The Somnambulists Association of Greater America

Three Songs about Falling Asleep on your Feet

On hearing that his sons intended to pursue careers as rock stars, Anthony Farina reportedly warned: "the only stars are in the sky," which may have been truer in 1957 than it is today. Nowadays, if you really hit it big as a celebrity your star doesn't end up in the sky at all but, instead, embedded in cement to be walked upon or gawked upon in loving tribute when the ceremony is over.

A few years after his seemingly-sage admonition, Anthony's two kids, Santo and Johnny Farina, did, in fact, achieve a #1 hit – though none after – with the first and foremost "Sleep Walk", an instrumental which, despite having no lyrics, still managed to say quite a bit about a better and dreamier version of America at that moment and since. According to their wistful and melancholy melody, it's entirely possible to be both broken-hearted and hopeful all at once when you're walking home late on hot summer night reconsidering the day and reflecting on your station in life. The song is so good at creating that particular sensory experience, in fact, that it set an early high-water mark for so many of the reverby rock instrumentals that thereafter glued great albums together. Honestly, I'm surprised to see it left off Dylan's "The Philosophy of Modern Song," though I suppose it may have been a clerical oversight owing primarily to its wordlessness.

The sentiment, though, was certainly not lost on Joe Strummer who in 1989 – thirty years after the original tune hit the charts and on an album filled with post-Clash ruminations about America – included his own (and our second) "Sleepwalk" on his solo effort Earthquake Weather. Strummer's "Sleepwalk" (condensed to one word, rather than two) is tucked at the back of the LP, a postscript to a raucous roadtrip, and alludes to Santo and Johnny's original with its own hesitating melody from the outset. Standing against a California sunset, levitating just above a swimming pool and a row of palm trees on the album cover*, it's easy to imagine the early-onset mid-life reflection Strummer had encountered in Los Angeles.

He sings:
I went to find, some piece of mind
What good would it be?
What good would it be
If you could change every heartache
that ran through your life and mine?

That idea – that there'd be a chance to somehow undo past heartbreak or that's it's simply not worth it given the opportunity to move on – is, for me, at least part of the magic that sits underneath the original "Sleep Walk" melody. Leave it to Strummer to pull off that trick.

By 1994, you'd expect that a then 40-year-old "avant-garage" songwriter from Cleveland would've given up for good on a 35-year-old instrumental one hit wonder, but you'd be wrong. A keen observer of bygone Americana – not the kind you hear on XM Radio but the sketchy roadside entrapment and deferred dreams kind – David Thomas (and Jim Jones) of Pere Ubu give us our third 'Sleepwalk,' though this time – purposefully, I'm sure – the title is again divided into two verbs, "Sleep" and "Walk" as a matter of directive. In the video, we get to watch just that as the band trudges through the downtown snow before they really buffed out the rough edges of the city. Thomas starts by cautioning against the magnetic attraction and dangers of reflection to the point of distraction (or, the pull to "relinquish substance for shadow") as per Aesop:

Somewhere, I see a face in a stream
I watch the dust in a beam
I work harder and harder to break away
From the grip of a dream

Then – right before their own obvious instrumental coda to the original "Sleep Walk" – Thomas and 'Ubu shake us all awake, returning us to earth and to Anthony Farina's observation about the stars above:

It ain't me
Don't watch the sky, brother
It ain't me
Or the ground far below

– Jon Roket

Jon writes on music, creativity, art, and eCommerce at Unclumsy.com

Addendum: The original Santo & Johnny "Sleep Walk" is often listed online and in various cover versions as "Sleepwalk," the single verb – and that would seem to make sense given the lilt of the tune – however, per ASCAP/BMI look-up, it's quite officially two words. Interestingly, Santo and Johnny's mother – she was, presumably, more encouraging of their career than her husband – wrote a set of lyrics for the 1959 Betsy Brye version that, while labled on the 45 itself as 'Sleep Walk,' is filed under "Sleepwalk" (one word) in ASCAP/BMI's Songview catalog.

Photo credit for the Earthquake Weather album cover: Josh Cheuse. He's produced what looks to be an incredible book – Print the Myth, Joe Strummer Portraits 1981-2002 – about his 20 year work span with Strummer. Click here for a short video about that project.

Backwards

This is a Big Deal. Where Do We Begin?

Last week I walked into the kitchen and the television had switched over from the noon news to a soap opera where a well-appointed couple was standing in a well-appointed recording studio, presumably in Los Angeles, California. The pair shared a pretty serious look on their faces. The woman furrowed her brow, clearly deflated: "There's a problem with the song," she fumed before letting a big dramatic pause linger as long as network television will allow. "And *I* wrote it!" she continued, punctuating the "I" purposefully for her now somewhat bewildered companion who hadn't yet realized – leather jacket notwithstanding – that he was in the company of a songwriter in the first place.

So it goes with songwriting. You can be in the near-field vicinity of a songwriter at the bank or on a bus – or even standing right next to one at a fancy LA studio – and unless you hear 'em humming, you'd hardly ever know. Rolly Salley, originally of Belvidere, Illinois, for example, wrote "Killing the Blues" which, forever, I simply assumed was a John Prine song and which the rest of the world now thinks was written by Alison Krauss and the lead singer from Led Zeppelin. At this very moment, though, the actual songwriter of that song – a song as impactful and important to me as Kristofferson's "Sunday Morning Coming Down" or Zevon's "Desperados Under the Eaves" – might actually be standing at an ATM machine or sitting on a bus, unlike, say, Robert Plant.

My own experience is that I wrote about ten dozen songs in the span of ten years from 1990 to 2000, then about a half-dozen in the 23 years since. I committed a handful of these to tape, but the rest eventually flew out the window after a few plays or dropped out of my pockets on the way from Ohio to Chicago. That's the first part of the story. The second part is that these same songs still resurface occasionally – as time capsules do – sending me backwards to separate decades out of days and recalibrate my sense of time.

Most recently, my pals Chris Allen and Kevin Grasha of Rosavelt released an astonishing version of a song I first recorded in Roger Klug's living room on Marburg Avenue in Cincinnati almost thirty years ago. Notably, their version of "Cardboard" – now available on iTunes/Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal – includes the high honor of Don Dixon production (with a real-life drum machine) amid the unbelievably humbling recognition of songwriters who long ago mastered their craft so they could easily outrun the cover tunes.

– Jon Roketenetz

Jon writes on music, business, and creativity at Unclumsy.com

Postscript. Rolly Salley is a Grammy-winning songwriter and plays bass in Chris Isaak's band Silvertone. According to Google, people also ask: "Is Rowland Salley married?"

Unsung

Bring Back the Grand Finale

When I was 16, I went on trip to London with my family: my mom, my dad, and my sister. The only real goal in my teenage brain at the time was to find the songwriter Billy Bragg once I got there. I had, by then, ingested quite a bit of "Talking with the Taxman about Poetry," and "Workers' Playtime" had just been released. I couldn't quite believe that someone had found a proven process to compress Woody Guthrie-style, social commentary into obvious Motown chord changes but, there it was, and I was on my way to meet him.

I somehow convinced my parents that I should be allowed wander off across London using the Tube on this journey and I eventually (the luck!) found that Billy was playing a *quadruple bill* featuring his band — with, at the time, with Cary Tivey on piano — Michelle Shocked, comedian Barry Crimmins, and Michael Franti fronting one of his earlier bands. I bought a ticket and was floored. It was perfect in its wobbly imperfection, the kind of rock n' roll I had come to expect from rock heroes like the Del Fuegos, but presented here, before me, in a theater setting with red velvet-y seats and a crowd of people singing along. For the grand finale, the entire set of performers from the evening participated and a light clicked on for me. I saw the light, so to speak. I bought a t-shirt at the merch table on the way out and wondered: "What does an avowed socialist do with all the swag sales money?"

Later that night, within just yards of arriving back at the hotel, I encountered my dad. He been out looking for me at the direction of my mom, clearly having re-assessed the wisdom of having let a naive, suburban kid wander this big city beyond midnight. He was glad to have found me almost home. As a dad myself now, I can intuit the amalgam of relief, surrealism, and adrenaline he experienced at that moment. Standing there in the Underground, he and I paused a bit in the vacuum of the moment to take in a drunken reveler in a Burger King crown singing his heart out. He was relieved to have found me. I was elated at the experience of the previous four hours. In that regard, it was a win for both of us.

In any case, Bill's music became a guide-wire for me in so many regards from that point forward. While I occasionally returned to those early records, I followed his career forward, too. At each turn, there was a song there for the taking that somehow matched my world.

On "William Bloke," indeed, he captured, in a single song, the circumstances and moment I met my wife,

He was trapped in a haircut he no longer believed in,
she said 'I'm a teacher, I teach the children.'

the joy and complex circumstances of bringing our kiddo home 14 years later,

Their baby came home to them an unmarried mother,
they wished she would turn into a pillar of salt

and, today, the absolute most important rule in our home:

Compassion has to be the greatest family value.

Just last week, I was Googlin' to confirm Bill's favorite song — it might just be Lowell George's "Willin'" and that's a story for another blog post entirely — and I was reminded in the search results of his pre-pandemic project singing train songs and traveling by train with the songwriter Joe Henry. It took me right back to that moment in London so many years ago, this image of two musicians in their misbegotten hats — this time standing right in the middle of in my hometown of Chicago at Union Station — embarking on a literal shared journey.

I'm thinking about this, of course, because we're all still stuck in our homes, watching so much of this horribleness occupy our TV screens, awaiting and praying for the end of this craziness, but also acutely aware of the things we're grateful for, and missing that shared journey and experience of live music. That is, of course, the main thing we're all looking for as musicians alongside our cords and cables, the hum from the amps, a shock to the lips, and most importantly to me, the grand finale and the arc of community and solidarity it represents, which I first learned about from Bill's show way back in 1988.

So, right now... bring me back to the Billy Bragg grand finale at Dominion Theatre in 1988. Let me stand on the side of summertime ski hill, overlooking Lake Superior, thirty years later, while Michael Franti hauls all the kids in the audience on stage to sing along. Don't play me a slow, mournful version of anything right now; instead, give me the ten minute grand finale jam of "I Saw the Light" with Billy Strings and his crew. Give me a nine minute version of Don Dixon and Autumn Defense doing "Praying Mantis" to close out a house party. Give me Maria McKee, Van Dyke Parks, Hiram Bullock, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and David Sanborn closing out a Night Music episode doing "Sailing Shoes." Bring out Ringo and Ronnie Wood (in his tuxedo t-shirt) and give us all The Band, with the rest of the ensemble, singing "I Shall Be Released."

When this is all good and over, give me the grand finale in full, glorious harmony, over and over again, from the West down to the East. You and me, together, we can take the long way home.

– Jon Roketenetz

Jon writes on music, business, and creativity at Unclumsy.com

Sunken Ledger

On His First Solo Outing, Mike Tittel Owns His Own Demons

According to Mike Tittel, half of Ohio is sitting at the bottom of Lake Erie and we're probably better off for it. Tittel, a Southern Ohio native and Cincinnati-scene fixture for over 20 years puts it bluntly: "If every drum kit I own was stolen tomorrow," he says, "I'd make more progress just writing songs at my kitchen table than trying to talk my way into another gig in Columbus. Who needs it?" He should know. In the mid 90s, Tittel traveled the country while vacuum-packed in a Ford Econoline as the touring drummer for the iconic power-pop band, Loud Family. Along the way, he absorbed almost everything you need to know about the craft of hook-laden artful deception. He learned a fair bit about songwriting, too. The rest he picked up from a well-worn record collection of XTC, Elvis Costello, Aimee Mann, and every possible incarnation of Westerberg, all clearly just below the surface in his writing.

Back in Cincinnati, Tittel made one more record — 1999s astounding "Let There Be Work" with his band Pidgin — then hit the pause button, set aside the drums, sold the old-school 16-track AMPEX 2" deck, and opted for career of photography and advertising. He waited a full 15 years, then returned in 2014 with the harrowing "44," a stop-motion chronicle of his admittedly complex life at the time. "Friends were concerned," he laughs, but it turned out to mark an awakening. His second act in music, dubbed New Sincerity Works, released the acclaimed "Nowadays" (2015) and "Wonder Lust" (2017) in quick succession, both featuring an all-star cast of the best of the best in Midwest power-pop: Bob Nyswonger of the Psychodots & Bears and Roger Klug among 'em.

With 2020's "Sleeping In," his first true solo endeavor — he plays almost all of the instruments with support from his key comadre, Lauren Bray, of Pretty Birds — Tittel turns down the volume and breaks out the vintage acoustic guitars, but can't get away from the pop sensibilities, no matter which way he swims. From "3AM" to the closing track ("Birds of Murren"), "Sleeping In" lets you in on a little secret: you're gonna hear the paged turns of spiral notebooks, the inked padding of lined legal rule, and the ledgers of lyrics right up close as he skims across the personal and the profane. From the Neil Finn-tinged "Own Your Own Dealings" to "On a Good Day," the songs end up reading like a practical guide to realignment in a world so obviously overturned:

The seekers of the dreams, those busting at the seams
with losses from the past, it's time to do the math

For Tittel, it's clear that it's no longer enough to be the photographer, the drummer, or the songwriter alone. He's determined to be the observer-in-full and go, as the songwriter Greg Brown would say, "further in," the cinematic and the ineffable in single sentiment, every single time.

"Both the shipwreck and the treasure are resting on the bottom," Tittel notes about the creative process, "waiting for anyone who can hold their breathe."

Watch the album trailer for "Sleeping In" here.

– Jon Roketenetz

Jon is the CEO of GimmeAnother and founder of 3VERB.

PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Wilson

Deeper Blue

"I think we're making a late 1970s Emmylou Harris record here."

Here’s the story: Laurie's husband, Joe, passed away in April of 2015 and not too long after I picked up the phone to call Laurie. There had been a fair amount of news coverage surrounding Joe's death and, in particular, the path he chose to die with dignity, Laurie at his side. One picture in the newspaper featured Joe in bed, near death; for me, still hard to process. But the picture also showed Laurie, too, right next to Joe, singing him a song and playing the ukulele with a smile on her face. The picture represented everything I love – we all love – about Laurie and her songs: heartwarming, heartbreaking, tough as nails despite it all, defiantly joyful, and with you to the bitter end, no matter what. I said: "I can't shake that image, Laurie. What song were you singing to Joe?" She said, "Rocky, I think I need to make an album."



That began our three-year quest, of sorts, to make a record that would serve as a cathartic outlet for Laurie in this incredible time of transition and pain and, quite purposefully, draw in some of the most creative folks we knew. I had recently reconnected with an old pal, Mike Tittel (of New Sincerity Works) – easily one of my favorite musicians – who had started a recording studio at Fruit Hill, outside of Cincinnati. Mike was trying to convince me at the time – he still is, actually – to record a new album but I told him about Laurie and her story and we all agreed: Laurie's record was the priority. We cut the first tracks – me on electric guitar, Mike on drums, and Laurie on uke and electric piano in the Fall of 2015. Right away, we knew we had half-a-dozen really great takes. It was early in the process, but they had soul and felt like the framework for a really special record. I told Laurie: "I think we're making a late 1970s Emmylou Harris record here." We knew, even then, we were going to walk away with a truly classic-sounding LP. Much later, Mike looked at the cover and said: "I can't tell if it's June Carter Cash or Juliana Hatfield," which, of course, is the nicest thing anyone could have said about the type of record Laurie and I had hoped to make.

Those half dozen songs from the first session became the basis to bring in the second half of the band – Chris Allen on acoustic, Al Moss on pedal steel, and the legendary producer Don Dixon on bass. After juggling schedules, we eventually hauled the aforementioned dream team to Fruit Hill to get 'em on tape. To say it was an honor to have them work on this record is certainly an understatement. Chris and Laurie, of course, had years of experience playing as a duo across Ohio and have a sonic mind-meld that allowed Chris' acoustic guitar to drop right into the mix. Al Moss, one of a small group of Cleveland musicians who I consider my cosmic and musical brethren, not only added key melodies throughout, but also a few solos that left us all either applauding or stunned silent in the studio. And, what can I say about having Don play his Silvertone bass on this record? A dream come true. Above all, these guys played and sang on this record with such generosity and sense of purpose for Laurie that I still get a chill listening back now. A year and a half after Laurie had written: "It's gonna be alright," as a reminder to herself in a trying time, they sang it right back to her, in harmony, with such conviction that you just knew it had to be true. After the very last take, at midnight following a full day of recording, the skies opened up, and we dragged all of the gear back up the hill in the pouring rain, confirming the adage: "If you want a perfect storm, stand under the cloud."

We recorded the rest of the album – minus vocals – back at Laurie's house in Oxford so we could cut live baby-grand piano and Hammond A-100 in the music room Joe had built for Laurie years ago. John Kogge – Laurie's long-time partner in crime – stopped by and sang harmony on one of the album's most affecting songs, "Pauline," still a treat for me to hear. Laurie re-recorded her vocals with our new pal, the super-talented Mike Landis – who also mixed the record – at Fruit Hill until she had 'em perfect. A few months later, Landis finished up the mixes and it was off to be mastered. I shot the cover photo at the 3VERB studio here in Chicago.

It's still hard to believe we pulled it off. Along the way, we laughed, we cried, we made a pilgrimage to the now shuttered Hammond Organ factory in Chicago, discovered a jerk-chicken restaurant across the street from John Prine's childhood home, and celebrated each little rock 'n roll victory. I'm exceedingly proud of the final album and the way we did it. It's dedicated to Joe, of course; I know it honors his memory.

— Jon

Click here to buy the record. Click here for full liner notes/credits.

Majestic

Three Songs of Accidental Majesty, Depth, and Immediacy for the New Year.

“Last Night it Snowed,” The Ass Ponys

About this time of year, I anticipate the first legitimate snowfall here in Chicago and do so knowing I'll have the chance to play (loudly) the Ass Ponys' brilliant, compact, and majestic song, “Last Night it Snowed.” It's an annual tradition of sorts – my favorite of Chuck Cleaver's AP work – to sit back and marvel at the perfection of these “econo” lyrics:

A blanket white
At least it was when it came down last night
The morning brings the rain
The blanket's washed away
Now everything turns back to grey

It's hard to imagine that so much goodness could land in just over two minutes of song: all the mixed-up optimism and rainy, overcast second-guessing of a Southern Ohio winter with the added bonus of a delicate mandolin that falls apart into garage-band urgency as he sings: “So live and learn, The snow is melting never to return.”

Here's Chuck singing this classic with a local School of Rock:



The original studio version of the song is available here.

“Wasted,” Pere Ubu

Like “Last Night it Snowed,” this song leads the album, 1993's “Story of My Life,” from Northern Ohio's most important post-punk combo, Pere Ubu. It's an album that finds lead singer David Thomas in a reflective mood, at one point recounting his pre-Cleveland childhood in Florida and stumbling upon“the secret of anti-gravity.” But “Wasted” finds him in real-time, trying to decipher his marriage and “breathlessly, throwing time away.” It makes me think the album runs in reverse, marching backward from today, with Thomas' melodeon (aka the button accordion) setting the scene and his enjoinder to “rock” at 1:33 as guidance to take care of business moving forward. It's as inspirational to me now as when I first heard it.

“This is the Sea,” The Waterboys

I had forgotten about this song and album – the album “Fisherman's Blues” is important to several friends and I'd always marked their career by it – until a cold, rainy day in Northern Wisconsin. I was away from my family for a few days and had just hopped out of a hazy mid-30s mist into the car when the skies opened up. The rain started falling in buckets but, as I started to drive, advanced in waves quickly, so I pulled the car to the side of the road. The windshield wipers couldn't keep up. I turned on the radio to find "This is the Sea" at the beginning. I sat there, not a soul around, feeling a bit underwater while Mike Scott sang:

You're trying to make sense
Of something that you just can't see
Trying to make sense now
And you know you once held the key
But that was the river
And this is the sea

I'm convinced now that “Fisherman's Blues” couldn't exist without this prelude. Get ready, the open ocean is in front of you. This is the sea. If you're ever unconvinced of the epic adventures ahead, try this song again... in the rain.

– Jon Roketenetz

Jon is the CEO of GimmeAnother and founder of 3VERB.

Flashback: Inspiration

From September 2015:

"I wanted to keep that moment and word – inspired – in my pocket as a memento of the feeling that I'm occasionally lucky enough to encounter."

Read the full blog post, featuring Thos. Moser, Joe Henry, and Tom Dowd, here.

– Jon Roketenetz

Jon is the CEO of GimmeAnother and founder of 3VERB.

The Auburnaire

Tittel Turns out an Ardent, Important Second Effort

In 1988 the Cincinnati band The Auburnaires released Bedtime Stories, on the French label, New Rose. I didn't understand then and don't understand now how, pre-internet, a label based in France and a singular post-punk, funk mash-up from Cincinnati found each other but I'm more and more convinced these days that good art – even rock music – seeks its own path, like water telegraphing across a rafter before it finds its way down your interior wall on the other side of the real leak.

If you search eBay for that Auburnaires vinyl record today, you'll find that most copies are available from England. So, it was an import in its day – out of my price range at Everybody's Records in Cincinnati when I was a kid – and it's an import today, further away from Cincinnati as it ever was and right at home there, I suspect.

I bring this up as I had the good fortune to work on the liner notes for the latest New Sincerity Works record, Nowadays, this past summer and hearing it played back now – all lively and compressed and perfectly mixed by Mike Landis and, especially, as a counterpoint to their first record – I'm certain it's destined for and deserving of a bigger home outside of Ohio, too.

Mike Tittel, the songwriter behind New Sincerity Works, spent time as the touring drummer for the legendary underground outfit The Loud Family in the 1990s, built a studio and a home and a family in the Queen City, then got divorced, tied himself up in personal and career knots, tried to figure himself out, and still managed to assemble a dream team for V2.0 of his band: Bob Nyswonger on bass, Roger Klug and Tom White on guitar, Greg Tudor on drums, to say the very least. By 2014, he had issued the critically acclaimed 44 which chronicled a particularly difficult time in his life, falling apart in real time while a crowd of a friends inched him forward at turns, congratulating him either for the honesty of the emotions at the surface or for simply surviving the crash landing.

His new record, though, catches Tittel at an absolute creative peak, confident in his forward direction and having sharpened his songwriting craftsmanship to a fine point. It brims with a cautious hope from start to finish that edges the listener from one track to the next in a way only really great albums can. From "Dreams Worth Keeping" to "Champion" to "Learning to Walk, " Tittel walks the listener through something that feels a lot like redemption yet is careful to swap out any high-minded preachiness for an influx of urgent, perfect drumming, an unmistakable ‘72 Telecaster, and beautifully washy keyboards.

Before you know it, just five or six songs in, you’ve wandered through the best Side A of any record from a Cincinnati-based band since The Afghan Whigs' 1998 masterwork Gentlemen. Trust me on this, I know my shit.

To wit: The first video from the record (for the title track) starts in the expansive, stark black and white landscape of Iceland before landing back in Cincinnati and falling away at the end with "Don't Walk" countdown timer of a downtown street sign. It’s a perfectly executed window into the rest of the album: half-home, half-away-from home, mid-step, hope mashed with resignation.

With 2014’s 44, Tittel covered the first two stages of grief: attack and decay. Nowadays, it’s clear, is his effort to sustain. In the course of assembling the songs and band that make up this record, Tittel has made an album for the ages, no matter if it ends up in a cut-out-bin in France, in your dreams, erased over on a cassette, or spinning around on your turntable. Don’t miss out.

– Jon Roketenetz

Jon is the CEO of GimmeAnother, founder of 3VERB, and occasional musician.

Inspired

Close Your Eyes. Fall Backwards. Meet the Wrong Person.

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to run across the All Things Considered interview with Jason Isbell. I knew of the Drive By Truckers, Isbell's old rock band, but I wasn't familiar with his solo or 400 Unit records. The interview itself knocked me out. Jason was on the edge of sorting out a few things in his life, including his alcoholism, and to hear him tell the story, you just knew he was on the edge of a great album. He recounted the story of a drunken evening contemplating rehab with his then girlfriend (now wife) who stated pretty matter-of-factly: "You're telling the wrong person." By this, of course, she didn't mean she was about to do nothing, but everything.

Not long after this, maybe even before I bought the record, Isbell played the Letterman Show and played the tune "Stockholm" from the new album (Southeastern) with his band. They were great. Here's the video. Like the interview, but for other reasons, it felt like I was witness to a small triumph of sorts, a performance of a song on the flipside of a fair amount of heartbreak, with the earnest support of people who really cared for him. The song ended and one word struck me about the performance: inspired.

I wanted to keep that moment and word – inspired – in my pocket as a memento of the feeling that I'm occasionally lucky enough to encounter. And, I wanted to make sure I used it sparingly, so it didn't dilute like "awesome" or "spectacular," once reserved for only the best fireworks and true wonders of the world.

Now, I've spent the better part of 20 years involved in the creative pursuits, sometimes for projects of my own and often as part of my job at 3VERB where we develop marketing and tech for companies. In that time, like any good Midwesterner, I've consistently put an emphasis on the perseverance and hard work needed to produce meaningful creative work; it often takes plain stamina to push through a thousand "no's" on the way to the best art and work. Also, as taught by my father, I've sought out and respect craftsmanship in all manners of creative: the discipline and diligence to write a complete novel, the depth of woodworking knowledge to craft a Thos. Moser chair, the professionalism and mannered approach of Tom Dowd as documented in The Language of Music.

But, in the hunt for perseverance and craftsmanship, I've often given inspiration less credit than it deserves. I don't trust that it'll come around as often as it should. So now I'm out actively lookin' for it among my colleagues with the confident belief that it might be around the next corner even when I'm not clearing an emotional hurdle like Isbell.

Just last week, I had a client apologize after a energetic conversation about his work because, I suppose, it felt somehow emotional and tangential to our work. But for all the block and tackle that needs to happen with that particular project aren't we really mostly in it to help support the inspired design, that exact passion, we're meant to share with a wider audience? When we stumble across the next fast and inspired moment, will we just let it burst open high in the sky to fall into small ashes at our feet or catch it on film – lock it in our memory like that picture of the Grand Canyon – so it can punch us in the soul a second time? Will we be ready for it?

– Jon Roketenetz

Jon is the CEO of GimmeAnother and founder of 3VERB.

Postscript. I stood outside Chicago's Merchandise Mart watching the rain this morning, thinking about finishing this article and the first line of Joe Henry's song "Our Song" – "I saw Willie Mays At a Scottsdale Home Depot Looking at Garage Door Springs At the the far end of the 14th row." It's a line I often cite to fellow writers in the description of my editing process. One day, I'll learn to leave that kind of inspired line alone at the outset.

The Weather at Fruit Hill

New Sincerity Drops The Pretense

44, the excellent new album by the guys and gal in New Sincerity Works, has had it's share of glowing reviews and accolades. A look-no-hands-barred open letter documenting a raft of heartbreak and written big as a billboard, 44 shoves songwriter Mike Tittel out from behind the kit for the first time in a long time.

I won't drag you through a full review – because I don't know how to write one – and because you'd do better to own it and judge for yourself. If you live in Southern Ohio, it's already required listening or been duly banned by your local municipality anyhow.

Here's the true low-down on three important tunes:

1. "I'm Not The Problem" is as good as any problem-based song I've ever run into and that includes a fairly heavy emotional connection to Jackson Browne's "My Problem is You" as well as The Replacement's "My Little Problem," which I've witnessed performed live as a duet between Paul Westerberg and Dan Baird.
That's how good.

2. "As If We Are 24" features lyrics intricate enough I'm still somewhat afraid to unpack it fully. The second guitar on the chorus doesn't sound like Keith Richards, it sounds like Ron Wood.

3. "Less Me, Less You" – the sleeper – drops us in a room filled with "shiny pants" (favorite line: "hey, best friend with the hillbilly dance") but reminds us how easy it is to plug the pinholes of our lives with criticism of others. It's not me, it's you. Wait, I mean it's me, not you.

Mike Tittel, the engineer behind this entire episode, lives on Fruit Hill and spent the first part of his career as a photographer, so you'd not be surprised to learn that the graphic elements shine on the packaging, too. The cover sings. It's the San Francisco you should know, not the one you do. And, the typography sings, as well, though certainly the two 4s should face away from each other. If you buy the record, Tittel promises to lob other visual elements at you via text message.

And he delivers.

In the band's promo poster below, half of the message is absolutely plain to see: The bass player looks like a keyboard player. The drummer insists on wearing a hat indoors. One guitar player won't put down his soda, the other won't tell us what's so funny. Tittel can't even look you in the eye.

The the other half ain't so obvious, though, leaving the curious wanna-be fan with more uncomfortable questions than not. Who is this group? Are they knowable? Do I want to know them? Are the broken aparts alone ever greater than a sadly tethered sum? Can they put down their Kinks covers long enough to make another record?

We'll find out well before 55 if the weather at Fruit Hill holds.

Cue the handclaps right after O'Callaghan's solo. If you haven't heard this album yet, go hear it. Or, go watch the video about the making of the record. Or, go find fifteen songs you never knew you had in you.

– Jon Roketenetz

Jon is the CEO of GimmeAnother, founder of 3VERB, and occasional musician.