Starters and Alternates
IT ALWAYS WORKS OUT
The News
Scott and I had a great time at the Old Louisville Springfest this month. We were fortunate to be the last to play our full set before the festival got rained out (lightninged out, really). It felt good to play songs for fresh ears, and afternoon gigs are always fun because Eliza can come see her dad sing without staying up too late.
Here’s what’s coming up for us next:
Thurs. June 4 we’ll be on Terra Firma, a local music radio showcase. It’s livestreamed on Facebook that day at 7, then will be rebroadcast locally on 106.5 WFMP (Forward Radio) the following Saturday (8pm), Sunday (6pm) and Monday (10am).
Thurs. June 4 will also be release day for BROADSIDE #5, "How Did I Get Here", which has been a setlist mainstay for about a year now. You can pre-save it on Spotify here if you’d like but rest assured I’ll be sending out a post about it once it’s live.
Tue. June 16 I’m playing bass with Jason Bemis Lawrence on Honky Talkin’, the always-free variety show at The Whirling Tiger. Show at 7pm, 21+, free.
Sun. June 28 Scott and I will be at Rosetta Chapel in Portland with Break!!, Wreithe Alice, and Sphere Bats. Doors 3:30, music at 4pm; all ages; $10.
And now for some musings!
I was advised in college once to never throw anything away with my name on it. You never knew what might come down the pipe in the freelance world, and having a physical catalog of flyers, concert programs, liner notes, and whatever else was proof to potential clients that you could do the work, and—sometimes more importantly—a reminder to yourself that you’ve done it before.
I don’t need to be told twice to hang on to anything. I’ve mentioned before that I am a very sentimental person. I have a box of letters, I have a box of ticket stubs, I have a box of posters and mementos—maybe I should start scrapbooking. I’ve never thrown anything away, and the same is true when it comes to digital filing. My hard drive is full of dead-end project files, demo versions that weren’t properly finished before a new version was started, live recordings that aren’t quite good enough to warrant mastering, and arrangements that felt too off-brand to share.
That was one of many catalysts behind the BROADSIDES single series—to finish a bunch of demos, and rework a bunch of old songs that were taking up digital and mental space. But I really can’t stress that I try to save everything, so in that spirit, I decided to start a new thing called…
Starters and Alternates
This is going to be a series of early versions and demos of the BROADSIDES songs that have changed dramatically in their lifetime. Some of the earliest songs I’m reworking are from 2014 and ‘15, and have had a lot of time to shapeshift.
It Always Works Out
Since it’s the most recent release, let’s start with this one. First, if you haven’t heard the finished track, here’s that:
My most played records of 2017, when this was written, were David Bazan’s last two solo LPs, Blanco and Care. Bazan’s early career is defined by slow, guitar-centric, lo-fi indie rock; but both of these are entirely driven by synthesizers and samples. This wasn’t revolutionary for 2017, sure, but I didn’t listen to anything even remotely electronic in college, and I was surprised at how smoothly he had transitioned from guitars to synths without losing the impact of his songwriting.
“It Always Works Out” started as an attempt at this style while maintaining the introspective singer-songwriter aesthetic I was trying to embody at the time. I found it pretty difficult to arrange this way, but I wasn’t unhappy with the result.
When I sat down to record what eventually became Leeside, I decided I didn’t like the workflow of organizing samples on a grid. It would have been convenient, because at that time I was working with only an acoustic guitar, a bass, and a USB mic1. But it just wasn’t for me.
Here’s the earliest version of “It Always Works Out” from November 2017.2
Read more about this song here:
The drums on all of Leeside were written out in Sibelius and then exported and mixed as stems, which I always thought gave it sort of a TMBG sound.
Technically this demo was never finished, so the vocal track was imported from the 2018 version which appeared on Leeside.