All Too Well (Jake’s Version)

I was scrolling through the internet last Sunday morning and I was suddenly aware that Taylor Swift had released a new ten minute song. I was curious so I followed a link to You Tube and watched her performance on SNL from the night before. I was moved and inspired. What a beautiful song! Many favorite lines, but that one about dancing in the refrigerator light is still sticking with me. Some clicks later and there I was down the Taylor Swift rabbit hole. I did not know about the original version of this song from ten years ago or that everyone knows it is about Jake Gyllenhaal or that he and Taylor dated for three months back then. Something about the expansive emotion of this new version and the ridiculousness of Jake Gyllenhaal’s involvement really got my creative juices flowing. What does Jake think of all this? How does he remember those three months? Is he sorry? Has he changed? I couldn’t let it go and a week later here is “All Too Well (Jake’s Version).”

Also, thanks to KQED for getting the joke and sharing it! :)

This parody is a commentary on Taylor’s wonderful song. I believe it is covered by fair use doctrine and Section 107 of the US Copyright Act. More on this distinction here and here.

Texas Curveballs!

The nation of Texas is tricky; the country of Texas is tough. Song is "So This Is When It Comes" from 2011 album Backyards.

Los Angeles!

Five days playing shows, seeing friends and their children, and biking around Los Angeles. I lived there for eleven years, but I never had a bike -- there's a whole secret matrix grid of paths explore! LA bike statistics in this video: 105.3 miles + 4,304 feet of elevation. Songs: "The American West" & "Empty in the Heartland" from 2011 album Backyards.

Getting back!

Multimode fossil fuel and human powered assistance to get back home. The beautiful song in this videode is "Pedaling My Bike" by Kristin Allen-Zito from her beautiful album The Atlas.

Jamboree!

Bike Videode #8. Various meanderings, performances, and thoughts/feelings in Bellingham, WA and at the 21st annual Subdued Stringband Jamboree! Songs: lots of music from various artists plus bits and pieces of "The Ballad of Wallace Green," "The War on Cars," and "Opening Up" (a new one).

Two Day Haul!

Bike Videode #7. Show day in Oak Harbor, WA and next day ride to Bellingham for evening rehearsal. Statistics for this video: 101.2 miles + 4,514 feet elevation.

Audible Day!

Bike Videode #6! Show day in Bothell, WA and day off to travel that includes interacting with Interstate 5 and calling an audible.

Statistics for this video: 56.9 miles + 2,633 feet elevation. Song: "Every Car Is A Person" from 2007 album Before We Fall.

Seattle!

Bike Videode #5! What a joy to bike through Seattle! Excellent infrastructure the whole way, separate protected paths, and reconnections with many friends from many different life chapters. Thank you to Jimmy and Peavine Alley for having me back. I've never made it anywhere alone.

Statistics for this video: 34.6 miles + 2,259 feet elevation. Song: "Outlaw" from 2011 album Backyards.

Tacoma & Vashon Island!

Bike Videode #4! The journey continues and I find myself back where I was:

Statistics for this video: 26 miles + 2,216 feet elevation. Songs: "Give Me What I Want" & "Back Where I Was" from 2006 album The Hereafter.

San Francisco to Tacoma via bike, magic machine, and train!

Bike Videode #2! The adventure continues. Multiple modes of transit necessary to get 826 miles in 48 hours. Obstacles: a wildfire destroyed the bridge in northern California that the train I was going to take crosses and a landslide resulted in an unexpected road closure.

Novato to open for Bob Schneider by bus-ferry-train-foot-bus-foot!

Bike Videode #1! Hyper local gig to open for the great Bob Schneider at the Hopmonk Novato Sessions Room! What a beautiful and epic day trip. Here is an all new Videode on the experience. Are Videodes the new Audiodes?! Hmmm…

STATS: 19,484 steps / 5.5 miles on foot.

Challenges

These are the train tracks I was going to take to Washington for the bike tour.

The Coast Starlight Amtrak train has been cancelled until at least September because a wildfire severely damaged tracks over a bridge in Northern California. This is my first tour since making a self pledge to avoid using cars and airplanes for touring…and I am forced to immediately break my commitment. I’ll get my bike and myself up there somehow.

So: emissions largely caused by cars and airplanes have contributed to a climate crisis which has resulted in conditions that make massive wildfires probable and destroy transit, forcing continued dependency on cars and airplanes.

I recommend reading this interview. It has had a profound effect on me. I was struck when I first read it, but it keeps resonating and my thinking continues to evolve in surprising ways. It is a catalyst for a massive paradigm shift.

I love traveling and playing songs for people, but at what cost? It is human supremacist of me to insist that I must fly up there and back to do my bike tour and shows, but in this instance I am going to so because I have made commitments to many people and places and I have a job to do. Isn’t that always the way with us humans? “Just doing my job.” I will tell you: this experience is radicalizing me further. During my travel the next three months I will be thinking critically about how to avoid contributing further to this epidemic of human supremacist behavior that is destroying so much life.

This work in progress continues. Combining multiple modes of transit with the bicycle (train+bike, bus+bike) is a consistent source of stress and unpredictability. There is so much work to do to reduce car dependency. I want to ride my bike.

Washington State Bicycle Tour

All right! Well…let’s see how this goes? I am really looking forward to this journey while simultaneously anxious about the unknown challenges that will likely occur. It is my first tour since December 2019 and my first since taking the no cars or airplanes self pledge. Details and links to tickets are on the performances page. If you are the vicinity, consider attending the Subdued Stringband Jamboree. It is a wonderful and mellow kid-friendly festival and this year’s line-up is stellar. I’m playing on Thursday, August 12th and hanging out the rest of the weekend (and also celebrating my birthday on August 14th).

To get up there and back from the Bay Area I am taking Amtrak and bringing my bike on the train. The whole reason I started this weblog was to upload videos and updates of my 2020 bike tour so this will be my first opportunity to finally try that. Hopefully, this will be the best place to follow along on the journey. That way we can both save ourselves at least a little bit of social media scrolling/data harvesting?

After this it’s on to Los Angeles and then El Paso (again via train), then a bike tour from El Paso to the Kerrville Folk Festival which I am playing on October 3rd. More details on that trip later. Several works in progress! Please do get in touch if you live around these routes or elsewhere and want to collaborate on a show or if you have any questions/thoughts and you feel compelled to share. None of this would be possible without co-conspirators and true believers so thank you for your support.

Touring Without Cars or Airplanes

On 2/20/20, I released a new (very long) song called “The War On Cars.” This single was meant to accompany the announcement of my Freedom Tour 2020 Project: to bike the 3,500 mile Lewis & Clark historical trail, playing shows along the way. 20 days later, Tom Hanks announced that he had tested positive for Covid-19 and the pandemic suddenly became very real. Consequently, The Freedom Tour Project was put on hold.

Since then, I have only been in a car twice (to/from a camping trip). I have not been on an airplane. I have been moving at human speed — assisted by my bicycle machine — for over 400 days.

This has been a radical change for me. At the end of 2019, I flew to Europe and rented a car and drove all over the place playing shows. I flew back, rented another car, and did a December tour of the west coast. Glen (my Honda Civic) went over 267,000 touring miles before Glen retired. For twenty years, I have been in a constant pattern of coming and going. For two of those years I did not have an address.

Among the many things I have learned during this period of not traveling is the concept of human supremacy. I have become obsessed with the idea and my obsession has resulted in a life altering paradigm shift. I still want to tour and travel and perform, but I want to move forward from this moment with intention. I want to tour without using cars or airplanes. I like trains with the bike on board for longer trips when necessary. And maybe boats for international touring? I will cross that bridge when I come to it. It’s a work in progress.

Last weekend was a trial run from San Francisco to Sonoma to Vallejo and back. I’ll be posting videos about this journey as it unfolds on my YouTube Channel and here on the blog (which will make it an occasional vlog?) so here is the first one:

Custom Vinyl & NFTs!

The digital world and the real world are colliding! The real world is digital and the digital world is real?!

It’s the information age.

Consequently, for the next month “The Information Age” will be manifesting itself in both the real and digital world in two new ways.

CUSTOM VINYL

For a limited time only (until April 15th), you can create a custom vinyl record of “The Information Age.” You pick the sequence and you choose the songs from the 24 track digital release of the album. Each record will be lovingly handcrafted by Austin Signal in Austin, TX. Here’s an infomercial with my buddy Von Rhodes explaining the deal:

NFTs

Or “non-fungible tokens.” Six (and only six) NFTs of “The Information Age” are now on sale at the all new Digital Trading Post! These are really exciting collectibles on the new frontier of the blockchain. It’s the wild wild west and we’ll explore it as we go — six and only six will exist!

The owner of each NFT will gain access to a trove of unlockable content including, but not limited to: full quality audio files of the entire album plus three unreleased tracks, a songbook PDF which includes the chords and lyrics to all the songs, and the separate audio files from the original recording sessions of both versions of the title track (so you can remix or just listen to the vocal or do whatever).

The initial owner of this NFT may also manifest this digital token in physical form as a vinyl record. lovingly handcrafted by Austin Signal. This record will be a unique version of the album with a unique sequence and song list. It will be linked to your NFT with a QR code on the label of the record. For more information please visit the weblog at thehereafterishere.com/the-information-age-nfts.

The Information Age (Part Two) Liner Notes

Since The Information Age is a digital release, there is no packaging to accompany it. When Part One came out in September 2020, my friend Ned mentioned that he wanted to read the liner notes. I spent some time writing about the extraordinary group of artists who contributed to the creation of the album. Click on the names to read all about Jonathan, Andrew, Daniel, Tayloranne, Katie, and Solomon. I am eternally grateful that each of them took the time to shine the light of their talents and their energy on this project. 

Part Two is now available. I picked 2.12.21 for the release date mainly because how cool are those numbers?! What else goes in the liner notes? I always loved when the lyrics were included - you can scroll through those here. You can even buy a digital version of the sold out songbooks, which includes the words and chords to all the songs, a link to download full quality audio files, and a brief introduction with some thoughts on songwriting. Finally, here is some premium liner note content — song-by-song notes on The Information Age (Part Two):

“I Don’t Know What Freedom Means”

When I wrote this song, I thought of it as a rock song (see Part One). That summer, I saw Willie Nelson live for the first time at a festival in Ohio. I learned a lot from watching Willie play, especially that it’s okay to really take your time with a song. The slower, the better. The next day, I was playing piano with this lesson in mind and rediscovered this song as a 6/8 Willie style ballad. There’s a full version of it in this form, but it’s long and the album is already ballad heavy so I cut it. When I was sequencing the album and settled on the two part concept, I reimagined the slow version as an intro to Part Two and edited it with that in mind. 

“I Trimmed My Beard Today”

I discovered these lyrics in an old notebook when I was moving from the 70 square foot art space room in San Francisco (“the loft”) to a larger room in the same space (“studio one”). It is an intimate and intense experience to interact with everything you own. You literally touch all your stuff when you move. For me, it inevitably results in a several-weeks-long memory and nostalgia journey. It’s also an opportunity for a fresh start. In that empty new room, with that old notebook open in front of me, I wrote this song about new beginnings. 

“In a Different Life, in a Different Time”

I wrote this on the road in Arkansas after meeting a particularly compelling woman. It is an elegy for something that never existed, but might have under different circumstances. The music and the words for the chorus of this song just floated into my head that night in my hotel room. I love when a song happens like that. I just grabbed the guitar and transcribed what was coming through me. When a song arrives in that way — just shows up all at once — I never question whether it is “good” or not. I just trust it, try to get as much of it as purely as possible, and move on. 

“You Gotta Keep a Secret”

This melody and chorus has been floating around in my head for a long time. I tried to attach it to a bunch of different songs over the years and it never fit right. The residency finally gave me the time and space to sit down and work on it and figure it out. And also rock. 

“Thinking About the Bad”

This song evolved over time and some of the words eventually changed into the version on Part One. When I went back and listened to the original demo, I was surprised by the slightly different lyrics and chord changes. Totally forgot about them. This is basically an exact transcription of that demo. I don’t know if anyone else hears it this way, but Elliott Smith is a direct influence here. When I was living in Echo Park in Los Angeles, his ghost was omnipresent. So was his despair. 

“You Better Believe Somebody”

Bluesy number here. Sick guitar solo? I wrote these lyrics in the spring of 2016 and rediscovered them when I was collecting songs for the album. The words seemed to have become more true over time, particularly in the era of “fake news” with the 45th president commanding our collective consciousness. When I wrote them, I was thinking about mental health and how many vastly different perspectives there are about it. Who do you believe, especially when you are suffering and need help? There is a lot of bad information out there. There are as many untalented mental health professionals as there are untalented dentists. In my experience, it is very worthwhile to do the hard and time-consuming work of searching for somebody who you can believe. 

“Wedding Day”

One of the gifts of setting aside six weeks to be an artist in residence and focus only on recording was that I got a lot of work done. There was nothing else to do. After I recorded all the new songs, I started listening to older voice memos and demos. I found two very long recordings called “Wedding Day” and “Wedding Day 2,” both made on the same day. I can’t remember exactly, but I think these were made in 2010 or 2011. I know I wrote the lyrics on the subway in New York and recorded these improvised versions when I got back to Los Angeles. Then I mostly forgot them. Once in awhile, I’d rediscover them and think they were too heavy and too long (and honestly, I was too lazy to work through them and learn them and turn them into finished songs). But now, finally, I had the time! I recorded both of them…and then immediately decided they were still too heavy and too long and dismissed them again. When I left The Sanctuary, I gave Katie & Solomon a couple cassettes of rough mixes and included these songs. Awhile later, Katie said she really liked “Wedding Day 2” and thought I should include it on the album. I listened again and was finally able to hear it as a song (a very long and very heavy song). If Katie likes it, maybe someone else will too. It has grown to be one of my favorites on the album. The songbooks were printed before I decided to include it so it is not in there. 

“I’m Beautiful”

It took a very long time for this song to come together. Pop quiz: what is “the greatest love of all” in that Whitney Houston song? It’s learning to love yourself! That’s what this song is about. I’m very aware that “I’m Beautiful” is a loaded title, but it’s also hard earned for me to be able to see myself as beautiful and Whitney Houston is awesome. I love the shape Jonathan gave this song in the mixing process. Really tied the room together. 

“The Information Age” 

The first song I recorded for the album was the rock version of this, which is on Part One. I was stoked about it, but I was also initially pretty sure that it was too much. I hadn’t yet decided that the ethos of this project was going to be to make a big messy mixtape and just put it all out there. A couple days later, I recorded this mellow version (thinking this would definitely be the “real” one that would end up on an eventual 10-12 song album). When I kept recording and creating more content, the double album concept crept in and wouldn’t go away. I love how these two versions of the title track work like bookends in the sequence now. The loud one yells at you, demanding attention and announcing its presence. This quiet one is reflective as the sun finally begins to set on the album.

“It Gets Bad, but it Gets Better”

This song means a lot to me because it’s the first song I wrote that felt like magic since committing to full sobriety. It proved to me that I will still be able to access that unconscious and elusive wellspring of creation that lives inside of me. It was a massive relief to feel it burst forth and it was very rewarding to do the work of harnessing it and shaping it into a song with a clear mind and conscious intent.

“The New Place”

I can tell you exactly where and when I wrote this song: The Rising Star Sports Ranch Resort in Mesquite, Nevada in November 2016 just after the presidential election. A friend of mine was staying at an artist retreat property in Escalante, UT and invited me to come stay for a week. I flew into Las Vegas, rented a car, and got this sweet Priceline hotel deal for the night. The Rising Star Sports Ranch Resort was brand spanking new. I may have been the first person to sleep in that room. A new administration had just been elected, the times they were a’changing again, I had just emerged into the light after an eleven month depression, and there was suddenly a romantic interest in my life. The world felt fresh and new and full of possibility all over again. 

“Time To Be Here Now” 

I had this music and melody for a year before I wrote lyrics to it. I would sing it to myself all the time and I loved it so much. I was really worried I wouldn’t find the right words for it (this same experience happened with “Young Ones” from North Star). One of the most fun parts of making up a song is that you can sing it to yourself throughout the day and work through it over time. You can “write” it in line at the grocery store or in the shower. Fragments of these lyrics materialized slowly and came into focus piece by piece. I can give up on my dreams. Giving up in this context is letting go. It is joyous and freeing. It is arriving fully in the present.

Down here at the end of the year 2020

I felt a creeping restlessness while checking in with social media this week. There is such a pressure at the end of December to wrap up each year in a nice little package. Every app has its end of the year data as advertisement that everyone posts everywhere because we love to share information about ourselves. And there are also the year end lists and essays and articles, all attempting to make sense of twelve months as if they were episodes in one season of a Netflix show.

I’m trying to resist the temptation to do that, which makes this blog post I’ve been planning to write troublesome. I was going to reflect on the year, what I had planned for it, how it turned out, lessons learned, gratitude acquired…but I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m going to share this setlist and link to a Facebook Livestream I did on the Winter Solstice and let it all be:

Winter Solstice Show // 12.21.20 Everyone Looks Different / Evicted / Crash the Party / Daylight Saving / The True Love Who Loved Me / All My Friends Are In The Valley / Feet to the Fire / I Trimmed My Beard Today / Are You Still In Love With The World? (Raina Rose cover) / The American West / Thinking About the Bad / Present Day or 1492 / The Information Age / Praying for Time (George Michael cover) / At the End of the Year

The days are getting longer again now. The nonlinear progression of time continues, however we choose to make sense of it by chopping it into pieces and naming them. After awhile, the days will get shorter again. I am grateful to still be here, watching the days come and go, singing my songs for whoever takes the time to listen. I will continue to do so as long as I am able.

The Conclusion of Season Two of Livestreams!

Season Two — the Green Screen Season — is in the books! That was fun. Thank you to everyone who virtually stopped by and supported the shows. After two seasons of 11am Pacific shows, the consensus in the chat was that we move to weeknight evenings when Season Three begins in the depths of winter. And so it shall be! Precise night of the week TBD. Here are the setlists from the last two shows:

Weekly Sunday Livestream Green Screen Show // 10.25.20 The Ballad of Wallace Green and His Dog / Change We Can Believe In? / Gone To Pot / The Most Qualified Candidate in History / The Art of the Deal / Diminishing Numbers / A Return To Normalcy (2020) / Evicted / It’s Hard To Be White / Burn Minneapolis / Company Man / It Gets Bad, but It Gets Better / A Friend is Hard to Find / Moonlight Motel (Bruce Springsteen cover) / Yesterday Some Roses / I Think I Found A New Friend / I Trimmed My Beard Today / End of Summer Cigarettes / Young Ones

Weekly Sunday Livestream Green Screen Show // 11.1.20 My Family Came From Germany / Simple Heart / An American in Love / Give Me What I Want / Boy, That Was A Close One / Love is Big / It’s Okay To Be Alone / All My Friends Are In the Valley / That Golden Shore / Present Day or 1492 / All These Good Goodbyes / Rings on Ring Fingers / A Friend is Hard to Find / At the End of the Year

It Doesn’t Matter Why It Is, It Doesn’t Matter If It’s Wrong IV

One thing about the pandemic: there is going to be a lot of art created in quarantine. Friends have been sending me recordings they are making since March. I’m sure visual artists are doing their thing. Authors, poets, filmmakers, ceramicists…all these creative people locked down and shaken from their usual routines. Some, I imagine, haven’t made anything at all. That’s part of the process too. Ebbs and flows.

I have been creatively flowing pretty much all year, starting with The War On Cars single released pre-pandemic. There really is no timing these bursts. I’ve had months and months of nothing happening and every time that happens it feels like I’ll never make anything again. Endless source of inspiration Bruce Springsteen talks about it beautifully in this excellent new interview.

Every four years since 2008, I have made an album that I consider part of a series called “It Doesn’t Matter Why It Is, It Doesn’t Matter If It’s Wrong.” Of the third installment, my friend Ted said: “This is a really weird album.” And later in the conversation, he said it again: “It’s really weird.” I assume he is right because Ted is almost always right. Fortunately, it’s not my job to judge what comes. I just try to get out of the way as much as possible when it’s happening.

The fourth album in this series happened all at once in June of this year. “Burn Minneapolis” was the first song I wrote, the weekend after George Floyd’s murder. About the same time, I bought a handmade notebook from a batch that my friend Lindsey Verrill made (another quarantine creative burst in another medium). Over the next two weeks, as the country exploded in protest and unrest, I wrote the rest of the songs and filled that notebook. The album was finished by the end of the month. I tidied up the mixes this week.

I wish it were always that easy. This is the fastest turnaround from seed to fruit in two decades of sharing recordings. Less than five months! Is it weird? I suppose it’s pretty weird. I don’t know. I love it, but I’m biased.

The prequel to “Ned,” a song from the first album in the series, is on this one. There are also songs written from the perspective of a Qanon YouTuber, a white person who is not me and believes it is hard to be white, and a person experiencing eviction (also not me, thankfully). It has long been a goal of mine to write a collection of songs in which the characters are speaking for themselves in the first person and I am not present. I accidentally accomplished that with this project and it was really really fun. I had A LOT of fun making this. I hope you have a lot of fun listening to it.

It has been such a joy to feel the flow this year. There is an inevitable ebb and inward turn that follows productive periods like this. I look forward to that part of the process and the listening it entails.

Texas

This week’s livestream concluded a four state “tour” of some of the so-called “red” states that were on the freedom tour itinerary with a stop in Texas. All Texas-related songs and Texas covers. Growing up in Minnesota, I never gave much thought to Texas. We shared an interstate (take I-35 south and you can’t miss it), but it felt like another country. That’s because it is. It is a big and bold and beautiful place, with all its flaws and complicated history, and some of my best friends in the world live there. The good people of Texas have welcomed and supported me and my music since my first visit. Its songwriters are among the best writers I have encountered in any medium and are a constant wellspring of inspiration for me. I played some of my favorites in the show, but there are many many more. Something in the water? Maybe the tacos.

Weekly Sunday Show: Live from TEXAS // 10.18.20 Happy Birthday to Phil / Clay Pigeons (Blaze Foley cover) / Every Morning (Blue Hit cover) / Texans Not From Texas / Beggars and Mules (Danny Schmidt cover) / Levelland (James McMurtry cover) / Come and Take It (written with Bill Davis) / Accidental Thief (written with Matt the Electrician) / We Can’t Make It Here (James McMurtry cover) / To Live Is To Fly (Townes Van Zandt cover) / Are You Still In Love With The World? (Raina Rose cover) / I Love Austin / The American West … and special guest Wilson Marks!