Joanna Newsom - On A Good Day

“On A Good Day” is one small song within a larger chronicle of songs that describe the complexity of Joanna Newsom’s relationship and break-up with a lover. It is the most concise song on Have One On Me, instrumentally and structurally; at under 2 minutes, the song is communicated almost as a sketch. When I first heard it, I thought the song was a breath of fresh air, sandwiched as it is between songs that clock in at over 9 and 7 miniutes, respectively.

Joanna Newsom’s delivery is never flat, either as a vocalist or as a harpist, but on this track she does not exaggerate her phrasing so much, which leaves the interpretive possibilites more wide open for me as a listener. I find the prettiness to be the easiest thing to take away from this song after a cursory listen, yet it is not why I keep coming back to it: I am drawn to her bitterness and anger at her lover, her resignation to continuing a project in which she longer wants a part, her sense of feeling silenced by someone else’s priorities and her sense of feeling alone in that.

I suppose I could write even more about why I would find these things to be compelling. Suffice it to say I find the self-awareness with which she suffers to be both universal and utterly intimate. Where the original recording is a whisper into someone’s ear, I wanted my interpretation to be a shout into the dark.

John Prine - Angel From Montgomery

I was not ready for John Prine when I first heard his song “Sam Stone” in high school. I would imagine that its content is over the heads of even the least ripped high school seniors. It certainly flew over mine. I took it to be another stoner’s anthem, a song to wear your scars to. As such, it didn’t really interest me. And since I was only into Zeppelin and Kanye’s first album at the time, I didn’t explore prine’s catalogue any further.

In 2010, the mentor of a close friend of mine passed away. It was an unexpected, sad, and unfair death. At the funeral, my friend played “angel from montgomery.” I did not attend, nor had I heard the song at that point, but the title stuck in my head. It was a strange image, and I built up certain expectations for the song – that it was about a lovely woman from montgomery, or something along those lines.

Of course, then I heard the song, and my expectations were shattered. The song is indeed about a woman, but a woman who wants to die out of sheer boredom, disappointed with where her life has taken her. It is a very sad song. Yet the old woman’s nostalgia and bitterness have been ground down and refined into a diamond-hard will to live in spite of wanting to die. I found it interesting that John Prine took on the personality of an old woman so well. He does it so casually that you don’t even think how weird the whole idea is.

As someone who has grown up listening to ’90s country arrangements, I am generally quick to dismiss the static, down-tempo, steel-guitar-laden recordings that characterize so much of country music. However, only the right side of my car stereo works, and listening in mono on my cassette stereo that day, I only got some guitar, drums, piano, and vocals. The recording feels like it was captured in a dusty corner of the house that is being described within the song. I don’t even know if this is the whole mix, but I loved it – full yet lean.

I wanted for my interpretation to preserve the spareness that I first perceived. I love John Prine’s biting vocal timbre, and I felt it would be just as exciting to lose some of the more conventional arrangement choices and let the structure speak for itself.

Covers Project

I have always had an ongoing fascination with covers. And when I say cover, I mean the kind of cover that refers to when a musician creates an homage to a previously written and/or recorded song. It is an act of interpretation in which one musician admits the influence of another. It is a great compliment to be covered. It is a process intensive task to cover. I want to do the original justice!

I have found the creative task of interpreting other people's work to be both rigorous and exciting. As a musician, I cannot deny the importance or influence of a great song, but I'll be damned if I don't try to make it new and better!

A dialog is established the moment someone covers a song. By performing or recording a cover, the interpreter has taken what she believes to be the most important or exciting aspect of the original, and filters that through her own vocabulary while excluding or downplaying what might be less exciting. Criticism is an implicit function of covering someone's work. It tests the limits of the song as well as the prowess of the interpreter.

In this ongoing project, I am recording my interpretations of songs as well as designing new visual identities for them, accompanied by a small written blurb.