Truthfully, it’s been a hard old week and it’s only Wednesday night. In my day job, for the newspaper, I’ve been covering a quadruple murder case. Also, a stalwart, crazy-ass member of Portland’s musician community, who I’ve known since I was 19, succumbed to his demons this week. It’s a big loss for everyone who knew him.
To balance this awful, just a little, here’s some silly.
This song was inspired by something my buddy, Dean, said in the car on a long road trip to a gig somewhere. As we drove, I scribbled out the lyrics and had a song when we arrived — I was the passenger, obviously.
I recorded this during a warm spell last fall as part of my “Alone Beside the Road” video series.
This DIY series of songs was inspired by a giant, wet plate collodion Ambrotype my friend Daniel Afzal shot of me and my Ural sidecar motorcycle at John Coffer’s Tintype Jamboree in the summer of 2022. It’s the picture you see at the start of the video.
My friend, and song inspiration, Dean Clegg, mastered the audio for me.
That’s a 1930’s Vega tubaphone banjo pot and yet another friend, Carter Ruff, made the long neck out of a maple tree that fell in in his neighbor’s yard.
