Just Woke Up (Mountain Dulcimer Bleed) and More Journal Excerpts

This came from fooling around with multi-tracked mountain dulcimer and super-processed trombone. Don't not try this at home. In fact only try this at home. Somewhere along the way I also got a bass amp and that helped.




2014.09.24

I took 71 to work yesterday, it was super fast and I did not miss traffic on 39th, at all.  I'm farther away but it is about the same commute time: 20 minutes.  I get a nice view of downtown going 71 to 670 to 35, too.  I took a longish walk on campus last night and it is beautiful over there, what a great place to run and walk the dog.  I had a weird feeling of being at home there and wanted to look into continuing education classes just from being in that environment.

2014.9.27
I haven't bought a record in some time and this is nagging at me, like I haven't visited an elderly relative in the hospital.  I am looking forward to a good browse somewhere.  I would like to get rid of a bunch of stuff.  When I look at the pile of gear I moved and office things, I see a bunch of beatdown junk.  I mean, if you are working or active musician, your shit looks a pile of beatdown junk, so that's not THAT big of a deal.

2014.9.29
I really want a mocha master coffee maker because I think the ones at work make really good coffee and I am tired of the coffee ritual in the morning, I'd rather have that extra twenty minutes to write.  I wonder if it is actually possible that a machine could make good coffee at home.  I would like that.

2014.9.30

I had a scary dream last night about a diabolical character who was a police detective.  I met with him on a case, in a junior colleague kind of way.  He was an intimidating European, maybe Scottish, very intelligent and intense, tall and kind of lanky and handsome.  Our meeting was over dinner and I remember feeling like a nuisance or an irritation, and I remember something about a soggy sponge or brillo pad used to clean up a spill or something on the table.
    It turned out later that this detective had murdered many people and perfected a way of slowly disposing the bodies that involved chemicals and storage and off-gassing in neutral way.  I'm not sure who discovered this, but it was another older colleague, and I was still somewhat to the side of it, yet had shared a meal with the criminal and felt in some way that my intuition was moving me in the right direction, I just wasn't aware of it.
     It's weird what dreams can signify--weird in the ancient sense of the word.  I've always tried to intuit crime-related dreams as the energy of coming up against personal rules or structures.  I.E. if you feel criminal energy in your dreams or whatever, you might be up against breaking your own rules, represented by the rule of law or morality in your dreams.

2014.10.01

Well, that was the best baseball game I have ever seen while rooting for The Royals and having it come out in our favor.  I mean, it was some kind of crazy miracle game, with this ridiculous inevitability that came after getting down four runs.  I watched it over at Scot's house with the neighborhood dudes, Joe, Dan, Dave, Frank, and Gabe, it was really a grand time.  We set off fireworks at midnight.  It was crazy.  The Royals aren't just a wildcard playoff team, they are officially an American League division series playoff team.

BASEMENT/GARAGE PUTTERING SOUNDSYSTEM DELUXE

SHOW THIS WEEK

STRAIGHT OUTTA MIDTOWN BASEMENT TAPE: "SNOWBIRD"

 snow bird backlit by a brick tower broken window eyes and mouth neither flying north nor south sirens police and fire and EMT it could easily be you or me but it does not move the snowbird courtyard secreted away in the city a gal on a staircase smoking counting up her old lays where you gonna go when you are old and your thoughts don’t link and you do not have control over nothing nothing comes of nothing at least be a questionable ruffian or a saint with a bedpan shuffling where you gonna go when you really go into the breath of a million other souls I suppose it would be fine to be a light left on in the basement gloom so the kids aren’t scared at night and why do we think on this when the snow is glowing bright on a gray bird drunk on a mash of berries fermenting in an alley and maybe that’s how your mind goes flitter flutter flitter and the wind is blowing litter where you gonna go when you really go maybe where the muscle joins the bone or inside an ancient beast that swims down deep alone or the drip drip on the pavement of a melting ice cream cone (c) daniel sherman jones bmi 

Writing songs is STILL fun...go Royals.

NEW BATCH OF "MY NAME IS JOHN SMITH" E.P.'S

This weekend I printed a new batch of My Name Is John Smith E.P.'s in some new colors.   If you'd like a signed edition and a copy of The Golden Motors cd for $20, message me.  (These also come with a download of the e.p. that includes Dan Jones and The Squids Live '09 and Peter Wilde's Super Taco anthology.)  Limited edition, clear vinyl, hand-screened by yours truly.  Otherwise, it's available at all the usual digital outlets and there are copies at Amazon and CD Baby too.
     Phew! I went to bed at 8:30 last night after all those prints.  Squeegee dreams and solvent visions.

STROLLING THE GROVE

Yesterday we went up to Cottage Grove to the wrestling tournament at the high school and then walked around downtown Grove.  We’d been wanting to try the Fleur De Lis, a bona fide French bakery, rumored to be owned and operated by actual French people not associated with the University.  The Napoleon pictured here indicated that rumors may be true.  It was really good.  The turkey sandwich on Dave’s Killer Bread was more of a cultural crossover. 

On Facebook, one friend made fun of how long it would take to tour downtown Cottage Grove (“what did you do with the rest of the hour?”).  But we goofed around in antique shops for quite a while and if we had stayed any longer I would have tried Big Stuff BBQ.  They were smoking meat in the parking lot next to their place.  It hit my Kansas City BBQ neurons hard.  There were also places to stop and have a high-end (artisanal hand-crafted) beer along with places to have a Budweiser and some chicken strips.

We also happened upon the old National Guard Building, which looks like a potential McMennamin’s Hotel waiting to happen.  Or it would be if Cottage Grove were closer to a metropolitan area.  You can tell lots of TLC has been put into the old downtown, and it is a fun place to stroll around.  The Ax and Fiddle is there on the main drag, too--a fine venue.  Dead Moon and Danny Barnes have played there, what else is there to say? 

People can make all the wisecracks they want about how small it is, but The Cottage Grove downtown may be more comfortable than Eugene’s.  Eugene is at war with itself in bizarre ways that only become clear when you take a break from it.  I’ve even heard Eugene described as “twenty square miles surrounded by reality.” This hypothesis really grabbed me: people moved here from the Bay Area in the very early 70’s when speed was introduced to the LSD people were taking.  Everyone freaked out and moved here to stay home and tend their kombucha and be at odds with change.  (I moved here because I tasted a fresh raspberry in July and was impressed that The Kiva sold Wright Morris novels along with the organic kale, not knowing it is wet and cold for nine months of the year.)
 
I didn’t intend to compare the two downtowns and make totally subjective wisecracks, but somehow that happened. Anyway, both downtowns are fun. And in Cottage Grove you won’t get a parking ticket, because parking is FREE.

Speaking of free parking, the $5 sale goes on at my cdbaby store.  Let's refresh some inventory in 2013.

GROCERIES OR RECORDS?

     There comes a time in any music fan's life when he or she has to look at the bank account and ask: Groceries or Records?  This t-shirt, designed by Eugene artist/singer-songwriter/man-about-town Dave Snider, will help you refine your choice.  It's available at danjonesmusic.com as part of a t-shirt/cd bundle, and available on my bandcamp.com merch page w/ a free download of The Golden Motors album.

$5 DAN JONES/SQUIDS/GOLDEN MOTORS CD SALE

All in-print Dan Jones/Squids/Golden Motors CD titles are on sale for $5 at CD Baby. Vinyl is $7. Clearing the decks for a fine 2013 with gratitude for a great 2012.

Vacation Music

It's our last half day of vacation, back in Kansas City after the train ride back from Jefferson City last night, and a quick outing to Westport Cafe, our new favorite place.  We got to see the replay of the Royals 1-0 ten-inning win, and Hosmer's scrappy bloop single that won it.  It's going to be pretty hot today, in the low 90's, and I'm sitting out on Steve and Cheryl's deck with a pile of CD's to rip.  My official trip souvenir is the new Redd Kross record, picked up at Vinyl Renaissance on 39th.  But typically our trips to KC involve Steve turning me on to new stuff, in his car.

We drove around last week listening to the new Swans double, and that really blew me away.  The downtown NY art punk feel is elegantly embedded in music that has something in common with Balinese Gamelan, Steve Reich percussion pieces, and very remote, smoky, country and western.  I don't think there's a genre for it--just musicians totally in control of what they are doing in a unique do-not-change-one-syllable-or-cymbal-hit-of-this way.  Everything corny or standard stripped away and apparently built out of pure chi. (Do bands like this eat veggie burritos and drink Pepsi while they are in the studio?) Another record that hits me the same way is Richard Hawley's Truelove's Gutter, even though it is an unabashed popular music record.

The other record we discovered (in my brother's rig) was Mark Twain: Words and Music, a narrative song cycle with Clint Eastwood, Garrison Keillor, and Jimmy Buffet providing the story between folk, country and bluegrass songs.  It was really cool, and it is a benefit for Twain's boyhood home and museum.  The sad parts had us crying while we drove to visit my folks in Columbia.  I'm ready to revisit Twain's writing in a big way.

So, after a walk down to a cafe on The Plaza for coffee and a walk back Ward Parkway in the glorious sun and heat, I am unwilling to admit this vacation is almost over.  Kansas City is pretty well hopping in new ways (restaurants, especially) and it is hard to leave.  The only thing that is going to make me feel better is to rip all six disks of The Stooges Heavy Liquid box set and envision myself running around Margaret Bailes Johnson track in Eugene, sweating out a full week of pork: pork sausage, pulled pork, baby back ribs, crispy pancetta.  Bacon Fest is coming up and Dave Snider had better get himself an Amtrak ticket.  This may be the city of his dreams.