Thing a Week 31: Just as Long as Me I wrote this song for a…
Thing a Week 31: Just as Long as Me
I wrote this song for a documentary a friend is working on about being tall (and in case he is reading this: yes, I certainly do owe him a phone call). Some people fake the funk, me, I fake the bluegrass. And this feller in this song, you see, he’s extremely tall and he would like to find a tall woman. I like the vocals and I’m pretty proud of the word play in the chorus, but I think this song could be much improved by the addition of a little fiddle – any bluegrass fiddle players out there?
PRESENT DAY JOCO SAYS: It would be interesting to track the “day late and dollar short” index of the songs week to week from the original Thing a Week against the same measurement for these Redux posts. I am late a lot! It’s touring that does it to me. Short bursts of travel preceded by a stretch of planning and followed by a period of recovery and catching up. It amounts to a black hole, a dark, timeless void where I cease to exist – I become merely a shadow that smells like an airplane and only wants to fall asleep in front of the hotel television. In case it isn’t clear (it isn’t), this post was meant to happen 6 days ago, so if I want to get back on schedule I will post again tomorrow. Blargh.
ANYWAY. This last week (that is to say, last Friday’s “this last week”) was when Hodgman’s Apple ads started running. I thought I was becoming famous, but what happened to John as a result of these ads was another thing entirely: TV famous, very different from Internet famous. It was thrilling to watch, and I was very happy for my friend. Did I really call Justin Long “the guy from Jeepers Creepers 2”? Yes, I did.
Those were heady days! Code Monkey Tshirts first went on sale this week at CafePress, the beginning of my merchandise empire. MySpace was still a thing. And I, well, I failed to write a new song. Just as Long as Me was from the reserve tank, I think that I may have added a verse and tweaked a lyric or two, but it was mostly a repurposing of something I had already made. No excuse this time. Maybe too busy, er, watching Apple ads? Dunno.
I would later acquire a fiddle part from some kind internet person – I can’t locate that post right now and am too lazy to keep looking. It helped a lot with the bluegrass flavor. You may be wondering if I play the banjo this quickly. The answer is yes, for short stretches of time, like Wile E. Coyote running in the air right before he falls off the cliff. Thanks to digital editing capabilities, it almost sounds like a guy playing the banjo.
The song is a little too gimmicky for my taste now, I’m not as interested in writing these kinds of songs as I once was. There are some good jokes in there though. And YE GODS do I love three part bluegrass harmony, I don’t know why exactly. It’s like, the way my brain is wired, bluegrass harmonies are a direct line to the very center of pure musical beauty to me. Sometimes just the sound of it makes me tear up. Probably a tumor.
I also wrote an Al Jolson style number about being tall for the same documentary, and likely I used the same jokes there too. And the same banjo. Not sure if he ever finished that thing, I should ask…
You can find more info on this song, a store where you can listen to everything, and also other stuff at jonathancoulton.com.
Milwaukee Ticket Giveaway
UPDATE (This contest has ended – the secret time was 2:37 PM and the winner is twitter user @baddox. Congratulations @baddox, email me through that contact link up there and I’ll get you your sweet delicious free tickets to the Milwaukee show. I’m sorry the rest of you didn’t win, I wish everything could be free all the time to everyone and the world was made of candy!) END UPDATE
In an effort to nearly DOUBLE the size of the audience for the Milwaukee show this Sunday, I’m giving away a pair of tickets to one lucky winner. I stole this contest mechanism from Scalzi, and I love it because it demands practically zero work from me! So here’s the deal:
I have chosen a time of day today that is secret because it is KNOWN ONLY TO ME. To enter this contest you must simply @ reply to me (I am @jonathancoulton) on Twitter and include the hashtag #JoCoInMilwaukee. The person whose tweet is tagged with the time closest to my secret time without going over will win the tickets. Times will all be in my time zone here in NYC. You may give away one or both tickets to someone else if you win. You may enter more than once but please no bots – I will know if you are using some sort of trickery because my reply stream will be flooded with minute-by-minute replies from you all day long.
In case there is something dumb this contest – my final decision is final even if it’s totally unfair, I am the boss of you on any media known or hereafter devised, throughout the known universe in perpetuity, etc. etc. I will hear no bellyaching!
It is currently 9:41 in New York City. The winning time is some minute after that. Go!
JoCo Update #Umpteen
Just sent this to the mailing list (but you already know most of it don’t you?):
Hello! This is an update about where I will be, when I will be there, and what I will be doing.
First! Good news for those of you in the Midwest: I’m bringing the band to Chicago, Madison and Milwaukee. That’s right, band PLUS Paul and Storm, which is practically a show with TWO ORCHESTRAS! Did I mention Madison and Milwaukee? Because those were recently added to this trip and I just wanted to make sure I had mentioned them. Great!
Second! More good news for some of you in the UK: I’m going to go to there! Details still in the works, and tickets will be on sale soon, but for now I can tell you Bristol June 9, Manchester June 10, and London June 11. Plus incredible bonus city which is not in the UK, Amsterdam, on Monday June 13. Watch the Twitter and the mailing list, more announcements about those gigs coming soon.
Third! Album! Yes! Release date is not 2013, despite what you may have heard. Release date is more likely some time this Summer. You will know soon.
Chicago, IL – Park West
Friday April 22 at 8PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/gs4LAh
Band show with Paul and Storm
Madison, WI – Majestic Theater
Saturday April 23 at 8PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/eJIBfq
Band show with Paul and Storm
Milwaukee, WI – Shank Hall
Sunday April 24 at 8PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/ebvI0p
Band show with Paul and Storm
Minneapolis, MN – Guthrie Theater
Monday April 25 at 7:30PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/f6MJfc
Acoustic show with Paul and Storm
Richmond, VA – Hat Factory
Thursday May 5 at 7:30PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/fu7Kjp
Acoustic show with Paul and Storm
Alexandria, VA – The Birchmere
Friday May 6 at 7:30 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/ihg2kZ
Acoustic show with Paul and Storm
Annapolis, MD – Ram’s Head Tavern
Saturday May 7 at 8:30 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/eiaYUx
Acoustic show with Paul and Storm
Ottawa, ON – Gladstone Theater
Friday May 27 at 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/eXkbgw
Acoustic show with Paul and Storm
Toronto, ON – The Mod Club
Saturday May 28 at 8 PM
Tickets: http://bit.ly/gUDgGt
Acoustic show with Paul and Storm
That’s all I got. Happy tax day, suckers.
-j
Thing a Week 30: The Presidents This is a song that I wrote…
Thing a Week 30: The Presidents
This is a song that I wrote last year for a Presidents Day edition of Little Gray Books – one small fact about every US president (thanks Wikipedia). Some of you more dedicated Coulton scholars may have already heard the live version in episode 7 of the Little Gray Books Podcast. Back then I performed it with the Hungry March Band, the most energetic stoner marching band I’ve ever seen. They played the Hail to the Chief part in between verses – since I have no marching band here, I had to make do with toy instruments. This new recording may be a little rough because there are men hammering and sawing and drilling in my kitchen all week, not exactly the best thing to have on the other side of the studio wall. You may hear some of it here and there, but hey: this is Thing a Week, people.
PRESENT DAY JOCO SAYS: Right, jeez, this is when there were four contractors in my two bedroom apartment for a couple of months. My studio stuff was all in my daughter’s room. She was still just a dumb baby for the first part of Thing a Week, but it got harder to keep my stuff in her room the more she turned into an actual child. We had this enormous kitchen, and since at this point it seemed like this was going to be my job at least for a while, it made sense to steal some square footage from it and make a little studio room. It was tiny, about 4×8, but it was a room with a door and there were no babies in there. Before that was done, a lot of the tracks were mixed with my daughter sleeping in a crib a few feet away, and I remember at least a couple of times when I was trying to finish up some background vocals on a Friday afternoon, holding her in my arms, hoping she would stay quiet while I sang into the microphone.
This was was particularly rough weekend in the renovation – dust, noise, people. It’s even harder to write when you’re afraid someone is listening to all your bad ideas. So I grabbed something from the catalog and gave myself an easy week. The song is OK, it’s a little bit of an easy target I think. Musically it’s not that interesting (OK, one good modulation), and it steals pretty heavily from the soup of country novelty songs that’s always simmering in my head. I still can’t remember all the lyrics, they just run together in my head for some reason, and I’ve done it wrong live enough times that I fear I know the mistakes better than I know the correct version. That’s always part of the fun though, at least that’s what I tell myself.
Mistakes that are built into the lyrics include the Garfield assassination date (1881, not 1882), and referring to George H. W. Bush as “George Bush Senior” which makes no sense because he has different initials from W. I have corrected one but not the other in my live lyrics, at least when I sing them correctly.
When Obama was elected I changed the last lines a little bit to reflect that. At first I did it in a way that was kind of snarky toward George W., and when I played it that way in Texas I got a few angry emails from people in the audience who said they were so offended that they weren’t going to be fans anymore. I find that a little silly. I mean, OK, but…really? Mostly I was amazed to encounter people in my audience who looked back on W’s presidency and thought he had done a great job. It just goes to show you what a liberal bubble we have here in NYC. It’s also yet another example of how polarizing red/blue issues have become. These people were really upset, more upset than anyone who’s ever emailed me to complain about anything. They did have one good point though, which is that if the last line is “I don’t like to make political statements” then maybe I should not make any political statements dum-dum. Evolution of the lyrics has been like this (according to my own wiki):
Original:
W’s legacy’s a work in progress.
That is all the Presidents so far
After Obama was elected:
W’s reign of terror is finally over
Obama’s been pretty excellent so far
After the Texans got angry:
W decided he was the decider
(not sure what the next line was, maybe the same as above?)
For Hodgman’s audio book, and this one stuck because I liked it:
W decided he was the decider
Obama has a peg-leg and a scar
I think that walks the line quite nicely thank you very much. Obviously it doesn’t reveal a lot about Obama’s presidency in a historical context (EXCEPT THE TRUTH!), but we’ll have to wait and see what happens, won’t we? Unless you read this as a satirical backhand slap to the Birthers and the other crazies who think he is not a citizen, that he is a secret Muslim, that he was born in Kenya, that he is a terrorist, that having him in power threatens our nation to the extent that we might have to get a bunch of guns and start killing people, etc.
You are, of course, free to read it however you like, because this is America.
You can find more info on this song, a store where you can listen to everything, and also other stuff at jonathancoulton.com.
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