words

I woke up with 50FootWave blasting a song called “One Train” in my head. This is an old folk song that the band has never even heard, much less played, but honestly, it sounded great.

In the shower, I dismissed the idea as ridiculous (50FootWave and folk songs don’t share a lot of common ground), but that only made it play louder. I often find that when I cut a song from a record or take a lyric, bridge or melodic line out of a song, it will repeat in my head indefinitely. Really, for years, I will be haunted by these aborted pieces of music. It’s icky.

I mean, I try giving them the benefit of the doubt, as I’m not heavily into editing anyway, but either they’re not very good or they’re out of place or redundant or just half assed ideas. Misfits.

I’ll give this one the benefit of the doubt and ask Bernie and Rob if they want to try “One Train”, but they’ll probably look at me funny. They don’t even know that there’s a whole NUTHER new song they have to learn for the recording session later this month.

I tried hard not to write it, but that just made it angry.

Love,

K

For various reasons (touring around the world, moving around the country, heat waves, global warming, black magic, etc.), it has been summer in our lives for about 3 and a half years. Anyone who knows me at all knows that this is a very bad thing. One long, stupid summer.

I’ve sewn the straps back on the same sundresses over and over again. Even dental floss wasn’t keeping my summer clothes together at the end.

Then, yesterday, it happened: fall.

Lordy, what a relief. And what a season! Why do we even HAVE the other ones? Leaves should ALWAYS be red. Air should ALWAYS be…what’s the fall word for air? “Brisk”.

We drank our coffee hot instead of iced and then I proceeded to bake everything I could think of: cinnamon rolls, bread, cupcakes, cookies…in long sleeves! Remember those?

Now our household is busy and happy. Spazzy, even. We were pretty calm when we were listless. Now we can’t sit still. I got up at 4 a.m. to practice(!)

And practice I did. These new 50Foot songs were written all over the place, so this morning in the pre-dawn dark, I got to visit Amsterdam, Atlanta, San Francisco, Providence and some field in Scotland. I never could have done all that in the crushing heat of summer. I would have given up after Atlanta.

This is too much sitting still. I’m gonna go walk the dog again. See ya.

Love,
K

That beautiful creature, John Delf — Throwing Muses, 50FootWave and KH sound person extraordinaire (WAY more than ordinary), has blessed us with yet another beautiful creature in the form of his new baby girl, Matilda Grace. The 50 Foot Fam would like to congratulate John, his lovely wife, Carol, and new big sister Maisie (presently recording her first horse-themed, flute solo CD) and welcome little Matilda to planet earth.

This story on copy protection and music piracy aired on NPR’s “Morning Edition” this morning.

There was an experiment done with chimpanzees a few years ago. When a small group of chimps was given a small quantity of bananas on a daily basis they shared them among themselves, equally and happily. When that same group was given a surplus of bananas, the dominant chimps stole, hoarded and defended the entire supply, resorting to violence if necessary.

It just struck me this morning, maybe especially, amid the horrifying stories in the news right now how ridiculous this idea of music piracy is. The idea that ultra-rich media companies and even ultra-rich “rockstars” can’t bear to have their own fans (people who genuinely derive pleasure from listening to their music) make copies of their CDs, for fear of lost revenue.

I don’t believe there is such a thing as a music pirate. Yes, some people share files on a huge scale, but think about it, who’s being harmed there? It only really impacts artists & companies who spends so much on the mass-marketing of their product that every last dollar must be squeezed from every available sucker –er, I mean consumer.

Believe me, if 50FootWave’s songs were file-shared extensively, it would be a minor miracle, yes, but also a real shot in the arm for our visibility. In other words, file sharing could only “hurt” us, if we were enormously successful. Insert logical disconnect here. If we spent stupid money making and marketing our CDs then we’d need stupid money in return. I get that. But when does it ever help to restrict the marketplace or private consumer behavior?

On a smaller scale, artists like us stand to suffer greater harm from lost CD revenue, because every CD sale impacts our bottom line directly. And yet it will never make sense to be ‘grabby’ and forget the big picture. It’s music. We’re all so used to people getting rich from it, we forget that makes so little sense. Music was a nice business, it should never have become an industry.

I’m on one side of this, I know — but it’s relevant — after many years as a signed artist, with large advances at my disposal, way more people heard of my band without ever hearing the actual music. That band is dead now. My new band is finding it harder and harder to find the small audience we require to sustain ourselves. I find it hard to care about file-sharing when all I ever really wanted was for people to hear, not buy my music.

I always had faith that if the music found it’s own good people, the money would follow. After all, who in their right mind would become a musician if money was their primary concern??

It remains way more important to me that my music be heard than bought.

There is no such thing as a music pirate in my world.

File sharing is constructive, not destructive.

Share the she-it out of my stuff. Let me worry about the “damage” it causes.

Love,
Kristin

p.s. I know, this is all so “duh” — we’ve been over it and over it. I’m just venting. What’s a blog for after all?

First of all, my apologies. It turns out touring and blogging don’t mix in my world, but I’ll do my best to catch you up…

Billy and I left home on the first and drove to Rhode Island in a pleasantly screechy car full of kids and dogs and Madlibs and crumbs. Once there, we sucked up as much beach as we could, then flew to California (starring Arnold Schwarzenegger) with the baby. We checked into our hotel, then raced out to Zuma beach in Malibu (we’re beach-centric).

Sand and salt wiped off with “borrowed” hotel towels, we then booked over to Swinghouse in Los Angeles to meet the band for three hours of rehearsal. Lisa Fletcher, photographer extraordinaire, the producer/engineer Mudrock and Tanya, the beautiful redheaded-radio-lady-from-New Zealand stopped by. Hangworthy people, all three.

And it was so nice to play again. Bernie and Rob and I looked at each other after the first song with that “oh yeah!” expression we always get when life goo has made us forget our addiction to 50FootWave.

Rob looked pale and tired, but ready to play his heart out, as usual. All the more so because this was Johnnie’s tour. Rob’s mother’s story began in Santa Cruz and ended in Seattle. Coincidentally, we began our tour in Santa Cruz and ended it in Seattle, the day before her memorial service there.

So, bright and pretty goddamn early the next morning, Bernie picked us up and crammed us into his Dalmation hair car (I always want to knit a Cruella de Ville sweater after riding in that car) and drove us to The Bus. Our tacky, beloved, and perpetually busted Bus. It smelled great: eau de bus.

It’s always hard to begin a tour and watch creature comforts fall away one by one, but it forces us to become enlightened travelers. And enlightened musicians. We learn exactly what we can live without, in other words. And most importantly, we develop the ability to say to our bitching bodies and brains, “So what?”.

For example:

You’re hungry? Eat music. Thirsty? Drink it. Tired? Play some music. Dirty? No problem. Hungover? Well, duh-uh. Lonely? Use it. Sick? Me, too. Poor? So what?

From that point on, you live to play. Which is all we’ve ever really asked for. And what great people we met everywhere we went…club people, other musicians and audience members were all lovely, generous and funny. Having Rob’s amazing wife, Amy, along and the extra special KEXP night in Seattle were icing on a pretty groovy cake.

Some high/low points:

– playing a new 50FootWave song for the first time in a long time — “Hot Pink, Distorted”. It seems to be a ‘signature’ song already. Making a song happen in front of actual humans for the first time is a heck of a test.

– split the headstock on my red SG, right down the middle. Ugh. It fell on the stage in San Francisco with an awful karrang! noise and came up busted. It hurt to look at it. Bernie offered to “MacGiver” it (Bernie is the “MacGiver-ing” king: a twist tie, some soap and a pencil and he can work miracles!) but then decided against it. Messing with guitars is not really in our nature.

– Bernie’s learning to drive The Bus. He took over totally in San Francisco, of all places, when Billy had stuff to do in town. Heavy traffic, parallel parking, meter stress: the works. Very impressive.

– pulled my own tooth at a truck stop. Hillbilly dentistry. I was fine, except for a little wooziness; there wasn’t even that much blood. Billy was upset ’cause he thought I used his bus tools to do it, but Rob said, “You’re, like, my hero now.” That made it worth it.

– owl attack (the “Owl Qaeda” attack, as it has come to be known). On the way back to L.A. from Seattle, some goofy or maybe blind owl exploded into the driver’s side of the bus’s windshield on I-5 just south of Sacramento at 1:30a.m. and smashed the whole thing. The windshield didn’t shatter, but it was blowing around and Billy said it was “like driving while looking through a funhouse mirror”.

– the absolute animal release of Rob Ahler’s (recorded, yay!) performance at the Croc in Seattle, the last night of the tour. The man is a perfect musical creature: part virtuoso, part beast.

I was with sleeping Bodhi and when Rob and Amy left the bus Saturday night and didn’t get to say goodbye to them or tell them I love them before Johnnie’s memorial service. Her death is a tragedy, but I know a greater tragedy would have been Rob and his mother never getting to know each other. They had a few special years together, years that changed both of them.

The morning after we left Seattle, I drew a picture of an empty house for Bodhi, then handed him the pen and let him fill in the windows. He drew three scribbles and a blob. I pointed to a scribble and asked him what it was.
“Water.”
“And this?”
“More water.”
“How about this one?”
“It’s water, Mama.”
“Oh.” I pointed to the blob, “What about this one?”
“That is a sad octopus.”
“Really. Why is the octopus sad?”
Bodhi sighed. “He’s supposed to be sad.” He squinted at me, like he wasn’t sure I was ready for this piece of information. “See, Mama?” he held the picture up to my face. “Tomorrow he can swim to happy.”

Love,
K