Last year at Christmas, I could barely play 5 songs. By “play,” I mean sitting with my guitar and being able to make it through a song, knowing the words and chords without relying on sheet music. I had a couple of songs I was close to “nailing,” but the others I cloyed my way through.
A year later, I can now play an hour’s worth of music (or more) and my setlist is now in the double digits. I’ll still miss a chord change now-and-then, but I’m confident in my ability to play music. This from someone who believed the messaging that he’d never be good enough to perform with a guitar.
What’s the difference a year later?
A good portion of my growth can be attributed to practice. Most of the previous 365 days of 2020 (in the midst of a global pandemic), I spent hours alone in my basement: just me, three guitars (two electrics, one acoustic), a combo amp, a laptop, and a small Bose speaker. I acquired a two-channel PA midway through 2020 and a couple of microphones. These tools allowed me to approximate the live performance space, or a reasonable facsimile.
I have no crystal ball and hence, no sense of the next time I’ll be in front of an audience of flesh and blood humans. Once our “esteemed” leader, Governor “Crackhead,” shut everything down this fall, she deprived me of my weekly opportunity to get out and hit open mics. This was an essential part of my growth as a performer. No matter how much you practice, standing on a stage in front of a bunch of total strangers is an entirely different animal than sitting alone in the basement. Songs you’ve nailed time and time again become clunky messes played live in front of an audience. But, falling on my face made me better. Continue reading →
Most people rarely follow their hearts/dreams. It’s so much easier to simply wish upon a star.
Back in the late 1990s, I decided I wanted to be a writer. Then, Stephen King told me that being a writer wasn’t simply wishing you wanted to be a writer. “Oh,” I thought. I guess there’s some work involved. You have to write. Indeed.
I learned my lesson about writing. But what about music?
Playing the guitar is something I’ve always wanted to do. I’ve had a guitar and I’ve had seasons when I played it quite a bit. But inevitably, it would always end up back in the case, with the case building up a sheen of dust. Hard lessons don’t always stay with us.
My son was killed in 2017. Life came to a standstill for me, or pretty damn close. I could barely function for months. Then, one afternoon, my guitar came out of the case and it’s stayed out ever since.
I wrote “Walking Down the Road” last summer, in August, right after we moved to Biddeford. It’s about Mark’s final walk, as told in his voice, if he could still speak to us. I even have the first lo-fi recording of it made on my phone, in my clothes closet. I thought that would make for a great makeshift studio. I’ve since migrated to my basement, “my bunker” as my wife calls it. She actually decorated it a week ago, and now I have Christmas lights down there.
Having a Bandcamp page is something I’ve thought about. But for some reason, I held off setting one up. I guess I needed more time in the “woodshed.”
JimBaumerME on the Bandcamp
I’ve written 15 songs over the past year. I have an album’s worth of material. I’m starting to create some stark home recordings of my songs. Others like Guided by Voices, Swearing at Motorists, and Daniel Johnston have done similar things. They are certainly artists worth modeling myself after, but at the same time, I’m not really looking to be just like them–they’re guideposts for sure–but I have my own sense of where I want to go as a musician.
So, if you are inclined, bookmark my Bandcamp page. I’ll continue to post new songs and before long, there will be a full-length album.
We have been focused on the COVID Cloud since last March. That’s eight months, earthlings!
Like most false narratives, the design of it fixates on some fractional element of a much larger malady and malfunction. In the case of the COVID (or the “Kovidika,” as I’ve started calling it, one of my numerous descriptors seeking to mock the fear and loathing all about me), Americans seem hard-wired against accepting anything that promises pain: we deny death, lack empathy for anyone suffering through tough times (like grief and loss), and perhaps worse—refuse to own any responsibility for the mess we find ourselves in. It’s as if we’re all clamoring for the Staples “easy button” in some national ceremonial act, hoping away the COVID. Oh, right. I almost forgot. The vaccine will save us. Stupid me.
Today is the first Monday in December. Did you remember it’s National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. Will the day come when white people will have to denounce the events that occurred on that day in 1941? Locally, another windstorm has darkened significant portions of Maine’s power grid. Does Janet Mills see this as a problem? I don’t imagine any of the media sock puppets consider thqt worth investigating any further than a perfunctory posting of numbers of people without power—just like they do each day, fogging their fear, telling us of more positive tests of peopl with COVID. They are invested in numbers lacking context or meaning.
Our infrastructure is badly in need of an upgrade. The solution seems to be stringing more fiber optic cable in order for us to Zoom in perpetuity. But what about our crumbling roads, a malfunctioning power grid that’s the same one we’ve had for 70 years, not to mention our buckling bridges. I have fostered a keen interest in the topic of infrastructure. In fact, I pitched a series of investigative articles to this guy back in the day. He handed me off to some American expat living in Germany who passed on my articles. Not that they weren’t any good, they just didn’t match his “style” of writing. He’s now manning the switch on a fear-fog machine of his own, like much of those remaining in the legacy media. All the journalists with any remaining moral compunction have abandoned panic porn to write honestly, like this guy. I admire his work along with a handful of others. The rest, I’ve left in the dust to pander and put forth their propaganda passing as news. Continue reading →
Blogging for me began back in 2002. I occupied a cubicle in a soul-sucking job for a major disability insurer. Every minute I spent there was a minute I’d never recover. Fortunately, I didn’t invest much energy into furthering Whitey’s corporate agenda and instead began planning my plan of exit.
A co-worker with topnotch design skills built a functional website at my behest. He never charged me a penny, either. The most important element of the site was that it including a blogging platform. As a writer looking to up my game and work on my craft, I was off to the races with a space to publish my own writing.
Since 2003, I’ve had several blogs including this one. My writing has been bylined in a host of print publications and online. I’ve hit the markers I set out for nearly 20 years ago.
Occasionally, I look back at something I wrote. The blog I maintained from 2004 until I launched this one in 2012, Words Matter, is still out there. Since I just completed rereading George Orwell’s dystopian classic, 1984, I was curious about what I might have picked up previously and perhaps noted somewhere.
Interestingly, these prior blog posts serve as a “trail of breadcrumbs” back to what I was thinking at the time. Just like in the present, I was concerned about the use of fear and hysteria (back in 2006) and also, the limbing of what is considered “proper” in what we are allowed to think and say. These are both central tenets to Orwell’s book that I’m amazed was written in 1949 and is still eerily relevant—just as if he’d written it last week.
In my blog post from 2006 at the Words Matter blog, I wrote this about fear:
Yesterday, while driving home from some appointments in Dover-Foxcroft, I was scanning the radio dial for something tolerable, or at least wouldn’t put me to sleep. For a five minute period, my better judgment took leave and I found myself listening to the demagoguery of Sean Hannity, during his afternoon exercise in right wing ideological indoctrination. This man is certifiably insane. His propaganda-laced tirades are lapped up eagerly by his brain-addled listeners, who subscribe to this kind of bigotry-infused and racist rhetoric. He was prattling on about the need for the U.S. to support their friends (in this case, Israel) in the battle against “Islamofascism,” a term invented by the haters on the right.
Fourteen years later, I could rewrite this, change a few names and terms and it would read this way to detail something that happened to me back in April. I haven’t looked back: Continue reading →
Last Saturday, we hosted a live streaming show by yours truly from the saloon in our house. It’s called the Double Deuce and I call these streamers, “Live From the Double Deuce.” Yeah. Real original. Don’t like it—name your own shows. Oh that’s right, you don’t have any. Okay, enough of being mean. Let’s all make America kind again. Oh, never mind. [lyrical reference]
My sister mentioned one of my songs I played, “Bobcaygeon,” by The Tragically Hip.
I’ve been a fan of the Hip since I drove up to Montreal with Mary and Mark to visit Canadian members of her extended family. Mark was probably eight or nine. We ended up going to an Expos game at the Olympic Stadium. Probably the Braves were in town. We went down to St. Catherine’s Street, part of the city’s shopping district. There was one of those classic department stores, Eaton’s. Eaton’s was a multi-story emporium that every large city had in the late 19th and through much of the 20th centuries. Of course, the big box phenomenon brought about their demise and Jeff Bezos and Amazon ended up finishing them off. Eaton’s officially shut its doors in 1999. Back in 1990, the store still maintained a vibrant buzz with its multiple floors of consumer goods including music. Of course, if all you know is scrolling through items on a small phone screen, you’ll never understand the art of tastefully arrayed items with a purpose, in an actual physical space: think retail Feng shui, or something similar. But that was the lure and wonder of places like Eaton’s.
The T. Eaton Co. Ltd. store in downtown Montreal
That visit is where I scored my initial piece of plastic ware from the hip. This being the 1990s, it came in cassette form and the title was Road Apples. I knew the band due to their song “New Orleans is Sinking” on Maine’s last freeform FM station, WTOS. I probably bought the tape on the strength of that one song (which isn’t on this recording, btw). Glad I did. I became a huge fan. Have been to this day.
Road Apples (1991) by The Tragically Hip
Phantom Power, the record that “Bobcaygeon” is on, is one of my favorite Hip records. I always liked that song and I learned it as one of my first five songs on my quest to master 10 songs so I’d have an actual setlist. I’ve blown past that self-imposed barrier. Continue reading →
The governor has shut me down. Just when I was starting to slide into a groove of sorts with my guitar-playing and getting out to various open mics, the governor in what seems like simply a random dictate—has snatched away these weekly chances for me to take my music from the basement bunker onto a stage. It’s become a way to push myself to become better, which only comes when you perform. Song lyrics and chords that you nail flawlessly when it’s just you alone in a practice space suddenly disappear when nerves hit prior to going on before strangers.
Mark was killed in January 21, 2017. During the second year of living through grief and loss, things seemed to get worse, if that was even possible. The summer of 2018, I became deeply depressed. I contemplated ways to kill myself. The loss of Mark and the isolation of being alone all day in a large house with no one calling or even emailing me made life seem untenable. As much as I loved Mary and didn’t want to inflict even more pain on her than she was already carrying around, I just couldn’t see any options.
On the darkest day of my life other than the night we learned Mark was killed, I was moving towards a final decision. But, for some reason, I walked towards the corner office I had in our house we were renting in Brunswick. To this day, I still don’t know why. Maybe to buy some time before making an irreversible choice.
Sitting in the corner was my guitar case holding the Yamaha acoustic I bought back in 1989 at Buckdancer’s Choice in Portland. Just recently, Mary found the original sales slip. I paid $140 for an instrument that has brought me joy, along with frustration for 30 years. I say “frustration” because at that point in my life, I’d never managed to push through that “wall” that all guitar players have to pass through on the journey towards being proficient on their instrument. I read a book earlier this year and the author said something to the effect that “the guitar is an easy instrument to learn: it’s a difficult instrument to master.”
Until 2018, I never committed to mastering the guitar. Oh, I’d have periods that would last a few months to a year when I’d play enough so that I built callouses on my fretting hand. I’d learn Christmas songs for the holidays, or in 2001, while attending a Vineyard Church in Lewiston, I became the small group worship leader, the guy who played simple songs on my guitar and led us in worship songs each week. That’s how I learned about Michael Pritzl and The Violet Burning, a band I now cover.
Another attempt to find a drummer today. These inquiries launched into the digital void haven’t delivered a timekeeper, yet.
All-too-often, some guy wants you to “hit him up,” which seems to be code for “when you do all the work of writing the songs, scoring the gigs, call me and maybe I’ll show up for the payday.” Or something like that.
A week ago Tuesday, I followed a three-piece in Mechanic Falls that were amazing. The band were two brothers (I think) slightly younger than me. They’d been playing for awhile. The drummer who was co-hosting with Chris Floyd was a young man from Jay named Bobby. He has a band of his own, The Only Hope. I appreciated Bobby (and Chris) backing me on “Creep” by Radiohead, and my own song, “Walking Down the Road.”
For the past week, I’ve been thinking how my experiences at open mics might become remarkably different if I could show up with a bunch of songs that I’d been working on with a drummer, instead of hoping the band that I just met minutes before playing will be able to follow me in my own original songs. Then, in some settings, I have to have what I want to play vetted, ensuring the house band knows the song. Maybe I don’t want to learn a bunch of songs that everyone else plays.
Yesterday on my drive back and forth to Brunswick to see my chiropractor with a side jog to my old hometown to see my sister, I listened to Teenage Fanclub. The Fannies are one of a host of bands I could probably listen to daily and not grow tired of. I’m so glad I made the trek to Boston a year ago in March to catch them. It was another one of my solitary adventures.
Prior to my trip to the Hub, I tried banging out some of my faves by the Fannies. For whatever reason, I didn’t have much success. I’m a better player now than I was back then. Maybe that’s why I was able to work this one out, even transposing it in a different key so I wouldn’t be forced to play it dropped down a step and could keep my one electric in standard tuning. That will be good when I roll this one out, live.
What an amazing fucking scene from 1992. It’s Reading, in the rain, and the crowd is being transported to some other place by a bunch of 20-somethings who’ve managed to continue making meaningful music nearly 30 years later.
“Everything Flows” is not the type of song a 25-or-so-old kid writes: a plaintive ode to the passing of time with lines like “see you get older every year/but you don’t change, I don’t notice you changing.”
Looking forward to playing this one live in the near future.
Oh, and the biz card makes it official: I’m now calling myself a musician along with writer.
The business of music.
And since one can never have too much of the Fannies in their lives, here’s a show they did in NYC back in ’93 for some Japanese television station.
We are in that transitional time between late summer, segueing into early fall. I have felt a sense of being adrift. Six months into Covid, with little abatement in sight, the looming darkness and colder days don’t bode well for anyone preferring light and summer breezes. Simply, summer has offered some respite from Covid lockdown. What’s coming, I’m afraid, is a dank, Dickensian dystopia to be endured over the course of the winter.
Last week, a well-known local musician touched down on Facebook about his bookings drying up as the summer places began shutting down for the season. A drive along East and West Grand in Maine’s premier tourist Mecca, OOB, on Sunday revealed summer’s dying embers. Many of the places that had outside entertainment like the Sunset Deck and Myst have closed until next May. Others are open for another three weeks at best. Who knows if The Brunswick will have indoor entertainment come late October.
For the past 44 months I’ve been journeying through the loneliness that apparently is endemic in those relegated to living with the loss and associated grief that accompanies the death of someone deeply loved. During my sojourn, former associates have disappeared. Not sure why. I’m guessing that surface relationships can’t come to terms with darkness of death, subsequent depression it delivers, and all the associated fall-out from an event inflicted on someone.
On days like today, my first inclination used to be to sit down and write a blog post. Given that Mondays don’t require me to check-in at Whitey’s Farm until later in the morning, I went down the stairs to my bunker and picked up my acoustic. As I’ve intimated before, I’m not certain I’d still be here if on that dark day in August of 2018, I hadn’t opened the dust-covered guitar case housing my Yamaha guitar, rather than seeking the alternative hidden in the closet upstairs. Continue reading →
When I launched this blog in 2012, I was passionate about blogging. At that time, I still believed in the power of words—that words truly mattered. I no longer hold that as a truth.
Back in 1995, after coming to the end of another job and place of employment, I took the summer off. I read, I ruminated, and I planted a garden. There was a particular richness to that brief respite from work and busyness.
In many ways, that summer changed my life at the time. I made a transition in my thinking and outlook. I also read Neil Postman for the first time. What Postman taught me about the world is something I’ve carried with me ever since, especially in terms of how I view technology.
In 1995, there was no Facebook. News and presidents didn’t take to Twitter to make proclamations. I would not learn of the internet for another year. It was the perfect time to come to Postman’s ideas and live amidst the wreckage across the following 25 years, watching a world altered by technology.
Unlike 2012 when I’d spend copious amounts of time researching and organizing my thoughts in order to write a lengthy post that would ultimately be read by very few, these days, I simply present some truncation of a greater truth, or the more detailed ideal that I am working from. I am reading less these days than I did in 1995, but I still read. I’m probably reading and writing less because I’m playing guitar more. Since words matter no more that’s a worthwhile trade.
I don’t believe science and technology will save us, greatly improve our lives, or bring about anything particularly special to how we currently live. That thinking comes from internalizing Postman 25 years ago.
Here is Postman on technology, in five points:
One, we always pay a price for technology; the greater the technology, the greater the price.
Two, there are always winners and losers—the winners always try to persuade the losers that they are really winners
Three, embedded in every great technology an epistemological, political or social prejudice. Sometimes the bias is greatly to our advantage. Sometimes it is not. The printing press annihilated oral tradition; telegraphy annihilated space; television has humiliated the word; the computer, perhaps, will degrade community life. And so on.
Four, technological change is not additive; it is ecological, which means, it changes everything and is, therefore, too important to be left entirely in the hands of Bill Gates (or Jeff Bezos).
Five, technology tends to become mythic; i.e. perceived as part of the natural order of things, and therefore tends to control more of our lives than is good for us. …. When a technology become mythic, it is always dangerous because it is then accepted as it is, and is therefore not easily susceptible to modification or control.Continue reading →
On Sunday, I ran through 8 songs in my basement and posted the video(s) on YouTube at my music page. I figured these 8 songs were a good representation of where I’m at in terms of songs and music I’m playing, at least electrically. My hope is at some point to find a drummer, hence the name of the video (parts 1 and 2). I split the set due to a glitch right about midway through.
The title is a reference to both a Big Star song, when drummer Jody Stephens sings “Way Out West,” and Alex Chilton says, “let’s give the drummer some.” Of course, if you know your popular musical trivia, then you know that James Brown says “I wanna give the drummer some of this funky soul, here…” in his song, “Funky Drummer.”
I actually just finished A Man Called Destruction: The Life and Music of Alex Chilton by Holly George-Warren Here’s a review of the book, here. Actually, I like this summation of the book, better.The book was kind of depressing (at least in parts) due to how Chilton pissed away his considerable musical talents through the trifecta of rock and roll, “drugs, booze, and sex,” or at least that was my perception. I’ve written a song about this and will be rolling that out in an upcoming video or recording.
I received positive feedback about the videos from those who watched them. A couple of people asked about lyrics.
Here’s lyrics to my songs and links to the covers (below):
Walking Down the Road
Verse 1
Walking down the road alone, I saw a country lost at home
A mission of hope carried me forth, I lived each day for all it was worth
A president came while I was away, I planned to counter him every day
Hate and division won’t carry us forth, come together and be a force
Chorus:
I wish I had just one more day, I know I had so much more to say.
I love my dad, I love my mom. I’ll miss my friends forever yon
Verse 2
My family back home sent me their love, I wished I got back to give them a hug
We all know what we think we know, but can we strive for a greater hope
Friends I lost along the way, but still I walked another day
Saving earth was what it’s about, some of the haters would jump and shout
Chorus:
I wish I had just one more day, I know I had so much more to say.
I love my dad, I love my mom. I’ll miss my friends forever yon
Verse 3
One hundred days of joy and pain, my feet moved ‘cross the fruited plain
A dirty hippy or something more, why can’t they see my higher road
My face and words live on today, I often wonder what people say
I gave it all held nothing back, but in the end was it done in vain
Chorus:
I wish I had just one more day, I know I had so much more to say.
I love my dad, I love my mom. I’ll miss my friends forever yon
[Instrumental break]
Verse 4
Walking down the road alone, I saw a country lost at home
A mission of hope carried me forth, I lived each day for all it was worth
My family back home sent me their love, I wish I got back to give them a hug
We all know what we know, but can we strive for a greater scope
Chorus:
If I had just one more day, I often wonder what I’d say
It hurts my dad, it hurts my mom. Please remember them from where you roam
