hey folks 👋🏻
opening the gates this month for anyone who isn’t a paid subscriber. take a peek behind the curtain, why don’t ya? this month’s song is a cover of “this is the day” by the the, recorded two summers ago at the metal shop with zack and ian. essay is about doing things quietly with purpose and a radiator hospital show that i may never forget. if you like what you find, please consider subscribing for $5/month.
not much news to report as we’ve just wrapped a month of touring. the full-band shows we just finished were a revelation - thanks very much to anyone who came out to see us. it’s because of you that we get to keep doing this, putting our love and joy and laughter and pain into these performances. this work feels important. we are finding more meaning in it every day.
with gratitude,
jake
UPCOMING SHOWS
05/27/2023 Atlantic City, NJ - Adjacent Festival - Atlantic City Beach
NEW MERCH
soft power
if i’m in the middle of a song and i want to really grab people, i'll get suddenly quieter. restrain my voice, put my lips right up to the microphone like i'm whispering in your ear. that's when folks really start paying attention. when i'm playing by myself, my primary tool for winning an audience is intimacy. if i'm between songs and people start chattering, i don't address them when i’m ready to start again. i just start playing my guitar. softly, surely. i don't look at them either. there's an understanding there. it feels counter to a philosophy of shock performance, but i guess in it’s own small way, intimacy is shocking.
not sure when i started doing this. the performers i grew up with definitely didn’t do it (thanks anyway, billie joe). there’s one memory from philly that comes to mind, which is surely related now that i think about it - i was in college and sam from radiator hospital was the first act on a house show a block down from the row home where we all lived. we were obsessed with radiator hospital, and the whole scene was temporarily addicted to "our song," a white-knuckle breakup ballad that felt like a blinding revelation, a musical and idealogical smashing together of the 50’s and the 90’s. i remember we even had a friend who's band would cover the song at other house shows in the same neighborhood during the same time, which i thought was embarrassing then, but in retrospect it feels like a rare and beautiful moment of genuine recognition between peers.
but anyway, sam was playing down the block, except he was playing without his band. for that reason he was put first on the bill (the other acts were bands). i remember sam would never play with a guitar strap when he performed alone. he would shove the butt of the guitar into his armpit and hold it there real high, and he never seemed uncomfortable or overextended, having to simultaneously *hold* the guitar and *play* the guitar. i guess he was using the show to try out new songs. he was in a pretty prolific mode at the time.
in college, i went to shows mainly expecting to hear songs that i knew and liked. that felt like the point - someone uploaded a collection of songs online, you listened to it, and if anything stuck, you made a point to see the show. it was a specific kind of release. i would spend the week getting wound up on friends’ recordings, listening to them over and over on my bike or the subway or the walk to class, and then i would go see the show, and when they played the songs all that energy and love would spill out of me all over the basement, everyone singing along and bumping up against each other. all drunk. it was a wonderful release. but, like i said, sam was trying out new songs that night. it was strange to me that anyone would perform unreleased music for an audience, but i have always admired sam, so i chose to trust him. when i didn’t recognize his first song, i stayed put. most folks were milling around upstairs waiting for the bands.
sam stood there with his guitar stuck up under his armpit and sang all these beautiful love songs that he wrote but i had never heard. there were numerous factors at play here that i had never considered before. for one, the power of surprise - i was hanging on every word, mainly because i didn't know any of the words. sam is a gifted storyteller, and he sings at a wonderful pace. not too fast, not too slow, one line at a time, like the steady pull of the small world ride - you are allowed time to look around. next, of course, sam is a natural born performer. he knew when to get loud, and he knew when to get real quiet and make you listen. make you lean in closer. that added even more to the feeling of being along for a ride. he led the way, but he left room for you to involve yourself, to lean in on your own volition, like you were physically choosing to listen - but really we had little choice. he was too good for anyone to do otherwise.
there is something inherently captivating, which i think goes very much undiscussed, about a human being calmly and confidently telling you a story through song, right there in front of your eyes. sometimes it feels like a lost art to me, now that the democratization of recording has allowed us to heap so much praise on the bedroom auteur. anyone can make a record in their bedroom and share it with the world, and many people find incredible success without ever singing a song for someone right there in front of them. but it really is an amazing feat, an otherworldly experience, to be face to face with someone who has the power to captivate you with song, with a story, in real time. it is all the more powerful when it's happening in a basement, or a living room, or a musty bar - the places where there's no careful atmosphere to prime you for what you're about to receive.
these days i dread performing in grimy places. it can be an extremely taxing experience on tour, for obvious reasons - but how incredible it is to be standing among strangers in an unfinished basement, or a wet-walled punk bar, and to be transported by a song, by a performance. by someone who understands that soft power, someone with empathy, someone who is emotionally available, who can feel the audience before they feel the song. who can sense where the listener is coming from, where they expect to go, and where they're afraid to go, and to take their hand. win them over with surprise, and use that trust to show them a place they didn't expect to find. that's a powerful thing. to do all that without saying a word about it. sam was the first person i saw do that, and it has stayed with me since. i'm grateful to sam for that.
i've realized over time that my favorite musicians are the ones who trade in soft power. as much as i love rock n roll, i've so rarely been moved by brute force - a wailing solo, a thundering drum sound, a glass-shattering scream. what shatters me is the sound of jeff parker's hollow-body electric guitar in an empty room, a room so empty you can hear it. his fingers moving curious and unbothered over the fretboard, sounding the way a child might look stumbling across an empty room in a blazing shaft of sunlight. or the way pops staples sings, just barely above a whisper. "looking back now i see, somebody was watching over me." it is the sentiment, the severity, the seriousness that hits you. if pops were to belt out those lines, they wouldn't feel the same. what is more human that smallness? life is an endless humbling. in that sense, pops staples' voice sounds like the truth. jeff parker's guitar sounds like the truth. it is no wonder that pops sounds so at ease, so in control, singing just above a whisper while his daughters belt to the heavens behind him. it emphasizes the sentiment even more - his daughters represent the raw power of the unbound feeling, and pops represents the humility of the human reality. when the tidal wave overtakes you, the first moment you have to think is after it’s over. sitting alone in the dead silence of afternoon, dripping wet, whipped. it is our place. it resonates because it’s real.
it's a release to go to a rock show and see a person strut across the stage and scream into a microphone, or wail on a guitar, or bash on the drums. it’s play-acting, in that it’s so far removed from the humbling we experience every day as members of a human community. but to be arrested by quiet, by empathy, by humility - that is what cuts to the core. it's more than a temporary release, a steam valve being let open for a night - it is being seen in a permanent way. when you let open the valve for a night, the steam rolls out. you close it off again, it builds back up. it is, effectively, a game. but when you can feel your own humanity in someone else's performance, when you can feel seen as a living breathing animal with a soul, there is no un-ringing that bell. that's why i still remember sam's set.
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