Bruce Springsteen

Couldn’t name drop this one and not reach for NEBRASKA. Ten grim songs recorded on 4-Track at home, running 40+ minutes. Bruce’s 6th LP was released forty years ago and I remember playing it on vinyl as a little kid (thanks to my older brothers) and trying to wrap my head around the people who populated these stories. It may have been the very first time I thought hard about suffering. The stories haunted more as I grew older and the idea of suffering and living on the margins of society became clearer. This song is unusually upbeat as our hero celebrates fixing his car and then road-tripping all night to see Wanda. Love the electric guitar. 🎸

Bruce Springsteren

One more from NEBRASKA — the closing track suggests the notion of hope being ‘kinda funny’. Love this because it is absurd, especially as we hurdle through space with a 100% chance of suffering and dying. Everything’s stacked against us and we’re told to show gratitude each day. And we tell ourselves this too and somehow we can go there and be thankful. Humans have this huge capacity to believe and find hope — even in the darkest, imaginable situations. Love the guitar and harmonica all over this album and how this song seems to wrap up these grim stories about the beauty and darkness of living in this world.

Advance Base

A song that still blows my mind. Just how good the songwriting is — the story, the subtext. The heartache, The hope. It’s a tender, big-hearted song with great piano, melody and a little echoing drum machine. Love the studio version, but today I can’t resist this little in studio that Owen performs with FRIENDSHIP.

Advance Base

There is a beautiful kind of maturity to these records which I really love and appreciate. This one is another story song from A SHUT-IN’S PRAYER — a guy home drinking and watching game shows. The subtext is full of loneliness and dulled pain with some soul searching. But the sermonizing isn’t keeping the ghosts away. Perhaps there is something new coming along that will save him. A new gospel. I love the piano refrains, the clever lyrics and the doubled vocals. Incredible songwriting.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

Like a great short story, this one haunts. A freak accident leaves a 9 year old girl fatherless. I love how it begins like a warning — with those little bass thumps before the story begins. Dual vocals. Daughter and father singing together. 💔 Love the visual details — the jellyfish, fading tinsel. Oh Kim…

To never know what kind of man your father’d be.

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

It’s the first track I ever heard by Owen Ashworth and it was way back in 2009. I love the drums and bass in this — the cymbal crashes. The little tinkering keyboards. But mostly it’s the story and how he recounts adolescent pain, loneliness and a mother who’s ill.

Been this way for almost all my life
Wasn't born here Mom & me moved here when I was 5
These Kansas City boys are dull as butter knives

Had this little car since I was 17
The tape is busted, got a boom box in the back seat
Blasting Misfits all up & down these streets

Often covered, but I prefer Owen’s original — just the piano, drum kit and a little bass. It’s so simple and short. Lovely and sad. So much subtext. Another melancholy story song which he’s known for and this one has teeth.

The “I guess he’d be 15” just kills me.

2nd Grade

Have to do one more before moving on. I love the sincerity in this song. There’s a heart-on-sleeve quality that lifts up the importance of our friendships and relationships. The give and take — how the love goes both ways. What we need and what we can give. It’s all that really matters in the end and I love when music celebrates it.

It’s the kind of tone and feeling that reminds me of Big Star songs. This one is just a little strumming acoustic guitar with great melody and simple but profound lyrics that are direct. With no snark or irony. It just makes me feel something tonight.

2nd Grade

Had to get one more track in — this time from their record HIT TO HIT. This is one of 24 songs — many of which I almost chose today. They have a great song about riding your BIKE to the record store and telling everyone else to take a hike 🤣. Another about filling out a dreaded 1099. Cleary no subject is off limits. But this sad little ballad stood out because I find it sweet, hopeful and proactive. And I love the little alternating, distorted, strumming bridges coupled with the ooo’s. So good. You can buy all three 2nd Grade records on vinyl by bundling your pre-order for Easy Listening at Double Whammy’s WEBSITE. They also have a cool T-shirt I want.

Try to be on my side now
Everyone is backing out
Though I know you love a crowd
I could really use you around

Try to be on my side now
I don't wanna say it again
It’s a cruel way to treat a friend
To just turn tail and run from him

Try to be on my side now
Everyone is packing up
There's no way I could make this up
There's no way I could make this stop
If it ever happened to you
The first thing that I would do
Would be to show my love for you
I would show you my love is true
Mmm
I would show my love for you
I would show you my love is true

2nd Grade

The closing track to WISH YOU WERE HERE TOUR REVISITED has this amazing guitar solo 1:15 in. And then 2nd Grade spends the last two minutes deliberatly talking out the album credits. And these two things aren’t even the most amazing thing about this song. The most amazing thing? It’s the fact this kid is being held back and probably deserves better. Beautiful and bitter sweet. ♥️

All the other kids are having a good time
All the other kids are on track
All the other kids got through on the first time
I'm being held back

2nd Grade

The opening track to their little masterpiece WISH YOU WERE HERE TOUR REVISITED — it is so catchy and cool. Ultimately it tries to build bridges between people who disagree. Something profound and jubilant in this tune that celebrates people overcoming their differences.

I know that we don't really get along
Well that's okay
As long as we can talk about it

2nd Grade

Big surprise to me this great song was released yesterday — a week after LOVE THE STRANGER came out. Love the guitars and tempo — radio friendly and fun. Bonus points for the Liv Ulmann reference. It will be on their new album EASY LISTENING which comes out in September. Can’t wait for this one as last year’s WISH YOU WERE HERE TOUR REVISITED was one of my favorites.

Friendship

Compelled again — as I head back to Ashland from Austin tomorrow — to choose another track from LOVE THE STRANGER. This beauty has muffled keyboards and piano. The kind of track that normally doesn’t appear on an alt-country sounding record. But the twang is there in the vocals, and this dreamy love song floats along and feels mesmerizing. I love the idea of a memory of someone special making you feel alive again.

Walking around with you
We're just hanging out in your room
Didn't matter what we got up to
Every minute with you
Was like being alive twice
Like being alive twice
Like being alive twice

Friendship

Only a nose hair away / From inner peace today…

Had this song going through my head today, the three minute closing track to their new record LOVE THE STRANGER. This is one of those records that just makes me feel good and I can see myself returning to it frequently this year. Love the twang and there’s wit and wisdom here across 17 tracks. Humility. Relearning stuff I thought I knew. And Dan Wriggins just has one of those voices, ironically landing somewhere between Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy. ♥️