There are so many things in this world that I do and I am not sure why I am doing them.
Some of them I can recognize as having a reason… in an existential way.
Like using the word “existential.” I have no idea what that word means. Yet I use it.
I mean, I vacuum the floor. I know that, in a few hours, Bucky will have left paw prints all over the house again. And yet I do it.
I go to the gym and work out. At my age I’m pretty sure that I’m not in training for anything. At this point the worst pain I feel in my legs is when I stand to do a show. Lower back… feet, knees… all of them hurt for days after. Yet I go to the gym. Maybe I enjoy the way I look in spandex. No. I don’t. Maybe I enjoy the way OTHER people look in spandex? Possible.
Let me get to the point. Here is something I can’t think of any real reason to do. I’m making another album.
Even using the word “album” proves I should not be doing it.
Everyone these days does one or two tracks at a time and puts them out on social media to a waiting, drooling audience who will then download for a few cents and enjoy in their homes.
Me? I go in and hire a roomful of people, set them up in an expensive room full of microphones and spend thousands of dollars to turn it into a small disc that you could once play in your car, but now you can’t.
I know I can sell the new CD at shows. Even though people no longer have CD players in their cars, they still buy them as souvenirs.
Or ninja throwing discs.
Maybe I could sell them at OTHER people’s shows? Show up at a Keith Urban concert and set up a table near the squad car.
I don’t care.
It’s fun to do. I’m gonna hit up a bunch of my talented friends to play on it… pick a decent picture… think of a clever, self deprecating title….(How about “Brrr… is it cold in here or is it just my career?) and then have a thousand units pressed up and shipped to me in large, heavy boxes that will then be placed to hold up that wall in my rear closet.
This will be the 5th album I will have made. I can say “album” because that word refers to a collection and this will be a collection of my songs.
I made “Matters of the Heart” while I still lived in CT and drove back and forth to NYC to record. Yikes. I was still learning.
I made “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One”… a live show recorded with my band where we played all my hits up to that point. It also has a cow on it. If that makes you run out and buy it.
Next one was “Marianne’s.” This was kind of a pop record. Marianne’s is the name of the ice cream store I worked at in Santa Cruz in the early 70’s. It has a picture of the store on the cover.
Then I made “Juggler’s Logic.” Juggler’s Logic is that thing where (I sound like Stefon) a juggler starts his act and drops the ball (or chain saw) a few times to make the audience think he is not as good as he should be. Then when he juggles as well as he can, everyone is amazed and thinks he’s being lucky!!
Now I’ll make….
Who knows. I’m just going to do it. Maybe I find it a challenge. No one knows how many albums they have left in them. So this is my challenge.
An existential challenge.
Does that work? Damn. I gotta go look it up.