Chimney Swift

tension and release

2009-06-15T14:16:00.000-07:00

It's almost felt anticlimactic to release the Chimney Swift EP after a month and a half of silence on this blog and in general about the endeavor. There were good reasons for the silence--none of them expected, simple, or easy--and I can't help but wonder if the silence itself is a blessing of sorts. Releasing the EP this way has called my bluff and challenged what I so carefully articualted to be my state of mind regarding making music. Is the careful attention of a few friends truly better than the fickle adoration of strangers? Really?

I picked up a record a few weeks back. I needed a break from the reasons for the above mentioned silence and decided that an evening trip to Zia and Tops, both blocks from my house, was in order. I bought David Bazan's Fewer Moving Parts EP. I don't own any Pedro the Lion, and was never very interested, but I'd heard songs here and there from this solo EP, and ended up being drawn to it after an hour in the aisles (at Zia, not Tops). There's a passage from the opening tune that I wonder, seeing as how he's a "successful" do-it-yourselfer, independent, touring musical entrepreneur, whether he might have been directing, at least partially, at himself:

so if it starts to get you down
just pretend
that you don't make your living
from selling advertising
tracking trends, coralling demographics
and maximizing traffic

The thing about releasing something like I've released the Chimney Swift EP is that I don't have to pretend. This is not about making a living, it's about living. And life doesn't wait for the appropriate buzz or market saturation to occur before bounding forward. It's a good reminder to me.

So if you're already enjoying the EP, or if you plan to soon, do so with the knowledge that you're a friend before you're part of a coralled demographic.

Peace and joy to you all,
Chad

Dinner is served

2009-06-12T18:27:00.000-07:00

Come to the table and enjoy.

http://sites.google.com/site/chimneyswiftsongs/

Don't Believe

2009-04-27T13:55:00.000-07:00

Last week I had a bit of a breakthrough. It gives me one more reason to suspect what I've already suspected for awhile now: that the creative act is not the act of the artist alone, but that the painter or the novelist or the songwriter is joined in that act by something beyond her conscious self.

Almost two years ago, "I" wrote a song that didn't really sit right with me. It struck me as too overt in sentiment and as a bit disingenuous. I felt that I had drawn a caricature of my psyche that was an oversimplified version of what was actually going on inside of me at the time. But I also thought that my reasons for feeling uneasy about the song were unhealthy and ego-driven because I didn't like the speaker/narrator and didn't want people to think he is me . . . even though I knew he really is. On the other hand, it was a damn catchy little tune that wouldn't let me resign it to my song grave. So it's hung around on the edges of my repertoire for the last couple years, patiently awaiting my attention.

The song is called "Don't Believe," and I wrote it during the Summer of 2007 while I was working at a camp in Prescott. It was my second year as the music director for the Summer camp program, and I enjoyed the enthusiastically kind regard of almost everyone there: campers, counselors, staff, clergy (it's the Episcopal Church's camp). But there were some who were indifferent to what I was doing, and one who struck me as particularly hostile.

Imagine with me the scenario. I have an acoustic guitar, my voice, and some songs that, at the beginning of camp, no one but I know. I stand alone in front of 100-150 kids, high schoolers, college students, and full grown adults; I play and I sing. I do this about 4 times a day in a variety of contexts: on a lawn before breakfast, in a classroom setting, in a dimly lit room in the evening, around a campfire after dark. My task is a delicate one. A guy with a guitar is no match for a hostile crowd of youngsters. I crash and burn if I don't win the affection of the group pretty quickly.

I had my own room at the camp, and in the evenings I would try to write songs. The way I generally write is to sit with paper, a pencil, a guitar, and a small recorder. The initial stage is usually a jumble of melodies and chords and words. I rarely have clear ideas at this point. I emote. I've learned to follow the lead of this stage when I write, even if I don't have a rational grasp on what comes out. The first thing to come out on the night I wrote "Don't Believe" was a chorus:

hey, why don't you believe? why don't you believe in what I play?
hey, why don't you believe? why don't you believe in what I say?

Immediately, I pictured the one consistently hostile face in the sea of expressions I looked out at every day, and I proceeded to build a lyric from how it made me feel. Now, mind you, I did not dwell on that face or that person before I wrote the chorus. The negative regard was minimal compared to the smiling, singing masses. But when I heard that question, "Why don't you believe?" I addressed him.

your feet, firm
your arms fold
your face, the critic in the crowd
your loveless
eyes hold
my gaze as I slip the guitar down

And for the second verse:

you find
what I fear
there's nothing here but hollow sound
no tone
you hear
will lift your regard off the ground

Then a bridge spat out aggressively:

I'd rather be ignored
by a room of a thousand strong
I'd rather be ignored
than to feel you looking on

With a little tweaking and tightening, I was done. But what was I talking about? I didn't care that much about that guy, did I? Where did these feelings come from? Did I really need his approval so badly?

I never answered those questions. I played the song for a few friends and felt like I couldn't own the lyric nor could I pass it off to a character, so, like I said, I set it aside.

For some reason, the cognitive and emotional tension I felt had dissipated enough by this Winter that the song found its way into a set of demos I began recording after The Via Maris broke up last November. And when Rob and I started to work on this new record, it's one of the first three tunes we were able to finish before he left for tour.

So after a month and a half of the song being back on my lips and in my ears, Jana and I were driving to Prescott last weekend, and I popped in the rough mix to give it another listen. When "Don't Believe" came on she said, "I never really got this song until now, that it's you talking to you." But I was deep in thought about the production and responded with some convoluted drivel about how there are several layers, I guess, blah, blah, blah, blah and that was that. It wasn't until the middle of last week, after some other conversations with a dear friend, that what she said actually hit me. The critic IS me. I'm the one who doesn't believe in what I play and say. It's what I've been writing about here on this blog. I was speaking to the part of myself that isn't content with my audience of friends around a table. The part of me that found an ally in that hostile face at camp that silently challenges me to prove that I can do more than just "this." It's so obvious to me now. It was my breakthrough.

I wish the song was mixed and mastered and ready to share along with this post, but it's not. I thought that it was more important to share this story while it's fresh in my mind than to wait until the final version of the song is ready. Soon though, I promise. If you really want to hear it, I always have the current mix close at hand. Just come over.

-cs

3 songs almost ready

2009-04-15T10:26:00.000-07:00

Rob is leaving today for a 5 or 6 week tour, so it's up to me to put the finishing touches on the three songs we've been working on over the last month. I am planning to complete and release these three as an EP. Self-titled, perhaps. I dunno, we'll see what feels right at the moment.

By "release" I mainly mean that I will be sharing my work with my friends. By "friends" I mean a bunch of things, but what I don't mean is consumers of a product in the marketplace.

My wife, Jana, is a talented chef. The kitchen is her main studio. It's where her creative self comes alive, and it's where she finds the joy of skillful expression. She's a working mother with a full schedule, but almost every evening our little family gets to sit around the table together and eat something truly wonderful. Family and friends get to experience her talents quite often too. She has effectively changed the way several of them approach food and cooking, and inspired many to be more creative in the kitchen, just by doing what she loves. But in the terms of a market economy, her creative work is a horrible failure. I mean, goodness, we come out in the red year after year. In order for her work to be valued appropriately, it needs a larger economy than GDP.

That larger economy is the context in and for which I want to create, and I can only hope that the work of my hands is as successful as Jana's. I'm not making goods to be sold in the marketplace, I'm sharing pieces of my very soul around a table with people who come to my home, or invite me into theirs.

Yup, that's the long way of saying that three songs are almost ready for you to enjoy. If you're interested in bringing a bottle of wine or a salad, I could use some help with mastering : )

But for real, the table is open, you're free to bring just yourself and an appetite.

-cs

The Artisans of the Monastery

2009-04-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

I can't resist posting some of what was today's reading in a little book from which some friends and I read each day. It gives voice to much of what's behind Chimney Swift.

From The Rule of St. Benedict: Insights for the Ages by Joan Chittister, O.S.B.,

Chapter 57: The Artisans of the Monastery

Benedict writes,

If there are artisans in the monastery, they are to practice their craft with all humility, but only with the permission of the prioress or the abbot. If one of them becomes puffed up by skillfulness in the craft, and feels that they are conferring something on the monastery, they are to be removed from practicing the craft and not allowed to resume it unless, after manifesting humility, they are so ordered by the prioress or abbot.

Sister Joan comments,

There are three major points made in the chapter on the artists of the monastery: first, that there may be artists in a monastery; second, that they must themselves be humble about it; and third, that an art is not to be practiced for the sake of money. All three points have a great deal to do with the way we look at religious dedication, personal development, and contemporary society in the development of spiritual life today.

The points made in the rule are relatively plain: The development of the spiritual life does not depend on the suppression of beauty or the destruction of the self. The gifts we have been given are for the doing of them, not the denial of them. We do not smother great gifts in the name of great spirituality. The painter, the writer, the musician, the inventor, the scholar, all have to figure out how to put their gifts at the disposal of their spiritual life, not how to build a spiritual life at the expense of the gift.

. . . No gift is given to tyrannize the community. On the contrary, we are expected to learn to take our gifts in stride, to practice them because they deserve to be practiced and because the community can profit from them. Aristotle wrote: "The aim of art is not to represent the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance." Any great gift is a revelation of the more in life, a natural expression of the spiritual, a necessary expression of the sacred. To stamp out the artist in the name of religious rigor is to stamp out the spiritual eye itself, and that kind of blindness plunges any group, any family, any person into darkness indeed. Without the artist to show us what we ourselves do not see of the beauty of the world around us, we lose sight of the beauty of God as well. Benedictine spirituality never substitutes conformity in discipline for fullness of expression in life. The function of the artist in the monastery--and in the life of us all--is to make the transcendent visible; to touch the soul in ways that match the soul; to enshrine beauty so that we may learn to see it; and to make where we live places of wonder.

Benedict writes,

Whenever products of these artisans are sold, those responsible for the sale must not dare to practice any fraud. Let them always remember Ananias and Sapphira, who incurred bodily death (Acts 5:1-11), lest they and all who perpetrate fraud in monastery affairs suffer spiritual death.

The evil of avarice must have no part in establishing prices, which should, therefore, always be a little lower than people outside the monastery are able to set, "so that in all things God may be glorified" (1 Pet. 4:11).

Sister Joan comments,

Of all the paragraphs in the rule that are contrary to the cultural climate in which we live, this is one of the clearest. "Money often costs too much," Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, and Benedictine spirituality would surely agree. Not just dishonesty but even the standards of the marketplace are un-Benedictine according to this chapter. Benedictine spirituality develops goods so that people can have them, not in order to make them available only to the highest bidder or to make excessive profits. Money gained in that fashion costs us compassion and community and our role as co-creators of the reign of God. It hollows out our souls and leaves us impoverished of character and deprived of the bounty of largesse. It is Benedictine to develop our gifts and distribute their fruits as widely and broadly as possible so that justice, but not profit, is the principle that impels us.

production

2009-04-08T13:08:00.000-07:00

I'm working on making a new record. This one will be categorically different than any others I've made before. I've enlisted the assistance of someone else to take the reigns and steer the creative process from unrecorded songs (or, more accurately, sloppy demos) to completed album. In the jargon of the industry, a producer.

Rob Kroehler, who some of you might know as the songwriter, frontman, and creative genius behind The Loveblisters, has graciously spent a couple evenings a week over the last month pouring his considerable talents through his vintage instruments into my songs. I've actually known Rob for my entire life. His older sister and I dated when we were 3. Our parents made us pose to document our young love. We broke up when I was 5. It was rough. I thought she was the one. Robby was her baby brother who I played with off and on throughout my childhood and saw every once in awhile through high school. I remember being intimidated by his freakish musical talents and his hardcore/skater style as we got older. He was unquestionably cooler than I in 1993 . . . and in 2009, but I'm over it.

So after knowing each other a long time ago, we both ended up in the local music scene writing songs and putting together bands to play them. We've gotten reaquainted over the last few years from playing shows together and have developed mutual respect for each other as songwriters, and, after I listened to the record that his band put out last year, The Nowhere West (go and do likewise), I was bold enough to ask him to produce my next record with me. He said yes.

I've often wondered about the experience of working with a producer. I haven't made any recordings of my own songs wherein someone else's creative input is primary. It's sort of a strange concept on one hand, but on the other, it really makes a lot of sense. The writing and performing of a song, either in a band or alone, is a very distinct task from that of fixing a song in recorded form. I wanted to see what would happen if I focused primarily on writing and performing an album instead of being in charge of it all. Rob happened to be looking to try his hand at producing a recording of someone else's songs, so that worked out nicely.

Be prepared to be a bit surprised by what you hear. It's most definitely not The Via Maris. We'll be in the studio tonight, working on vocals, trying to get these first three songs done before Rob goes on tour for 6 weeks as a hired hand with indie-pop darlings, Fun. Wish my voice well . . .

from road to rooftop

2009-04-05T22:09:00.000-07:00

I have come to the end of The Via Maris. Pleasantly enough, I suppose, seeing as how I didn't fully realize I was at the end until a few months after the road had disappeared. Before I continue with cryptic metaphorical content, let me explain to those of you who aren't hip to my oh so literate perspective that 1) The Via Maris is the name of a band that I put together (several times) from early 2005 until late 2008, and 2) The Via Maris is the Roman name for the ancient trade route that circumvented the Mediterranean Sea. They paved it and used it to create and police their three continental empire. Anyway, I'm off of it now.

I've been thinking a lot lately about why I write and record songs in the first place. Are my intentions imperial? Do I believe that it is through size and scope that my output as a songwriter is given legitimacy and value? Now, to be honest, I chose the name The Via Maris because I liked the sound of it, and there were some vague social and political nuances I could have fun with. I was never looking to conquer the known world with that band. But, despite my intentions, I was confronted with a side of myself that responded poorly to the dominant cultural criteria for success that surrounds any musical endeavor. I found that it became really important to me how many plays I got on myspace, like the attention of a nameless throng would somehow fulfill a genuine need of mine. I would fight feelings of jealousy and inferiority when I watched other bands gain large audiences and mass approval. I'd plan the ways I could improve on what I was doing in order to make the NEXT album all the things that the others haven't been: better and more popular.

Irony: I distinctly remember having the thought in college, circa 1996, when I was just starting to write songs, that if only I had the means to make records and give copies to my friends, I would be very happy.

Those of us who grew up here in the West might not know what a chimney swift is. It’s a quick little bird with sharp, boomerang-shaped wings that roosts inside of chimneys, sometimes by the hundreds. They build nests and lay eggs in chimneys too. It’s common for unwitting homeowners to notice distinctive chirping sounds emanating from their unused fireplaces.

I have a little red book, a pocket guide to North American birds, published by the Audubon Society. I found it in a drawer in my grandmother’s desk we inherited when she was moved out of her apartment. In blue ink on the inside of the bent front cover is written “To Grandma Love, Kyle ‘83”. Kyle is an older cousin of mine. I had been looking through it lately, thinking that I would love to find a band name in there. I handed it to a good friend when she was visiting a couple weeks ago and asked her to see what stuck out to her, if anything, for a band name. She left me a list of a couple dozen ideas. I crossed them each off except for “Chimney Swift”.

So I’ve moved from a road of imperial conquest to a humble rooftop roost. If you’d prefer not to hear my chirpings in your chimneys, just shoo me away. But, if you would like to lend me some space on your roof, it’s for you that I make this music, and I’m profoundly grateful for the accommodations.