The Purple Chord

The Black Shell

Faux Jean is a singing cowboy from Duluth, Minn. Each week he adds a new song to an evolving record series over on Bandcamp and writes about it here. “From the Mixed Up Files of Mr. Matthew T. Schindler” is somewhere between a fake newsletter and a faux press release for the eponymous wabi-sabi private label album series that continues to evolve over there. Thanks for checking it out.

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Faux Purps,

I recorded today’s song addition to the “Mixed Up Files” yesterday morning while waiting for my kids to rise and shine.¹

‘Twas the last day of Christmas vacation, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even an Apple mouse.²

Eighteen days of kicking back with the kids.

Dropped ‘em off at school this morning and said, as I always do, “Be gentle and kind with everyone you meet.”

I am grateful to their teachers for the impossible work that they do.

Here is the song if you want to listen to it in the player below.

I captured this song idea on camera yesterday morning and came up with the title for the song based on the inadvertent obstruction you see below. (You can hear my son sigh at the very end of the song, as he had made it to the couch somehow by song’s end.)³

This chord progression may very well be purple, and it is similar to the chord progression from “I’ll Waste Away,” but it kind of follows me around as a way to limber up the fingers, wake the kids up, and oh so many other things.

It is my purple friend.

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If you make it out to San Diego btw, I recommend heading to the Ocean Beach Dog Beach.

That was the most frequent outing with the kids during this winter break.

Lots of friendly dogs, lotsa surfers to watch,⁴ seashells.

Black seashell found on Ocean Beach the other day.

When the world seems dumb, as it often does these days, sometimes it’s good to look at the ocean and remember how small you are, while keeping your head above the sand, of course.

My daughter said it looked like I was walking on water the other day and she wanted to take a picture of me and Teenie.

I was happy.

I remain your humble servant,

OX&C,

Faux Jean

1. This may have been a “wake up call” kinda jam.

2. Though there may have been some tapping on an iPad screen coming from the bedrooms.

3. I extracted the audio from the video and added some meta data and converted it to an AIFF file to upload the “single” to Bandcamp.

4. I got half a mind to get on a surfboard one of these days.