I might be a time traveler. There is a phenomenon that seems to keep happening to me where the songs that I wrote years and even decades ago have new meaning in the present tense. Lyrics I wrote when I was much younger feel very current to me now. They are suddenly feelings that are very important but in a very different way than they were when they were first composed.

For example, several of the songs on “Guilt Show” were written about addiction and recovery. “The Dark Night Of The Soul” and “Sympathy” are written from the perspective of observing someone else’s substance struggles. Even early on in my sobriety I quickly found both these songs to be eerily descriptive of my current state of affairs. It was as if I had written them twenty years ago about the person I am today. This is why I wonder if I’m a time traveler. I must have found a way to go back and teach myself what it feels like to hit rock bottom. How else would I have been able to express that feeling if I hadn’t lived it yet?

I don’t actually think I’ve come unstuck in time. I’m not Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, at least I don’t think I am. However, I bring this up because it’s been happening again.

I’ve started the process of relearning and re-imagining the songs for the second New Amsterdams album “Para Toda Vida”. Last year I released a similar interpretation of “Never You Mind” to celebrate that album’s silver anniversary. The record that I’m working on now will be the second in the trilogy of LPs that will also eventually include “Worse For The Wear”. So, “Para” is my “Empire Strikes Back” and, like the film, is much darker in tone than I remember.

In two thousand and one I recorded what is really my first true solo album. The first New Ams record turned out very differently than I heard it in my head. I refer to it as my “adult contemporary” album since I think some of the rough edges got sanded off. I don’t dislike it but it never felt like a “solo” record, it felt like I had started a second band which wasn’t really what I was going for. So, when it came time to make another collection of songs I was determined to produce something that was just me. One voice, one guitar and that’s it. Picturing Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska” or Nick Drake’s “Pink Moon” I started recording eight originals and two covers for what would eventually become “Para Toda Vida”.

Earlier this month I started sitting down at the piano to relearn the songs from this album. I thought maybe transposing them from acoustic guitar might be a fun way to re-interpret them. It’s easier to take a full band song and strip it down to just guitar than it is to do something new with a solo acoustic track that doesn’t ruin the vibe. Jerzy suggested that we do it with the band from “The Salton Sea” which made a lot of sense to me so that’s the plan. At least that’s the plan for now.

I sat down at the out of tune piano in my garage office and the first song I played was “That Side Of Me” which was written staring down the ripe old age of twenty five and thinking all the existential thoughts. “What am I doing with my life?” “Is this what I want?” Those sorts of observations. Now, as I’m staring down fifty I’m having all those same feelings again but the song lands differently with a quarter century’s more life experience. Unless I live to be over a hundred years old there is literally less time left now than there was then. At this stage it’s less “what do I want to do?” & more “what can I let go of?”. I think I know myself better now than I did then and it feels like time to shed some of my old bullshit that doesn’t serve me anymore.

“Picture In The Paper” was written about the first times I saw what I always considered just “playing shows” as a business. It’s about art and commerce and how they interplay and the “celebrity” that comes with it. As you may have read in the essays about touring with my family I’m finding myself somewhat disillusioned with the traditional music industry right now. I’m aching to find a way to just make art and to make enough money to continue to make art. I’d love to just live in a cabin in the woods and make records. This song is the first time I was looking at the industry with suspicion. Today, having just finished a short tour of rather large shows with my friends in Jimmy Eat World I see the touring industry as less of an evil empire, at least on the side of the curtain I’m on. Big tours are full of really hardworking people on and off stage, driving trucks, cooking food, hanging lights, keeping the gears turning so you (the audience) can have a night off to sing along. I still prefer playing smaller, more intimate gigs but the shows at this scale don’t feel off-putting to me anymore. They are the same job just with more people involved.

Then there’s “Losing You” which was written eighteen years before I lost that person. Losing as in they are no longer a part of my life, not that they’ve passed. They are still very much alive as far as I’m aware. The song is saying that they are struggling and I’m pretty sure that I’m enabling them. I’m blaming myself for their bad decisions. I don’t do that anymore, so that’s one thing about the song that’s different these days. But, it still fills me with a sadness for a friend that I lost and that somehow I knew I would. I honestly can’t say how I could have predicted it would happen.

That is unless…

I’m a time traveler.

I’m on tour this week and so I thought I’d share this. I was commissioned to write a custom song but the person who ordered it couldn’t come up with what to write the song about. So, he asked for this instead. I don’t usually do covers for the song orders but I made an exception because I love this song and this band both musically and as people. It kinda fits with my version of “Freakish” in that it’s a very folk version of a not very folk-y song. Maybe I should do more of these twangy emo covers down the line? New essay next week. Be well.

I hate to admit it but this tour didn’t go as well as I had hoped. Don’t get me wrong it was great in so many ways, I got to travel and play music with my kids and I didn’t lose money so overall it was a win. I just wish we’d sold more tickets.

This isn’t a complaint or even a think piece on the state of the live music industry. I don’t think that this one tour is necessarily an overall indicator that gigs are struggling. I mean, I’ve heard the phrase “blue dot fever” a lot lately so I know things aren’t going gangbusters. I don’t play places that trade in blue dots so that particular malady doesn’t concern me much. I have some idea of what worked and what didn’t on this tour. I’m pretty sure what I’ll do differently moving forward and that’s valuable info to have. Besides, sometimes for no reason that anyone can explain, turnout just isn’t what you expect it to be.

For the last couple of years whenever I played solo shows I played houses not clubs. This worked well for me. The gigs were “intimate” which is industry speak for “small” but the vibe was great and maybe more importantly the math worked. Anyone who tours this way can tell you that you can potentially make more money playing to less people at house shows. Since I had just released an album in November and was attempting to push it I decided to go into clubs and bars instead of homes. The idea being that house shows are somehow less professional than club shows and that if I’m gonna promote an album I should “do it right”. This proved to be a miscalculation on my part, I think doing house shows would have been better.

I feel the need to reiterate that I’m by no means complaining. Other than maybe two places all the clubs we played were awesome to work with and treated us like we had sold the place out. Professional and friendly staff, decent green rooms and well lit merch tables were all rare back in my younger days but seem to be standard now. Maybe that’s a symptom of the recent corporate culture of live music, the work conditions seem to have improved a bit. So, again, I ain’t complaining.

I found myself feeling disappointed less for myself and more for the kids. I think, and this is difficult to admit, that I was worried they were gonna think less of me because of the lackluster attendance. I know that’s ridiculous but it was creeping into my mind a lot as I drove down the interstate. It made me realize how much of my self worth I was putting on this particular metric and I’ll tell you what… I did not like that feeling.

After the show in Boise which was both the smallest and one of the best shows of the tour (funny how that happens) I asked the kids about it. Well, I didn’t ask, I just stated “I’m sorry these shows aren’t bigger” and was surprised by their response. Almost in unison they both replied “we don’t care, these shows are fun” and somewhat dumbfounded I asked them to elaborate. From their perspective even playing to thirty people is a bigger show than they play on their own. Plus, they were more excited about the charity work they were doing each night than the show itself. They had invited local Girl’s Rock Camps, food banks and Trans Rights organizations to flyer at the shows and were donating all their merch sales and tips to said organizations each night. By their metric all these shows were going great. They donated seven thousand dollars over the course of the tour!

Jerzy told me that they didn’t have any intention of making a living playing music, it was just something that they loved to do. It reminded me of myself at that age when I couldn’t explain why booking my own show at the KC VFW Hall or putting out my own 7” was so important to me. I couldn’t make anyone at school understand why playing in someones basement was the best thing ever. But to those like me I didn’t have to explain it at all. I thought about something Steve Earle said about making music: “we get paid a lot of money to do something we would do for free”. That’s still true for me.

That’s an easier row to hoe at nineteen but I’m pushing fifty now and have bills to pay. This isn’t just something I do for fun, being a songwriter is my career. But, that doesn’t mean it has to be a chore. “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” is what I was realizing about this tour. I really liked playing with the kids, I dug singing in three part harmony and liked cracking jokes with them onstage. It will come as a surprise to no one that they share my sense of humor, much to the frustration of their mother. If I focus on those aspects then any disappointment about ticket sales seems less important.

It sounds like some aspirational self help bullshit to try and “make a life, not just a living” but I wonder if there is something to the concept. As a somewhat newly sober person I don’t love playing in bars so maybe the house shows should be the way to go in the future? I don’t love the four plus hours of driving every day that is tour life but I love performing and especially enjoy playing with the kids. Is this the work/life balance that I hear so much about? I figured that was just a corporate buzz-phrase. Maybe there is a way to make a living making music with the people I love that doesn’t have to include truck stop burritos. That sounds like a life worth living.

But I’m ready to let it go

I’m further down the rabbit hole

Than I ever meant to be

A silent moment to reflect

On years of damaged disrespect

And what a thousand cuts

Could do to me

Desecrate the monument

The lies and what they represent

It’s money that just doesn’t spend

It’s a weakened currency

Just the latest casualty

Of words we use as weaponry

An armory that’s stocked for my defense

So, light a match and burn it down

Ashes fall on fertile ground

From this comes a joyous sound

Of starting things anew

I just have to realize

That nothing’s simply black & white

And change is still

The only absolute

This is, of course, ridiculous and even arrogant on my part. Nobody gave a shit, they still don’t but in my mind it felt like a monumental issue. That’s just how my brain works sometimes.

It reminded me of back in the day when my friends in Saves The Day had made a music video interacting with puppets. In what seemed like under a month Weezer did a similar video but with the actual Muppets! I was incensed at the thought that band in particular would steal my friend’s thunder. But, that was decades ago and I doubt you’d thought about that in years if you ever knew about it at all.

I have found this to be part of the artist’s condition. It’s important to sweat the small stuff when you’re creating something. It’s often the details in a song that people don’t even totally realize are there that take it from just “good” to something “special”. Those little things are really easy to obsess over and then if you’re not careful that obsessive tendency can bleed over into real life. You find yourself having to talk yourself off a ledge because some other artist has the same guitar tone as you or some other trivial nonsense.

It was as I was defusing the situation in my brain that I happened to see an interview with Mr. Tweedy regarding his family band. I’m paraphrasing but the gist of what he said was that you spend years, decades in a band trying to find synergy. What Tyler Mahan Coe called “onstage telepathy” in the Cocaine and Rhinestones episode about Buck Owens and Don Rich. It’s a sort of hive mind that can only come from years of writing and performing together. However, when you start playing music with your family you are starting from that point of synergy on day one. You don’t have to find it with the other performers because it just comes natural. This is especially prevalent in singing together, a phenomenon commonly referred to as “Blood Harmony”.

I was surprised to discover on this trip that the term “Blood Harmony” was not as commonly known as I had assumed. In a nutshell, it’s the idea that people who are related tend to sing better together. Something about having the same DNA I guess. I associate it with country music mostly, there’s a long tradition of Bluegrass family bands in particular but everyone from Hanson to Haim have it. I found this concept to be true for my family as well. I’ve sang and harmonized with a lot of people over the years but there is just something different about singing with my kids.

I keep calling them “kids” out of habit but they are adults. They can all vote. It’s doubly confusing when I refer to my children this way since when I say things like “the kids and I are going on tour” folks think I’m talking about my band. But I digress.

In learning the songs for this trip I was struck by how easy it was in rehearsals to figure out the vocals. Lily and Jerzy seemed to know what harmonies I wanted before we even discussed it. Sometimes the two of them would have the same idea and then have to argue over who was going to sing which part. I’d never had that happen before. I also noticed just how in sync our timing was. Singing together isn’t just hitting the right note but also the right count, the cadence. Starting and stopping a phrase at the same time, not running out of breath, that sort of thing. Usually another singer would have to listen to me and then adapt their performance accordingly. That didn’t seem to be necessary with the family, they just kind of seemed to know the timing instinctively.

It almost sounds like “woo-woo” horseshit. That there’s some magical synergy that can be obtained by tapping into your bloodline. Buy my supplements to help you harmonize with your family sort of nonsense. But, IDK, it just seems to work. I can’t explain it and I don’t really feel the need to try.

We had a similar synergy when it comes to day of show tasks as well. We didn’t have a ton of gear but we could get it all loaded in and merch set up (I did have too much merch) within fifteen minutes. Loading out was the same way, it was a very efficient system. Its the way I like to do things at work, I don’t like to putter. This is especially true in sobriety. If I’m gonna have to be at a bar I want to be working, not just hanging out. That’s what I must have subconsciously taught my children, more nurture than nature.

Even if that work ethic was learned I never taught them to sing. However, I can testify that “Blood Harmony” is real, I’ve heard it with my own two ears. I’ll preach it from the mountaintops.

At our show at Anodyne coffee shop in Milwaukee the bartender commented on how she liked our “Folk-Emo” sound. Her exact words were that something good had come out of that “stomp/clap bullshit”. Hilarious. I would tell that story onstage before we played the song “As If I Could Fall In Love With You Again” because it was the closest song we had to that style. It was my favorite part of the set because the harmonies are just a joyous howl. It was the moment that I felt most in tune with the people I was onstage with, who just happened to both be my children. In that moment I didn’t think about Jeff Tweedy at all.

P.S. Lily & Jerzy’s band Small Uncle have a new EP up on their bandcamp.

I started playing shows when I was fifteen years old and went on my first “real tour” when I had just turned twenty. In those halcyon days before the broad use of the internet I would cold call numbers in “Book Your Own Fucking Life” and hopefully find a basement to perform in. You’ve heard all this before, it’s a well worn story by any artist of my generation that came up in the indie underground of the nineties. It’s really the same infrastructure as today but people used to be harder to get on the phone and we had to use paper maps. Everything just took a little longer to get done.

I have three adult children who are all musical but I barely had anything to do with that. Their mother and I forced them to take piano lessons when they were little and encouraged them to continue with other instrument lessons when they showed interest. When they inevitably tired of lessons they just stopped and that was all there was to it. When my eldest started getting involved in the all ages punk scene in our sleepy little hamlet I was beyond excited. Her enthusiasm for house shows and the DIY work ethic gave me hope for the future and opened my ears to new bands. It was a shot in the arm that I desperately needed during a particular jaded period in my own life and career. I am forever grateful for that.

Before she could drive I would be the chauffeur and chaperone at her shows and quickly learned that I should wait in the car. The old guy in the corner at the basement show was not a good look for me. These days my eldest and youngest have their own two piece band called “Small Uncle” and I don’t even have to be the “legal guardian” when they play at bars. I just need to lend them my van. Needless to say, they are more than capable of handling themselves at a show and do it all the time.

Since they were little all three of my kids have gone on tour with me from time to time. My daughter Lily’s first time backstage was at The House Of Blues on Sunset during the “On A Wire” tour. She was only a couple months old and stayed in a car seat / stroller combo the whole time but it still counts. Our middle child, Elliott, used to play maracas onstage with The New Amsterdams when he was five and that seemed to be enough of life on the road for him. He’s studying music at University but isn’t terribly interested in tour. My youngest, Jerzy, did a whole “Where’s The Band?” Tour when he was just three years old and Lily toured as the opening act for Dan Andriano and myself in 2017. They are all familiar the van life, gas station cuisine and hotels but I still found myself hovering over them.

I don’t mean that I turned into a “stage dad” or anything. I didn’t tell them what to wear onstage or how to play or speak. I did suggest that they tune too much but that’s a pretty minor criticism. What I mean is that I handled most of the driving, all of the travel logistics and all the interactions with the club. I just sort of instinctively assumed that parental (tour manager) role like dealing with a promoter was some sort of “stranger danger” and they were kindergartners. I didn’t even suggest that they should be driving whenever we were inside the city limits, especially of a major metropolis. It was the same principle of learning to tie your shoelaces, it would be easier for both of us if I just did it.

It wasn’t until we were well past the I95 corridor section of the tour that I started to think about how I had been their age and younger when I first started this life. I drove a red van with a wooden bumper into the bowels of New York City with only a Rand McNally Road Atlas and still found CBGB’s. Was I coddling them? Was I making this seem too easy, like the indie band version of a participation trophy? I know that the instinct to protect them from the dark side of this industry is a good one but had I gone too far? Was I being a helicopter parent?

These questions vexed me for a time until I had a revelation. All parents want their kids to have a better life than they’d had. I had to start from scratch and now they don’t have to do that. If they want to make a career out of touring then they’ll already have the experience to at least know what they are getting into. They know what this job is, a lot of driving, a lot of eating quickly in order to get to the club and wait. There are also a lot of appreciative fans and in their case it’s a lot of drunk moms who come to the merch table and talk about their own kids. I couldn’t prepare them for that one.

So, maybe I made it a little easier for them than it had been for me. Its seems ridiculous to intentionally make things more difficult than they already were just to do what? Toughen them up? No, in reality instead of having to deal with the day to day of the tour they were able to put their energy into making a difference. They contacted local charity groups like Girl’s Rock Camps, Food Banks and Trans Rights Organizations to coordinate for them to come set up camp at the table. They then donated all of their merch money each night to the cause. That showed at least as much, if not more initiative and hustle than I’d had at that age. That feels like decent parenting if I do say so myself.

In my exhaustion I assume I was giving off “don’t fuck with me” vibes even though that wasn’t my intent. Inevitably, there would be at least one normie, maybe a family member or a friend with a “real job” who would attempt to chat with the sweaty heap that I was on that couch. I guess other artists take a few minutes to compose themselves before letting anyone backstage but that’s not how we roll. The show is really just foreplay for the hang, at least that’s how everyone else seems to interpret things.

Not me. My default introvert takes over as soon as I walk off the stage. I need to take that time for composure regardless of whether there is a party going on around me or not. So, I keep to myself, not because I don’t like the people backstage but just because I’m emotionally and physically spent. In these situations people might think I’m a dick but I’m really just tired.

Word came through the grapevine that an old friend from back home was in attendance. Someone I hadn’t seen in well over a decade but had played an oversized role in my early life. Back in high school, when I was in noise rock outfit that wore ill fitting matching thrift store suits. We were the Kansas City Temu Nation Of Ulysses or maybe the sale rack Reservoir Dogs and we made quite a racket. I have to admit I was kind of excited for my old friend to see what I had made of myself. Here I was, the lead singer of the headlining band playing a sold out show in the hipster capital of Brooklyn. Not bad for that sixteen year old Catholic School kid who really couldn’t play guitar.

My friend from back home slid into the dressing room and made eye contact with me on the couch. He gave me a respectful head nod that indicated he had clocked my presence. He then proceeded to look around the room like the T-1000, pausing on each concert goer as if scanning some internal database. It was weird to watch and I doubt I would have even noticed it if I hadn’t been anxiously awaiting our chance to converse. My breathing had evened out, my heart rate coming down as I nursed a clear plastic solo cup and just waited for what seemed like an eternity. It felt like I was on some sort of a stakeout, clocking every interaction and waiting for the deal to go down.

After a full fifteen minutes when, to my estimation he had exhausted all other attendees he finally made his way over to my couch. He put his hand out for a fist bump and casually said “good show, I gotta get back to the city” and then promptly disappeared. The teenage part of me was gutted, the adult part of me was furious. What the fuck had just happened? With nowhere to put these feelings I decided to drown them. I walked to the the mini fridge and grabbed a beer, borrowed a lighter from one of my coworkers, popped the cap and the proceeded to push all that hurt into the bottle.

In the hungover light of the next morning I was still irritated but somehow impressed with the previous night’s display. My friend from back home had cased the room like he was planning to rob the place. He’d done it with a surgical precision that separated the “important” people form the civilians. I was a little annoyed that in their revelry no-one else had noticed this behavior. I felt like the detective in a crime show observing that this shooting was no accident, this was a professional hit.

As the next day wore on and my headache subsided I was struck that this had happened before. As bizarre as the backstage pageantry had been I was essentially being blown off as “just a kid” by one of the senior class-men. It was like high school all over again. I wrote down the phrase “like a professional” in my spiral notebook that I carried for when inspiration struck. That felt like a good title for a song about this particular experience but then I realized that I had already written it.

The song “Holiday” is often misinterpreted as being about a romantic relationship but it’s not. In as much as the song is “about” anything, once the record is in the universe it can be about whatever you want it to be. The lyrics I had written way back when were about this same friend, how he had blown me off when he moved away all those years ago. How when we reconnected for the first time he’d treated me the same way, like I was just some nobody that he used to know. All the adventures we’d had and the conversations we’d shared were disregarded like an estranged cousin that you only see at Christmas. Hence the title of that song.

So, I’ve always thought of “Like A Professional” as the lyrical sequel to “Holiday” though I’ve never told anyone that before. There is, however, what I thought would be a pretty obvious Easter egg in the lyrics of what would become the fourth track of my second solo album. “What became of everyone I used to know, I wrote that song for you and I meant every word at the time”.

In hindsight, I guess it’s not that weird to feel disregarded by someone from your past. It does feel strange that it happened twice and ten years apart. I could be over reacting or misinterpreting things or being too “emotional” about the whole thing. I be like that sometimes. That is why I always give my self a lyrical trap door to escape from. … “your words don’t match the stories that your actions show … but what do I know?”

I was in the throws of an existential crisis. I hesitate to refer to it as a mid life event since that would imply that I have fewer years left than I would like to consider. I’m calling it an identity crisis but all the symptoms were the same.

After years in the game I had decided that I didn’t want to be a musician anymore. More precisely I didn’t want to be in the music industry anymore. I figured that after some time off I would eventually come back to writing but for the time being I decided to get off the touring treadmill and just become a farmer. Well, a farm hand anyway. For nine months I spent all day in a friend’s field earning eight dollars an hour while wearing custom molded in ear monitors as headphones. Those molds were excellent at cancelling out the noise of the tractor though I don’t think that was their intended purpose.

Looking back I see this time as a sort of deconstruction. I had lost my faith, not in any church but in my professional life. Even though I was raised Catholic I never really bought in to those beliefs so there was nothing to deconstruct from. I found my calling in punk rock and I had taken what was my passion and turned it into a job. That was a dream come true until the job part swallowed up everything and there was no joy left in it. I had fallen out of love with my career and so I decided to quit.

Before I left I decided to write a record that would be part “Dear John” letter and part manifesto. It would be my way of ending the relationship with that part of my life and I called that album “May Day”.

The title had a double meaning. From a strictly practical standpoint I was writing and recording the album in the spring and needed a firm end date to finish it. I chose the first of May sort of randomly and in doing so inadvertently arrive on a title. I also related to the symbolism of a festival for Spring that celebrates rebirth and fertility. I felt like I was shedding my old skin and starting a new life. It’s only in hindsight that I realize that there is a third meaning to the title, it’s a cry for help. I didn’t know that I needed it at the time but looking back it couldn’t be more obvious.

I launched a Kickstarter for the album and it exceeded the funding goal. Unfortunately I drastically underestimated the cost of fulfilling all the orders and lost money on the deal. This was fine, I was already quitting once this was over. I rented an RV and hired a friend to be my “rock nanny” so that I could take my three young children on tour with me. This is not a cost effective way to tour. My logic was that this was the last time I was ever going to go on the road so I should bring the kids. We packed up the Winnie and headed out east with an opening act called The Front Bottoms who were on their first tour.

When all the miles were tallied and all the invoices were paid I climbed onto my bike and rode off to the farm. I was riding into the sunset, into obscurity and probably bankruptcy.

Like a lot of people who shed their faith I had to go through a discovery phase. I had to disown the old me and try on some new skins no matter how bizarre or poorly planned they may have been. I had to spend that time away to figure myself out. At the end of my days harvesting radishes and tending to the chickens I felt that I had a better understanding of who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. I decided to go back to being an artist and to try and focus on the parts of the job that I loved rather than dwell in the parts I disliked. It took another ten years and a couple of grippy sock vacations before I really got the hang of the whole radical self acceptance thing. The whole May Day experience was the first step in that recovery.

I see this record very differently now. Whereas before it came from a place of defiance I now interpret it as a piece about acceptance. “Don’t Let The Bastards Get You Down” was written from a place of anger. The word “Bastards” is doing a lot of the heavy lifting of the tone I was composing from. As corny as it may sound I now see it as a song about hope. It’s a “that which doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” sort of vibe.

“As If I Could Fall In Love With You Again” has been transformed for me on this last tour. Playing a joyful stomp with my kids singing three part harmony really sands the edges off what was originally the anchor to the album concept. It’s a breakup song through and through complete with a ridiculously long Panic! At The Disco-esque title.

“Polish The Broken Glass” was everything I hated about the music business. It’s a song that is very full of spite and anger towards the “industry” and how unimportant it was to me. There is still a glimmer of light in there though, the last line of the song is “the people I love will save me”. That, more than anything else has definitely proven to be true.

On May Day this year I’m releasing a deluxe edition of the album on Bandcamp. That’s the only place it’s gonna live for now. IDK what is gonna come of it in regards to streaming or vinyl or any of that. I just wanted to put this out into the world to celebrate a new season. The winter has been really dark and though we’re not totally through it yet, there is a lot to look forward to.

I found it near impossible to write any essays in the van on the west coast tour so I’ve decided to pause this here newsletter for the month of April while I’m on the second leg. Call it “spring break” as I’m gonna go on a road trip across the midwest and east coast with my kids. I hope that you can make it out to one of the shows, they are small but really intimate and special. I don’t know if or when we’ll get to do this again, you know how kids are, having their own lives and shit.

Anyway, I’ll be back on May 1st with a new collection of dispatches from the road and deep dives into the New Ams collection. There are some other new projects in the works that I hope to announce on May Day as well so stay tuned.

Be well and don’t let the bastards get you down. - pryor

Mar 31st - Minneapolis, MN - 7th St. Entry

April 1st - Milwaukee, WI - Anodyne

April 2nd - Chicago, IL - Cobra Lounge

April 3rd - Ferndale, MI - The Loving Touch

April 4th - Cleveland, OH - B Side Lounge

April 7th - Cambridge, MA - Sonia

April 8th - Fairfield, CT - Stage One

April 9th - New York, NY - Mercury Lounge

April 10th - Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church

April 11th - Washington, DC - Songbyrd

April 12th - Richmond, VA - Richmond Music Hall

April 14th - Pittsburgh, PA - Brillobox

April 15th - Columbus, OH - Rumba Cafe

April 16th - Indianapolis, IN - The Hi-Fi

April 17th - Louisville, KY - Zanzibar

April 18th - St. Louis, MO - The Sinkhole

This song begins with one word that conjured imagery of both a life saving cure and at the same time something that wasn’t terribly important. I thought about how the one and only time I ever tried cocaine, I was being egged on by a friend saying “see, it’s not that big a deal”. At the same time my mind was racing and creative sparks were flying, this was very much a big deal! I was alive with possibilities! But even in that euphoric mania I knew that I should never do this again. The temptation would be too great.

I thought of an addict, a protagonist to the story of what would become this song. Even before my own battles with alcohol I had plenty of experience with addiction, at least other people’s addictions. I also knew damn well that I was genetically predisposed to becoming one but that wouldn’t really happen until years later. “White lines come anodyne” refers to both the relief that one would receive from getting their fix but also the internal justification that this wasn’t anything to worry about. What follows in the first verse are several images of drug use, both in jonesing and fixing. “Midnight by candlelight, just my heart in a spoon” is a pretty on the nose metaphor for heroin even though my only experience with that particular drug is in the movies.

“The music begins, the violins” is where the strings come in. That seems pretty obvious that I’m summoning the cello but it’s also meant to invoke the feeling of bliss once the substance has been injected. That’s what I’ve heard anyway, that it hits and then you sail off. I imagine that you might hear an orchestra in your mind before you drift. Everything being right with the world in that one calm moment.

The perspective of the song then shifts to the outsider looking at the addict. “The sad state you’re in wears so thin”. Even though this story is mostly fictional this is where I, the narrator make my first appearance. This is an idea I got from Kurt Vonnegut in “Breakfast Of Champions” where he places himself, the creator, in the center of the story. He sits in a bar and looks upon his creations but in my case I’m looking, or rather judging from afar.

More drug imagery throughout the second verse. “Tattoos cover needle bruises” seems pretty self explanatory. “Glass eyes don’t recognize, like you can’t even see” is where I picture the addict and myself meeting on the street but either they don’t recognize me in their state or I don’t recognize them. Either way works. I know I’ve been drunk enough to not remember people so I imagine that’s pretty common with harder drugs as well.

A side not here about my own struggles. This song is written almost twenty years before I finally admitted that I needed help and got sober. It’s interesting to me that I wrote songs about things like addiction all throughout my twenties and thirties even though I didn’t consider myself an addict at the time. It’s kind of like I was writing about my future self but that would infer that I am a time traveler. Which I am not. Or am I?

Back to the song. The second verse ends similarly to the first one conjuring up “monsters” and “creatures” that are following our protagonist. This is a pretty common metaphor for withdrawal and the paranoia that accompanies it. I’ve been around people, especially on heavy stimulants who are very paranoid. They can become convinced that someone is “out to get them” even when they are completely safe. Trying to bring this logic to light when someone is in such an altered state is a losing battle to say the least.

The last line before the final refrain is “There is no sin in my skin” which can be taken two ways. On the one hand it could be from the perspective of the addict who is saying that there is nothing wrong with them. Denial that they have a “problem”. The other way to think about it is from the outsider’s perspective as a kind of empathy. So often addicts are considered flawed or weak or of poor character, that they are to blame for their own dependance. This is a very old and puritanical way of thinking that doesn’t hold up in today’s understanding of addiction. Addiction is a disease and should be treated as such. If someone had cancer we wouldn’t say they deserve it because of their moral failings so we shouldn’t judge those who are suffering from addiction. The key word here is “suffering”. The way I like to interpret this line is that I’m telling the person “you’re not evil, you’re just sick” and I like to think that I would help them get better.

But, that doesn’t seem to be the case. “The madness within wears so thin … it’s done me in” closes the song and implies that I am just finished with the whole thing. I don’t want this person in my life anymore and I walk away from the relationship. It’s sad, but the song is sad from top to bottom. Ending on a shameful and depressing lyric seems appropriate.

Both versions of the song have a long finger picking guitar intro that swells with the bowed bass payed by Eric McCann. The “Cured” version features the band of myself, McCann and drummer Bill Belzer performing that song in New York, I believe during CMJ in 2004? On a live recording of that performance you can hear two women having a morbid discussion about some gruesome injury and death. I have no idea what or whom they were speaking of but I thought that the tone of their conversation fit that of the song so I kept it. The live version then bleeds into the studio version of the same band but with Dustin Kinsey on electric guitar as well. To this day I have no idea who those two women were.

The long intro made the song almost impossible to put anywhere on else on the record other than the beginning. Sequencing an album is kind of an art form in itself but I’ve found that the first song and the last song tend to make themselves known. This one really set the mood for the rest of the record.

White lines come anodyne

Like a calm summer sea

But all these creatures

they’ve been watching me

Midnight by candlelight

Just my heart in a spoon

All my insides howl at the moon

The music begins. Violins

The sad state we’re in wears so thin

Tattoo covers needle bruises

Like I won’t ever know

Long sleeve shirt sleeves

like it’s twenty below

Glass eyes don’t recognize

Like you can’t even see

You say these monsters

they’ve been watching me

There is no sin my skin

The madness within wears so thin

It’s done me in

The tour was successful on paper but divisive in real life. At the peak of our success we decided to pivot and try something different. Not a good business move but a necessary one creatively. The album was polarizing and a lot of people were open about not liking it. Over the years it turns out that it just needed time to breathe and for people to grow into it. At the time, on that first tour we were met with blank stares from the audience a lot of the time. That’s how I remember it anyway. The decision was made to cut back what would have been a “world tour” to regroup and start working on another record. We bought a recording studio and started writing. It was then that I finally found some time at home with my new family.

In the early aughts my wife and I were the first of our social circle to have kids and there is nothing more off-putting to the childless twenty something than a toddler. Its great now that the kids can are all older and we’re not even fifty but at the time it was really lonely. It was hard to relate to our peers, so we kept to ourselves mostly. The concept of a “stay at home Dad” wasn’t as common a thing in those days so I never talked at the park with the moms. I’d take kiddo to indoor playtime at the community center and would be the only male in there over four years old. The trade off was that I got to be home and write songs and spend time with this tiny human that I was getting to know. My wife already knew our daughter really well but she was pretty brand new to me and I wanted to celebrate that.

I had the Leonard Cohen song “Hallelujah” stuck in my head and wondered if I could write something like that. I’ve been a song writer for a couple of years now, surely I can compete with one of the greatest songs by one of the great musical poets. I was a young parent, only twenty three and filled with hubris. I sat down at the piano that we had inherited from my mother-in-law but it was painfully out of tune. We opened the literal Yellow Pages and found a tuner who was completely blind. He joked that he was the Daredevil of piano tuners and got the old girl swooning. So, I sat down and wrote a waltz about parental love.

This falls into a songwriting category that in my young mind was called “shit nobody cares about”. Since I didn’t know anyone else that was a parent there was no way for them to relate to the lyrics. I decided to make them intentionally obtuse. It sounds like a love song to a partner or spouse and that vague universality was by design. At the time I was actively writing songs about other people’s divorces (Guilt Show) because I thought “I love my wife, I love my kids, everything is good now” didn’t make for very interesting lyrics. In hindsight, as an older and hopefully wiser person I can see that is exactly what makes this song meaningful.

The tracks were recorded at The Black Lodge in Eudora, KS with Ed Rose at the helm and the Pope Brothers as the backup band. All the piano and reverse guitar noise is all me. All the vocals are me backed up by a choir of myself. Hollerin’ “la, la, la, la” into the can. The introduction of the drums in the middle of that part are one of my favorite moments on this album. They sound so huge! An alternate “demo” version of the song that is more stripped down and acoustic guitar driven appears on the Vagrant “Another Year On The Streets Vol. 3” compilation. I can never keep track of how many of those things there are or which of my songs are on them. Those and skateboarding / BMX videos are always some random person’s introduction to my work and I rarely know what they are talking about but am grateful they found it.

Another place that has happened with this song in particular is that it was licensed for an episode of “The OC” which makes a certain amount of sense since that show is very California-centric. The album art has also appeared in some similar dramas that feature a teenager’s room. I guess Vagrant was the place to call if you needed posters for an angry teen. It’s ironic that so many of the songs on this record are about adulthood but used as the background for teenage angst. That makes me laugh.

This song, for me marks a growth point as a songwriter. I don’t hear any agression in it but it’s still powerful. That’s the thing I wanted to accomplish with New Ams from the beginning. To be, I don’t want to say “emotional” but that’s the only word that comes to mind, without having to resort to just anger or volume. Maybe “if it’s too loud, you’re too old” is correct, this is a song you can listen to with your grandma. That’s the idea anyway.

p.s. My daughter Lily (who the song is about) is performing with me on the upcoming tour. I don’t think she reads these essays but regardless, don’t bring it up at the gig. She’ll die of embarrassment. Though, now that I think of it, that’s kind of my job as her father. Right? Ha.

Tour starts this week. I hope we’ll see you at one of the shows.

Feb. 26th - Phoenix, AZ - Valley Bar

Feb. 27th - San Diego, CA - Soda Bar

Feb. 28th - Pioneertown, CA - Pappy & Harriet’s

Mar. 1st - Santa Ana - Constellation Room

Mar. 2nd - Los Angeles, CA - Permanent Records

Mar. 4th - San Francisco, CA - Bottom Of The Hill

Mar. 6th - Portland, OR - Show Bar

Mar. 7th - Seattle, WA - Sunset Tavern

Mar. 8th - Spokane, WA - The Big Dipper

Mar. 10th - Boise, ID - Shrine Social Club Basement

Mar. 11th - Salt Lake City, UT - Kilby Court

Mar. 13th - Denver, CO - Skylark Lounge

Mar. 15h - Lawrence, KS - Cider Gallery (Just Food Benefit)

Mar 31st - Minneapolis, MN - 7th St. Entry

April 1st - Milwaukee, WI - Anodyne

April 2nd - Chicago, IL - Cobra Lounge

April 3rd - Ferndale, MI - The Loving Touch

April 4th - Cleveland, OH - B Side Lounge

April 7th - Cambridge, MA - Sonia

April 8th - Fairfield, CT - Stage One

April 9th - New York, NY - Mercury Lounge

April 10th - Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church

April 11th - Washington, DC - Songbyrd

April 12th - Richmond, VA - Richmond Music Hall

April 14th - Pittsburgh, PA - Brillobox

April 15th - Columbus, OH - Rumba Cafe

April 16th - Indianapolis, IN - The Hi-Fi

April 17th - Louisville, KY - Zanzibar

April 18th - St. Louis, MO - The Sinkhole

That all changed in nineteen ninety eight when we went out opening for MxPx. We were the first of three, the true “opener” with the Homegrown taking the middle or “main support” slot. This was the first time I’d really been privy to the business side of proper touring and it was interesting how different it was. The vernacular was strange. They didn’t say “show”, they said “venue”, this was the first time I’d heard the word “merch” which I refused to use for a long time because I thought it was lazy. They had soundchecks and roadies and all that pro-level stuff that I had honestly just never been around before. They had food backstage! They had a backstage! Such luxury! The band couldn’t have been kinder to us but the whole thing was crash course in what was, hopefully, in our own future.

That tour was the first time I’d ever been to The Masquerade in Atlanta, the old location, not the fancy new one. The club had three venues on different floors, “Heaven, Hell & Purgatory”. The headliner being of a Christian punk rock background we of course played in “heaven” that night but over the years I made the rounds to all three. Anyone who ever played there will undoubtedly have a story to tell about the load in. To get your gear up to the top floor the one must secure thousands of dollars with of amplifiers to a piece of plywood on a rickety pulley. It was the instrument equivalent of lowering down a feed bucket and I can’t believe nothing of ours ever fell off.

Over the years I would sit in the parking lot in a van or a bus and watch the line get smaller as tickets were taken. The parking lot would fill up again once you couldn’t smoke in the club anymore and I would people watch from time to time. It wasn’t really a “scene” anymore, not like in the house show days. There was a loss of the collective“we” and now there was just “us” and “them” and it gave me pause. It was an interesting juxtaposition between being the opener (child) to the headliner (adult) at the same club not that many years later. Having just become a father the previous year I couldn’t help but see the similarities.

The title of the song came first, “spoils” being the riches won in a battle felt in line with my feeling that being in a touring band was a form of modern piracy. We sail into your port, lay the place to ashes, take your money and then head off into the night. Burning the house down or ripping the roof off the joint being common violent metaphors for having a good show and all that. That’s what I mean by laying the place to ashes. Pirates or mercenaries both make amt metaphors for people who work transient jobs like mine. The “spoiled” in the metaphor refers to those in the musician class with attitudes of entitlement. I didn’t get that vibe from MxPx at all but came across it from time to time in my later travels. It’s that classic only green M&Ms thing you hear about or someone refusing to go onstage unless they have their favorite pair of boots (that one I actually saw in real life). The whole thing seemed kind of ridiculous and I refused to take myself that seriously.

A lot of the songs I wrote at that time didn’t really have a central topic other than whatever happened to be in my head at the time. “Strictly an accessory” referred to a musician friend who was obviously pretending to smoke because that’s what “rock stars” did. “Goddamn these idle hands” is an acknowledgment that I was already drinking too much because I was bored on tour. Idle hands being the devils play things and all. Humorously that was the line I wasn’t allowed to say when I got the opportunity to play the song on television. The censors said I could say “god” or “damn” but not the full swear. That seemed kind of an arbitrary thing to focus on but that’s another story. I think that the lyric “It overwhelms, engulfed in smoke but it’s all we can to cope” is really the most telling. In hindsight I really was overwhelmed but coping, drinking to get by.

The album was recorded at The Black Lodge which was the studio the band bought with the advance for what would be our fourth record. There are some spiritual similarities between this album and “Guilt Show” in that Ed Rose produced both and the Pope Brothers were the rhythm section. I can hear some songwriting tropes on my end that appear on both albums as well, the demos having been written in the same time frame. I would end phrases on the same chord going from major to minor and it’s not until years later that I realized how much I was relying on that particular trick. I still do it kind of instinctively but its like a flashing red “NOPE” in my mind. “Worse For The Wear” also highlights my limitations as a piano player. I can write songs on the thing but the versatility of the instrument is wasted on me. Maybe my ham-fisted technique gives the tracks some character but classically trained I am not.

This song gets requested a lot but I often wonder what it means to people or what they think the song is about? It makes sense in my head that it’s about observing the touring life as a novice and then again as a professional but that hardly seems relatable to anyone outside of the industry. It feels abstract enough that it could be about anything I guess. What do you think it’s about? Or do you just like the melody? That’s totally fine too, maybe even better.