Songs that dwell in the underbelly of human existence.
Sometimes you are hypnotized by how Adam Trice is able to shine a light upon the dark waters of his songs by the way he illuminates a shadowy world of human interaction against an ocean of conspiracies, entanglements, buffooneries and arcana, causing it to sparkle in every direction. What I ultimately find thrilling and inspiring about Adam Trice or Red Sammy is a far simpler thing. It’s his choice of lyrical phrases. Oh, his narrative threads are engaging as well, but Trice is most impressive when he reaches into a bin of squirming language and somehow plucks out a phrase as he would a minor 6th chord on his guitar, a phrase that is fresh and unexpected, yet totally appropriate.
For example, in ‘God Is Good and So Are His People’ from the 2021 “Vultures” album, there is what looks to be a street person exclaiming “Box crates of hope and redemption, Bail bonds of holy salvation, Rotten fish and a broken wheelchair.” A lesser songwriter might have settled on simply “hope and redemption” or “holy salvation,” none of which could have lit up the scene in the same fashion. It’s small choices such as those, choices to which, except subliminally, the listener is oblivious, that tote the barge of inspiration.
There’s a moment on ‘Ernest and Bukowski,’ a cut from “Holy Fluorescent Light,” Red Sammy’s riveting tenth album, where the tale takes a dark turn after a few seconds of jangling and the band’s typical traction. The song demands your attention like a roof collapsing over your head. The solo is euphoric, even as Trice sings of Halloween and Dramamine, getting punched in the face, missing teeth and a white picket fence. Dialled up to a 10 and leagues more efficient than earlier efforts, this is a record that blazes past you even in its more meditative moments.
Amid guitars that flit from sludgy to jagged to wandering, sometimes in the same song, Trice sings as though he’s coming apart at the seams in vocals that are less Waits-ian and more Cave-ian. This record appears as a capstone, a profound culmination of all Trice and company have accomplished thus far. No matter the music’s shape, the inimitable writing remains at the core of it all. Whether from the perspective of two literary giants or worried sick about a past love, he anchors real feelings in even the most enthralling absurdities.
Red Sammy’s sweet spot is stories of down-and-out characters who have come to terms with their own bad decisions and downtrodden circumstances. Pain and the human condition are wrapped tight through songcraft and leave a unique and lasting impression.
Mark Twain was of the opinion that the difference between the perfect world and the one that is merely adequate is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. Well, move over Zeus. Adam Trice has got both hands wrapped around thunderbolts.
Hey, Adam, what’s it like in Baltimore.
It’s good. For some reason I thought you were in England. But this says Wilmington, North Carolina. We used to vacation in that area, in Surf City.
I think that’s South of here but no Beach Boys there. How many in your family to take on vacation?
A wife, two kids, a third-grade daughter and a son who’s in seventh grade. To do music, you definitely have to compartmentalize. My wife’s been really supportive. When we first met 15 years ago, I was playing music, so she knew that about me. She lets me do my thing.
Let’s talk about your band, Red Sammy. Has it been you and a rotating cast of musicians or are you often with the same players?
The band on the latest record was together for the last record, too. The drummer is new in the sense he’s been with me two years. The bass player and I have been playing together for about thirteen years, and the guitar player has also been with us going back to the “Neon Motel” record, around seven years. But they’ve all been in and out. That’s how bands work for the most part these days. Once, we went a year without a drummer and played as a trio. I couldn’t find one that fit what we do. Knock on wood, I really like the current band and hope it continues.
You didn’t mention John Decker, who plays the Resonator guitar.
He played on probably four albums and left the band about three years ago. He was older in age. We were playing together when I was in my late twenties, and he was like 60 at the time. The “True Believer” album is myself, and John Decker.
Wasn’t that the album with all stringed instruments?
That ensemble was John Decker on Resonator guitar, myself on acoustic (electric guitar on one tune) and vocals, and then a cello and a violin player, both of whom were more or less hired guns. They’re classically trained musicians.
Red Sammy was conceived in ’07?
Actually, I would say ’07 is when we first documented a recording, but I guess the band was conceptualized about ’05. It took some working out quirks and kinks to actually record something. So, I say ’07 when we first laid down songs.
Considering how much music has changed over the years, in Red Sammy’s case 17 years, how much of what your concept of the band would become is different?
As a songwriter there’s been a lot of growth in terms of the craft and lyrics and also just being a better musician. So, if you were to listen to the first record, a self-titled record, it’s so raw. I enjoy the songs as they are, but a lot of those songs aren’t in our current performances because our capabilities have gotten better, my musicianship has gotten better, and the songwriting has gotten stronger. But I would say everything’s still kind of grounded in some form or fashion within a folk rock or Americana sort of genre that hasn’t swayed too much. When we’re still hustling as independent musicians, you want to put your best stuff forward. So, when we’re playing live shows, we tend to put the most recent albums into the mix. There is an occasional early song that might squeeze its way in. There were times where we were playing the same batch of thirty tunes for a five-year period. To keep yourself interested, you need to be continually writing new material.
As for yourself, did you envisi0on you would still be leading the same band after two decades?
If I were to say I was still doing this for all these years, I would’ve been surprised. But I persevere and am compelled to do this no matter whether we get famous or not. I’m compelled to write and record music. If I were to go back to 2007 or 2004 even and say in 20 years from now, I’m still going to be writing under the name Red Sammy and putting out music, that would’ve been a great vision, a great thing to aspire to. But I didn’t know I would’ve had it in me to sustain so long still being a humble, independent musician because it’s still a hustle just like it was from day one. I guess it’s easier to get some shows. It’s easier to get some paying gigs.
It is gratifying sometimes when an audience of listeners appreciates original music. But if you look at what’s in the mainstream now, rock and roll is not the most popular type of music. It’s a constant battle to stay true without going to a genre that I wouldn’t necessarily enjoy. There’s a lot more electronic music. There are a lot more solo artists that do not play with real instruments, or they play with backing tracks, and that’s the popular thing these days. But I was at a festival this past summer and somebody came to the show that hadn’t seen us since maybe at least 15 years ago. And the comment was, wow, I’m really happy you guys are still doing it. I do envision myself always doing this as part of my life in some form or fashion. It’s what I enjoy.
There’s a glut of records that are coming out all the time. Just the amount that you see in Americana UK, not to mention those that do not get reviews. It seems like there’s so many more every year, which makes you wonder how hard it is to actually get any sort of differentiation between what you’re putting out and everything else. Even getting gigs, I mean, the number of venues has really shrunk. There are more acts looking to get booked. Are you still able to find fairly regular places to play?
We have our friends that we know in different towns. We have a gig actually coming up this Saturday on the eastern shore of Maryland. It’s a place we’ve played for at least 15 years, an independent brewery that supports us as musicians that play original music. It’s been about five years since we’ve been there because they did end their live music program over the 2020 pandemic and just started slowly getting it back. But to your point, when I personally listen to what we’re doing, I will say, what is the differentiating factor and what sets Red Sammy apart? If you listen to the lyrics, that could be a differentiator.
The vocals have changed over the last 15 years. If you listen to early Red Sammy, sometimes they’re really rough, gravelly. But in recent records, I also embrace more of a traditional way of singing that’s not so gruff. It goes back and forth. I try to differentiate the sound mainly in the distinction of the vocals, having some kind of hook in terms of their timbre or sound, whether it’s conventional or not conventional. It’s because I feel like if the Red Sammy music is too clean or too perfect, we end up being in the blend of everything that’s coming out. There are no two voices that are exactly the same unless you’re imitating. That’s something that we embrace in this band, the uniqueness of the vocals, because we could play different guitar solos’ we could play different lines, but we’re not super intricate in terms of the song. The songs are still basic structures, but what sets them apart are some of the hooks or words that catch you because of the presentation. That’s where I think we are different.
It’s interesting that you talk about vocal timbre. I took “Holy Fluorescent Light” out for a walk with the dog this morning, and at times it sounded like different lead singers even though you do all the lead vocals.
That’s interesting you say that because if I look at that song order, the record opens up with a song called ‘Getting It Over,’ and that’s definitely kind of a southern rock vibe, a little more gravel. But then you go to the next song (‘Some Days I Feel Crazy’) and you get more of an indie or alternative, whiny voice. I think what I’ve started to try to embrace, and you’ll see this transition, even if you go back towards “Creeps and Cheaters” – that’s the album that has a black cover – and then go to “True Believer,” I started feeling that I didn’t want all the songs to have the same low-end vocals to them. It could get monotonous. So, I thought the best way to go is to embrace some songs that are whinier. Just to think of the voice as an instrument, not as what you have to do every song. But I do hear your point as it does sound like there could be maybe two different vocalists. It’s a conscious effort.
It was surprising but interesting. When you think about it, somebody like Daryl Hall will use a falsetto and his normal voice. Not really the same thing but similar.
One other point to make is it’s becoming a little more difficult to try to get radio traction. If you listen to any radio, even independent radio, you don’t hear much of Tom Waits. And if I were to embrace more of just the Tom Waits approach all the time, we become less accessible. Part of my reasoning is to intersperse some accessibility by also using more melody with the singing. That’s just trying to have growth as a songwriter, too.
You also have to consider that you’re 42 now and married with children. You’re coming at this from a totally different place than when you were 25 driving around with the guys in the van going from gig to gig. Now here you are with family, a home and everything, and you still have to go out but it seems like the experience must be different in many ways.
You definitely have to be a little bit more mindful of how much you do. Even if we’re travelling five hours away to pick up a couple gigs, I’m more mindful of my time commitment to be more efficient related to music. I can’t be haphazard. We can’t just jump in a van because we want to extend a tour. But the interesting thing is, everybody I play with, they have no kids. Almost every musician that’s been in my bands, whether they’re old, middle age or younger, none of them have children. I’m the only person that they’ve got to work around. And they’re more versatile or just nimble with their schedules sometimes, which helps actually to fulfill us as a band. It’s just something that I’ve got to be more mindful of because I do set things. I’ve got my band life and I’ve got my real world life, including a day job. We may not accept all of the gigs, only the gigs that make sense with our time commitments that also help advance what we’re doing. When I was younger, go play anywhere, anytime. Not so much anymore.
When you’re a young band, the annoyances probably don’t seem as big – food sucks, sleep in van or a crowded motel room, bad paying gigs.
That doesn’t change. This past summer we did some radio spots and a four-day run through Virginia and North Carolina back up through Maryland. As a band, we hope that because some gigs pay and you’re doing radio free, that after all of the costs, the hotels and the food and the gas, that you at least break even. Yeah, we’re going in a van as a band with four adult males, and we’ll stay still at the crappiest of motels or we’ll try to sleep on couches at friends’ houses in different cities. We’ll still do this even though as adults, we could afford a nicer place to stay, essentially because it’s a game to see if we can beat the system by not going into our own pockets. Believe me: It’s not as much fun being in a position where you’re paying to do your art.
That makes me think of your song, ‘Some Days I Feel Crazy,’ where everyone is stealing your body parts.
I like that comparison. I wrote that like a list poem of different people and what they stole from you. So, if it’s Johnny stole my lungs, well, somewhere in your life, Johnny manipulated you where he may have taken you down paths to destroy your lungs. But we as humans, we’re deteriorating every single day. And to pair that with people in your life that have come and gone, I mean, I’m glad you pointed that out.
Is the pinnacle for a songwriter, writing a hit song? You say your writing has improved through all these years, but how do you judge the improvement?
I was watching this documentary; I forget who it was. It might’ve been a band that’s hugely famous like Pearl Jam 25 years later talking about how they wrote a song and they knew it was a hit song. I don’t really believe that. I don’t believe when people are in a room, they all of a sudden hear like, oh, that’s going to be a hit song. They say it later once it’s been a hit. When I find something that sticks with me like a really strong hook, I know it but don’t look at it like this will be a hit song. It’s something I wrote that feels right.
I hope people like it and I hope it might get some traction, but I really only settle on songs we record and kind of move forward with based on my gut instinct of I really like what that just did. So I’m always just trying to continue to write things that appeal to me rather than trying to appeal to anybody. I think of it as if I enjoy it, I hope other people can hear the same thing I’m hearing. And yeah, it would be great if we had a hit song, but that’s not really the goal. My goal, when writing albums, is to write songs and then keep compiling them so that we can also make albums. I really like to listen to albums as albums. So for “Holy Fluorescent Light,” we originally released a single just to try to get some radio traction, and we released ‘Some Days I Feel Crazy’ about three months before we released the record, but the end result is not just releasing single after single.
The end result is to have an album that feels complete. And it’s kind of disappointing sometimes because I don’t think a lot of people really listen to albums beginning to end as much as they used to. I feel like people give bands about 15 seconds, and if they like the sound of a band, they’ll tell their friends. They don’t know the band. They don’t really know any songs. They just heard a snippet on Spotify or wherever, maybe a commercial, and all of a sudden they adopt that band as something they like. I feel like that’s the majority of the music audience, people that absorb music in little blips. I have to accept the fact that it’s a smaller audience out there that actually listens to albums and wants to find someone to bond with playing new original music. I do appreciate it when I find people that really listen to us and say, I like what you’re doing.
People have been Spotified for sure. Those of us who listen from the first track to the end are a vanishing breed.
That’s exactly what I’m trying to say. Most people hear the music, but they don’t listen to it. People like you are a rare breed. Music people are why we do this. But the reality is 9 out 10 people are just casual listeners. We have to find that 1 in 10 who are into it.
You make it sound like an uphill battle.
There’s this one song we used to do called ‘Everything Must Go’ off, what album was that? (“These Poems with Kerosene”, 2013) There was this young man from Vancouver, which is thousands of miles away from where we are from in Baltimore, and one day I get an email from his mother. Somebody bought the record off Napster or one of those sites. This is such a strange story. She said her son loved our music. She had gone on his computer and found that one song was the only one in his rotation. So, she looked us up and this is why she’s emailing. Her son took his own life and she says, “I was listening to your song and I know he really liked your music.” I knew she was grieving and was trying to appreciate what her son’s interests were. I’ve never had something tragic like that happen to me. But to the point, you never know how someone will take your music. I think she was trying to tell me her son was having difficulty in life, but he gravitated to music and that kind of gave him a release. And it was that song. You never know who’s listening to these songs and what’s going on with them.
That would be worrisome and a little weird if someone killed themselves, and something I wrote was all they had been reading.
For sure, and it was hard to have a conversation by email back and forth with her. That mom seemed to embrace what her son explored in terms of art and music, and at least it seemed pretty positive.
Your records have all been self-released except for “Dog Hang Low” (Beechfields Records, 2009). What keeps you making music without support from a label?
We didn’t have a good experience working with a label. I didn’t feel that there was any value added. The only thing I felt is that somebody was adding us to a catalogue to build their credibility through what we were doing, and there was no stake in it for them. They weren’t paying us. We were releasing music, and it’s as if you’re doing all the work and letting somebody else put their name on it. So, after that I was really adamant about starting to copyright all of my stuff through ASCAP. Even if someone approached me and said they would pay for our record, it would be questionable about how much ownership you released through that process.
One musician I interviewed in the spring told me he had to keep reminding his label that they worked for him, not the other way around.
I totally get that. I’ve discovered some really strong partners in distributors that help market our releases, and they do it in a way that it is affordable for indie artists. Everything’s registered though and you get royalties, but it takes a lot of streams and a lot of digital downloads to make any money and even then it’s usually three to six months after the fact. I got this check and it’s from National Public Radio. It’s not huge money but maybe enough to help finance another record. And it’s for one song called ‘Sometimes You Forget What’s Real.’ It’s about creeps and cheaters. For whatever reason, this algorithm picked it up. I called NPR to ask what radio station played this. Who picked this up to make you guys pay us this sum of money? It turned out some NPR syndicate picked up that song and played it so many times that they had to pay us this amount of money. Still to this day, I cannot find where in the US it got picked up. But those are surprises that keep you motivated to say, wow, our music can at least have some kind of impact.
Everyone must ask this, but I’m going to anyway. I read Flannery O’Connor years and years ago, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Why Red Sammy, in the novel the guy in the restaurant?
I read that novel in an undergraduate English course. Nothing really hit me in terms of thinking of a band name, but I was looking through a collection of Flannery O’Connor stories and decided to reread some of them. At the time, one of my musician friends, her name is Katie Field, and I were playing all the instruments and singing on the first Red Sammy record. We had a drummer join us that wasn’t really part of the band. We called ourselves Grade Lady Holiday. It didn’t have any meaning to it; we’re just thinking about what words sounded kind of great together. So, one afternoon I was rereading and it gets to Red Sammy’s barbecue place and his name is Red Sammy Butts. Just reading those words jumped out at me. I asked Katie, what about Red Sammy as our band name? She didn’t know where it was coming from, but she loved it because it reminded her of a pirate. Cool, well he’s not a pirate.
Some people ask if that’s communist or think my name is Sammy, and do you have red hair? As a songwriter, I embrace the lyrics and always thought that our songs fit the storyline of some of O’Connor’s short stories. So, it kind of all just gelled.
Nothing about the moral decay of society then?
Nothing like that other than I really appreciated Flannery O’Connor, just like I appreciate Charles Bukowski and some of the writers that use layman’s language and everyday scenarios. Things are not all happy and you read about the underbelly of human existence. That’s where our songs dwell as well. Our songs embrace the mundane and that part of the human condition you’re not always so happy about.
What do you think about the eventuality of people using AI to write songs?
I think the big music studios have already been doing that, and frankly I don’t know what’s much different for pop musicians where they get a team of songwriters to write their songs for them. If I were to guess what is happening, they may let AI generate something and then humans refine it so it doesn’t seem like plagiarism. And that’s why integrity has to be there. That’s why I think that live music and people playing instruments, maybe even playing in a way that’s less produced, might have a strong comeback. I’m starting to see the nineties coming back with younger people, and they’re listening to music that might reference that period. Back to AI, there’s no heart and soul in it. Really, it’s just robbed from an algorithm. Where’s the honesty in that?
Another musician told me autotune makes him sound like a robot.
You don’t want anything to rob your music of being human. Why try to make it too perfect. That has nothing to do with rock music. When you hear music from the fifties and sixties that was recorded analogue, the voices sound great, but perfect they’re not. There’s something to that, just like when people record to metronomes or drum machines. The beating heart is not a metronome. Your movement in life is not a perfect math equation. When you artificially try to be perfect, you lose the soul. You can’t replicate a soul.
Your singing voice is often compared to Tom Waits’. How do you see yourself in the way you project to an audience?
I know there are a couple of our songs that are really gruff, and I can understand where the Tom Waits comparison is coming from. But if you were a real Tom Waits fan, I don’t think you would make that comparison. When I was 18 years old, I moved to Houston, Texas. I was living with my sister, and it was getting out of my comfort zone. She was working for a public radio station as a photographer in town, and she had a lot of musician friends. There was a guy that I was told to go see by all my sister’s friends named Alejandro, playing the Continental Club. And me being a narrow-minded 18-year-old, I was just into mainstream rock and roll and grunge music. Who’s this? Alejandro? I thought we were going to go see a classical guitar player, but I snuck into this club where you had to be 21 with my sister and her friends, and that was the best show I’ve ever seen in my life. I didn’t know anything about Alejandro Escovedo. He became my favourite songwriter, even to this day.
Is that why you named one of the Red Sammy albums “True Believer?”
I look up to people like Alejandro, and I also embrace David Bowie and Lou Reed. There’s another Austin-based songwriter named John Dee Graham.
He was with Escovedo in The True Believers.
Absolutely. I’m also a huge Clash fan. I like all kinds of music. One thing I appreciated about Alejandro Escovedo is he started as a punk rocker before becoming that alt-country rocker. That’s why I don’t want to limit myself. Even when you say Americana or rock and roll, it’s still kind of limiting because sometimes we write songs that might be more punk-oriented or more grungy or alternative. I think it all fits into the overarching umbrella of rock and roll.
You almost have to categorize a musician or band; otherwise how would people listen to their music. In Red Sammy’s music, you can hear some Jay Farrar or Jeff Tweedy, maybe Tim Curry from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” But will anybody pick up or listen to “Holy Fluorescent Light” if they have no idea what the music is like?
I guess in that regard you could say our music is like Lou Reed meets Tom Waits meets Tom Petty – a little raw and punk with something gruff and quirky into a pop sort of thing. That blend would be Red Sammy, but if you’re into a poppier thing then you may not like us. Sometimes you can do it with song titles like one of ours titled ‘I Got Creepy When Lou Reed Died.’ It has nothing to do with Lou Reed, but it’s a song about heartbreak, about coming to terms with less fortunate scenarios in one’s life. I thought someone’s going to say, I have to listen to that song just because of the title.
That song was on “Creeps and Cheaters,” which actually was the first of yours that really grabbed my attention. ‘King on the Road’ had some of the southern rock thing going on. ‘Dirty Water,’ definitely not The Standells’ song. “I’m the dog that roams the streets.”
You go from the flow of a track like ‘Dirty Water,’ which structurally is a blues song, but it’s a really deranged and emotional vocal presentation, almost like the person singing might be possessed, to a ballad called, ‘I Got Creepy When Lou Reed Died’ because it’s got a really memorable three or four note guitar solo lick and a riff in it. There’s a lot of diversity on that album. It closes with a song about my uncle Ralph, who always identified himself as Elvis Presley. He is a very eccentric man.
Great lyric: “Hanging with Uncle Elvis on Christmas.” You made that album with a group of ladies playing strings, Some Charming Trespassers.
We named the band something that would set it apart from Red Sammy because this was an album that had a completely different ensemble. Our bass player now will say, “Remember that time you started another band with a string ensemble? We thought we were on hiatus, and next thing you know, a new album is put out.”
Escovedo did a record and tour with a string section, too.
I saw him play with that and a rock band, too. It did open my mind to reimagine already existing songs in my catalogue with different instruments. I really liked how he did that. Cello and violin lend themselves to a lot of music.
You closed the “True Believer” album with the song ‘Aunt Mary,’ a relative of yours?
Similar to Uncle Elvis, Aunt Mary is another person in my life. A lot of times, if you think about the song presentation on albums, I do reference previous albums lyrically to kind of tie our whole catalog together. Think of it as bookends. Anyway, she was a real rough around the edges woman that lived on the eastern shore of Maryland. She smoked almost a carton of cigarettes a week and didn’t take shit from anybody. And if you listen to how she’s characterized, just a real unique individual, one of the warmest people ever.
‘Barefoot Baltimore’ is an interesting song title, sort of a love song.
A lot of words in that one. John Waters is referenced in there. It’s definitely examining Baltimore in a way that it may not be the friendliest place to live. A young couple that may be dating are trying to set up their life in Baltimore, and it’s where reality sets in. But that to me is a love song.
Back to Waits, ‘Between Love and Lonely Heartbreak’ off “My Raging Heart” has got some Waits baked in, or you could say Nick Cave.
If you listen to the Red Sammy catalogue, you may say, oh, that turn of phrase was referenced three albums ago, which also kind of helps tie things together. If the listener can really absorb all of our stuff, they might find some of those unique things that tie it together.
The song ‘Punks, Geeks and Freaks’ makes me wonder if you watched the Judd Apatow movie, “Freaks and Geeks.”
Sure, I did. And not that this lyrically was referenced to that movie, but it is a reference to my high school years. I grew up in a rural setting in Carroll County, Maryland, and there was not much to do on the weekends. My parents were divorced. So, as a teenager, there’s trouble we could get into, but it was always going around with all the misfits – the punks, the freaks, and the geeks, – whether they’re artists or just teenagers on the loose without adult supervision. And that’s kind of where that song sits. It’s acknowledging youthful innocence, but also having a whole bunch of freedom. That’s something that gets to your earlier question about when you get older and have a family, are you as free to do your art? There is something to be said for the innocence of freedom, even if that freedom could be dangerous. You don’t get that as much as you get older and more cautious.
“Vultures” must be your Covid album. The first song, ‘Kerouac Revisions,’ has much to do with loss and loneliness.
“That Raging Heart” actually came at the start of Covid about a month before the lockdown. We went into the studio for about four days, slept there out in rural Pennsylvania. We hunkered down and recorded a record. And then come March, 2020, we have these files and we’re trying to go to the studio to mix and master, and the world shuts down.
This is an interesting story. My neighbours are a retired couple, and their son moved back from Philadelphia when the world shut down to be closer to family. He’s roughly my age and he’s a drummer. When my regular drummer quit, I’m still able to write a whole brand new album during the shutdown with a drummer who’s my neighbor, and his name is Dave Pearl.
There was so much loss with the pandemic – businesses shut down, kids losing at least one, probably two years of education, and this country is already 40th in the world in terms of quality of education even though we spend the most per pupil of any other nation. What’s wrong with that picture?
We’re living our lives with the understanding that the next generation inherits all of our good decisions and all of our bad decisions. That’s the weight the kids must carry. That’s the weight that we must carry. Whether it’s our children or our children’s children, there’s undoubtedly baggage that will be carried by them. But you hit the nail on the head. That’s kind of where I was taking it. But I also don’t like to make clear conclusions of what songs are about, because I think everybody can kind of bring their own life to the songs.
We have to hope you are right in the song ‘God Is Good and So Are His People.’
If you unpack that song, it was originally published as a poem. There was a literary journal that picked it up around 2010. It was sitting there and I felt that a lot of the phrases could be turned into a song. It’s a complete contrast to the title, ‘God Is Good and So Are His People.’ That’s positive. Under the surface, it’s really rough. This world’s a rough place with the crap that we all go through day in and day out, and it’s part of the human condition that’s inevitable for all of us. But at the end of the day, it is part of life. That’s another album that ends with a really raw, stripped-down acoustic guitar and vocal presentation that is lyric heavy. Almost every album that we have ends in a similar way.
Then next comes “Holy Fluorescent Light” and on the first track you are rocking again – ‘Getting It Over.’ Covid is over. “Freedom sometimes burns the innocent late on rent.”
What it really boils down to is that I don’t even have my life straight. I don’t have the resources, always living paycheck to paycheck, trying to get the next day of work over. Musically, getting it over is the same music from verse to chorus. The only change is the halftime transition at the end, which slows the song down. But every solo break, every verse, and every chorus is the exact same music. And the only change is the reciting of “late on rent / That’s what I meant / and I’m getting it over.”
You’re talking about dead poets in ‘Yesterday the World Opened Up.’
Once again, one of those things where words have a lot of meaning but they’re also just words. And how do you play off of words whether they carry personal meaning or not? Dead people, poems, to me can conjure up a lot. We have a lot of literary references. ‘Kerouac Revisions’ and the song, ‘Ernest and Bukowski.’ I think it can spark emotion. It explodes with, yesterday the world opened up and my mind fell out.
Why did you choose Ernest Hemingway and Charles Bukowski for that song?
I gravitate to both of them as writers, like I do another writer, Raymond Carver, in their simplicity of words. Ernest Hemingway was the pillar of an author that would write a very basic direct sentence that didn’t have a lot of adjectives or description. So does Charles Bukowski in a way. Their story ends up in a night on the town with the fictional setting of the two characters as buddies that went drinking, got into some trouble. It all end with them in the hospital.
You say, ‘I was worried sick about you.’ What was worrying so much?
When someone worries sick about a person they love, it’s almost a plea to change your life. I knew I had a nugget that belonged in a song but didn’t know what to do with it. It’s raw and sparse and belongs as the final cut on an album. Not just worrying about someone but worrying sick conjures up a helplessness and desperation.
“All the pretty things that washed up on the trash line.” That line is pretty bleak.
I met this Jesuit priest, who talked about thinking of your life as things washed up onshore with the tide. I meditated on that, how the tide takes things away but also brings things to you.
We’ve been talking for a while and I’m not sure I understand your music any better but I know more of how to listen to it.
Well, then this conversation has been a success.
