An Anthology of Sorts

Wasting all my time again Playing in the rain Guess I still remember getting burned So I think I’m gonna drown again I’m tired of the flame I give into the waves Hoping I’ll just float away A cloud in someone’s day Never gonna get burned Came back this time just to give it all away But when there’s nothing left but pain Nobody wants to take the weight Some way I know this day is just a start I’m still on my way it’s just a part Some way I’ve seen the end-You’ll be there my friend Sharing just one heart Keep coming back to stay I think I gotta learn again Must be something locked away Cause I think I’m gonna burn again Came back this time just to give it all away But when there’s nothing left but pain Nobody can take the weight And I’m taking a look inside of me What’s left no one wants to see Nobody can take the weight-got to burn it away Burn it away so I can learn again Keep coming back to stay Looks like I gotta learn again One day my friend Dan and I were walking around Oak Park, and I happened to have my acoustic with me. We had been up all night as was often the case on Sundays in the nineties, and we were still a little altered. We noticed just on the other side of Harlem Ave in Forest Park there was a ton of activity. Turns out it was Forest Park Days or something and there was even live music. We ended watching a band named Butterfly McQueen for a while. They were kind of a jingle jangle folksy band with a female vocalist, and they were pretty good. Making our way back to the south side of Oak Park we stopped in an open field to sit for a spell, and I started playing the hook for this song. It was one of those things that just came out. I remember singing some improv words that were kind of a joke about our day and we were giggling, but I liked the riff enough to keep it. This is another song that was on Dr Wippit’s 1st Time Out, and was initially recorded on the old 8 track to cassette machine. I had set out to make the song as trippy as possible, and of course that became the songs downfall. I ran a twelve string acoustic through my pedal with flange on it, had a bass with flange on it, and then added some really trippy lead guitar over the whole thing. At this point I wasn’t sure what the song was about yet, and the cassette I recorded on has the song under the title Butterfly McQueen. I wrote some words about the life cycle as I believe it, coming here to learn lessons, and hopefully starting all over a little smarter next time. I dubbed it Meadow as a reference to the field where I came up with the hook. Like many of the songs on Dr Wippit’s 1st Time Out, I thought it was a great song, but for the most part it sounded like garbage. When I decided to remake the song for An Anthology of Sorts, I really, really wanted to keep the trippy lead guitar from the original, but that was about all I wanted to keep. I had used a preset from my RP12 that was called freak out or pshycho or something, and working the expression pedal to bring just a little of the effect at a time I found something I really really liked. So the problem is there’s no drums on this song, the tempo fluctuates, so it was nigh on to impossible to just throw down a new rhythm guitar. In the end I programmed some drums, and using time stretch I lined them up with the different sections of the song, and now I had drums to play along with. I lined up the original bass line with the drums and found with a clean acoustic for the rhythm guitar I had almost the sound I was looking for 14 years ago. As is the case with most of these songs I have been bouncing mix downs off of people for a year to get feed back on them. Danny Brown the drummer for my cover band Tastes Like Chicken was asking if I was going to add any drums. I told him about the tempo issues, etc. and he said, “Not even a hand drum?” Well that got me thinking. A hand drum would be good, so I gave him a copy of the mix down and said you’ve got about a week to come up with something. A week later I had him play hand drums into the handy dandy H4 while listening to the mix down on headphones, brought the recording home and mixed them in. So new vocals, acoustic (6 string this time) and hand drum added to the original trippy guitar and bass and I’ve got something like a finished product. All this reminescing had me go back and see if I could find anything on the band Butterfly McQueen. Apparently the guitar player was from the Freddy Jones band, and here’s the singer – http://www.stonegrooves.com/NancyStone/

Time it just keeps ticking away from insanity is grabbing me Pulling me flooring me one thousand gs are yanking me I’m thankful for the lesson but now it’s messing with my head I see these babies run the show they don’t know I had twice the skills twenty years ago and I still grow I stay positive with experience Damn I show resilience But here it is later in the game and the ones that make it Are just faking it Taking the spotlight from my life And what could they have to say? I don’t know how they make you feel it Not even good at stealing someone’s lie And I never stopped a day If it takes this long to make it Could it be I’m faking it right now It gets confusing cause I’m losing the game They’re getting beautifully rewarded for being seriously lame It’s a crime – I never made it to the right place at the right time Struggling juggling bills keeping it real speaking my mind I’m ready to close the sale but sure it’s too late It doesn’t make me any younger all this hunger and ache And I don’t know if I can dummy down enough for the minds Of what you’re buying The realest of us get left behind And what could they have to say? I don’t know how they make you feel it Not even good at stealing someone’s lie And I never stopped a day If it takes this long to make it Maybe I’m just faking it right now I don’t feel this It’s not real Three Four was one of many songs that started with drummer Ben Gold saying, "I have an idea for a song!" In this case he followed that up with his best impression of a heavy guitar riff and went, "Du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun Dun, Du-du-du-dun, Du-dun, Du-Dun, Du-dun, Du-dun Dun, Du-du-du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun Dun, Du-du-du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun Dun…." And over the course of the next few minutes I found the power chords that sounded to Ben like what he was hearing in his head. Once we had this opening riff down, the rest of the song was a collabaration as far as what the verse sounded like, what the bridge sounded like, and the general order of parts. In coming up with the words, I honestly can't remember if I had the first verse written already or not, but I do remember writing that verse in LAX airport after a few days of absorbing several albums from the Rhyme Sayers label. My brother had been pushing these artists my way from Minneapolis for a couple of years, but of course I didn't pay attention until my friends here in Chicago were listening, and I remember thinking this was the best available hip-hop at the time (02-03). So once I had this first verse written it was clear to me this song was a golden opportunity for me to excorcise my anger at the rap nu-metal crap that had been driving my crazy for a while. In particular bands like Linkin Park and P.O.D. which were all over the radio had such lame flows that I thought it was a crime that kids were eating this stuff up. I couldn't help but think the free forms we did on the bus in the mid eighties were better than this crap. And power chords with distortion and screaming or barking does NOT make you heavy. Or does it? So I figure we'll take this really heavy song and scream really loud and hard like those guys and there you have it. I double tracked the vocals, and I'll always regret not fixing the part at the end where one vocal says, "Could it be I'm fakin' it" while the other says, "Maybe I'm just fakin' it", but what're you gonna do? Like all four of the Kenilworth Project tracks on the Anthology, these were mixed down years ago, and redoing parts wasn't an option. I think the highlight of this recording is the guitar solo. When we recorded this song I'm pretty sure Jake was still a teenager, but his guitar always sounded great because he was focused on tone, and when it came to solos he focused on quality over quantity. This is something I unfortunately didn't pay attention to until I was in my 30s and I have to blame all the shit metal I listened to in the 80s and early 90s. So when Jake sat down to do this solo, he took his time, he put down several good takes, he listened to them several times and took the best parts of a couple of them, and had the engineer put them together into one amazing solo that to me sounds like it came right off a Ten Years After record, which is pretty impressive for someone who was born in the 80s.

It isn’t always easy to give it up It isn’t always easy to throw it away I know you want to throw your hands up But what about yesterday I can’t promise you anything but what I see from where I stand I tell you everything I know and that I’m reaching for you Now do you want to understand The mind tries to be innocent- nobody wants to take the blame But when you see that it’s just you in the way it’s the beginning of the pain Most of the time- I’ll bring you back belief What comes around if you can look into my eyes It’s coming back to you so you can open up your mind and Let go and surrender if you can let go Deal with the pain I’m gonna keep you afloat You can’t be anything you don’t want to feel How long before nothings real again Let go and surrender Let go deal with the pain I’m gonna keep you afloat You can’t be anything you don’t want to feel How long before nothings real There must be something you like In the place that you hide There must be something you don’t want to give away What makes you want to stay You can’t go anywhere to get to here You’ve got to be here right now The only way to stay is grab a hold of the day But your hands are full of memories You haven’t even been here before So why are you telling me that you can’t take it anymore I know it’s hard to believe that I’m not lying to you But I got nothing less to lose at least we got today so you can Let go and surrender if you can let go Deal with the pain I’m gonna keep you afloat You can’t be anything you don’t want to feel How long before nothings real again Let go and break down your defenses Let go deal with the pain I’m gonna keep you afloat You can’t be anything you don’t want to feel How long before nothings real again If there’s one song that’s going to make people say, “Damn Dr why did you put this one on the album”, this is the second one. This song was written for a woman, and was about the personal issues and experiences she had that were impeding our relationship. However they can just as easily be about anyone that uses their past as an excuse no to succeed. Listening to a playback of this song as I was working on the remix for An Anthology of Sorts I found it to be an appropriate message to myself. Which I suppose is a testament to the fact that I shouldn’t even be telling these stories, I should let folks get their own message. But I digress…. I wrote the music for this song while I was visiting my home town. The person I was visiting was at work, and I was actually using my car stereo as an amp for my electric guitar. Years earlier I had bought this little practice gadget that you could plug a guitar into, it had a tape player/recorder, and even came with a headset microphone. The headset microphone was long gone, but I could play my guitar through it, and I had the headphone jack running into a cassette adapter in my car stereo, and I was sitting in the hatchback area with guitar coming out the speakers on either side of me. It was here that I came up with the two different guitar parts for the verses. I initially recorded this for Dr Wippit’s 1st Time Out with the old 8 track to cassette machine. I know I wanted the power chord guitar that opens the song to sound like Motley Crue’s first album even though that album was already 15 years old. I’ll always have the Crue’s first album on my top ten/desert island discs list. If there were ever an album that sounds like pure cocaine, that’s it. As a matter of fact that opening riff is almost completely stolen from Come On And Dance. The rest of the song seemed to add up mathematically and it seems like I programmed and played everything right, but the version that’s on the first Dr Wippit album just sounds terrible. Fast forward fifteen more years, and I wanted to see if I could get this song to sound right. I dumped all the original instrumental tracks into my pc and figured I’d be able to clean them up and create separation I couldn’t get with the old school technology. An initial issue as that the old four track can only put out four tracks simultaneously, and I’d already learned that if you tried more than one pass, the timing wouldn’t be quite right. So if I wanted two guitars, bass, and drums, I had to give up on stereo drums. I did try to recreate stereo by copying the mono track and putting different eq on each one and then panning. Another one of the first things I tried was taking the harmonies I used in the last verse of the original version and putting them throughout the song. I decided they didn’t work everywhere, but it added to quite a few places. I put a significant amount of time into getting the guitars to sound better through eq and a lot of volume changes to make sure I could here what I wanted to hear for each part. In the end I’m pretty pleased with the final mix, it sounds like 90s glam rock meets Seattle with a touch of prog metal, what more could you ask for?

Swimming in circular motion Leaves dissipate in a trance Do I reach back do I grasp at the past Or can I just follow the dance Seems that I’ve waited so long this time And I’m feeling so close again And I’m baring my soul again Time is an absolute mirror In time you can’t help but see you Sometimes others eyes can be so much more wise Sometimes we just hide from the truth IBut I know who I am and I know what I’m after – this time Give me this moment I promise I won’t hurt your pride (please don’t wake up) Am I just dreaming again Take me this time to the pasture Take me one time to the field I’ve seen it so much even felt it I’ve touched it It’s got to be real But I know who I am and I know what I’m after – this time Give me this moment I promise I won’t hurt your pride Feels so close I feel strong again No don’t let me be wrong again I’m sure I was right the first time This is also one of the first songs written for what would become The Kenilworth Project. For more on the beginning of The Kenilworth Project see Mama Baby. This was one of the first four songs that we recorded, and here again it was just Ben and I in the studio initially, and again Patrick went in later and put a much better bass line down. Also on this song I came up with back up harmonies in the studio, and as I hadn’t rehearsed them at all they were a little shake to say the least. This is where I found out about that thing they call “Auto-Tune”, and it doesn’t have to sound like Cher or T-Pain when you use it. The song is called Third because….well because it’s in three. And it’s not as heavy as the song Heavy Three which we were also writing around the same time. Lyrically it is a theme I hit all the time, damn I sure have been trying to be a rock star a long time now, surely I have it coming. Musically it is also a variation on a common theme for me, and it all comes back to Alone Again by Dokken I’m sure. What’s different in this song is the little bridge thing in between verses one and two, which never shows up again. I don’t know where that came from, but without I think the song would be about half as good. Like the other Kenilworth Project songs all I have to work with is the mix down, so no correcting mistakes. And here at the end of the song I’m reaching for a note that I might be able to hit on a good day, but it’s pretty evident that day wasn’t one of them. I’m not sure why I thought it would sound better if I tried twice, and then put the two together, but I can’t say that helped any either. The rest of the song though is definitely one of my favorites and most personal, and other than that two seconds at the end I’m actually okay with the vocals. And the guitar solo’s not half bad either.

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Maybe it’s because you’re always there Makin’ me feel like I don’t have to care I know you can’t leave And I know I ain’t gonna change Is it the little things I do Got you actin’ strange? All I see are storm clouds in your eyes Tell me is it me or do I feel your temper rise? Are you tryin’ to tell me somethin’ I don’t want to know Suddenly it occurs to me I got no place to go I’m gonna cry like a child If you ever let me down I don’t know why it’s so hard To turn this thing around I’m gonna cry like a child If you ever let me down I don’t know why but somehow I thought You would always keep me around And I’m dreaming again What did I miss I’m finding wicked ways to pinch myself awake I see you screaming again Cause I forgot to read your lips I wasn’t listening again Don’t hold it against me Maybe I’m scared – I know I ain’t prepared I cannot face the consequence – knowin’ I could have spared the future I can’t believe you never really needed me I live and die inside your wounds A danger to both me and you You’ll go on even when I’m gone You’ll be fine and I can’t make it alone I should have seen it comin’ I should have changed my evil ways I never thought I would see the day, it just might be too late I’m gonna cry like a child If you ever let me down I don’t know why it’s so hard To turn this thing around I’m gonna cry like a child If you ever let me down I don’t know why but somehow I thought You would always keep me around Sometime around early ’07 I was working on a new song that started off as something like electronic music. I had started with the drum programming, and I worked the chord progression out while playing the wurlitzer through a wah-wah pedal, and I had something different than most of my other stuff. It never takes long though before I feel like I gotta put a guitar in there and inevitable it turns into some variation of rock. I had recently bought a small fender amp specifically for recording guitar with better tone than I could get out of my old Digitech RP-12, and it was sounding good on this track which at the time was called “Hmmm”. Being the left wing pinko that I am I stumbled across a contest for best save the planet type Earth day video, and I thought, okay let’s write a song about how we’re destroying our planet and make a video. I think I had three or four weeks before Earth day to get this thing done. I already had a mixdown called “Hmm Instrumental”, so it was just a matter of writing and recording the words. And of course making a video. At the time I didn’t have or know of a good way so suck video off the internet, so I actually spent hours googling for videos on pollution and environment, etc., and video taped my computer monitor playing the videos, and then arranging the video over the song. I did not win the contest. I’ve always been pretty happy with the video, but as is often the case, I’ve never been happy with the vocals. In preparing this song for An Anthology of Sorts I once again had just a complete instrumental mixdown to work with and record new vocals over. I really always wanted a female with a kick-ass R&B voice to sing this song, but I haven’t been able to get anyone interested yet. Hit me up if you are that female and like the song ;^)}. I’m satisfied with what I got done here for now. As I was listening to mixdowns with the new vocals I realized the last chorus sounded kind of thin and empty even though the drums are going crazy and there’s two guitar solos on top of everything else. I realized that somehow in the original mix I had no rhythm guitar for that last chorus, it drops out right after the second to last chorus. I thought well this is one of those songs I recorded on my old software so I can’t open the original project, but I should have that guitar part sitting in a folder somewhere. I scoured my back-up of the old pc, and found everything but what I needed. The drums, bass, wurlitzer, leads, old vocals, no rhythm guitar. I though I could try to recreate that same sound that I got in ’07, but instead I tried something else. I took just the instrumental bit from an earlier chorus that has the rhythm guitar in there, and layered with this last chorus with the volume pretty low, and it works for me. Below is the let’s stop f%^&ing up the planet video.

I know I never liked the feeling when I’m lying there alone at night lying awake and wondering am I right am I wrong All along a conversation going on in my head I never got a straight answer from me But when I think about it now it seems amazing cause a couple of lovely ladies My mama and my baby got me standing tall It’s not a problem at all Whatever I see there – they both always be there for me I don’t know where I’d be without these ladies in my life They keep me grounded I feel dumbfounded when I think about the love and the blessings they surround me with I don’t know where I’d be without these women in my life (don’t need to say it again) but I’m gonna my baby and my mama always standing in my corner for me If I could take a trip in time I wouldn’t make it cause I finally got to the place and now I love the situation I’m in I never thought that I’d have been so lucky and happy Know I’m soundin’ kinda sappy Some people get to laughing and that’s all right So well I’m sleeping at night And it’s all day feels like that I wanna say That I’m in love with a lady who’s in love with me I got my mama on the phone whenever I need her to be there for me I don’t know where I’d be without these ladies in my life They keep me grounded I feel dumbfounded when I think about the love and the blessings they surround me with I don’t know where I’d be without these women in my life (don’t need to say it again) but I’m gonna my baby and my mama always standing in my corner for me This is one of the first songs written for what would become The Kenilworth Project. The Kenilworth Project started with just Ben Gold on drums and me on guitar, we had a goal of starting a group that would be a little of everything, from ridiculously fast and heavy to slow and melodic. We were in a hurry to get things going, so we actually went into Gremlen Studios with four brand new songs within about 6 weeks of starting this new group, and Mama Baby was one of them. Ben played drums and I did everything else. The back up vocals and harmony came to me in the studio. Once I was able to hear the song with a bass as well as guitar I started to hear more layers that just needed to be there. At the same time Ben had booked our first show, and we needed to come up with a bass player quick, I was able to talk Patrick Cassin into giving it a shot even though his experience was with guitar. At the time Ben booked the show we didn’t have a name. When the manager of Uncle Snorky’s asked Ben for a name the first thing he thought of was the cold he was suffering from, and we were listed on the marquee as “All Hopped Up On Sudafed”. I sure wish we had taken a picture of that. It was Ben that had the idea to write a song for our moms, and I expanded the concept to include our wives, because I really don’t know where I’d be without Ms. Wippit. I had folk/hip hop in mind and the more we worked on the song the more it seemed like a true hit. Shortly after playing that show we brought Patrick into the studio and he put his own bass lines down on these four songs, and he did a stellar job. I hadn’t been happy with the original guitar solo, and rather than waste more studio time I recorded a few at home and brought in the one I wanted to use. I swear we ended up with the wrong one, but I’ve heard it so many times it sounds like the right one. While I was working on the solo at home it occurred to me that an acoustic guitar strumming a rhythm would really give it the folk/hip hop sound I was looking for, and I recorded that at home too. I don’t remember how long it was before we decided a “guest rapper” would really make this one a hit, but I know it was long enough that some people didn’t like it that way. Well we thought it was good. I added an extra four bars after the solo to give our friend Bobby the Dread a full eight bars to work with (copy and paste) and he worked on it in his own basement studio. If I dig around in enough old hard drives I can probably find an old version without Bobby, but me I prefer this version. And below you can see The Kenilworth Project (calling ourselves Cortechs at this point) playing the song on Mother’s day ’94 at the Double Door in Chicago with Jake freestyling the flow in the middle.

I never had the eyes to see into the present I never was the one to be here now I’m forever searching for the place where I am standing I never seem to set my feet aground But I’ll get there When I’m good and ready I’ll be there You’ll find me living for a future that won’t happen Reflecting on a past that’s never been One day I’ll finally find myself living in that very special moment And I hope that you’ll be there And I’m dreaming again What did I miss I’m finding wicked ways to pinch myself awake I see you screaming again Cause I forgot to read your lips I wasn’t listening again Don’t hold it against me A holy man once said just be yourself the answer lies within Do you know the way? How do I get there? Am I getting close? I’ve been trying to be everyone and everything that makes me want to stay And I’ll get there When I’m damn good and ready I’ll be there I keep trying to listen for the sound of silence All I here is a white noise coming from my brain It seems I just can’t sit still long enough to see what I’ve been holding onto And let go of the pain And I see it again that magic dream I once knew Could it be I’ve been my own worst enemy? Can I be it again that super hero I once knew? Back when everybody still believed in me I lost it and I just can’t feel it Try to drop it but I keep on holdin’ on Wide open and I can’t stop bleedin’ Try to drop it but I keep on holdin’ on I wrote this song sometime after The Kenilworth Project was over, and it was the first time I sat down to write with an acoustic in a decade. As such the song quickly became personal and introspective. There are a few songs I’ve written where the words just seem to come out with no effort and this is one of those. It’s as if the song had been waiting to be written. And after years of playing full throttle punk/metal/ska stuff it was probably overdue. I touch on my own perceived shortcomings – hearing loss, lack of focus, using the past as an excuse for not succeeding, all things that keep me from living in the moment – thus the title. It seems like there’s an unwritten rule about the fact that there’s supposed to be more than two parts to a song. Of course there’s the verse and the chorus, but it’s not a complete song without some kind of bridge or pre-chorus or something that uses a different progression/melody than the other two parts right? Well I thought I’d go ahead and call this one complete without that third part. At some point though I started doing this little two chord thing at the end that was a little different, and words came for that part right away to so I kept it. Once I got the instruments recorded on this one I began the endless process of trying to get an acceptable vocal. Eventually I got something I could live with, but even back in ’07 when I finished it, I knew I’d redo the vocals and saved an instrumental version just for that purpose. I proceeded to shoot and edit what should be widely recognized as the worst green screen video in history. I paid $6 for a green screen over the internet, hung it on a wall in my living room and shot myself in different outfits with the different instruments. I shot on a couple of different weekends so I could get a hair cut and varying amounts of facial hair. It never occurred to me to check and see how the green screen thing was working until I had collected all my footage. You can see the result below. I had a lot of fun though and it was certainly a learning experience. Fast forward to 2012 and I’m getting ready for An Anthology of Sorts and of course I want to redo the vocals. Back when I recorded the original I was using Sony’s (Sound Forge when I started using it) Acid software to record. I still have those files but I’m using Adobe Audition now, so if I wanted to do anything with the instrumental mix it would mean hours of pouring the guitar and bass takes and trying to line them up again, or buying a fresh copy of Acid to remix this song. There are a couple of things I would have liked to tweak, but not that much. So new vocals over the instruments from ’07 and I’m still not 100% happy with the vocals, but I think it’s ready for prime time.

It’s another day that I feel like I want to quit Another psychopathic look at how rough the game can get It’s easy to see how I’ve been telling myself a lie Got so damn sure I’ll get it all before I die again But I redeem myself in the end I know that I’m changing I know that I’ve lost Those pieces of those pages Where I gave up and walked Got ripped away and I know that it’s gone Something else I must do over Before I move on I got to stay And I carry it all I’m telling myself something every time that I fall I get to stay And I deal myself the same hand The game isn’t changing The picture’s the same The only thing that’s different is I try not to get in the way And it takes so long To know I’m doing nothing when I’m building up walls I get locked away Inside of it all I’m telling myself something every time that I fall I see people by my side along the way I can’t see no logic to the ones that slip away Some hidden force just seems to take away their faith They don’t know… they drop out of the game But I redeem myself in the end I know that I’m changing I know that I’ve lost Those pieces of those pages Where I gave up and walked Got ripped away and I know that it’s gone Something else I must do over Before I move on I got to stay And I carry it all I’m telling myself something every time that I fall I get to stay And I deal myself the same hand The game isn’t changing The picture’s the same The only thing that’s different is I try not to get in the way And it takes so long To see I’m doing nothing when I’m building up walls I get locked away Inside of it all I’m telling myself something every time that I fall I see a head trip I want to get away All that’s left in the way If I could get out of the way Then this is the last time I’ll stay It’s already happened-I’ve already seen how it ends I’ve already looked from the other side- and I see… my friends If there’s one song on the Anthology of Sorts that I think will make people ask, “Damn Dr, what did you put that one on there for?”, this is the first one. But it’s important to me, particularly the words. And I do think the music is good, but probably somebody else could do it better. Help yourself. It’s one of my many songs that touches on my belief in reincarnation, and for me it really does sum up the cycle I believe we go through over and over until we get it right. The music started out as a Nova Brain song. It never really got as far as words with them, but I liked the chord progression, the back up “Heeey-ay-ay”s, and the speed up part at the end. So I just needed to come up with the verse part which I did. When I recorded this for Dr Wippit’s 1st Time Out, I went ahead and had Joe and Andy from Nova Brain play their guitar and bass parts, and I did everything else. In the end I could not get over the fact that Joe’s guitar sounded out of tune. And I was never really happy with the vocals. I called the song “Opener” because I was using it to open the album (after some Wippit Theme of course), and it’s not an Opener anymore but it is the name of the song so there you have it. On re-recording this for Anthology of sorts I decided to keep the bass and drums, and do everything else over. The bass is a little distorted so I had to keep it lower in the mix than I’d like, but I sure wouldn’t do a better job Andy, it’s the perfect bass line. I’m okay with the vocals now but not excited about them. I did steal Joe’s descending guitar lead for the transition to the fast part, other than that I played pretty much the same guitar as before through better gear. In the end, it’s really up to me whether or not it’s any good, eh?

I get stuck in never letting it go Feels like I’m wasting time I see the face of my position Standing still is getting behind How do I get to the place Where I don’t need this… How did I get to this place I can beat this…. Foot’s in a pocket of hope And I keep on pushing along My foot’s in a pocket of hope I keep on rolling down the road My foot’s in a pocket of hope I never know how far it goes but My foot’s in a pocket of hope And I’m never gonna give it up cause I know When I get beat I wonder why I get beat all by myself I see the culprit coming from the inside I ain’t well I see the hopelessness I’ve been surviving for so long It’s time to live All the things I waited for Never gonna give it up I’ve been giving it all along And I’m comin’ home Foot’s in a pocket of hope And I keep on pushing along My foot’s in a pocket of hope I keep on rolling down the road My foot’s in a pocket of hope I never know how far it goes but My foot’s in a pocket of hope And I’m never gonna give it up cause I know FFeels like your walkin Just markin time Feel like you been workin so hard And you look back At all of this time Looks like you haven’t gone up down left right Forward Back Everything looks the same How do I know How do I know? Cause I believe And I can look And I can see The change So I still got my feet on the ground One night in 96 or 97 I set out to write a Janet Jackson/Paula Abdul song. At the time my friend Brian had the old 8 track analog to cassette set up in his kitchen, and he sat a few feet away in the living room watching tv, while I put the headphones on and got to work. As was often the case in those days the song started with making some beats on the Alesis drum machine. I made up the three different beats, and arranged them into a song structure, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-breakdown-chorus out. Next I put down a bass line, and that’s where I developed the chord progression. Next I put down the keys, trying to throw in some syncopated rhythms through out the verses, rockin organ on the hook, and bluesy piano during the breakdown. Finally the wah-wah guitar, cause it had to be funky. I had a complete song, and I don’t know that it sounded like Janet or Paula, but I was pretty happy with the results, and figured I’d save the words for another day. The one phrase that I kept hearing in my head as I listened to the hook for this song was, “Foot’s in a pocket of hope”. I wrote some lyrics about getting out of being stuck and moving toward success, and just not giving up. I figured I had a bonafide hit on my hands. The one thing I wanted to record better from that first night was the bluesy piano. I tried to bring in a ringer, but I ended up redoing myself, and that’s what ended up on Dr Wippit’s 1st time out. I had a buddy mixing it down, and I noticed he pulled all the keys I had put down in the verses. “Oh that stuff just sounded like a bunch of fart noises.” And he was right. The back up vocals are a mix of me, me with effects, and a female. For the reboot you hear above, the Anthology of Sorts version, I kept the drums, bass and guitar from that first night. I now had access to a semi-professional keyboardist who gave me a couple of organ sounds to choose from for the verses and choruses, as well as a regular piano and Rhodes piano to choose from for the breakdown. The results are outstanding. I redid the vocals as well, including the backups in falsetto, and I have to say this sounds like the song I was trying to write all those years ago in Brian’s kitchen.

If it’s possible to wait too long to try I think I did Suddenly I’m feeling all my weight Didn’t hear the ticking of the clock somehow I missed it Time just slipped away and now I wonder where it went Crumbling towers that Were never more than a fantasy Seem to have brought me to my knees If I could make it look like an accident It’s easier on everyone involved This time I’m in too deep to run If there’s a way to get too old I think I’m there I don’t feel it but I read it in the lines I see myself reflected in the youth Resurrected with no proof Even I can’t believe the lies Crumbling towers that Were never more than a fantasy Seem to have brought me to my knees If I could make it look like an accident It’s easier on everyone involved This time I’m in too deep to run I read somewhere years ago that Keith Richards said he doesn’t write songs, they are just floating around in the air and he catches them or something like that. This song is one of those. I was playing guitar with my step-son Sean playing the drums, and out of nowhere he broke into this really fast straight rock drum beat. I started playing the guitar riff that makes up the opening and choruses of this song, and it was as if the riff was always there. Had to finish the song. It became apparent to me early on that this song was coming from REM’s Reckoning era, and I embraced it. I have to give years of playing with Ben Gold on the drums credit for my drum programming on this one (as well as If You Could Read My Mind). While I have certainly done my time playing drums, and was a percussion major for a couple of years, Ben’s playing was as a rule about twice as fast as the rest of us were even thinking. So now when I’m programming something this fast I can already hear all the kicks and fills in my head because I got used to hearing them out loud. Once I had a verse-chorus structure I had to complete the song by adding the third part, which in REM eighties songs is two new chords back and forth and some kind of ohs or ahs or Michael going I-Hi-I or something. I decided that ohs were better than ahs or I-Hi-I’s. I threw in a stab at this “Talk Box” effect that I hadn’t tried yet on my Zoom Twin Tube G9.2tt. I’m sure I wrote the first line first, and it quickly became one of my many songs about realizing I’m old, especially for a wanna be rockstar. Aside from feeling old there’s the realization that, unlike other times in my life where I would just disappear when things got tough and start over, that just isn’t an option anymore.

You snuck up from my past I swore to you this time that It was gonna last It’s easier to see How far apart we had to get…. together It started all over for me Looks like this love will never be I kiss the morning when I wake up and I see the light It all makes sense when I realize that I was right I wait til you're old enough that I could never make you cry Old enough that you could rip me up inside I never want to see you again Cause the truth can’t hurt me bad enough To believe it had to end I don’t believe the lies you told yourself to set you free That’s why no one can ever get that close to me It’s a picture perfect world A door that once lie open becomes a scar I needed The knife comes back to me I let you see the only side of me that bleeds I’d keep it going I know you're mistaken in my mind If only I had something to live for besides my pride I’ll take it as long as it takes to make you depend on me It’s gonna take your pain to set me free I never want to see you again Cause the truth can’t hurt me bad enough To believe it had to end I don’t believe the lies you told yourself to set you free That’s why no one can ever get that close to me I don’t ever wanna heal because I hold on to the pain I feel And if everybody holds a knife how could I ever let another soul inside I kiss the morning when I wake up and I see the light It all makes sense when I realize that I was right I'm keeping an empty space where you were living inside of me It's gonna take your pain to set me free I can’t wait to see you break your promises again Because the only thing that’s real to me is that this pain will never end I don’t believe the lies you told yourself to set you free That’s why no one can ever get that close to me I’m pushin’ along…makin’ it strong…movin' along…holding on Never again is my first true heartbreak ballad. The first one that comes from a very real, deep, adult heartbreak. The kind that leaves you messed up for weeks and scarred for life. I remember my drinking partner/shoulder at the time telling me I should be grateful that no one would ever get that deep inside again, Celebrate the scar tissue. Somewhere there’s a cassette of a version I did with a tiny little keyboard and a four track. I played the keys along with the little drum beat from the keyboard to one track, leaving me two for vocals and another for guitar. I didn’t have these words written yet, but I recorded a couple of vocal tracks of just improvised falsetto in an effort to get a melody written that I could write words to. Somewhere else there’s another cassette that has a mix down of my first 8 track version, and I really wish I could find that (or better yet the actual 8 track tape). When I recorded that I was in the band Nova Brain, and we had a practice spot downtown where we kept the old 8 tracks to cassette machine. I had the song fully fleshed out with words, and I went down there by myself to record the song. I recorded the drums first (real drums!), then keyboard, guitar, and vocals. In my mind the vocals were to be a two part harmony like Jerry Butler’s “He Will Break Your Heart”. The mixdown of this song was perfect except a minor hiccup in the drums. This being an analog cassette, that sort of thing wasn’t easy to fix like it is these days so I knew I’d have to re-record it eventually. As I was compiling songs for “Dr Wippit’s First Time Out” in the late nineties this was one of the first songs I got to work on. I put down essentially the same drum beat as the previous eight track version, this time with a drum machine. I had remembered that my brother told me he wished there was more lead guitar in the last version, there was just the one lead bit that’s in between the first two verses. So on this new version, in true Dr Wippit fashion, I completely slaughtered the song with annoying leads almost everywhere. When I started working on the redo of this song for An Anthology of Sorts, I decided to keep the drum machine and keys from the nineties, and re-record the vocals and guitars. There was never any bass in any of the versions, I always thought the keys had that covered. I knew I needed to go easier on the lead guitars this time. I’ve kept that bit between the first and second verses the same for the third version now, this time I doubled it. You can hardly tell it’s two guitars because I’ve done it so many times now. I wish it could sound as good as it did the first time I played it, but that was a moment in time, and you can’t go back. I tried a few different things with the next lead and it worked out best to use two of them for a few seconds and then just one. I was playing a mix down for one of my drummer friends and he said the snare on the pre-chorus was bugging the crap out of him, and as soon he said that I heard it too. So I used my current drum machine software (Beat Craft) to create a new pre-chorus part and inserted it between the old drum machine parts. I kept the annoying snare in for the very end. Of course the other thing that I didn’t have access to back in the nineties was that auto-tune all the kids are using these days, and if there’s one song here (and one singer) that cries out for some of that auto-tune this is the one.

She don’t read too many books And she don’t wear too many clothes She lives on Strawberry Street I see her drinking at the Avenue B She’s gettin’ freaky with the Wizard of Oz Sippin’ and trippin’ on Alice’s tea She sleeps in a velvety bag Waitin’ for the day when she don’t have to wake up no more It was around about seven o clock this girl had made me stop and it was getting late This one she makes me wait all the time – but that’s all right – I don’t mind you gotta set ‘em free and if they come back to you well then I guess it was meant to be It was about that time that we walked into the party everybody could see this girl had already started From the look in her eye from the wave of her hair everybody starts to stare – like she’s really gonna care Met her at the corner down at State and Main And she took my heart away I said maybe I’m to blame But she went up to the corner and tried to get a hit I can’t be there with this ….. And she don’t read too many books And she don’t wear too many clothes She lives on Strawberry Street I see her drinking at the Avenue B She’s gettin’ freaky with the Wizard of Oz Sippin’ and trippin’ on Alice’s tea She sleeps in a velvety bag Waitin’ for the day when she don’t have to wake up no more I said hold up hold up right there cause she was walkin’ up to me And I had this other girl sittin’ on my lap you see – it was a catastrophe And I wasn’t sure what to do but she just laughed at me Cause I was lookin’ a fool She’s takin’ it easy watchin’ me takin’ rough She’s gonna tease my but then I’m callin’ her bluff Because I know that girl can’t stand to leave alone She never takes me all the way, but she always takes me home I interrupt just to get a cup of tea By the end of the night that mouth was around me I tried to pull it from her mouth but it wouldn’t come out So I dropped that girl when I was allowed And she don’t read too many books And she don’t wear too many clothes She lives on Strawberry Street I see her drinking at the Avenue B She’s gettin’ freaky with the Wizard of Oz Sippin’ and trippin’ on Alice’s tea She sleeps in a velvety bag Waitin’ for the day when she don’t have to wake up no more She sleeps in her room alone – picking up the pieces of her broken soul She puts them in a paper bag – cause she knows it’s time she’s got to let it all go As she’s watching the flames rise can you not see the tears that fill her eyes? Not because she’s gonna die but because she don’t know why everybody has to lie and they won’t stop takin’ and breakin’ and takin’ and breakin’ and takin’ and breakin’ and takin’ and breakin’ and it down And she don’t read too many books And she don’t wear too many clothes She lives on Strawberry Street I see her drinking at the Avenue B She’s gettin’ freaky with the Wizard of Oz Sippin’ and trippin’ on Alice’s tea She sleeps in a velvety bag Waitin’ for the day when she don’t have to wake up no more If you’ve ever been in a band with drummer Ben Gold (and I’ve been in a couple) then you know that as often as not, an original song starts off with Ben describing an idea in his head of a new song, and the rest of the band works with him to turn that idea into reality. This was one of those songs. Ben had an idea that was something like a fast rap part over this drum beat which would then turn into a half time ska beat and then we’d rock out this chorus. He set to playing the drums, and we came up with a simple four chord progression and we had a structure pretty quick. I know this was right about the time Jake joined the band, I honestly can’t say for sure if we started working on it before he joined or not. I know the first words that got written were the hook, and that Pat and I quite literally took turns making up lines, which leads me to believe we might have started it without Jake, but we hadn’t got far. I’m not sure why it became a song about a girl, but somehow Pat and I seemed to have the same girl in mind right away. Not a particular person, but a personality type, a tragic one at that. She’s a beautiful disaster, for whatever reason she doesn’t like herself enough to take care of herself. She does heroin, or she drinks to much, whatever it takes to keep her from success, but she’s still having a good time and seems to be happy. I remember Pat came up with the line, “She sleeps in a velvety body bag” and I couldn’t make it all fit so it became “velvety bag”. Things like that are the real reason for this blog. The song started off named Million Dollar Girl, and the noise bringing the song in is a recording of Ms Wippit saying, “She’s a Million Dollar Girl” with a crapload of effects on it. You’re just hearing the syllables “Millio…” over and over. So we had a hook and a song structure and now we needed some verses. I decided to be the guy who’s hopelessly in love with this girl, but I never get anywhere because these girls need to have at least one guy who’s just a friend, the one guy who would take care of her and treat her the best, gets kept and arms length. And so Jake became one of the “other” guys, and now we’ve got a complete song. I recently stumbled across an old basement recording of the song that was made at the same time as “Wake and Bake” and was part of a three song cd we passed around for a minute. On this version I clearly had absolutely no idea what my second verse was, but I think I like the solo better. This older version also has Pat going to town on the back up vocals. By the time we re-recorded this at Gremlen Studio Pat didn’t want to sing that bit on the chorus anymore, so Jake sang it and Pat did some subtle, more like talking vocals, and doused it in distortion. I think it’s awesome because it blends right into the guitars, if you listen you can hear him saying, “She’ll walk away with your heart today…..”. Since this was something like a hit for us, (it got some airplay on Ashland University’s station in Ohio when we were there supporting Scorefor) I decided to take all the live footage I have of us playing the song, and make a video with the studio recording. Shows were from ’04-’07.

I don’t know how long ago it occurred to my that Gordon Lightfoot’s cheesy love ballad would make a great fast punk/pop song, but it’s been at least 15 years. I know I thought about it when I was in the band Stalemate, we were rocking up songs like Jack and Diane, Stuck In the Middle With You and Like a Rolling Stone. Even though it’s a four chord cheesy pop song, it’s a long one with a couple of changes that feel a little unnatural if you haven’t heard the song a bejillion times, so I don’t think I ever brought it up. Once it occurred to me I could never hear, “I never thought I could act this way and I have to say that I just don’t get it..” without thinking this really needs to be fast and he really needs to be yelling. I can’t tell you exactly what finally made me decide to get it done, but once I started it was one of those things that just needed to get finished. I programmed the drums, recorded the guitar and when I went to put the bass down there was something wrong with the electronics in my bass (we’d had a flood and it took on a little water), so I recorded a bass line with the guitar and dropped it an octave with the studio software. Sounded good enough to put some vocals down so I went ahead and in one day I was done. I played it for family and friends and it sounded pretty good. Heck people make videos of covers all the time, I think I’ll make a video. The video was also a one day affair, at least as far as getting the footage recorded. How could I not start with a guy trying to play it the original way and…something’s just not right. I went through two costumes each for guitar, bass and vocals. I didn’t have anything like a drumset left in the house since the flood, how do I do the drum guy? Got a Bodhran… So in truth this is the moment that leads to the release of this Anthology. I was already using Reverb Nation to get my songs up on Facebook, and I had seen something about them having a way to get a song on iTunes. Can I sell Gordon Lightfoot’s song? How does that work. Some internet searching turned up a publisher that owns the rights to the song and I hooked it up. That’s right Gordon gets a few cents whenever somebody buys my version. Then I figured out it cost the same to release an “album” as a “song”. I need to get an album together. I started the process of gathering songs and making them sound as professional as I could. I even re-recorded the bass for this cut with an actual bass guitar. Can you tell the difference?