Oh hi,
GOODBYE DECEMBER:
December is dangerously close to finishing itself out. It’s my favorite month of all the months… it gives me a birthday, which reminds me how much closer I am to corpse-dom (which inspires inspired living)… it gives us Christmas (love: the giving, the recieving, the lights, the tree, the cold, the 100 or so snowmen at my parent’s house, that ever-evaporating magical holiday feeling, the niceness of people, the rain, family get-togethers, etc. etc.).
This year I proposed to a couple people that we all should leave our Christmas decorations up. Make this the default setting. Why not? It’s better and more fun. Then next year, when Christmas comes, we just ADD to it, challenge ourselves to make it look even more festive… and just keep it going year after year. This way things are always improving. There’s no post-Christmas let down. Ya know that super bland boring feeling when the Christmas tree is gone and there’s just a blank corner? We don’t have to feel that way people!… Anyways, so we keep it all up all year. Then when we all decide it’s gone too far, after maybe 5 years… we reset back to the norm (which by then will be awesome, starkly artsy, and all nostalgic). Let me know if you’re in.
THE ALTER-EGO… a story:
Last night Natalie and I were watching tv and against our own better judgement “The Soup” came on. It’s a celebrity based show that acts like it’s better than the other ones by making fun of them… but it’s exactly the same really… So there was a whole segment about Miley Cyrus (a.k.a. Hannah Montana). I was reminded that the last time I was in the studio with her (with Nic and Andy) she was quite… energetic… Nic had come along to help out and while we were doing vocals (for a song we wrote for Hannah Montana: season 3) Miley peered through the studio-window, suddenly focusing on Nic and said, in her nasally chirp “Hey! anyone ever tell you you look like Joe Dirt!?”. No one is safe around Miley. She’s pretty hilarious… fearless and full of that nutty teenage energy… X1000… You get the feeling that, famous or not, she would be exactly like this. At the end of every vocal take, she’d start doing a Reba McEntire impression, eventually calling herself “Meba”. It soon evolved into a mix between Reba and Emenem… country rap, performed by a teen star: it’s gonna be huge. Luckily we got what we needed for the song (which was actually a mellow acoustic tune!).
GETTING ALL REFLECTIVE and what not:
It’s odd doing what I do in that realm of music. It’s like the polar opposite of what I do as an artist… and the reason I got into music in the first place… It was never my plan to work on that style of music… but I’m completely and utterly thankful that I’ve had the chance to do it… it’s an amazing “gig” in most ways… to see a song you contributed to be listened to and enjoyed by millions upon millions worldwide, is a nice feeling. But it doesn’t compare to even one person really connecting to a song I’ve written then recorded or performed with Nic, Jules and Matt. And God willing, millions will hear this music very soon. That’s the plan.
With this pop-stuff… In a way I feel like an architect who’s goal is to make really inspired, compelling, intense buildings, but was asked to make some crazy jungle gyms that would be sold to millions of kids. And I said “sure, why not, I can still design all the other stuff”. Every now and then I think “Oh frick! I’m a sellout!”… Then I remember that it’s strategic. My plan is and always has been to have fun making music AND at the same time, grow as an artist without spoiling it… it’s funny, I’ll do whatever is necessary for a pop song for someone else to sing, but when it’s MY song, I won’t bend a millimeter away from what’s honest and true to what I need to express.
It is mind bending sometimes though, to work on this shiny gleaming pop then the next minute dig deep and write music that really means something to me. Usually though, it’s like a switch. I just toggle it over and I’m back to my core (it’s always barking and thrashing right below the surface)… Then suddenly I’m back to what I really love about the power of music and the CLEAR line between the real and the manufactured. Between the contrived and the organic. Between the inspired and the made from craft… it’s a little more grey than that though… I must admit it does take genuine inspiration and belief to write ANY song… you just have to diverge at some point along the process and serve someone else’s purpose…
BY THE GRACE OF DODD:
Sometimes that side of me won’t toggle back and I find myself unable to write or produce a poppy song… that’s when I’m so glad Andy is there to pick up the slack and give me a moment to gather the energy flip the switch (which somehow got rusted stuck:-). What a guy:-)…. he’s had a lot of grace for me in those times… suddenly the dude who was willing to go with the flow yesterday, is now all full of an almost religious fervor against all things not emanating from personal experience and a sort of “this sucks, that doesn’t” aural esthetic.
If these are my biggest problems then I guess life is good… but they aren’t! And yet life is still good. ha. The weight of the world seems to land back on my shoulders weekly if not daily… I guess it’s the vocation (blessing? curse?) of artists to try to dead-lift the world:-)…. but then, we ALL feel like that every now and then, eh? Maybe we should all get together and LIFT at the same time and it wouldn’t feel as heavy.
This blog is long. I’ll finish with a few questions:
Does Nic really look like Joe Dirt?
What songs should go on our AWB EP?
How about we forget about New Year’s Resolutions and make it a Dissolution?
Make it about what can we dissolve that’s only holding us back? That’s maybe a little easier then committing to DOING something… lets commit to stop doing something! Eh? Okay that concludes the “self-help” portion of the blog AND the blog itself.
bye for now!
Adam
