Jordan Rakei

My main quarantine activity is deep-diving into Logic Pro X - as usual, I’m late to the party, but at least I got here. I can’t remember the last time I was this elated spending long, uninterrupted hours in my underpants.

I’ve been a fan of Jordan Rakei’s music for a long time, and his new YouTube series A Song From Nothing is a fascinating exploration of his production style and creative flow.

Other artists, like Jacob Collier, have launched similar concepts, but while Jacob’s from Mars, Jordan’s from New Zealand, and his approach feels like something I can wrap my head around.

Brilliant, accessible, and I’m learning a ton.

Check it out

Non-Statements

Live Nation has stated they’re “prepared” to go without concerts for the rest of the year, and people are freaking out.

I promise I’ll go back to rambling about thrash metal and hippy stuff here soon, but it’s important addressing some of this click bait nonsense.

To the best of my knowledge, Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino is not an Epidemiologist, though I’m sure he could play one on TV. No one, least of all Mr. Rapino, has any clue when this virus will run its course.

Live Nation’s being “prepared” to go without concerts for the rest of the year means they have cash reserves. So what? I’m “prepared” to go without concerts for the rest of the year. No one’s turning down work once we’re given the green light, and, trust me, Live Nation loves making money.

In conclusion, then, I recommend the newest season of Ozarks, and perhaps a walk around the block.

Don't Panic

Quite a few dubious COVID articles are making the rounds. A couple thoughts:

Major media outlets are big companies competing for headlines and advertising revenue. It’s in their bottom line best interest to sensationalize and create click bait.

It is an elected official’s unenviable job to have to say something, even with essentially zero information. It makes sense they’re as reactionary as we are.

What I’m trying to keep in mind:

Consume news responsibly, appreciating their isn’t enough information yet for anyone to draw meaningful conclusions.

Make every day like Groundhog Day. Practice, write, exercise, connect with people who love me, and lean on gentle disciplines for structure and perspective. 

Even though I tried cutting my own hair last night, for the love of god STAY AT HOME. How quickly this storm passes depends on our doing our part.

Windows

When you have negative emotions, imagine there is a window at the back of your heart, and your breath is wind that blows them right out the window.

This apt and lovely quote was shared with me yesterday. Pre-quarantine, I think it would’ve landed similarly to New Yorkers staring at kittens through pet shop windows - a close, yet so far away something I’d love in my life, sacrificed in the name of hustle and winning and nefarious adulthood. 

Now, I have the time to meditate on sentiments like the one above, to sit with my anxieties, inconvenient in a musician’s peripatetic life and therefore muted, and come out the other side at least knowing I had the fortitude to underarm tickle some gremlins. 

The best paths are surreptitiously revelatory, and I’m grateful to be led down this one. 

One Sentence

I’m listening to Sæglópur by Sigur Ros, and the opening nineteen seconds are perhaps the most satisfying soundtrack for existential fatigue - the whole song is magical, but loop the first nineteen seconds, don your favorite crunchy sweater, and let your eyes fall out of focus, as if peering into the blissful, infinite void, and you’ll feel unbothered by the Impossibility of Knowing, the only certainty, when all this is over, being your booking a ticket to Iceland and never coming back, until realizing they offered asylum to conspiracy theorist and raving anti-semite Bobby Fisher, who I’ve been told was also passably decent at a board game, and I hope you’re all doing ok and boy quarantine is weird.

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Happy and Safe

It was put to me really well recently that “this is a pandemic, not a productivity competition.”

I’m welcoming the opportunity to indulge other and new interests, but right now every ounce of my being’s revolting against anything beyond gentle disciplines, so here I am, spooning peanut butter out of the jar, kept company by the hum of my peaceful home.

I hope you’re happy and safe, and may I suggest listening to Sigur Ros, settling into a comfy couch with your warm beverage of choice, and staring out the window at perennial things.

Rust In Peace

I’m listening to Holy Wars by Megadeth, off their Rust In Peace record.

It’s the first dreary day in Nashville since I’ve been quarantined, and I’m thinking about growing up in Walla Walla, horny and angry, hunched over a guitar, practicing motherfucking MEGADETH YES YES YES YES and slowly making sense of my acned world.

Rust In Piece is the first Megadeth album with Marty Friedman on lead guitar, and his first solo as said lead guitarist happens at 3:27. It’s kooky, angular, shreddy but not overtly so, and decidedly un-metal compared to the diminished arpeggio frenzy of the time. Friedman’s one of my favorite guitarists - acerbic, opinionated, holds his pick bizarrely, and he’s never taken a boring solo in his life. He brought Megadeth out of the let’s play faster than Metallica doldrums and made them unique and daring. 

And check out the solo in Tornado of Souls, starting at 3:10 - so good, supposedly, that it drove a jealousy-consumed Dave Mustaine back to drinking.

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Pneuma

I’m listening to Pneuma by Tool, my favorite song off their latest record.

As a nerdy caucasian who finds the touch of a woman miraculous, it’s no surprise that Tool’s one of my favorite bands. When I write music, it’s three chord singalongs rather than shamanic, polyrhythmic explorations of our inextricable creative essences, and I suppose there’s no time like the quarantined present to turn that ship around. But I think I’ll stick with “perfecting” a french omelette.

Tool excels at playing off of each other. Danny Carey grooves in 7, say, Adam Jones plays a riff in 5, Justin Chancellor’s bass line’s in god knows what, and, to my ears, the resultant rhythm’s deeply soulful. Skip to 4:27 and you’ll hear what I’m talking about.

I aspire to be as good at whatever the hell it is that I do as Tool is at their band. I’ve got a long way to go.

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Sweet Babies

I’m listening to Sweet Baby James by James Taylor, which really everyone should if their goal’s feeling exponentially better about themselves and the world.

During the outro of Country Road, the drums fall waaaaaay out of time for a couple beats. It’s the kind of thing we’d fix today, but I’m picturing James and band imbibing god knows what and staying up til god knows when regaling each other with tales of sexual conquest, and yes, of course the wonky bit stays in, because it’s the moment and the people and how dare you wipe the tape and start over you utter bastard.

We can do everything ourselves these days, but maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe we should make some dubious choices and wind up in a room with myriad rascals and press record. 

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Fly On

I’m sitting in my back garden, listening to “O” by Coldplay. The arpeggiated piano motif is gentle, undulating, hypotonic, the vocal raw, the production subtle and intentional. There’s an apt melancholy throughout, that stripping away pretense and hipness and surrendering gracefully the way things were ushers in something needed.

Chris Martin takes it on the chin from cool kid musicians, but he has a knack for hitting the nail on the head:

Sometimes they arrive

Sometimes they are gone

Fly on

There’s always a beginning, always an end, and no point belaboring the bit in between. Things have a way of making sense in their own time, if we let them.

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Storms

I hope you’re all hanging in there.

I’m doing ok. I’m honing in on a routine that makes me feel happy and accomplished, and sure, being quarantined solo brings out my inner Gary Busey, but I’ve been told insanity, such as it is, suits me, and I’m inclined to agree.

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Only A Song

There’s a negative and positive way of looking at things being connected and built.

You can spend all day creating something and listen back and realize you don’t like it, and therefore not like you.

But you are, objectively, doing great, having created something rather than deepen the crevice in your couch. And nothing created’s ever bad, it just is, and can be changed.

It’s only a song, after all.

Occasionally Insane

It warmed my heart today, walking around my neighborhood while practicing appropriate social distance, listening to Bill Withers serenade these surreal times out of kitchen windows and garages, from front porches and stoops, reminding that there’s strength in gentle progress, beauty in resoluteness, and a deep honesty that illuminates paths through seemingly impenetrable darkness.

I don’t know if I have a “Lean On Me” up my sleeves, but I’ve never been more inspired to put the kettle on and try.

It’s nice writing this newsletter again. I hope you’ve been safe and healthy and only occasionally insane.

Respect

The battered buildings, pocked streets, and steep, triangled roofs betray a reality far more brutal than my sunglasses-bedecked face suggests, and while today isn’t testicle-shatteringly frigid and I’m sitting outside in short freaking sleeves, I’ve been brought to my knees in Pittsburgh, where one too many wind chill body shots agitates the bubbling cauldron of whiskey and riffs on potato and, hey presto, I’m kissing porcelain.

But today I’m writing this a seasoned goddamn professional, measured and sweat panted and holy smokes do I love this town. Incredible food, and pragmatic, inspiringly sardonic people, who will not be impressed if we fuck this show up tonight.

Days like today remind me, in all the best ways, that I’m not a rock star. I’m a working musician, and there should be respect paid to the craft and the opportunity and here, in this proud, blue collar place, I’m going to do just that.

Khoa Soi

The Pai Northern Thai Kitchen in Toronto ON is my vote for the finest restaurant in North America. I left that place in a state of nirvana previously unimagined, blissful and food coma-y and stumbling into friendly Canadians who offered approving shoulder pats. It’s the kind of experience that saves a tour, a “holy shit everyone got a 1920’s disease but jesus every loving christ that khoa soi” sprinkling of divinity.

I’m not a food critic, clearly, but you should go to this restaurant, sit Thai style, and embrace that every decision you’ve made, good or bad, led you to this moment, and life isn’t such a grim slog after all.

Alpacas

When visiting a place like Portland ME in early March, and the wind’s whipping down narrow streets and people have entire alpacas draped around their shivering corpuses, it’s tempting to offer a myriad of dismissive utterances and book the next flight to LA. 

But there’s something about a place imbued with preposterousness. Unlike Los Angeles, people are actually from here and fiercely proud, equipped with an edifying, pugnacious lunacy unique to those who voluntarily reside in places where spit freezes before hitting the ground.

I’ve already been offered mushrooms and mistaken for the “new Grateful Dead guitar guy,” both outside of Whole Foods. It’s going to be a good night.