Rags and Bones Music

Staking out the Territory

Hi kids, Here's a little something worthy of a post-it-note on your bathroom mirror:

“I’ve taken a certain territory, and I’ve tried to maintain it and administrate it with the very best of my capacities. And I will continue to administrate this tiny territory until I’m too weak to do it.”  – Leonard Cohen quoted in “Who Held a Gun to Leonard Cohen’s head” by Tim deLisle –The Guardian.

I say: Hallelujah brother! I mean,  isn’t that what its all about? Staking out that tiny piece of territory no one else can occupy? Whatever metaphor you use, "finding your voice", "being authentic", it adds up to the same thing: Only you can see the world through your eyes and your offering is unique. Sometimes finding that weedy half-acre and staking it out IS the work.  Thanks to Sean Bell for his thoughtful piece in PopMatters.com.

And this:

If you don't know Ed Sheeran, here's one reason his name is goin' 'round. And kids, please don't try this at home without adult supervision:

 

 

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Darrell Scott and Anne Lamott

Hi kids.

I've been gone a while, mostly due to an extended "what-the-fuck-am-i-doing-with-my-life moment (I'm certain you've never had one of those) during which I was surprised to find that even I can become weary of shameless self-promotion. But I keep coming up on things people say and songs people write that tickle my impulse to share. So, instead of letting those moments pile up in my already cluttered closet of good intentions, I'm going to take a minute, only a minute I promise, to send a few things your way . Here is today's offering:

Let us begin with the lovely and talented and completely hilarious Anne Lamott:

"What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head. First, there's the vinegar-lipped Reader  Lady, who says primly, 'Well, that's not very interesting, is it?' And there's the emaciated German male who writes these Orwellian memos detailing your thought crimes. And there are your parents, agonizing over your lack of loyalty and discretion; and there's William Burroughs, dozing off or shooting up because he finds you as bold and articulate as a houseplant; an so on. And there are also the dogs: let's not forget the dogs, the dogs in their pen who will surely hurtle and snarl their way out if you ever stop writing, because writing is, for some uf us, the ltah that keeps the door of the pen closed, keeps those crazy ravenous dogs contained. Quieting these voices is at least half the battle I fight daily." -from "Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott.

 

And then there's this:

Since 1995 the BBC has been producing the "Transatlantic Sessions" under the musical direction of Jerry Douglas and Aly Bain. They are live performances of great folk and country music from both sides of the Atlantic. This is one of my favorites. My ex-wife grew up near Harlan County, Kentucky. Every word of this song is true.

 

If you received this post via email and cannot view the video, you may view it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtSLMGc4VSA

 

Indiscriminate Act of Kindness

His name is Foy Vance. I stumbled upon him while looking for production ideas for my first recording project. For those of you who are not yet familiar with his music, here's a video shot at Pete Townsend's UK studio. This song, Indiscriminate Act of Kindness  is from his first album, HOPE and brings Richard Thompson to mind. Its a beautiful, well crafted song and his voice has the emotional nuance necessary to properly tell this story.

As I continue my search for writers/performers who appear to be in my tribe, I'll share some exceptional ones with you here. Enjoy!

 

 

Diction, Syntax and Tom Waits

As a songwriter, I tend to write from my own voice, especially when writing from my personal experience or struggles. In this sense I am always the main character in my songs. But I've always admired those who can write using the voice of an imagined character. And it's a technique I'd like to learn.

What got me thinking about this was Tom Waits' song, "A Sight For Sore Eyes" from my favorite album, Foreign Affairs. The song is full of gems like "all these palookas", "a nickel's worth of armed robbery", "workin' hard, hardly workin'' and references to DiMaggio, Drysdale, Mantle and Whitey Ford.

Diction is defined as the style used to write or speak. It shows up as your choice of words. "Barkeep", not "Bartender". "All these palookas", not "all these men" or "all these dudes". Syntax is how the words and phrases are put together. "Long time no see", not "Haven't seen you in a long time". Waits uses diction and syntax the way my father used a sharp set of chisels. Tools of the trade in the hands of a craftsman. Is there anything more pleasing?

And where would you meet such a guy? Waits leaves no question: "Hey barkeep, what's keepin' you, keep pourin' drinks." The song is full of the poignant reminiscing we do when we begin to see more of our lives in the rear view mirror than down the road ahead: "I guess you heard about Nash, he was killed in a crash/hell that must've been two or three years ago now."

Everything about this song rings true because the character who claims to be "half drunk all the time and...all drunk the rest" is carefully fleshed out.  The wonderful thing, and what I find so inspiring as a writer, is that this man's picture is painted 100% with the character's own words. There's not a single line of narrative in this song.

It is, in my twenty-five cent opinion, a masterstroke.

[Painting is "Old Man at Bar" by Paul Tiberio. You can see more of his work at Paul Tiberio]

 

 

 

"Letting the Song Write You" - A Report From the Field

 “Writing from the title” is one of the most common starting points for songwriters and it’s a great way to focus your ideas and stay on track. Every verse can be evaluated as to whether it drives toward that central idea. I think it’s this method of writing the great Nashville songwriter Don Schlitz had in mind when he said to “take a small idea and make it smaller.” This is the way some of the most popular and well crafted songs in all genres have been composed.

When you write to a title you have to make some judgments very early on about what the song is really about. But what if you want to experience what Guy Clark suggests in his new song, “Some days the Song Writes You?” What if you don’t want to make an early judgment of what the song is about? What if you want to let yourself wander with the muse and see what strange lands you might come upon? Some days I do have the sense of being led somewhere I don’t ordinarily go and I suspect that a willingness to tread that unbeaten path is what enables writers like Dylan, Cohen and Waits to write the multi-layered, non-linear, ambiguity-embracing songs that I love.

I periodically drive up to our travel trailer parked on a piece of land overlooking Pipes Canyon for a private writing retreat. It was during one of those explores that I decided to experiment with “letting the song write me”, to write a song without starting with a title, without trying to write a chorus that would sum everything up, and without stopping to edit. I was searching for a place where songs could be found that have a mythic dimension, songs that tap into something deep and archetypal. All I had to work with at the beginning was the mood I was in, a set of chord changes that drew me in, and the high desert surroundings with which I was unconsciously, but surely, interacting. 

The result was the song "Gone." It wasn't until a year later, after I'd been playing this song in my live shows for a while, that the song's meaning revealed itself to me. At least, what it meant to me, personally.

When people come up to me after a show, it is the song "Gone" about which they most often remark. Each person thinks the song is about something different. And none of these interpretations are wrong. They are all true for that listener. I find that to be both mysterious and miraculous and a result of "letting the song write me."

Here is the song, "Gone:"

 Gone

Painting above is by Catherine Svehla. For a deeper look into how stories and archetypes inform our everyday lives, visit her at Cultural Mythology: Myth, culture and consciousness.

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Songwriting as Practice

My childhood guitar teacher, Mr. Myron, was the owner of the one, small music store on Commerce Avenue in Tujunga, California. When I did well with a lesson, he rewarded me with a small plaster bust of a great composer. I remember learning to play the melody to "Love Me Tender"  on my first Fender guitar (don’t I wish I still had THAT!) and, over time, earning busts of Chopin, Haydn and Mozart. He had no little plaster busts of Elvis. Besides, I didn't know it then but "Love Me Tender" was actually written by Vera Matson and Ken Darby.

I no longer have any of those busts nor that old guitar, but what I do have is the work ethic he and my folks pounded into my thick young skull: practice, practice, practice. Isn’t that how one becomes better at anything? Yes, but what I’m interested in here is practice as a noun. That is, to have a practice. 

 To practice, one regularly repeats. And repeats. And repeats again. And while that repetition helps to create body memory, there is a side effect. It becomes rote. Our ability to pay real attention to what we are doing with each repetition and not let our mind wander as our body carries out the task at hand begins to require, well, practice. Therein lies the real value of a practice as songwriters: Learning to continually bring our attention back to the real subject of our writing as that subject, through the work, becomes clear. 

I’m thinking about the possibility of songwriting as a practice much as one would think of meditation or performing a ritual - an activity to which we commit ourselves that, over time, we serve and it, in turn, serves us. I have been told that the important thing is to do it daily and, like meditation, to continually return from the brink of mindless cliché and generalization to attention, to the actual details at hand.  If approached in this way, I think songwriting as a daily practice can be as introspective as journaling over morning coffee, as exhausting as a difficult yoga class, or as sacred as a prayer. 

 No one’s offering me any statuettes these days, plaster or otherwise, but the lessons haven’t stopped appearing, along with the practice it takes to learn them. Do you ever engage with songwriting as a practice? How’s it working for you? Drop by my room in the basement of the Tower of Song sometime and fill me in.

The painting is by Erika Hastings. You may view more of her work at: Erika Hastings

The Foul Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart

   “Now I must lie down where all the ladders start
    In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.”

                                                      - W.B. Yeats
                                                       from The Circus Animal’s Desertion

 

 

In 1990 I attended a men’s retreat in Brevard, North Carolina facilitated by Michael Meade, Coleman Barks, Robert Bly, and James Hillman. That is a creative and powerful group of men and it was a foundational experience for all of those who attended.

 This retreat inspired me to  begin drawing and writing poetry and it rekindled my lifelong desire to write songs. Before leaving Brevard, I purchased a collection of poetry called “The Rag And Bone Shop of the Heart” that Meade, Bly, and Hillman edited. They took the title of their collection from William Butler Yeats:

               “Those masterful images because complete
                 Grew in pure mind, but out of what began?
                 A mound of refuse or the sweeping of a street
                 Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
                 Who keeps the till. Now that my ladder’s gone,
                 I must lie down where all the ladders start,
                 In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.”

Yeats wrote this late in life and in the full poem he refers to several of his earlier well-known works. He refers to the images in those poems as circus animals. In fact, the title of the poem is “Circus Animals’ Desertion.” He was talking about no longer being able to go around parading the ‘masterful images’ that made him famous. He was determined to go in a different direction with his writing: Down. Down into his heart.

 Isn’t it true that our finest creative work, if it is to have meaning for our audience and for us, is found beneath the surface of our "ordinary" everyday lives?  Yeats describes it as a not-so-pretty place to which he must descend, the place "where all the ladders start." And I think its true that the real value in what we write  must be found in those “mounds of refuse”, where the unattractive sides of us go around without makeup or excuses and we are not allowed to criticize or judge them.

 Country and pop radio is proof that a songwriter can make pretty good living skimming the surface. But Yeats was out for bigger game. He seems to be asking himself: Am I willing to go down there and face the “raving slut who keeps the till”? What, in fact, is the price of being truly candid? Can I see what is beautiful in “the sweeping of a street?" We all have to decide how honest and how vulnerable we’re willing to be in our writing and be willing to take that risk.

 All this to say that the name “Rags and Bones” is both a nod to Yeats and a reminder to myself. A constant nudge that reminds me not to get too attached to making things look presentable or acceptable and to avoid tying it all up at the end with a pretty bow. Its a reminder to describe the experiences of my life as close to the bone as I am able at any given moment and tell the difficult truths about them because in the end, that’s what makes them intrinsically beautiful.

This notion of going down, of making something from the rags and bones found in the alleyways that wind through the cellars of our hearts, leads us to a discussion of two other phenomena which I’d like to talk about in future posts: nostalgia and sentimentality. If you have thoughts on this subject, I'd love to hear them.

In the meantime, may your muses be kind and generous. Don’t forget to drop me a line and let me know how things are going in your own foul rag and bone shop of the heart.

(Painting  above is "Ragman" by Edouard Manet, 1869)

 

Tower Of Song

I recently found myself thinking about Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song". Several things about this idea and the qualities of a ‘tower’ are striking: It's hierarchical, with one floor on top of the other. It has a foundation and it's tall. It has windows from which one can observe different views of the landscape. But mostly, I'm wondering if I can check in for a while and wander around or if it's a permanent address. Oh, and do I need a reservation?

I suspect it is in fact a permanent address, one where, in the words of another tenant, “you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave”.  Our reservations are probably made during our early childhood if not before. To hear Cohen tell it, it's where we live as writers and perhaps not by our choosing. Destiny may be operating here, something over which we may not have control: Cohen says: "I was born like this, I had no choice." and " "They tied me to this table right here in the Tower of Song".

 I started writing songs as a teenager and, no matter what else I was doing, falling in and out of love, raising kids, working construction, hitchhiking up and down the west coast, songwriting was a constant. Or, at least, a constant recurrence.

In the forty-some-odd-years between then and now I have found that songwriting is work - difficult, honest, useful work. It requires a lot of digging and sorting and sacrifice. Something may inspire me, an idea for a great first verse, only to find after many hard hours and as many cups of black coffee that I now have a song emerging in which that original verse no longer belongs. Please tell me I don't have to give it up! Surely, I can make it work? 

Then there’s the problem that life-changing events often get reduced to a lyric. Someone close leaves or dies and while those around me are finding tears, I’m finding rhymes. What, for most people, are fully lived lives is, here in my room in the Tower, more grist for my songwriting mill. It can be sort of a second-hand life if I’m not careful. But what’s one to do? There’s no desk clerk and no one to complain to about a life in shambles, not to mention that incessant coughing 100 floors above.

 I'm curious to know how you handle these matters. I don’t know your room number or even what floor you're on, but if you were ‘born like this”, “had no choice” and are living and working here in the Tower, send me a note, invite me up, or drop in on me. Let me know how you’re doing and I’ll see you around.

 The painting is “The Tower of Babel” by Peter Bruegel the Elder, 1563

Here is a link to Leonard Cohen’s Tower of Song.