San Francisco is a Muttering Bum
Volume Ten begins today!
Listen to the first song on Volume Ten of "From the Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T Schindler” in the player below:
Watch the video announcing the new album’s release in the player below:
Below is a transcript of the video if you prefer to read and not hear someone talking like a singing cowboy:
Hey Everybody! Singing Cowboy Faux Jean
It is September 24, 2024—it is a Tuesday. I am releasing today, Volume 10 of "From the Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T Schindler.”
That’s right, we’ve done 10 of these things so far!
And they’re gonna keep going. There’s a lotta song ideas, lotta mixed up files that I have on my old computer, old cassettes, older songs, newer songs, all kinds of stuff, voice memos.
“From the Mixed Up Files”— that’s why I release these songs and just kinda like, rather than spending $1000 to press vinyl or CDs, I’m just doing it on Bandcamp and I write about it on Substack. Anyway, Volume 10 starts today, you can see the cover of this album has a picture of me aged three as a singing cowboy. You can tell it goes a ways back because there’s one of those old-timey telephones in the picture. That’s what we had in the kitchen at 701 Woodland Avenue Duluth, Minnesota, when I was a kid.
That was a long time ago, but now it is 2024 and this song today you know I gotta say—one of the hardest times of my life was when I moved to California. In 2020, the pandemic had just started. I had kind of a cushy job back in Wisconsin. I worked in a recording studio and my job was mainly somebody would come in and say, hey we want this video about postpartum depression and we want it in Arabic and we want it in Vietnamese and we want it in Spanish or whatever for the healthcare system. So I would have all these people come in and do the voiceovers and I worked in that recording studio, it was a nine to five I punched out, I had my lunch, it was a normal job.
My wife got a job in California in 2020, and I put my notice in at that job said I’m gonna move to California. As a result, I did not get unemployment like everybody—all my friends who stayed in the restaurant business all suddenly started getting $1000 a week just dumped into their accounts, I got to California and there were no jobs.
But I needed to make some money because things were tight.
Things are a little more expensive in California if you know that Woody Guthrie song “Do Re Mi,” it says: "California as a garden of Eden, a Paradise to live in or to see, Believe it or not you won’t find it so hot if you ain’t got that do re mi.” Well I’ll tell you, I tell people who are thinking about moving to California, bring lots of money and once you get here, look both ways. ‘Cause there are a lot of people driving really fast and they got places to be they’re texting. They don’t know what’s going on.
OK, that’s my advice on California— so I got to California, but I got a job, I was a grocery store hero, that’s with the mayor of the town I live in called us. We were “grocery store heroes,” and we wore masks and I also worked in an Amazon warehouse at night, so sometimes I would ride my bicycle 5 miles, I’d get there put on a snowmobile suit going into the deep freezer so everybody could have their Stauffers delivered to their house, now times like those I kind of missed that recording studio job.
And then in the grocery store—oof! boy I tell you, there were a lot of people didn’t like wearing masks and stuff. I remember January 6 the big day where they stormed the capital, one of my coworkers was kind of an Incel, I guess you’d say, he was like “They’re stormin’ the capital well they got through. They got to Pelosi’s office. This is gonna happen. We’re gonna take over the country” and another guy that worked there who was a very religious man, he said “Well Matty, Faux Jean actually he said, Faux Jean, you know as long as Trump is president, the apocalypse can’t happen. That’s what my priest told me at church the other day so.” That’s the kind of stuff I was dealing with and I just it was a hard time.
But it kind of brought me back to this song… I wrote this poem in 1992, January 31. The lyric is “Winter’s so long, but so is your life if you’re gonna run down south to hide from winter where are you gonna hide from your life?” I was in Arizona when I wrote that it was January, so I was like wow I can’t believe I can just walk around with a T-shirt on, this is great. So the song, I started a band called Steel Shank and we kind of worked that poem up into a song and it says “winter’s so long, but so is your life. If you run down south to hide from winter…”
But now there’s a lyric in there says “You don’t know shit from Shinola, so you pack all your bags for California, and San Francisco is a muttering bum1, The bubble done burst waiting for the big one.”
Now, “You don’t know shit from Shinola, so you pack all your bags for California.”
Now here I am living in California now and that lyric kind of spoke to me. Steel Shank, we never recorded that song. So just a couple days ago I was like you know what, I kinda like that one, it’s got a good— my son, I played on my guitar. My son said “You know, there’s something to that song dad, you should try to track it, kinda bring that one back.” So I recorded it. That’s gonna be the first song on "From the Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T. Schindler, volume 10,” available starting today.
Each week I will add a new recording. I’m gonna try to make these ones a little better sounding. Not that I ever tried making them sound bad. But this is the 10th one so it’s kind of special and I think maybe a maybe I should just try a little harder, and I’m gonna try a little harder to market myself to try to sell these ideas, because I don’t know shit from Shinola, I’ll tell you that much, and I moved to California and here I am.
Last night, kind of on a related note I woke up at two in the morning, at 2:19. I was like oh boy, I’m gonna have trouble getting back to sleep, so I put on an audiobook, it’s called “How to do Nothing,” by this woman named Jennie Odell. And she was talking about San Francisco and she said this place needs to be talked to, Or something like that look at the 12 minute mark and I was like San Francisco?? She’s talking about San Francisco needs to be talked about and I got this —this is the song that’s got to start the album. This is the first song of Volume 10 "From the Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T. Schindler”—each week we’re gonna be adding a song, through the season, ends with the Solstice.
I got a kid home sick today, so I’m not gonna talk much longer, and that’s why I’m kind of speaking and hush tones, ‘cause I don’t wanna wake her up, she stayed home sick. So I’m gonna sign off.
I’m gonna say thank you for listening.
Thank you for paying attention.
Your attention is so valuable.
It really is and I’m grateful to you for taking part of this artistic project where I share these ideas of art that I’ve created, and I’m grateful to you for being here.
Over and out have a good day. Ciao!
OX&C,
Faux Jean
Here are the lyrics to the song:
Winter's so long
But so is your life
If you run down south to hide from Winter
Where you going to hide from your own life
In New York City
New York City
And New York they say she just might...
She's gonna float away
Watch her float away
She gonna float
Treading water
Watch her float float float float float float float
You don't know shit from Shinola
Pack all your bags for California
And San Francisco is a muttering bum
Bubble done burst
Waiting for the big one
In San Francisco
San Francisco
San Fran they say she just might...
She's gonna float away
Watch her float away
Hang a left at the garbage patch
Keep an eye out for Bikini Atoll
And San Fran they say she just might
Up and float away
Watch her float . . . . . . . uh-oh
Oooh, Ahhh, Ooooh!
###
This line was inspired by Jack Kerouac who said something very similar in a poem once.