadly going until the metaphorical wheels fall off.
It's blues I guess.
Dakota
As the road passes out the back way round to the part of my heart where you’re no longer found I nearly turn to water every time Dakota passes by my side.
I’d never been alone til she left me. I’d never been high, til she let me in. I never got the picture now I wish that I had never been.
Palaminos in the tall grass, elevator every five mile passed. Seen half this state in my rearview mirror since dawn this mornin’ better part of a year.
Two days and I ran out of gas 200 miles into Iowa’s ass. It came to my attention I was someplace I had never been.
When I lay down by the side of the road. Realized that I'm done something I had been told not to do. To run with no intention livin’ through is marked down as a win.
Repeat first verse.
I think we recorded it in a stairwell with all the mics far and I just yelled. People complained to me about the fidelity of this record, but I felt good about the feel and the audibility and there was a little movement of four track guys making tape only records and then releasing them on CD, Sam Eggnog, David Dondero, Guided by Voices… it felt completely legit to me to do it this way.
I have not put the record that this song is on onto Bandcamp, but if you are super curious you can buy it from I-tunes and Apple Music and all of the other things. It’s on Spotify. If this kind of thing appeals to you do a little digging. There are 15 good songs on Mudfefnce Turnaround.
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