It has been ten years. This will be the end of things. What have I learned? Have I actually gotten better at doing this? My guitar playing? Sure. My piano playing? Maybe. My singing? Eh.

It might be easier to list what I haven’t learned. My actual album production is generally woeful. The track volumes are all off. I never figured out how to master a track. Whenever I’ve played with EQ settings, the song has always gotten somehow muddier and more underwater. Synthesizer tracks always are too loud and live tracks to soft. I never set up a microphone or learned to tell them apart. I couldn’t begin to guess what my vocal range is, if I can call it a “range.” I still have a serious issue with playing the piano with both hands, partially because of lack of practice and partially because of a weird panic attack that starts to happen as soon as I start playing with both hands that makes me worry that I’m going to fuck it up, as if I’m juggling jagged glass objects or something. Drums remain a total mystery and, probably, rhythm in general isn’t something that I could be considered a dependable custodian of.

In short, I’m a melodist. I have ideas in runs of notes. Often consecutive. Usually meandering. Fairly followable and traditional. I don’t think I’m too shabby at counterpoint either. Maybe I’m just good at playing devil’s advocate with music. I like narrative. I write cinematic songs that tell me little stories. They may be meaningless in general, but I can usually imagine something when I listen to them.

This final album, the music speaks for itself, is a series of soundscapes. Some of these places are on earth. Some of them aren’t some are far away. Some are big ideas that are easily dismissed. Some are living things that you don’t notice and scurry by you in cracks and shadows.

Rejected titles for songs on this album:
– if you see one, there are five of them in your walls
– seriously don’t touch me, no im not kidding, please stop
– ive never actually listened to that last song all the way through
– chipper moonwalk happy yoga meditation
– shut your eyes and pretend like you are sleeping and dreaming something peaceful one more time
– indoctrinated by science
– buy floss, you keep forgetting and im going to title this song buy floss so you remember to do it tomorrow on the way home from the office
– jeff feels like a wound-up monkey
– someone get me to a hospital i felt something in my bowels rupture and ive never felt pain like this
– autumnal leaf burning yoga meditation

All ridiculousness aside, this final album is probably closest in sound, feel, and quality to the very first album. A few things caused this. I didn’t want to write lyrics and I wasn’t sure how to write songs without lyrics, I realized. At first, I didn’t want any instruments on the album. I was going to build new instruments for new sounds. Since I don’t have a workshop or significant tools or raw materials, well, that didn’t happen. Then I ran into issues learning my new version of my recording software making this album as sloppy as when I was just beginning.

There are two instruments on this album that I’ve never used before.

Even through all of the troubles, this album might include the perfect recording of why I’ve always enjoyed doing this.

What is the point of creating an album of music every February for ten years without any intention of doing anything with it? I’m sorry you have to ask.

These never happen without the help of friends. Not only because of their contributions to the songs, but their support and interest. Thanks to Kevin Scott for his music space and actual musical talent. And thanks to Emily Rose for your spare instruments and actual musical talent.

Download all the tracks here.

The Original Idea

I believe I’ve mentioned this before somewhere on these pages: My favorite recordings are of my friends and family laughing. There’s an incredible thing that happens when suddenly Drew Patty or Laura Houlette or Noah Poole comes through the speakers laughing. Each person you know has a distinct and endearing laugh that you may not even remember until you hear it again years later.

The ambitious idea behind the Live Album Project was to roll the joy of making an album into the joy of traveling into the joy of visiting old friends and relations. It was going to be a tour to Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, Indianapolis, Portland, San Francisco, and Austin. I’d write two to three songs while traveling, teach them to whatever musician(s) lived in that city and then hit an open mic and record a show with them.

Time, work, budget … well there are many reasons that this didn’t happen. Mainly, I didn’t plan ahead nearly enough. But I always said I wanted to do a live album during the Album of the Months Project and since this is the ninth year, it seemed like it had to happen now or it wouldn’t. Life is a series of compromises and I had to scramble to come up with the Live Album Experiment.

The New Concept

I decided to play two shows a week at open mics in New York. I could vary the type of music played by getting friends out to play with me on stage and by switching up instruments. Instead of it just being the boring dude with a guitar and harmonica, I was looking at potentially all of the following:

• Play a keyboard set by feeding it through my computer and playing on top of preset tracks. Maybe I could finally roll out something from La Casa Di Omicidio.
• A singer/songwriter set with storytelling in between.
• Play a set with a second guitarist with me on guitar, keyboards, accordion and clarinet.
• A band set with bass, violin, and piano.
• A set using a looper app I downloaded onto my iPad.

While this didn’t fill my desire to visit old musician friends and play music with them, it would at least make a lot of new music and maybe do something different.

The Stark Reality

Most of these ideas weren’t possible.

• The update to Garageband and iOS broke the driver for my 61-key keyboard. Synth music was out.
• Scheduling the other musicians I knew in town didn’t happen. I was left to play by myself.
• The looper app was fun, but didn’t really seem to work live. I needed something with a petal although I’m not sure I could have done that live either.
• My guitar doesn’t plug in and wouldn’t pick up on a microphone.  I could only find one open mic a week that had a community guitar to play on. I was down to only four shows for the month. Fortunately I liked the place. It had a little stage up a half-flight of stairs and a nice feel to it.

So I recalibrated. I was now stuck with the singer/songwriter/storytelling thing. I wanted it to be better than just strumming, but the problem is, well, I’m not very good at guitar. I had to rethink the way that I play it a bit. In order words, I had to simplify and then simplify the simplification just so I could maybe be sure that I could actually play and sing at the same time.

I practiced by recording an album of demos. Mostly these are unmixed and are simple run throughs. Sometimes I tried singing really low and sometimes higher just to see if it sounded better. It was rare to have a second take and I only double-tracked a couple of solos in fun.

For the performances, I wrote five new songs and one time-filling instrumental, repurposed one old song, practiced one of the first songs I ever memorized, and wrote a weird beginning to a cover. I figured if I had to I’d do some older, simpler songs: Adieu (I Do), Husk, Moon, and The Restaurant with No Name. Tours are supposed to have greatest hits, right?

Overall, I was pretty happy when I played these. I could do this.

I didn’t originally intend on making these a part of this month’s album, but …

Download the Demos

The Performances

I only got on stage twice the entire month – a far cry from the twice a week or the multi-city tour I’d originally imagined. I went three times total, but on the 15th, I simply never got picked to play. I’ll let you listen to the results below. Then I’ll make some comments on what this was like.

Download the Live Album

• There’s something more existentially vacant about being on stage alone with no one listening. I felt a creative claustrophobia. On the other hand, this also meant that I could restart songs whenever I wanted.
• Perhaps it was the winter but on stage the dark and dry humor wasn’t come through. Man, I wrote a lot of spiteful songs this year. I thought the songs were funny and ridiculous, but with no one listening, they felt like off-hand depressing comments and desperate. I suppose that’s a predictable outcome when you write something called “The Sick of People Grumpy Asshole Misanthropic Blues.”
• The audience during the first performance was much kinder with applause.
• I was a lot more comfortable on stage the second time. The first time was basically an extended panic attack. The guitar felt like an obstacle I was trying to get around.
• The songs I wrote had too many words to be well remembered. When you are telling a story, there’s an ebb and flow to the audience reaction. You kind of know where they are in the story and you can work from that. A song has a place where the lyrics fit. If you miss the place that the lyrics fit, you aren’t going to be able to fake fit them in later.
• Speaking of the stories, they were even worse and fell flat because it wasn’t a venue for talking really. People were trying to eat their meals. Also since I didn’t prepare anything really to say, it’s just meaningless rambling.
• The entire project immediately felt more like a vanity project than any other moment in the last eight years. Previously this was just a fun hobby. Something to do at the darkest point of winter with friends. This year it felt like public masturbation.
• Every song came in about a minute shorter than in practice. I guess it was harder to really know if it was worth picking through a random “instrumental” part when I wasn’t really feeling the song I was playing.
• When I was asked to play more songs, I completely felt uncomfortable with almost everything I’d practiced and went for a random song written years ago in Chicago about the movie “Deathrace 2000.” Not sure why.
• “Hello Everybody” was actually an improvised song that was written on stage during a chord issue, I rerecorded it as a demo because why not?
• I wish I’d had one more live performance to choose from so I could cut and mix the album down and maybe remove the flubbed John Hartford cover. Whatever, not all albums of the month can be listenable.
• I felt humiliated in general when getting off-stage. Sub-mediocrity was a lot harder for me to handle than I thought it would be. The rest of the open mic regulars were very friendly and I felt like an infiltrator, like a journalist that had gone undercover. I guess I couldn’t have been that bad. I was asked to attend to a songwriter series in March by a much better musician that said I sounded like Bill Callahan. Another musician, also much better than me, told me that he liked my Weezer cover. Flattery, however undeserved it is, will always be accepted immediately after time on stage.

Conclusion

During the last show I realized that I’d been to the place once, years ago, with a girlfriend. It was actually during my first visit to New York City. We’d sat on the patio, ate lunch, and met up with an old college friend named Aline Mendelsohn. The girlfriend has long been an ex now. And it was the last time I saw Aline, I think. I wonder what happened to her? I’ll bet I have recordings of both of them laughing somewhere.

I’d do it again. Maybe even next week. Maybe twice a week for the next ten years.  Hopefully every once in awhile, I’ll have someone on stage with me to smile with when a guitar part goes a little astray or a forgotten lyric gets a mumbled rewrite.

Thanks for listening everybody. We’re nine years in. Only next year to go.

 

Liner notes for Spare Parts and Spare Ribs: A Collection of Outtakes from Ten Years of Making an Album Every February

If any artist records for a decade, it is inevitable that a certain amount of usable sludge will get left behind. Included here are eighteen songs that couldn’t make the ten albums of the month recorded between 2007 and 2016, but deserve reconsideration. Maybe these songs didn’t try hard enough. Or maybe they ran into bad luck. Maybe they had a scheduling problem with the bus system and just couldn’t show up for the interview. Whatever the reason, they were left behind. This compilation is an attempt to swoop back through time, find all of those old lost feelings and ideas, smash time into one big new thing, and poop them them all out at once.

As with impurities that a body never fully flushes from its digestive system, only by splaying open a corpse can one fully inspect what lies buried inside. Over the past month, Jeff Rose and his research assistant Miles Shropshire have poured over hours and hours of digital files, listening to failed takes, forgotten jingles, and vomited-out instrumentals. Their exhaustive post-mortem revealed many disgusting things, of which these were the biggest and most notable musical kidney stones formed from this long period of drinking melody coffee and eating rhythmic magnesium pills or something. Each track has been remixed, remastered, researched, and presented here with context. Please enjoy these tidbits as you would any ground-up-and-reconstituted, diseased, chicken-organ product.

Compilation albums are by default incredibly collaborative. As the years pass and people come in and out of our lives, then back in and then back out again, we accidentally collect little things left behind by them: memories, pieces of advice, books, jokes, hair pins, grudges. As can be imagined, there are too many people who influenced this album to mention. We can’t be bothered to list all the inspirations, but here, at least, are the friends and family and direct contributors in order of appearance:

Emily Rose
Casey Cochran
Noah Poole
Amarin Enyart
Jeff Freeman
Lloyd Thompson
Paul Whitener Jr.
Nate Lineback
Aron Taylor
Wellington Chew
Dave Faloon
Jeff Fleischer

These people cannot be thanked enough. Thank them for us if you see them.

And without further ado, we present Spare Parts and Spare Ribs: A Collection of Outtakes from Ten Years of Making an Album Every February

Jeff Rose and Miles Shropshire

February 2007 The First Album Outtakes 

“Smoke-Filled Room”
A damning indictment of Bush-era torture policy, this song was never released because of paranoia that the political statement would make Jeff a target of the powers that be.

“Porky Piggin’ It”
This song was conceptualized as a tribute to Booker T. & the M.G.s during their high-school years, when they were still learning how to play music. It was discarded because the title is about being so slovenly that you don’t bother to wear pants.

“Oh Babe, I Know What You Need”
This wonderful, stream-of-consciousness song about awkward dating was not included on the album because of fears that the singer’s ex-girlfriend would find it too personal.

February 2008 Homesteadin’ Outtakes 

Two songs from a soundtrack for a fictional western named Homesteadin’. The rough demos were scrapped when other non-western-y songs were recorded and added to the playlist. Some songs from the original project remain on the actual album: “Pick Up Your Luggage with Confidence Traveller!” and “Nick Cage v. Bruce Willis.” Those two included songs are the only other remains of the abandoned sessions. Regardless of the results, the forward-thinking, thematic attempt is an artistic precursor to 2010’s Dyatlov Pass Incident.

“Shitty Wooden Cross Grave”
Inspired by Neil Young dropping his guitar for two hours in the movie “Dead Man,” this song was cut from the final album because of a strong wind piercing the microphone guard.

“You Better Have Clothes On Under that Blanket”
The more epic of the western songs, this time about a tall, nameless stranger who rides into town on a pale palomino, while chomping on a cigarillo and porky piggin’ it.

February 2009 The Tribute Album Outtakes

There were no outtakes from The Tribute Album because the album was perfect in concept and execution.

February 2010 Dyatlov Pass Outtakes

“What Could I Ever Do?”
An outtake from the Dyatlov Pass musical. Recorded early in the month before the decision was made to replace synthesized strings and keyboards with real fiddling. The song was never fully realized and the lyrics never finished. This song is about when Lev’s girlfriend compound fractures her leg and dies in his arms. He holds her body as his comrades dig a grave. Later in the musical, they dig up her body and eat it.

November 2010: Lullabyes and Advice Outtakes

An album that began as an album of lullabies with parenting advice. The project died within two days when it discovered that it wasn’t February.

“Bababye”
The creative process requires unabashed experimentation and improvisation. This raw little uncut diamond, recorded just days before a calendar was properly used, is a unique look into the creative process of the album of the month.

“Spare Part”
A song transparently written after watching a reality show about hoarding. This song follows ploddingly in the already rutted footsteps of songs like Paul McCartney’s “Junk” and Tom Waits’ “Soldier’s Things.” This song was never revisited or replayed because it’s weaksauce.

February 2011: 34-Year Bluegrass Outtakes

Five incredible songs from an early February bluegrass jam-out featuring a reunion of the original lineup of “Can I Punch Your Baby?” The all-night-all-day-all-night-again session featured eighteen recorded songs that could not be used on the final 2011 album because of a legal dispute after the songs were mistakenly copyrighted to Enyart/Freeman/Rose/Lineback/Taylor/Thompson/Whitener, Jr. instead of Enyart/Freeman/Rose/Lineback/Taylor/Thompson/Whitener Jr.

“Nothin'”
Thematically, the second-most-relevant song to this set. The disembodied voices captured as a moment in time sing wistfully about the things that slip, oh so softly, from your grasp as one turns to look the other direction. We always think that a pillow will be there to rest our heads on, and then one night, we get to our beds and find that the pillow, the one we used all these years, the one drenched in head sweat and hair grime, has mysteriously disappeared and left us to hurt our necks when we try, uncomfortably, to sleep with our skulls pulled too far in one direction to reach a bare mattress. You know what I’m talking about.

“Killer”
Before Jethco Heathcomb died in the process of trying to build a wood-powered missile, he had openly disagreed with the song “Killer,” calling it “a bunch of panty-waist libtard bullshit about the men in blue.” So it probably would not have made the cut regardless.

“Who You Used To Be”
Amarin Enyart: “It’s impossible to sing harmony with you because you sing the words the way they spill out of your brain.”

“Thinking of You”
This laid-back track was ruined when some asshole neighbor entered the room and started talking.

“Tobin Spirit Guide”
When you get a whole lot of talented people in one room and set them in the same direction, the torrential outpouring of creative energy can sometimes overwhelm good sense. “Tobin Spirit Guide” is a song that requires between fifteen and sixteen consecutive listens to fully grasp and appreciate, even for the most discerning ear.

February 2011: 34-Year Bender Outtakes

“Husk”
Recorded in a late February session at the same time as “If I Quit Drinking I’d Be Home By Now” with the Rotten Liars on back-up, this electrified version of “Who You Used to Be” was rejected because it was too similar to another song on the album.

February 2011: Ubasute Outtakes

The 2012 album was started with the decision to teach oneself piano and evolved into an album with a very dense wrapper, to try to cover for the fact that the album was just an attempt to teach oneself to learn piano.

“Etude 41: Outtake”
A song for parts of the fictional transcript that were cut from the fictional audio book. This song was cut from the final album when the part of the fictional audio book it was supposed to accompany was cut from the fictional transcript. The fictional transcript part is printed here:

***

NARRATOR: I suppose I understand this:  For most of us fail in life, the same way that my father failed at being a songwriter. We half-ass it in public. We can burn inside with creativity, passion, and energy, but once we have a moment to share it or use it, push it or play it, we shrink. We are enormous inside and tiny in the world. Maybe it’s because we shy from disapproval or fear success. Maybe we simply can’t translate our own language. Perhaps that’s as it should be. After all, we all remain small whether we stand at the base or have climbed to the peak of the holy mountain.

***

February 2013: The Outtake Collection Outtakes

“Ubasute: The Audio Book Credits Song”
A fake outtake from Ubasute with lyrics about the album about the audio book about the story about a series of songs about a legend about a Japanese forest. This unlistenable painful haze of navel-gazing, recursive self-indulgence was cut from the songs for 2013’s Spare Parts and Spare Ribs and therefore isn’t included here.

 

February 2014: ??? Outtakes

“????????????? (Faloon Remix)”
The future is a strange and unpredictable place, full of twisted cyborg versions of people you loved and now struggle to see any remaining humanity in. Remember that when you think you have something relevant to say to your children.

February 2015: The Live Album Outtakes

“Hey Marci”
While David Bowie and David Byrne are clear influences throughout all of the songs on all of the albums created for February, the failed vocals of this song only bring those influences more to light. This song didn’t make 2015’s live album because it wasn’t live.

February 2016: The Last Album Outtakes

“Ten Years”
Although very relevant to this collection, this song did not make the final 2016 album because it wasn’t recorded in February 2016.

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