This tune is called “Drugs to make you sober”

This tune is called “the Daisy Chain”

It was my birthday

on Saturday – I’m 27 – and I threw together a show at the Reptile Palace in Oshkosh with the Love Badgers, John Statz & his band, This Bright Apocalypse and I opened the with a new outfit I’m calling the Mysterious Bruises.  Kiki Schueler happened to be hanging out and took some video of the show.

I’ve been doing stuff under the name Patchwork for a few years and I’m really itching for a change-up.  We pretty much do all new stuff, things written in the last few months.  I’m sure we’ll pull out some old tunes for all-nights slots but as of now it’s really fun to play things that I am not completely sick of…

The band is Shawn Drake (fiddle/vox), Matt Donoghue (bass/vox), Willy Schultz (elec. gtr) and me.  Laura got me a series of wonderful birthday presents including but not limited to the camo Miller High Life hat you’re seeing on the video and I think it made my voice twangier… and the show was a success!

thats my baby...

that's my baby...

On tour

in August and September, I was able to just totally drop off the grid and spend my days driving and writing and my nights playing shows or relaxing.  I anticipated a few off nights and just blocked off the time to write.  I find it’s simply not worth it to stress out about trying to fill a date if it’s an off-night – you’re time would be better spent working on tunes or taking in some scenery.

This daisy chain tune I wrote while I was in Winter Park, CO hanging out before the show.  It was the first of a batch of tunes that came out of the trip.  I was coming off a month and a half of solid promotional-publicity bullshit that I totally hate doing for the new Patchwork record.  So it was good to leave my laptop and phone off for a while and get back into something with a little more soul.

The lyrics came fast

and the form is very concise, which is new for me.   I have had a problem with overwriting things to the point where nothing repeats and I am just now kicking it.  Shawn was saying last night how shitty it would be of me to give these songs to sing harmony on where they were just paragraphs without a single line being repeated.  It feels good to sing something that feels like it’s worth repeating AND something that isn’t weighted down by excessive emotional woes-me jibber-jabber.  After a while that stuff just feels completely expressionless,  you know?