A Boy And His Machine Gun
I haven’t a lot of time to write these days. With the release of the new record only days away, I’ve been doing a great deal of press and find myself too exhausted to ponder commenting on current events when I’ve free time. I commonly find myself sitting chairs, staring at nothing, trying to put all the pieces floating around in my head together regarding the upcoming tour – what songs to do, what not to do, how to go about it all in an impacting way.
I have well over 100 songs in my catalogue, which means that playing for 90 minutes, or even 120 minutes, is a significant challenge when it comes to deciding what to play. Obviously, performing 6 or 7 songs off the new record is a given, which leaves 7 to 9 others up in the air. You can’t please everyone, nor can I rehearse with a band for two weeks and get over, say, 80 songs down so that random numbers can be pulled out of thin air. It’s something that becomes more daunting every time I tour with a band – how to formulate the show.
On my way into town the other day I spent some time doing some homework. I listened to Beautiful Midnight from beginning to end. It’s hard to imagine that it came out ten years ago this month. It’s equally as hard to imagine that there was a time when I played most of those songs live. Were you to hand me a guitar and ask me to play A Boy And His Machine Gun or Failing The Rorschach Test the truth is that I couldn’t. I remember the melodies, but even the words have escaped me, not to mention the chord progressions. True, it wouldn’t be that difficult to quickly sit down and figure them out, but that just adds more fuel to the fire – what to play, what not to, what’s relevant, what isn’t.
The thing about being in a band is that the past is remembered, you retain the ability to pull out obscure songs from the past. When you’re a solo artist, and have a large catalogue of material, the process becomes far more difficult given the fact that even if those that play with you are brilliant musicians (which Stu, Blake, and Milos are), it’s simply impossible for us to work up that sort of live catalogue given that we live in different cities and the time that we have to prepare is limited. With the old band it was different. We had a rehearsal space, we could get together whenever we wanted. These days I have to fly to the other side of the country to do it. That would be why preparing for an acoustic tour is much easier and the songs that I’m able to perform are greater in number – because I can sit in my basement and do it.
I don’t even know where I’m going with this. I have a break in my schedule right now, so decided to sit down and write. I think I’m going to go lay down and think some more.
Ah thinking – the bane of my existence.
