Monthly Archives: February 2020

National Disgrace (new song)

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A week ago, Neil Young penned a scathing letter to Trump and posted it on his website, the Neil Young Archives. As a new American citizen, Mr. Young had a few things he wanted to “get off his chest” about his president, Donald Trump. Apparently Trump’s been playing “Rockin’ in the Free World” at his rallies.

Young, never one to mince words or fail to say what he feels like saying, obviously can’t stand the president. I know the feeling.

I haven’t written any songs since the summer and early fall. I’ve been playing a ton of guitar, though.

I had most of the verses written when I headed to my weekly guitar lesson a week ago, Thursday. My guitar teacher helped me re-arrange a few of these and gave me a couple of ideas about chords for the chorus.

Last Sunday, I had the song that I wanted.

Today, I’ve spent most of the day down in the “wood shed,” working on songs, including the new one. Here’s a live video of the song, with just two muffs.

Because I don’t have a PA and the vocals are probably muffled, I’ll post lyrics below the video if anyone’s interested.

National Disgrace (Jim Baumer)
Lyrics

Verse I

You’re a national disgrace/A fucking public shame

Trashing all your rivals/Can’t ever shoulder blame

Verse II

Talk about corruption/Should be your middle name

Bait and switch the shell game/It’s how you set your frame

Chorus

Deny global warming/Call it just a hoax

You’re a pox on the planet/Tides are rising at the coasts

Greatness offered suckers/No lightning in that jar

History will show us/Exactly who you are

Verse III

Tiny hands and fingers/Grabbing all you can

All your daddy’s money/Won’t float another sham

Verse IV

Some see through illusion/Your divisive world of hate

Fake news is your mantra/You deserved a Watergate

Jim Baumer/EverySongYeah (2020)

New Experiences and Learning

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Over Christmas and afterwards, I read a couple of really interesting books. I’ve found myself coming back to them often to re-read passages.

Both the books, Heather Havrilesky’s What If This Were Enough? and Kurt Andersen’s book, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, keep delivering returns on reading time invested in each. What both drive home is that this period of time in America isn’t necessarily unique—at least in Andersen’s narrative—about how America’s need to indulge in fantasy and thinking untethered from science and intellectual rigor dates back to our founding and prior to that. 500 years, really (which is part of the book’s subtitle).

Havrilesky’s book is essay-driven, and while similar in terms of demanding something from readers like Andersen’s does, focuses more on the personal—as in, in a world where excess is the norm—how do we find that place of “happiness” that’s not plugged directly into the capitalist mindset of “things” and “devices.” Both offer more than enough to mull over and I’m sure I will be for months to come.

Then, there’s the constant reminder during my part-time work life of a society that’s been conditioned to constantly bleat the equivalent of “gimme, gimme, gimme,” in the context of healthcare and wellness. It’s all enough to throw one into an existential crisis. Continue reading →

Move Beyond the Usual (Politics)

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After last week’s debacle in Iowa, where nearly a week later, we still don’t know if the results are in fact valid, the chattering classes are asking, “why Iowa?” and even, “why New Hampshire?”

The horse race to November’s presidential election has begun in earnest. And as it’s been done now since 1920, presidential wannabes, political insiders, and self-appointed front-runners are forced to trudge through the cold and chill of a New England winter writ large. Running the gauntlet of retail politics is still being done in the age of Twitter—as it should be—in a very white state that doesn’t always mirror the rest of America. But to New Hampshire they all come.

During past campaigns, both my wife and I have traveled to Maine-based events together or on our own. I’ve seen Democrats like the Clintons, John Kerry, John Edwards, and Dennis Kucinich in-person. When I was a Republican, I attended events for George Bush. There’s something about seeing candidates in live settings that surpasses merely seeing them pixelated on a television screen.

On Saturday, we decided to make the 35-minute drive from Southern Maine and cross the border into neighboring New Hampshire to hear a long-shot candidate, Tulsi Gabbard. She was hosting a town hall in Rochester, at the Elks Lodge.

Why Gabbard? Both of us have been intrigued by her commercials running on the Portland station where we consume our morning news and get our weather from. Like other candidates I’ve supported: Kucinich, Ralph Nader, and in 2016, Jill Stein, Gabbard projects something different than the typical business-as-usual politics common during DNC-influenced dog-and-pony shows passed off as debates. Continue reading →