Liner Notes: i dreamed a knife like a song you can't whistle
"I dreamed the blacksnake rode the guitar / Down the river / I dreamed the clouds went by / The moon like dead fish / I dreamed I was dragging" - Frank Stanford, "The Singing Knives"
Oh, but I do miss liner notes. Especially punk records, where the notes would take on this 3-D production quality—the image would be a photo of a track list written in Sharpie on coffee-stained notebook paper, a topless whiskey bottle resting on a Post-It note that had lyrics. What had a more lived-in feel than liner notes? I grew up in the age of the CD, too—one can only imagine how Smeagol-like I’d be with these things had I been 17 in 1975 instead of 2005.
Being mostly a bedroom musician, my albums don’t have physical releases. I don’t get to do liner notes. So why not do them on the blog? Today, I’m looking at my first album, i dreamed a knife like a song you can’t whistle, from 2016.
Why revisit this album now? Well, I made some music videos. You might not call these videos “technically sound” or “all that interesting,” but you have to remember I consume a lot of THC. Wait, that’s later. The buttoned-down way to talk about my process here is I take a lot of walks. Shit, before moving to West Ridge? I walked everywhere. While I’m walking, I’m noticing things. Little things that I think are cool, or little experiences I want to preserve. I can’t, though—when I go back and watch these videos, I do not get fully transported back to the initial experience of wonder that made me reach for my camera. My first thought is, “I’m glad Past Me gave Present Me this little memory, that I can now experience again anew.”
One motivator for this project was a Defector article from Corey Atad, called “Good, Bad, or Invisible, CGI Makes Movies Unreal.” Here’s a pull quote that sums up a lot of how I felt trying to do this:
In one of cinema’s earliest recordings, Auguste Lumière and his wife Marguerite are seen feeding their baby daughter Andrée. The footage, shot by Louis Lumiére, lasts only about 40 seconds or so. Presented as part of the Lumière Brothers’ first-ever commercial public film screening in a 10-film program on Dec. 28, 1895…the short made an impression that has persisted more than a century. A perfect representation of what the Lumières called "Actualités,”…Maxim Gorky and Georges Méliès would both later describe their experiences attending that first screening at the Salon Indien…recalling the particular fascination they and the rest of the audience had in seeing leaves on trees in the background moving in the wind. There, at the birth of cinema, the medium made itself indispensable—not by showing people something they’d never seen before, but by capturing something of the quotidian and making it present.
So yeah! Think about phrases like “capturing the quotidian and making it present” or “in 1895 leaves on trees moving in the wind but seen on a screen was basically a miracle.” Then consume some THC, full-screen the YouTube on your computer, put on your most noise-cancelling headphones, and let’s watch some music videos.
i dreamed a knife like a song you can’t whistle
The title is taken from a Frank Stanford poem. I’d type up the whole poem here, but it’s too ding-danged long. We got column inches to think about. Here’s a Reddit thread with the poem typed out with extremely poor attention paid to line breaks (hey, even Homer got this treatment). Here’s Frank’s friend Bill Willett reading the poem. If I were Paul Celan, I’d say this poem summed up pretty much exactly how I felt in 2015, and leave it at that.
Here’s a link to the Shipwrecked Sailor Bandcamp. Here’s a direct link to this album.
When I wrote this, I wasn’t so deep into burnout that I’d stopped writing or reading. Wasn’t in a good place, though. Five years out of undergrad, firmly a grad school dropout, working in the basement of a used bookstore. Newly married and with a full social calendar—my personal life was going great, it’s just that I couldn’t figure out my career. Making this record was something of an act of desperation. I was desperate to do something creative, desperate to be a musician again, and desperate to prove all the education and training I’d gotten in my life wasn’t a waste. I had an idea of what a solo career sound might be like, and I had a vision of what this “Shipwrecked Sailor” persona might look like. Mostly, though? I was hoping impress Brendan and Spencer.
unfamiliar beds
Right away, you’ll notice “not technically sound” not only applies to my filmmaking, but to the production and mixing of this album. I made this drunk in 2015 (release date in 2016, but I spent most of 2015 on it) on a 2011 version of Garageband, and I think these are good songs. Plus, raw, half-crappy recordings are charming. Anyway, this song in particular felt like a new direction for my songwriting. Before this, I’d been trying to be an acoustic singer-songwriter, from about 2005-2009. The less said about that, the better. Before that, I’d been a guitarist in a four-piece punk band, from 2002-2006. Beginning this song with a bass line I wrote, some piano I played, and some Apple Loops drums? That was a new direction for me.
About the video—isn’t Lake Michigan wonderful? That’s Berger Park, off the Granville stop. My kid was playing with his cousins on the playground next to the lakeside restaurant there while I filmed this.
out of the hollows
Delay pedals: not something I had access to during my Explosions In The Sky phase. Except, here’s Garageband, with so many pedals. Also, you wanna write in 7/4? Come on, we all gotta write in 7/4 sometimes.
This video shows the West Ridge Nature Preserve. Is it my favorite part of the neighborhood? I’m not sure, actually. Up there. This won’t be the last video I ever film there, I can tell you that much.
further smoke
Miles Davis is something of an obsession for me, particularly rumors I’ve heard about his process. I heard he wrote “So What” by coming into the space and writing “Em7 - Dm7” on a chalkboard and the band improvised from there. Of course, the song is only in D minor for 16 bars, then it goes to Eb minor for eight bars. Back to D minor for eight bars. That’s how the chart was written in my high school jazz band, anyway, and that’s what I wanted to emulate here. We’re hanging out on C#m7 until we go into Am7, then back to C#m7. Also, the guitar, bass, and keys are completely improvised. I smoked some weed (wasn’t doing that a lot back then!) and did like two or three takes each. It’s one of the most fun times I’ve ever had making a song.
Since I don’t have gills, I must film life underwater. Indianapolis is a solidly C+ city—if this were poetry workshop I would tell it to push itself more—but the people we met were nice and we had a good day at the zoo. Seals are fun. Penguins even moreso.
blood moon
What influences our songwriting comes from strange places, right? The end result seems so unconnected to the inspiration. There was a local band in Murfreesboro, Five Foot Annie, that we really liked. One of their riffs, I keep playing over and over. You can’t tell this song is based on it. Also doing the modal jazz chord thing—16 bars of D69 - A69, then eight bars of B69, then another eight of D69 - A69.
Did I film during an actual blood moon? Yes, once back in like 2017 (?) and once again this fall. Is this footage of a blood moon or just some night I was smoking a joint on my friends’ roof and the moon happened to be orange? Only the moon knows.
train bones
16 bars of Bm9, eight bars of Ebmaj7 (b5), eight bars of Bm9. Really digging into the modal jazz chart-making. I was definitely trying to rip off “Talk Show Host,” aka the Radiohead song from Romeo+Juliet. More improv, although the outro required some writing down and arranging. Proud of this outro.
This video kinda gave me fits. I wanted to film out the window of a train car on every train line in the city, but could never find the time. Since the title was inspired by that Red—>Purple transfer and the elephant graveyard of trains just past the Howard Station, I decided to film there and in Skokie. I think it turned out cool, but it is very much a goal of mine not to be A North Sider Who Never Goes To The South Side. I go to the South Side somewhat regularly, it’s just that it’s usually to play basketball or so my kid can play with Kevin’s kids. One day I’ll go to film.
bone moon
I was learning how to tap when I was writing this, if you can’t tell. That harmonic riff in the middle, like a minute in? I’ve had that in my back pocket since I don’t know when. Age 14? Like seriously, one of the earliest things I ever wrote on guitar. Never knew what to do with it.
Here’s a partial lunar eclipse, 2024, for you. Marvel at the majesty of the cosmos.
shaking trees in purple dusk
Really leaning in to the modal jazz chord chart, really having fun with Garageband guitar effects. Hey, I like this song, it puts a smile on my face.
The butterfly room at the Nature Museum is one of the best rooms in the city. This won’t be the last video filmed in the butterfly room at the Nature Museum.
fox chasing
Sometimes, when you write an album, the last song becomes the “damn, why wasn’t I doing this the whole time?” song. Definitely “fox chasing” is that for me. There was a family of foxes that lived by the library/Information Commons at Loyola when I was there, and I’ve named more than one song after them. Can you tell I was listening to a lot of mewithoutYou while writing this record?
Remember when I said “this won’t be the last video filmed in the butterfly room at the Nature Museum?” Still true.
Thanks for taking some walks with me. Genuinely, I really hope you like this album. It’s written to be Music To Write To, so. Next week, we’ll do if not a river, which remains my favorite solo thing I’ve done.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris
man, am i behind in the emails. thanks for providing a soundtrack to read to, that's really cool of you. shaking trees was a personal favorite.