Crickets Chirping

I put together an EP from the songs I have recorded over the last year or so. I call it Halfasstronaut. It’s not so much a work of art as it is a crayola drawing you might stick to your fridge with magnets from places we’ve visited together.

Here’s where the magic happened (sob, I’ll miss it):

You can download a .zip of the entire thing here: Halfasstronaut.zip, ~23MB

Or you can skim the tracks here, along with descriptions of the songs:

Adios, Mofos

This is the last song I recorded in the garage, and it’s probably the peppiest damn thing I’ve ever written.

Identity Crisis

I had an idea for a sitcom whose central gimmick was two identical twins who were separated at birth but then reunite later in life. The twist- they’re both blind, and so they don’t even know they’re twins. They move in together for convenience, since they both need roommates. The plot never puts the two in the same place at the same time (except for when they are both home) so people in the building think that there’s only one of them. Hilarity ensues. Instead of coming up with a script, I just wrote a theme song for it.

Lyrics:

Separated, at birth they were
Identical twins
Iodine was in short supply
So they both went blind

Mother, yeah she was a dirty one

No one in the building knows
that there’s two of them
Not even them
Yeah, you could say they’re whole again

Met each other on the subway
After they’d grown old
Neither was aware of the ironic
Coincidence

One needs a roommate
The other needs rent
No one in the building knows
That there’s two of them
Not even them
Yeah, you could say they’re whole again

Waltz of the Melancholy Vaudevillian

This is a re-recording of a song I did a long time ago, this time with drums. And gratuitous use of flange and reverb.

Our Onion

It’s so hard to be sincere these days. Rather than pour your heart out and risk sounding comically trite, it’s easier to parody true feelings and go for the sarcastic angle and make the comedy sound intentional.

These tiny things are precious to me
Easy to lose, and so hard to find
Digging through these dusty corners
I found the truth and I lost my mind
[see, my mind is tiny :)]

Just like you but not beautiful or true
A perfect match, strike me anywhere
Burning down this family tree
Hope is a curse afflicting the free

Someday I am bound to play
Sweet songs of sorrow till then
These tears ain’t falling
For you

Someday I am bound to play
Sweet songs of sorrow till then
Just keep on peeling
Our onion away

Talking in My Sleep

Can’t keep a secret
Talking in my sleep
I’m gonna tell it all
To the wall

Flower Vase

I bought some flowers in a vase for a friend who was in the hospital. On the drive over there I had to keep the vase in my lap to keep it from falling over, but water splashed out of it all over my crotch. Not wanting to walk around a public place with a soaked groin area (“No, really. It’s water!!!”) I called her boyfriend friend to come get the flowers and take them up to her room. When I went home I wrote this song.

Fron the Neck Down

This girl dumped me for a guy in a wheelchair several years ago. We’re friends now but at the time I didn’t take it very well. I wrote these awful lyrics and Brent shamed me into not actually recording them. It would have gone something like this:

I guess you needed
Someone to push around
But my feet touch the ground

So you dumped me
For a crippled asshole
I guess that’s just how you roll

Now you got yourself
The perfect parking spot
That must count for a lot

From the neck down, I’m alright
It don’t affect my appetite
From the neck down, I work alright

The implication being that perhaps from the neck up, I do not work alright and that’s why she opted for this differently abled fellow.

Don’t Mind Me, I’m Just Flying Debris

Brent played drums on this one, as you may have guessed since they’re nigh flawless (especially compared to my drumming skillz). The squeaking sounds at the beginning are two walkie talkies that I placed facing each other. This creates feedback, and you can control the pitch by how far apart you hold the walkie talkies. It’s sort of like an improvised invisible accordion. That squeals.