12-17-09 Chicken Foot

...And we move from Cribbage on to dominoes. We played this slightly maddening variation on traditional dominoes called Chicken Tracks. You can build off of other dominoes in groups of three to make patterns that look like - you guessed it - chicken tracks.



The reason it's maddening is that the tracks can be built off of any other domino, so that by the end of the game the table is a chaotic mess of dominoes pointing in all directions. Not unlike what real chicken tracks must look like. So the song is just a little bit maddening, too. I really love the way it turned out, though, especially the messy splats of high notes played on the wrong side of the bridge of the mandolin. Here it is!

12-15-09 Living In A Glass Box

I like that this song is fragile. The kind of song that someone actually in a glass box might sing, with lots of icy and pristine mandolin parts reverberating off of smooth walls.

And now, a Philip Glass Box:

12-4-09 Madrone in A

Thanks to my friend Aaron for supplying the title for this one. Our conversation that night featured a lively discussion of Madrona trees and what makes a particular body of water a 'sound'. I decided to combine the two topics (in a somewhat hallucinatory fashion).

11-26-09 Catch As Catch Can

I understand what this expression means, but I'm still mystified about its origins. I mean, it sounds like nonsense, right? But, when it's used in the right context, I love it. Like Ned Plimpton does in The Life Aquatic. I couldn't find a clip, but go see the movie if you haven't already. That's where the title came from. Seu Jorge is an integral part of that film, and I think the overall sound of this piece is reminiscent of his stuff (with a little Iron and Wine thrown in for good measure). One of my favorite patchworks of sound from the year. Link.

10-18-09 Future Booty

Drums by Garageband, the rest by me. Kick ass bass, sexy absurd/chic. Gimme gimme gimme! Link.

10-17-09 In Deep

I think that with this one, all I really had was the one little short guitar loop. It didn't occur to me until later in the year to add the weird stacked vocals. Tone clustery! Link.

10-12-09 One More Hour

Creepy piano, nice arrangement, winter encroaching. Link.

9-23-09 Log Jam

The name of a one-off night we did at Seattle Center for Winterfest last year. Pretty much completely nonsensical. I kind of love it. Especially the ridiculous guitar tone cluster meltdown at the end. link.

9-22-09 You're Always Right

Written out of anger and frustration at a situation I shall not divulge here.

This was an interesting experiment. The groups of 'backup' vocals were recorded while I was not listening to the playback, so they all seem to happen at random times. I then took those random vocals and painstakingly harmonized them (no easy feat since they weren't really synched to any particular part of the song. The result turned out pretty cool.

Link.

7-14-09 Diesel

Considering BP and all, this one's kind of timely.



Last year, "Awesome" performed at an event hosted by uber-talented art geniuses Sutton Beres Culler. It was meant to be a "West" workshop. It ended up being kind of a mess, but a fun one. The event was at a decommissioned gas station in Georgetown. The SBC boys have plans to turn it into a greenspace/artspace. It's an amazing project.



Right now, it's still the shell of a building. Their conversion plans have been stopped because it was discovered from underground testing that there is diesel sludge under the building. They may have uncovered a Superfund site! EPA testing commences this summer, and we'll see if it gets turned into a useful greenspace or not.

So this song was written to commemorate the event. I really like the weird harmonies.

7-9-09 Brunching With The Devil

This one's pretty funny. I imagine that having brunch with the devil involves an endless supply of silver dollar pancakes from IHOP. With razor blades in them. Zeeba zobba zoo.

Link.

2-22-09 Don't Worry Sarah

An a cappella ode to my wife.

1-25-09 Let's Get To The Heart Of It

Some ethereal garagebandy nonsense. I like the lyrics, though.

1-20-09 Obama

Hey, anyone remember that time a year ago today when we were all filled with hope and possibility? Giddy about change? Seems like an eternity ago, but here's a 44-second reminder of that giddiness.

The main riff comes from one of Sarah's ringtones. Special appearance by our other, quieter cat.

1-19-09 Wake Me From This Dream

An angry song. I can't remember what I was so angry about anymore, but I do remember enjoying thrashing on the electric guitar for this. Drum loops by Garage Band.

1-18-09 All Too Familiar Town

Here's a sad l'il country tune. If memory serves, I think the words were written whilst walking around Green Lake.

1-15-09 Prog Ress? Prog Less!

I like prog rock. I ain't gonna lie. Although there's very little 'rock' in this piece, there's a healthy slice of 'prog'. It was basically an exercise to see if I could write something with interlocking guitar lines that are in different time signatures which eventually line up. I always think of this King Crimson song when I listen to it:



Wow, Adrian Belew's pink suit in that video is fantastic.

1-12-09 Good Night Sleep Tight

A nice little lullabye. Clay drum courtesy of Garage Band. The mbira was gift from a family when I worked at Gymboree. Stevie is audible in the mbira loop.

1-5-09 Boombox Man

Sometimes coming up with a title is everything.

Other than my computer and a microphone, the only piece of equipment that I currently own is a Line 6 audio interface. In non-technical terms, it takes an analog signal - a microphone or an instrument - and converts it to digital. It also has some bundled software with a lot of preset effects which are fun to play with. For example, you can plug a guitar into it and get screeching feedback sounds, without all that pesky pissing-off-the-neighbors business. Of course, the actual amplified screeching guitar is more fun and sounds more natural, but you take what you can get.

On this particular day, I was having no particular inspiration lyrically (big surprise), so I started experimenting with the presets. The vocal sound that grabbed me was called 'Distorted Boombox Vox'. Voila! A song germinates. I imagined John Cusack holding his boombox over his head at the climax of "Say Anything", but playing Tom Tom Club instead of Peter Gabriel...

Drumbeat courtesy of Garage Band. All other sounds created by me.

1-2-09 Mother's Keeper

A little more polished than yesterday's effort. I like the creepiness of it. I think I'd been listening to a lot of The Decemberists that day. You can hear that I hadn't yet made a pop filter for the microphone in my oh-so-swanky studio. You can also hear that my melodica is tuned to itself and nothing else. link!