Playing Solo

IN the Beatles documentary, Get Back, Paul is asked how song writing is going.  The context is John and Yoko's relationship's effect on the band.

He describes a lull, owing to them not all living together,  He says when they were in the same house they were always around and the writing would just happen.

I've been going through old voice memos.  My process, ever since I picked up the banjo in SF at 18, has been to make music that sounded good.

It was 1994, and I had been living in Santa Cruz, only maybe $5 to my name, along with whatever food stamps I had.  I was living on a couch with my older brother in a house occupied by UCSC students, across the street from the Santa Cruz High pool.  We were out one evening and popped into a music shop.  I picked up an old banjo from a bargain bin.  The clerk asked me if I was interested in it.  I told him I didn't have much money.  The tag on it aid $250.  He smiled and told me he'd sell it to me for $10.  I thought he was joking.  But he wasn't.  I borrowed cash from my brother and that was that.

I moved in with my girlfriend in San Francisco a week later.  She had been a friend of one of the UCSC students and had also been staying in the house over the summer before moving into a flat in the city to attend SFSU.  I would hitchhike up Highway 1 to visit whenever I could.  Once, the car that picked me up broke down around Half Moon Bay and had to hitch again the rest of the way.  But it was usually pretty easy to get up there.  Getting back was always more difficult - getting out of the city via 19th until it really turned into the 1 again.

I began by trying to figure out how to tune it, and then working out little top string.melodies and turning them in to songs.  I would make simple multi-track recordings by recording the banjo, then playing it one one cassette while recording lyrics into another, then playing the second recording while recording something else - maybe pie tin drums into a third recording. One serendipitous track came out great when the N Judah passed and rang its bell just as the song faded out.

"People in my life
These people
They say so much while looking away
From me 
They care about their cares
Our cares, blank stares
Foggy lenses
Hidden cameras walking 'round on 
Tripods setting traps for angles
on the beasts that we see"
 - Ding Ding - 

I used to practice for hours in her apartment..  Sometimes I'd go up on the rooftop, or sit on the back stairs.  The neighbors yelled at me once because I was out there late at night making a god awful racket.

My dad then gave me his old acoustic and I began learning chords.  This was before the internet, but somehow I got ahold of the tabs to Greensleeves.  Maybe one of the only "covers" I know to this day.

As my playing grew more advanced, I imagined being in a band.  My good friends John, Jeff, Kenseth and Mitch formed Rumah Sakit.  I moved to Portland in 1998.  John sent me their demo tape and I played it at the group home where I worked.  It was set up for people with brain injuries, and they would come up to the main office to get their meds, staying to play solitaire on the old windows computers and chat for a bit.  The tape blew me away. 

I always wanted to make music with other people.  Their compositions and mine together building something greater.  In Palm Desert, I've made multiple attempts - even playing a house show once.  It was exhilarating.  But it didn't work out.  The people were either weird (the house show band was all the songs of a young guy who spent too much time on the internet and was some kind of neo-fascist.  He was where I first learned about Jordan Peterson.  The songs also sucked), or just didn't play the kind of music that inspired me.  I'd find them on Craigslist and then invite them to play in my music room.  

For my last two rock albums albums, Polyvision Offering and Discovery of Zero, I had thought about having people play with me.  I was even teaching some of my stuff to a pretty good drummer and bass player.  But it felt lagging and we went our separate ways.  For DOZ I pretty much resigned myself to doing solo projects.  

​Maybe one day.