You were the one who knew how to have fun
I was in a funk and along for the ride
I am not a golden god.
Nor am I a natural musician.
I have never taken a proper music lesson outside of being in high-school choir.
Making songs is kind of hard for me.1
That’s why it takes me 15 years to write a song nowadays.
When I had a shit-hot band behind me2, I could present them with a rough demo and have something presentable to the public in a week or two.
Since becoming a solo-cholo singing cowboy, things are moving like molasses.
Some songwriters might say “If you haven’t finished this song in 15 years, maybe it’s not that good.”
To which I say: “This is my dusty museum and I will curate as I see fit.”3
Today, I have added 3 (count ‘em!) versions of the same song to the “Mixed Up Files” album series to give you a little view into the 15-year-songwriting-cycle—a little taste of molasses, if you will.
Please listen in the players below and peep the video at bottom.
I recorded the first version of this in 2009 in the apartment I shared with my fiancé on Nokomis Avenue in Minneapolis. Gene Wire from the Faux Jean band lived upstairs.
The 2021 Harpsichord version I recorded in the apartment I lived in with my wife (ex-fiancé?) and kids in Irvine, Calif.
Now, what is a singing cowboy doing playing a harpsichord?
I’m just working with the materials at hand, folks.
On the Bandcamp page for the Harpsichord version, I’ve included a trigger warning regarding the sound quality, which you can read in the footnotes.4
I’ve presented this trifecta of “You were the one-ness” as a breadcrumb of sorts, both to inspire me to get down to work on finishing a solid, listenable version of this song for an album of “new” material to be released in the not-too-distant future, and to give someone who might hear that album in the future something to go back and listen to as a lesson in taking the time necessary to create one’s art.
I remain your humble servant,
OX&C,
Faux Jean
If I run into a snag with tempo or the arrangement or the sound of this one keyboard no longer loading, I have to take a walk in the wilderness.
Which I was lucky enough to experience in several iterations.
I’ve got a lot of unfinished songs in my little museum and that’s part of what keeps me going.
Trigger warning for this track-- I recorded this by placing and iPad where the sheet music should go on an electric piano using the "voice memo" app on the ipad and the harpsichord setting on the piano, and the loud thwacking of the keys might convince a person, if they are listening while driving down the road, that someone is rapping on the top of their vehicle with a large Claddagh ring. I have never taken a piano lesson, so the struggle is real here. Technically, pianos are considered a percussion instrument and this track really brings this home. I apologize if this offends your senses, but I just had to share...