Spent the month of February recording a record/CD. I still say “record” because I grew up with records. When I mention that I have a “new record” what I mean is that it’s a grouping of songs with some thematic consistency—just like rockers used to make. Actually, musicians still do it apparently, as there is this thing called the RPM challenge. This year’s February call motivated me to get off my duff and cobble together some new material, and gather an assorted unreleased track or two that’s been sitting there for a year or more. I also re-recorded a new version of an older song.
Full discloser…I didn’t complete my project in February so technically I couldn’t pimp my new release along with all the others on RPM’s platform. That’s okay. I would rather make sure that I had a group of songs I really liked rather than feeling I was a song short.
In fact, that’s what I had at the end of February. Eight songs, seven I really dug, but track #8 just didn’t seem right. On a darker collection of songs, you gotta’ give a listener a little hope, right?
As a songwriter that’s been mining life lived after tragedy, it’s been hard not to write songs that tend towards the downer side. The clusterfuck called COVID didn’t help, at least it didn’t help me. What felt like governmental dictats—two weeks to flatten the curve, then weeks turning into months, etc. Gigs cancelled, me back in my bunker in the dark. Shit! Worse, people began pulling away from family and friends. To me, it felt similar to what I felt following Mark’s death in 2017.
But not to despair. So yeah—the record isn’t a reworking of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” But I’m not apologizing. If you know who T. Rex were, get what Arlo Guthrie was doing with his talking blues and “Alice’s Restaurant” and have a clue about newer bands like Car Seat Headrest, then you’ll at least understand (if not love) the new release.
Friday, March 4, I sat down with my Epiphone acoustic and came up with a chord progression. I then started jotting down words in my lyric notebook. Then, scratching out and rewriting. In about an hour’s time, I had “Kick the Darkness,” what is now my single and a somewhat hopeful capstone to the new record, “Living in Some Strange Days.” The cover, done by old friend and Canadian expat Jonathan Braden (living in Europe these days) is ambiguous in an amazing way!
[CD cover-Jonathan Braden design]
The song, based on Bruce Cockburn’s “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” namechecks a host of Canadian performers I’ve been a fan of over the years: Cockburn, The Tragically Hip, Eric’s Trip, Sloan, Matt Mays, and Joel Plaskett (and the Joel Plaskett Emergency). Someone I know, a fellow musician told me he thought the single sounded like Lou Reed to him. I’ll take that as a compliment.
The new songs will be showing up on various streaming platforms thanks to Distrokid: Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Deezer, Amazon, etc. One of my favorite streaming services modeled after an actual radio station with real DJs picking and playing the songs is Amazing Radio. They have a US station, as well as one in the UK. There is cross-pollination, especially with the artists and releases.
I got an email yesterday (April 7) that my song was going to be played on Cubs the Poet’s show that night. I was playing a gig down the coast in Rockland, so I figured I’d come home from gigging and sit with a beer and unwind and catch the show. “Kick the Darkness” got played at around 11:50. While it as amazing to hear my own song coming out of the speaker, it hit me that it was going out all over the world. So cool! The new release is in production, and I should have actual physical copies available soon. Keep your eyes on my Bandcamp page for availability.
I think 2022 will really be the Summer of Baumer, aka, JimBaumerMe.
Oh, and I have a video (by Vizy) for the single.
