drwippit-remastered

Sunday At Sams

Thu, 26 Sep 2024 16:04:44 GMT

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...

I was a musician with mediocre skills on a couple of instruments, and I had a handful of songs written. In 1989, I was starting my third year of college, and my friend Tony Heffner, who had played drums in bands with me in high school, had just finished two years in the army and was joining me at UNL. All we needed was a bass player, and we'd have a band. A mutual friend of ours, Todd McHenry, who had played trombone in school, was up for the task. With little more than a few rehearsals, we felt ready to go into the studio and record some songs. I don't remember how much we spent, but I think it was around $300. That got us time in the studio to record on eight tracks of analog tape and 50 printed cassettes. The studio was at Ray Ellington's house in Lincoln, where a couple of other bands we knew (The Confidentials and Such Sweet Thunder) had recorded. We had to fit the drums, bass, guitar, and the three of us in Tony's Beetle.

We didn't waste much time. I think we got about eight hours of studio time, along with the cassettes being printed. I do remember playing the solo for "Go Away (You Suck)" several times. I was trying to come up with something that would gradually build but wasn’t getting anywhere. The guys told me something along the lines of "just jam," and I nailed it on the next take.

Ray was generous with the guitars he had around the studio. The electric guitars were Ray's Gibson Les Paul, and the acoustics were his six- and twelve-string Ovations. At the time, I didn't have an acoustic guitar that was studio-worthy, and my electric was the Ibanez Iceman I bought with my detasseling money when I was 15. I remember thinking that if I doubled the intro to "Love, Life and Death" between the twelve-string acoustic and dirty electric, it would sound like Mötley Crüe's "Merry-Go-Round" from their first album. Listening to it now, I wish I'd spent five or ten more minutes to get the ritard at the end a little more lined up between the two guitars.

I have to say, Tony's meter was so solid—these tempos are really locked down, and we never even thought of using a click track. Todd's bass playing was also spot on. For eight songs recorded straight to analog and mixed in a few hours, I think we did pretty well. In those days, you might be able to punch in a part, but there was certainly no "fixing" anything with digital magic.

Sam's was a restaurant that was great for college students on a budget and, in particular, had a special on burgers every Sunday—I think it was four for a dollar. You can read more about that here .

We were pretty happy with the cassette when it was released and had dreams of getting local shows, improving our playing, and who knows what else? I wish I could say we went on to do more, but we didn’t, and that's on me. By my third year of college, I was a mess personally. I could see I was never going to finish school, I was falling into debt, and I convinced myself I needed to start over somewhere new. I would either sink or swim. As soon as 1990 started, I got on a bus with my guitar, some clothes, and whatever cash I had, and without telling a soul, I disappeared.

I don’t know what happened to all of the cassettes. I’m sure I had one when I left town, but I can’t find it now. I remember we had a friend do the artwork, and we asked her to make the word "Tracers" repeat and fade to create the tracer effect, with "Sunday at Sam's" off to the side. I know we included some "Thank You"s on the inside and thanked some folks, as well as Black Label beer.

Fast forward to 2008, and I ran into a friend who still had one of those cassettes. He let me have it on the condition that I’d get him a copy once I digitized it. I played the cassette into my computer, but the sound was so out of phase, with volume and EQ swells all over the place—it was really unlistenable.

Fast forward to 2024, and I’ve been using a guy I found on Fiverr to help me mix the songs I’m writing and recording today. I noticed his services also include audio restoration. I don’t have Peter Jackson’s budget for restoring sound, but I do have a "guy on Fiverr" budget, so I sent it his way. What we have now is far from perfect—you can still hear some of the artifacts of sibilance and phase issues—but you can also actually hear the songs the three of us recorded 35 years ago. And it’s quite listenable. I tried to remember what the cover looked like since I no longer have one to reference. I think this is pretty close.

Listening to the recordings is like stepping into a time machine. The way we chose to play the songs, the arrangements, and the sound of the instruments bring back memories. I think it’s a time machine for anyone who listened to what we called "college rock" back then.

Take a listen!

Never Again - Again

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 17:53:00 GMT

How I used the internet to help me improve on a couple of 'old' songs.

So I have a new release featuring two heartfelt love ballads. The first track, "Never Again," is a song I wrote in the 90s, at the time I was shooting for a soulful R&B song with its raw emotion and smooth vocals. I'll be the first to admit that smooth vocals aren't my specialty. My early recordings of the song were based around a keyboard riff I played on a '72 Wurlitzer over a drum machine, and then I added some dirty guitar. I never felt like I got what I was looking for and I'm sure a fair amount of that was due to the high falsetto harmony I was trying to add. You can find an example on An Anthology of Sorts .

Fast forward almost 30 years from when I wrote it and I'm giving it another go. The first thing I did was start with 'Hip hop' drums from EZ drummer and a variation on the beat. In place of the Wurlitzer I used an electric piano sound. I started adding the guitars and this time I decided to go with less. Instead of a crunching heavy rhythm all the way through the song I went with a clean wah for the rhythm and less of it. At some point I thought some cello would add some sadness and depth and I started playing with that. I decided what it really could use was a full string arrangement. While I could have come up with this myself, I thought it would end up sounding more professional if I farmed it out. I found someone on Fiverr that had a lot of good reviews and sent him my current demo with the one cello part and asked for an arrangement that starts at the same spot and goes through the rest of the song. I was pretty happy with what I got back.

Now I just needed someone to mix and master, quite frankly that's a weak spot for me. When I mix things down they end up sounding pretty amateur so I'm always looking for someone else to do this part. I found another guy on Fiverr that again had good reviews and even a website with a couple of before and after samples. Mick was willing to do a few revisions trying different levels, different effects on the vocals, and I even sent a new drums track with a diffferent kick and snare. Given a few different versions I could release was fantastic.

The second track, "Nothing in Kerry," takes a different approach. It's an Irish Ballad I wrote after my last visit to Ireland. Sitting in pubs over there listening to story tellers spin yarns really felt like another time and place and I wanted to create something along these same lines. I've been playing the song live for over fifteen years but never got around to recording it. Knowing I wanted it to sound like a 'group' I started by sending my acoustic version to Aerugo Productions , they've done three songs for me in the past which you can here on my EP All The Time .

What William sent back wasn't exactly a traditional Irish arrangement, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I told him it needed a 'singing' instrument in addition to guitars and they added both accordion and harmonica which I think give it the small club/pub feel I was looking for. The drums are a little heavy but I love how they start the song. As I listened to it I thought it really needed some picking guitar during the harmonica breaks. I recorded a guitart part and sent it back to William telling him I thought it needed this and that he could probably do a better job than my quick improv. He sent the mix back to me using the same guitar track I sent him and it works. So I can say it's my guitar there in addition to my vocals, bonus.

William does a pretty decent job of mixing, but rather than a bunch of back and forth with him, I found yet another guy on Fiverr to handle the mixing and mastering. Dgunz did a fine job, allowed for a few revisions, and in the end I said, "More accordion!" Maybe it's too much but I'm happy with it, and as with Mick I still have a few different versions I can put out there.

All The Time

Fri, 28 Jul 2023 20:08:00 GMT

The new EP is out on all the streaming platforms. Details on the songs below the links.

All The Time

I starting working on the song All The Time before I left Chicago to move out to Colorado. I'd had an idea in my head for a while of a song with a hook that was just, "That's all the time". It was a night I was on Mushrooms and had just finished a heavy version of For Everyone that I decided to start putting down tracks for All The Time. I got a verse chorus structure going and came up with something a little different for the guitar solo. By the time I was done that night I had the solo done and about three extra minutes of soloing over the chorus at the end and called it a night.

The next thing to do was write the verses. At this time we were really focused on the move to Colorado and step one was for me to get a day job there. I had felt like my Chicago job was a dead end for a few years already and it was borderline toxic so I just couldn't wait to leave. I wrote most of the first two verses of this song about that job and getting out of it, and then made the last verse kind of a positive summary to finish it upbeat.

On thing I new I needed was some backups on the choruses to echo 'All the time'. Initially I was thinking of a crowd sound, but after moving to Colorado and hooking up with my friend Lavette who's a great singer, I decided to go with the female backups sound. I really didn't give her much to go on, she just went through the song three times singing it three different ways and I put them together. The more I listened to the song in 2019, the more it sounded to me too much like 90s era 311 and I shelved it in 2019.

Fast forward four years and a pandemic later I was working on a couple of songs with Aerugo Productions from Tennessee and I thought it's a good time to revisit this and see if I can finish it up and include it on an EP with this other songs. What inspired me to jump back in was having the idea to use Hip Hop drums in the verses in place of rock drums, and working on remixing the drums allowed me to hear it as more than a 90s era 311 song. I rerecorded my own choruses and the verses with the new drum mix and decided I like the song again, enough to make it the title track of the EP. You can check out the lyrics here .

Be Here Now

If you've been following the Dr long enough, you remember this was first released as part of An Anthology of Sorts , you can read the story of the original version here . So what are we doing releasing it in 2023? Well I got an email from Aerugo Productions that they were going to raise the price for recording a song. Honestly I think they are extremely reasonable, and the $50 per song increase is more than fair and still a fantastic value. Since they offered to do one more at the old price for us loyal customers, I looked at my back catalog for songs that I think are pretty good songs and maybe my original version is kinda shitty. Which is to say I looked for songs I think are pretty good songs. I sent them a couple and they picked this one. The ending is actually a little more chaotic, truth be told I know these guys don't get to just rock the fuck out often enough and they enjoy it when they get the opportunity. I really like the addition of piano, other than that it's very true to the original and I like to think I sang it a little better this time. You can check out the lyrics here .

Get It Right

I've lived in Colorado four and a half years now, and this is the only song I've written start to finish since I got here. One night I had a particularly healthy weed and alcohol buzz going and went outside for a cigarette. It hadn't happened in a while but it was one of those moments where some lyrics just popped into my head. I felt good enough about 'em I wrote them down on Paper as soon as I got inside:

Sleepin' on a bed of thorns

I wake up feeling cold and warm

I wonder what the day will bring today

Whiskey and some water I got everything I need

I'll remember how I got here on the way

So now I need some music and what's it about? Well for music I decided to write with the capo on and tried to use open strings and create kind of a weird intro bridge thing. Style-wise I was thinking of the song Seasons by Chris Cornell, but not so dark, more of a country folk thing. What's it about? Well I did have an idea for a song topic that had been marinating for a while. This started back in Illinois when I was having a similar moment to myself outside and the thought popped in to my head, "What if I actually did everything right?" It was a question filled with the regret of knowing you've made a lot of choices in life that haven't helped, maybe hurt, and definitely slowed you down and kept you from reaching your true potential. On another night here in Colorado the same question hit me, only this time it was, "What if I actually DID everything right?" This time the question was filled with hope an confidence instead of regret. After all, I am what I am, I was given what I was given and the choices I made are what got me here, and quite frankly, here is a lot better than I might have predicted 30-40 years ago for myself. So the song is about getting it right. "This time" being kind of a reincarnation reference, the more lessons you learn this time the less work you'll have ahead of you when you get back.

I created an arrangement myself knowing I was going to be sending this one to Aerugo Productions to put down professional instruments, you can check out the demo version here . William and Aerugo Productions did a great job recording their version including some banjo and a fantastic harmonica part.

You can check out the lyrics here .

For Everyone - Wippit Wah Mix

I know I know. It's my 17th version of this song, right? What is it now? Well it was about 6 months ago I had Aerugo Productions record it and put my vocals on it and I thought they did a great job of making a professional sounding hard rock song out of it. What I did at the time was I also tried doing some of my own lead guitar with their version. I think I tried about 20 solos a night on five or six different nights and I didn't like anything really that I was hearing. I had to face the fact that I haven't been playing with a band in about five years, and the little bit I've played by myself since I got here just is not keeping my lead guitar chops up. Anyone that knows me also knows I don't right solos, I just play along with whatever's there, and I'm as surprised as anyone else at what comes out. So finally I said, "Dr, you're just gonna have to break out the wah. Let the foot pedal provide some expression and see where that takes you." I went through the song with the wah pedal about three times and figured it's as good as it's gonna get and sent it off to Aerugo Productions along with my vocals. They sent back the version with them doing all the guitars, and then this version with me basically shitting wah all over them. You can check out the lyrics here .

For Everyone - The Evolution of a Song

Wed, 04 Jan 2023 20:51:00 GMT

I started writing the song For Everyone about ten years ago. Like most of the songs I write, it started with a chord progression followed by a vague idea of what the melody could be. One day I was driving and listening back to an acoustic strumming the chords, and the beginning of the chorus just came to me out of the blue:

When do we get to the part where we stop hurting each other?

How do we get to the place where we stop breaking each other down?

It had been some time since I wrote a song with a "message" and this one seemed to be writing itself. Suddenly, I felt this one needed to be done in a hurry and rushed out. I already had a couple of new songs close to the finish line, Yup and Paying for Lessons. Now I felt like I was close to getting an EP worth of material , and I wanted to get it to the masses.

It didn't take more than a couple of days to get the lyrics finished, now I had a song I could play on an acoustic, but I wasn't sure where it would go from here. I brought it to the studio where my stepsons worked on music and asked if they wouldn't mind learning it real quick and putting down bass and drums, I was still just strumming an acoustic. I think we wen't through the song all of three times and I brought home the acoustic, bass and drum tracks. In the big picture, I wanted this to have electric guitar instead, so I recorded a kind of funky electric riff over the drums and bass, put power chords over the chorus, and then another track of lead throughout the song. The final touch I figured it needed was female backups on the chorus. At the time I was in a cover band and I got the female vocalist from Tastes Like Chicken to sing a three part arrangement I put together, and I figured it was ready for prime time.

Since this was the song with the message I made it the title track of my EP, and I rushed it out to CD Baby and all the streaming services. You can check out that version here:

It didn't take me long before I thought this version was a bit unfinished, there's some latency in the lead vocals here and there, and I felt like I hadn't done the song justice. Being in a band, I did try to get the band to play it, but all they had to go off of was this recording. While I continued to play it at solo acoustic and songwriter sets, the song wasn't getting "out there" by any means. The more I played it, the more I heard it as more of a "hard rock" song, something along the lines of what I used to write with The Kenilworth Project .

One night I found myself alone with a few hours and some magic mushrooms and decided to just make it happen. I programmed the drums and added the guitars and bass you hear on this version that one night, and added vocals a few days later.

The lead guitars in the beginning are a bit much, but you know how it is when you have tracks you laid down on shrooms, you want to keep those so the track stays true to that magic moment. I threw this up on SoundCloud and just let it sit, not really pushing it at anyone, just there for posterity.

I read American Songwriter magazine and I noticed that there are ads in every issue from a couple of guys that will record your songs "in Nashville". At some point curiosity got the best of me and I decided to reach out to Aerugo Productions and find out what it would cost and of course, what it would sound like. I sent him the two versions above and told him I thought maybe there was a happy medium between the heavy version and the original recording. I was pleasantly surprised when he came back with something actually very close to the heavy version. It opens with a loop that repeats throughout the song. He asked me to send him the backing vocal tracks from the original version, and he sped them up to fit in with this new version.

I spent a little time playing my own lead guitar with it and I sent him individual guitar and vocal tracks. He sent back a mix with my guitar and vocals. In the end I decided it sounded best with my vocals but all the guitars done by his team and that's the version I released as a single to all streaming services.

I did put up the version with my lead guitar on, in which I proceed to shit wah-wah all over Nashville, you can check that one out here:

I'm so happy with what we ended up here I already sent them a demo of my latest song, stay tuned!

The Covid Sessions - Episode 1

Sun, 13 Nov 2022 07:06:00 GMT

March 22nd, 2020

So I found out Covid was "real" as I was in the office at my new job getting ready for a weekend of Frozen Dead Guy Days in 2020. The event was canceled 24 hours in advance and shut downs and work from home was happening immediately. I had been planning within the next week or two to play an open mic just to get in front of folks with a guitar for the first time since I moved to Colorado in January 2019.

Something about being stuck at home for an unforeseeable amount of time made me think I gotta play streaming cause it's all that's left. This was the first of those shows, and this was less than 10 days from the shut down. I was already starting to think about more shows after and what I might play. Since an open mic would have been just me and an acoustic that's how this started. I did test it out with just a web cam initially and the sound was all phased and weird, so I found a way to get a stage mic through usb for the sound and it was a little better, not a lot. It's amateur at it's best, sometimes worse, but if you're following Dr Wippit at all, you know.....

I was a little surprised that a few friends "showed up" and dropped comments throughout. It really did feel a bit like a show. I had to commit to keeping it going, we're all stuck at home together after all.

The song list was pretty close to what I would have played at an open mic, without the three or four song limit there's a couple of more. Four out of the ten songs were originals, and six covers that I already new and just like playing. Here's the list:

Irish Ballad - Dr Wippit

Shadow Dancing - Andy Gibb

In Color - Jamey Johnson

Be Here Now - Dr Wippit

Meadow - Dr Wippit

Something More Than Free - Jason Isbell

Say You Do - Dierks Bentley

Kiss Off - Violent Femmes

For Everyone - Dr Wippit

Baby It's You - Beatles version

The Covid Sessions - Episode 2

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 07:40:00 GMT

March 28th, 2020

In the six days between the first two Covid shows, I decided the shows should have themes, I sure can't play the same songs every week right? The expectation was the same small handful of friends would show up and they deserve something better than a repeat.

I came up with a theme of 80s songs, allowing me to use a bunch of songs I'd played a hundred times before, just not in the last 30 years or so. I started a weekly schedule of spend Monday through Thursday putting a list together and, Friday night I'd play the guitar in headphones and make sure I pretty much new how to play it, Saturday I'd do an out loud run through singing and playing, then live show Saturday or Sunday.

You can sure see a difference in my appearance. The first episode I wasn't expecting anything and just showed up au naturel. Knowing folks actually tune in got me to dress up like, well like I'm playing a show. I brought in two originals because I could. The stuff I wrote in the eighties was, well, written by a teenager. Making the push to get to an hour, I went from ten songs to sixteen. As I mention in the video, over half of these I played with my friend Tony on drums after school in high school. Everything from Husker Du and The Replacements to Cyndi Lauper, George Michael, Prince.... Here's the list:

Don't You Forget About Me - Simple Minds

Driver 8 - REM

Scarecrow - John Mellencamp

Never Let Me Go - The Attitudes/Tracers

Tainted Love - Soft Cell

The Ledge - The Replacements

Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper

In Your Eyes - Peter Gabriel

Tomorrow Someone's Leaving - The Attitudes/Tracers

When Doves Cry - Prince

Faith - George Michael

Add It Up - Violent Femmes

Never Talking To You - Husker Du

Whip It - Devo

Hold Me Now - Thompson Twins

Never Tear Us Apart - INXS

The Covid Sessions - Episode 3

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 07:16:00 GMT

April 5th, 2020

For the third episode I stepped the sound up with a mixer so I have a stage mic and my guitar on separate channels and effects streaming with the video. I also started trying to pull off using a looper built into my guitar pedal. The looper pedal thing isn't my forte, just wanna play a solo here and there you know. I do think the set ends well. I played this full set with acoustic/electric but I already have my eyes set on electric.

Bill Withers passed this week so I had to do a couple of his. I still leaned heavily on songs I played thirty years ago in order to play new songs every week. I owe my parents for having a crapload of 45s and albums, I had a thousand 50s-60s songs stuck in my head by the time I was 10.

As you'll see below, this video won't show here because it may contain content owned by someone else. So I guess that could happen to all of these, they all have cover songs. You'll have to click the Watch on Facebook to check it out. I guess those folks that might own the content don't mind if you watch it on Facebook. And yeah. I played a Three Doors Down song.

Here's the list:

Ain't No Sunshine - Bill Withers

You've Got to Hide Your Love Away - The Beatles

Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town - Pearl Jam

It's Too Late - Buddy Holly

Lover's Question - Clyde McPhatter

No Milk Today - Hermans Hermits

Say You Do = Dierks Bentley

White Man's World - Jason Isbell

What's So Funny Bout Peace, Love and Understanding - Elvis Costello

Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie

Suffragette City - David Bowie

Eyes Without a Face - Billy Idol

Loser - Three Doors Down

Use Me - Bill Withers

The Covid Sessions - Episode 5

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 06:38:00 GMT

April 19th, 2020

That's right I opened the show streaming to the wrong page, the Tastes Like Chicken page. So nobody saw it as it happened, but there it is. The Dr Wippit page stream starts with Margaritaville, a better lock down song to be sure.

I got in an original that goes back to Stalemate and one I haven't played alone before (Eyes Wide Open). The switch to electric is the first time I notice a thing where suddenly my pedal is way down in volume and I swear I didn't touch it. I think I have that figured out.

With the solo at the end it looks like the weekly playing is bringing back some old guitar chops.

Hey Jealousy - Gin Blossoms (Wrong Page)

Margaritaville - Jimmy Buffet

All I've Got to Do - The Beatles

Mr. BoJangles - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Eyes Wide Open - Stalemate

Peace Train - Cat Stevens

I'll Be Your Baby Tonight - Bobby Darin

Southern Cross - Crosby, Stills and Nash

Fall Down - Toad the Wet Sprocket

Wake and Bake - The Kenilworth Project

867-5309 - Tommy Tutone

Keep Your Hands to Yourself - Georgia Satellites

The Covid Sessions - Episode 4

Thu, 10 Nov 2022 05:40:00 GMT

April 12th, 2020

The first time I opened with a Pink Floyd reference. I’m starting to kind of feel like there’s regulars for these. Am I going through the trouble of putting on a shirt and hat for something? Yes.

John Pride died so I covered one of his. Bonnie Raitt of course.

The fact that I’m doing The Best Way to Travel by the Moody Blues I think reflects that we really we’re feeling the reality of “we might just have to live on our own for a while”. Shoulda left the Pearl Jam alone. But there it is. Ain’t no filter. The last couple were thrown in cause I was trying to hit that hour but still missed by eight minutes. Should I stop trying to come up with an entirely new set list every week? I do have a day job....

Stuck in the middle

Angel From Montgomery

That’ll Be The Day

Don’t mess around with Jim

The Best Way to Travel

Plush

Jack and Diane

Sirens

What Condition my Condition was in

Steady As She Goes

Third

Keep Pushing On

For Everyone

I Think We're Alone Now

The Covid Sessions - Episode 6

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 06:40:00 GMT

April 26th, 2020

My first attempt to use the looper (Summer Breeze) is a terribly painful four starts, but it gets going eventually, and I need to practice this now. My snide comment about people requesting songs "I already played in other sets" goes to show how seriously I'm taking myself at this point, but really I'm just trying to play a whole new set every week to see if I can do it.

Switching to the electric is another painful loop song (Blue on Black). Maybe I shouldn't try to do a whole new set every week? By the time I got to Steve Miller I actually got a good loop going on the first try. The Steve Miller is followed by two songs I played because... well cause the wife likes 'em and.... I never did before and they both have wah wah solos.

Hey, Hey, What Can I Do - Led Zeppelin

Up On the Roof - The Drifters

The Night Has a Thousand Eyes - Bobby Vee

Cool Change - Little River Band

Summer Breeze - Seals and Crofts

Wild World - Cat Stevens

Sure As I'm Sittin' Here - Three Dog Night

Swimming - Dr Wippit

What I Got - Sublime

Blue On Black - Kenny Wayne Shepherd

Little Red Corvette - Prince

Swingtown/Jet Airliner - Steve Miller

Jackie Blue - Ozark Mountain Daredevils

Guitar Man - Bread

Stuck in the Middle = Stealers Wheel

The Covid Sessions - Episode 7

Tue, 08 Nov 2022 04:04:00 GMT

May 3rd, 2020

Opened with Nobody's Home from Pink Floyd and then into a request. I'll do what I wanna do but maybe what you want to? What you want? The trying to have a full new set list every week has me relying on lyrics and chords on the screen and I can see it. I pick songs that have just always been with me and see if I can. I should leave Zeppelin alone but I'm not gonna.

I started the electric set with an unplanned request, it's almost like really playing a show or something. Then a planned Guadalcanal Diary song that just crashed and burned. It's live TV kids! Use Me I really just want to do with a full band again that song rocks so hard. So I try to make the band with the looper, still tryin' to figure that thang out.

Nobody's Home - Pink floyd

Night Moves - Bob Seger

I Got a Name - Jim Croce

Bus Stop - The Hollies

Never Comes the Day - The Moody Blues

Going to California - Led Zeppelin

Runaway - Del Shannon

Trail of Tears - Guadalcanal Diary

Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison

I Want to Tell You - The Beatles

Use Me - Bill Withers

Heart Full of Soul/For Your Love/Stepping Stone - The Yardbirds/The Monkeys

The Covid Sessions - Episode 8 - Mother's Day

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 05:07:00 GMT

May 10th, 2020

The first Mother's Day of the panedemic calls for another Floyd start, amiright? Little Richard died so I had to lay into some of that. And 16 years after we played it at the Double Door on Mother's Day I played Mama Baby, I'll probably always play that on a Mother's Day gig.

My deep cut of the show is One More Time from Joe Jackson's debut, we all have that deep heartbreak cut that only we know why it's deep. It's a pretty legit version of Lifeguard, an original from Stalemate, in true fashion had to finish it out with five srings. Had to switch back to the acoustic for songs that were meant for the electric; You get what you get.

Mother - Pink Floyd

Long Tall Sally/Tutti Frutti - Little Richard

Do You Want to Know a Secret - The Beatles

Ligntning Crashes - Live

Mama Baby - The Kenilworth Project

Country Roads - John Denver

Times Like These - Foo Fighters

Hush - Deep Purple

One More Time - Joe Jackson

White Wedding - Billy Idol

Lifeguard - Stalemate

Fly Like an Eagle - Steve Miller Band

Yes We Can - The Pointer Sisters

The Covid Sessions - Episode 9

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 05:49:00 GMT

May 17th, 2020

Started with a terribly painful Tracy Chapman. I really do mean well. I'm learning a new show every week, what're you doing? Did you know it's Take a load off Fanny, not Take a load off Annie? The things you learn with an exercise like this one.

A week went by and I didn't replace the string on my Iceman, sign of the times. The electric set this week is the Epiphone hollow body. Brought out another Stalemate song with Touche, can't do it justice without Ben on drums but I'ma keep tryin. Two Tickets to Paradise is a song we used to play in the living room in my early twenties. I'm gonna get it put together with Fleetwood Mac's Dreams one of these days.

New Beginning - Tracy Chapman

Sunshine - Jonathan Edwards

The Weight - The Band

She Talks to Angels - The Black Crowes

Sundown - Gordon Lightfoot

Seven Years - Lukas Graham

Breaking the Girl - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Drift Away - Dobie Gray

Shambala - Three Dog Night

Fell On Black Days - Soundgarden

Touche - Stalemate

Two Tickets to Paradise - Eddie Money

The Covid Sessions - Episode 10

Fri, 04 Nov 2022 06:58:00 GMT

May 25th, 2020

At some point I had the idea to put Zeppelin's That's the Way together with Pearl Jam's Daughter. I think it was the first time I heard Pearl Jam's Daughter. Turns out the same custom tuning works for both, win win. The tuning break is a little long, but a 10,000 Maniacs song and then another brilliant twofer, Too Late and Too Late.

I used the world famous Dr Wippit "Gordon Heavyfoot" version of If You Could Read My Mind to make the switch from Electric to Acoustic. You see I'm working on the show. The Electric Set is all pet songs for me from the 80s that I've never played before, things you do when you're trying to learn a new set every week. And an original thrown in cause ... pet songs.

That's the Way/Daughter - Led Zeppelin/Pearl Jam

What's the Matter Here - 10,000 Maniacs

Too Late to Turn Back Now/It's Too Late - Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose/Carole King

Homeward Bound - Simon and Garfunkel

Children of Children - Jason Isbell

Fire and Rain - James Taylor

Breakdown - Tom Petty

If You Could Read My Mind - Gordon Heavyfoot

That Girl Could Sing - Jackson Browne

Driver's Seat - Sniff 'n the Tears

Change - John Waite

Cocaine - Eric Clapton

For Everyone - Dr Wippit

The Covid Sessions - Episode 11 - Summer Special

Thu, 03 Nov 2022 07:54:00 GMT

Summer Special - August 8th, 2020

So after ten shows in ten weeks I said enough, I'll get to it when I get to it. I don't know that I put that much more than a week into prepping for this one, I just quit worrying about playing for a while. And then, I gotta put on a show. A weekend alone with the new puppie is perfect. What am I gonna play? I like to open with songs I have no business singing so here's Sarah McLachlan.

I used a Three Dog Night "portion" of the set to make the switch from Acoustic to Electric, and probably not the first two songs you think of for Three Dog Night. You're welcome. Summer Rain I wanted to learn cause I liked it so much as a kid, turns out it's not a simple song on the guitar. Who knew? Can't miss with Hankie Pankie, is there a cooler song? Throughout this set Annie steals the show.

Angel - Sarah McLachlan

Mr. BoJangles - Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

Reason to Believe - Rod Stewart

Wagon Wheel - Old Crow Medicine Show

Father Figure - George Michael

Breathless - William Prince

Stay Tonight - Eagle Eye Cherry

Family of Man - Three Dog Night

Liar - Three Dog Night

Ah Leah - Donny Iris

Summer Rain - Johnny Rivers

Hankie Pankie - Tommy James

Mad Season - Matchbox 20

Meadow

Sat, 30 Aug 2014 05:26:00 GMT

Wasting all my time again

Playing in the rain

Guess I still remember getting burned

So I think I’m gonna drown again

I’m tired of the flame

I give into the waves

Hoping I’ll just float away

A cloud in someone’s day

Never gonna get burned

Came back this time just to give it all away

But when there’s nothing left but pain

Nobody wants to take the weight

Some way I know this day is just a start

I’m still on my way it’s just a part

Some way I’ve seen the end-You’ll be there my friend

Sharing just one heart

Keep coming back to stay

I think I gotta learn again

Must be something locked away

Cause I think I’m gonna burn again

Came back this time just to give it all away

But when there’s nothing left but pain

Nobody can take the weight

And I’m taking a look inside of me

What’s left no one wants to see

Nobody can take the weight-got to burn it away

Burn it away so I can learn again

Keep coming back to stay

Looks like I gotta learn again

One fine day back in the ’90s, my buddy Dan and I were wandering around Oak Park—probably looking for meaning, or maybe just coffee. I happened to be carrying my acoustic, as one does after being awake all night (which was sort of our Sunday tradition). We were still... let’s just say philosophically altered.

On the other side of Harlem Ave, in Forest Park, there was a whole thing going on—turns out it was “Forest Park Days” or something equally festive. Live music, people having fun, the works. We stopped to check out a band called Butterfly McQueen—a jangly, folksy group with a female singer. They were actually pretty good.

On the way back to Oak Park, we plopped down in an open field to regroup, and I started strumming what would become the hook for this song. It just sort of fell out of the guitar. I improvised some ridiculous lyrics about our day, and Dan and I couldn’t stop laughing—but the riff stuck with me.

This song later made it onto Dr. Wippit’s 1st Time Out, recorded on my trusty 8-track cassette machine. My goal was to make it sound as trippy as possible—which, predictably, was also its downfall. I ran a twelve-string acoustic through a flanger, put flange on the bass too (because why not), and topped it off with some psychedelic lead guitar. At that point I didn’t even know what the song was about, so I just labeled the tape Butterfly McQueen.

Eventually I wrote lyrics about life’s little cycles—showing up here to learn a few lessons, hoping to come back next time a bit less clueless. I renamed it Meadow, after that field where it all started. Like a lot of early Dr. Wippit tracks, I loved the song but… yeah, it sounded like trash.

Years later, while re-recording it for An Anthology of Sorts, I was determined to keep that trippy lead guitar. I’d used a preset on my old RP12 called something like “Freak Out” or “Pshycho,” and when I eased in the effect with the expression pedal, it hit that sweet spot of chaos and melody I’d wanted all along.

But there was a catch—no drums. And since the tempo wandered around like we did that Sunday morning, it wasn’t exactly easy to add new rhythm parts. So I programmed drums, time-stretched them section by section, and finally had something to build on. Clean acoustic, the original bass line, and the same trippy lead—suddenly it sounded like what I’d been chasing 14 years earlier.

As with most of my songs, I bounced rough mixes off friends for feedback. Danny Brown, the drummer from my cover band Tastes Like Chicken, asked, “So… no drums?” I explained the tempo chaos, and he shot back, “Not even a hand drum?” Touché.

So I handed him the mix and said, “You’ve got a week.” A week later, he laid down hand drums into my trusty H4 while listening on headphones. I mixed them in, along with new vocals and a fresh six-string rhythm track. Finally—it sounded finished.

All this reminiscing made me curious about Butterfly McQueen, the band that started it all. Turns out their guitarist was from The Freddy Jones Band, and the singer—Nancy Stone—is still making music. You can check her out here: Nancy Stone – Stonegrooves .

Rock Movement #23

Sat, 02 Aug 2014 22:44:00 GMT

I did live through a brief glorious period where I had access to a rehearsal space set up to record straight to an 8-track-to-cassette analog machine, and psychedelic drugs at the same time. One night I set out to document Never Again for the first time with words, and with a gel cap.

I wish I still had the cassette to prove it, but that version sounded better than anything I’ve been able to come up with since. I was so excited I had to drive at least a couples of miles to my buddies’ place to share. When I got there I found a pair of guys getting ready to move out and burn all of their stuff because the place was so infested with roaches. Zzzt Zzzt they zipped across the floor or wall every few seconds. If you’ve never seen this on acid before you’re in for a treat.

I could handle only so much of this before driving a car was less stressful than my fear of bugs. I got myself back to the rehearsal spot, hit record, and sat behind the drums and shook cockroaches out of my spirit for about eight minutes. I rewound the tape and recorded a couple of takes of bass and heard a song start to develop. I recorded a couple of guitar parts and a vocal through the guitar pedal, and ended up with this. And there it lay.

Three Four

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:39:00 GMT

Time it just keeps ticking away from insanity is grabbing me

Pulling me flooring me one thousand gs are yanking me

I’m thankful for the lesson but now it’s messing with my head

I see these babies run the show they don’t know

I had twice the skills twenty years ago and I still grow

I stay positive with experience Damn I show resilience

But here it is later in the game and the ones that make it

Are just faking it

Taking the spotlight from my life

And what could they have to say?

I don’t know how they make you feel it

Not even good at stealing someone’s lie

And I never stopped a day

If it takes this long to make it

Could it be I’m faking it right now

It gets confusing cause I’m losing the game

They’re getting beautifully rewarded for being seriously lame

It’s a crime – I never made it to the right place at the right time

Struggling juggling bills keeping it real speaking my mind

I’m ready to close the sale but sure it’s too late

It doesn’t make me any younger all this hunger and ache

And I don’t know if I can dummy down enough for the minds

Of what you’re buying

The realest of us get left behind

And what could they have to say?

I don’t know how they make you feel it

Not even good at stealing someone’s lie

And I never stopped a day

If it takes this long to make it

Maybe I’m just faking it right now

I don’t feel this

It’s not real

Three Four was one of many songs that started with drummer Ben Gold saying, "I have an idea for a song!" In this case he followed that up with his best impression of a heavy guitar riff and went, "Du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun Dun, Du-du-du-dun, Du-dun, Du-Dun, Du-dun, Du-dun Dun, Du-du-du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun Dun, Du-du-du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun, Du-dun Dun…." And over the course of the next few minutes I found the power chords that sounded to Ben like what he was hearing in his head. Once we had this opening riff down, the rest of the song was a collabaration as far as what the verse sounded like, what the bridge sounded like, and the general order of parts.

In coming up with the words, I honestly can't remember if I had the first verse written already or not, but I do remember writing that verse in LAX airport after a few days of absorbing several albums from the Rhyme Sayers label. My brother had been pushing these artists my way from Minneapolis for a couple of years, but of course I didn't pay attention until my friends here in Chicago were listening, and I remember thinking this was the best available hip-hop at the time (02-03). So once I had this first verse written it was clear to me this song was a golden opportunity for me to excorcise my anger at the rap nu-metal crap that had been driving my crazy for a while. In particular bands like Linkin Park and P.O.D. which were all over the radio had such lame flows that I thought it was a crime that kids were eating this stuff up. I couldn't help but think the free forms we did on the bus in the mid eighties were better than this crap. And power chords with distortion and screaming or barking does NOT make you heavy. Or does it? So I figure we'll take this really heavy song and scream really loud and hard like those guys and there you have it. I double tracked the vocals, and I'll always regret not fixing the part at the end where one vocal says, "Could it be I'm fakin' it" while the other says, "Maybe I'm just fakin' it", but what're you gonna do? Like all four of the Kenilworth Project tracks on the Anthology, these were mixed down years ago, and redoing parts wasn't an option.

I think the highlight of this recording is the guitar solo. When we recorded this song I'm pretty sure Jake was still a teenager, but his guitar always sounded great because he was focused on tone, and when it came to solos he focused on quality over quantity. This is something I unfortunately didn't pay attention to until I was in my 30s and I have to blame all the shit metal I listened to in the 80s and early 90s. So when Jake sat down to do this solo, he took his time, he put down several good takes, he listened to them several times and took the best parts of a couple of them, and had the engineer put them together into one amazing solo that to me sounds like it came right off a Ten Years After record, which is pretty impressive for someone who was born in the 80s.

An Anthology of Sorts

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 05:59:00 GMT

In 2011 I decided to start documenting all the songs I've written over the years. There are dozens of them, many I've written along with some really great artists. As I started documenting the lyrics I looked to see how many I had good recordings of. I decided there had to be enough good songs here that never got a proper release, and would be worth 99 cents each. So I set about remixing and remastering and ended up releasing these 15 songs as An Anthology of Sorts. The back stories and lyrics can be found in individual song blogs.

It's On You

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 05:21:00 GMT

It isn’t always easy to give it up

It isn’t always easy to throw it away

I know you want to throw your hands up

But what about yesterday

I can’t promise you anything but what I see from where I stand

I tell you everything I know and that I’m reaching for you

Now do you want to understand

The mind tries to be innocent- nobody wants to take the blame

But when you see that it’s just you in the way it’s the beginning of the pain

Most of the time- I’ll bring you back belief

What comes around if you can look into my eyes

It’s coming back to you so you can open up your mind and

Let go and surrender if you can let go

Deal with the pain I’m gonna keep you afloat

You can’t be anything you don’t want to feel

How long before nothings real again

Let go and surrender

Let go deal with the pain I’m gonna keep you afloat

You can’t be anything you don’t want to feel

How long before nothings real

There must be something you like

In the place that you hide

There must be something you don’t want to give away

What makes you want to stay

You can’t go anywhere to get to here

You’ve got to be here right now

The only way to stay is grab a hold of the day

But your hands are full of memories

You haven’t even been here before

So why are you telling me that you can’t take it anymore

I know it’s hard to believe that I’m not lying to you

But I got nothing less to lose at least we got today so you can

Let go and surrender if you can let go

Deal with the pain I’m gonna keep you afloat

You can’t be anything you don’t want to feel

How long before nothings real again

Let go and break down your defenses

Let go deal with the pain I’m gonna keep you afloat

You can’t be anything you don’t want to feel

How long before nothings real again

If there’s one song that’s going to make people say, “Damn Dr why did you put this one on the album”, this is the second one. This song was written for a woman, and was about the personal issues and experiences she had that were impeding our relationship. However they can just as easily be about anyone that uses their past as an excuse no to succeed. Listening to a playback of this song as I was working on the remix for An Anthology of Sorts I found it to be an appropriate message to myself. Which I suppose is a testament to the fact that I shouldn’t even be telling these stories, I should let folks get their own message. But I digress….

I wrote the music for this song while I was visiting my home town. The person I was visiting was at work, and I was actually using my car stereo as an amp for my electric guitar. Years earlier I had bought this little practice gadget that you could plug a guitar into, it had a tape player/recorder, and even came with a headset microphone. The headset microphone was long gone, but I could play my guitar through it, and I had the headphone jack running into a cassette adapter in my car stereo, and I was sitting in the hatchback area with guitar coming out the speakers on either side of me. It was here that I came up with the two different guitar parts for the verses.

I initially recorded this for Dr Wippit’s 1st Time Out with the old 8 track to cassette machine. I know I wanted the power chord guitar that opens the song to sound like Motley Crue’s first album even though that album was already 15 years old. I’ll always have the Crue’s first album on my top ten/desert island discs list. If there were ever an album that sounds like pure cocaine, that’s it. As a matter of fact that opening riff is almost completely stolen from Come On And Dance. The rest of the song seemed to add up mathematically and it seems like I programmed and played everything right, but the version that’s on the first Dr Wippit album just sounds terrible.

Fast forward fifteen more years, and I wanted to see if I could get this song to sound right. I dumped all the original instrumental tracks into my pc and figured I’d be able to clean them up and create separation I couldn’t get with the old school technology. An initial issue as that the old four track can only put out four tracks simultaneously, and I’d already learned that if you tried more than one pass, the timing wouldn’t be quite right. So if I wanted two guitars, bass, and drums, I had to give up on stereo drums. I did try to recreate stereo by copying the mono track and putting different eq on each one and then panning. Another one of the first things I tried was taking the harmonies I used in the last verse of the original version and putting them throughout the song. I decided they didn’t work everywhere, but it added to quite a few places. I put a significant amount of time into getting the guitars to sound better through eq and a lot of volume changes to make sure I could here what I wanted to hear for each part. In the end I’m pretty pleased with the final mix, it sounds like 90s glam rock meets Seattle with a touch of prog metal, what more could you ask for?

Third

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 05:12:00 GMT

Swimming in circular motion

Leaves dissipate in a trance

Do I reach back do I grasp at the past

Or can I just follow the dance

Seems that I’ve waited so long this time

And I’m feeling so close again

And I’m baring my soul again

Time is an absolute mirror

In time you can’t help but see you

Sometimes others eyes can be so much more wise

Sometimes we just hide from the truth

IBut I know who I am and I know what I’m after – this time

Give me this moment I promise I won’t hurt your pride

(please don’t wake up)

Am I just dreaming again

Take me this time to the pasture

Take me one time to the field

I’ve seen it so much even felt it I’ve touched it

It’s got to be real

But I know who I am and I know what I’m after – this time

Give me this moment I promise I won’t hurt your pride

Feels so close I feel strong again

No don’t let me be wrong again

I’m sure I was right the first time

This is also one of the first songs written for what would become The Kenilworth Project. For more on the beginning of The Kenilworth Project see Mama Baby. This was one of the first four songs that we recorded, and here again it was just Ben and I in the studio initially, and again Patrick went in later and put a much better bass line down. Also on this song I came up with back up harmonies in the studio, and as I hadn’t rehearsed them at all they were a little shake to say the least. This is where I found out about that thing they call “Auto-Tune”, and it doesn’t have to sound like Cher or T-Pain when you use it. The song is called Third because….well because it’s in three. And it’s not as heavy as the song Heavy Three which we were also writing around the same time.

Lyrically it is a theme I hit all the time, damn I sure have been trying to be a rock star a long time now, surely I have it coming. Musically it is also a variation on a common theme for me, and it all comes back to Alone Again by Dokken I’m sure. What’s different in this song is the little bridge thing in between verses one and two, which never shows up again. I don’t know where that came from, but without I think the song would be about half as good.

Like the other Kenilworth Project songs all I have to work with is the mix down, so no correcting mistakes. And here at the end of the song I’m reaching for a note that I might be able to hit on a good day, but it’s pretty evident that day wasn’t one of them. I’m not sure why I thought it would sound better if I tried twice, and then put the two together, but I can’t say that helped any either. The rest of the song though is definitely one of my favorites and most personal, and other than that two seconds at the end I’m actually okay with the vocals. And the guitar solo’s not half bad either.

Intro

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 05:06:00 GMT

I have a friend named Barry who is the king of writing acoustic guitar intros. We used to live across the street from each other, he’d bring his acoustic over, and it seemed like almost daily he had another intro written. I don’t know if any of them ever got attached to songs, but they could have, and should have. Anyway I couldn’t help but think of Barry when I started writing this song. I just couldn’t think of adding words or making a song out of it. Even when I went as far as writing the bridge, it still seemed like an instrumental piece. I began thinking about which one of my songs this would be the intro to.

Recording the song because something else altogether. I’ve never really done any finger picking, and I’ve never been one for practicing. So when I sat down to record this piece with an acoustic guitar and a microphone, I found it just about impossible to get through the thing without mistakes. I know you can fix one or two of those in the studio, but I had to do better than I was doing. So I actually played the song a couple of times a day for a few days and tried again, and was able to use the 10th take or so.

One thing I noticed while I was working on this song was that it seemed to be crying out for strings. I did play a little viola for one semester in college, but I don’t have access to one now, and I’m sure if I tried playing one Ms Wippit would think I was torturing one of the cats. Then I remembered, Patrick’s got an Ebow! I’ve never used one of these things, but it can’t be too hard! I found I needed to use a little distortion to keep it going long enough for what I thought sounded good. I did about three takes, and then I heard something like an arrangement happening and went back and did a couple more with melodies in mind. The final product uses the last to takes with a little bit of a previous take in the bridge.

Cry Like a Child

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 04:55:00 GMT

Maybe it’s because you’re always there

Makin’ me feel like I don’t have to care

I know you can’t leave

And I know I ain’t gonna change

Is it the little things I do

Got you actin’ strange?

All I see are storm clouds in your eyes

Tell me is it me or do I feel your temper rise?

Are you tryin’ to tell me somethin’ I don’t want to know

Suddenly it occurs to me I got no place to go

I’m gonna cry like a child

If you ever let me down

I don’t know why it’s so hard

To turn this thing around

I’m gonna cry like a child

If you ever let me down

I don’t know why but somehow I thought

You would always keep me around

And I’m dreaming again

What did I miss I’m finding wicked ways to pinch myself awake

I see you screaming again

Cause I forgot to read your lips

I wasn’t listening again

Don’t hold it against me

Maybe I’m scared – I know I ain’t prepared

I cannot face the consequence – knowin’ I could have spared the future

I can’t believe you never really needed me

I live and die inside your wounds

A danger to both me and you

You’ll go on even when I’m gone

You’ll be fine and I can’t make it alone

I should have seen it comin’ I should have changed my evil ways

I never thought I would see the day, it just might be too late

I’m gonna cry like a child

If you ever let me down

I don’t know why it’s so hard

To turn this thing around

I’m gonna cry like a child

If you ever let me down

I don’t know why but somehow I thought

You would always keep me around

Sometime around early ’07 I was working on a new song that started off as something like electronic music. I had started with the drum programming, and I worked the chord progression out while playing the wurlitzer through a wah-wah pedal, and I had something different than most of my other stuff. It never takes long though before I feel like I gotta put a guitar in there and inevitable it turns into some variation of rock. I had recently bought a small fender amp specifically for recording guitar with better tone than I could get out of my old Digitech RP-12, and it was sounding good on this track which at the time was called “Hmmm”.

Being the left wing pinko that I am I stumbled across a contest for best save the planet type Earth day video, and I thought, okay let’s write a song about how we’re destroying our planet and make a video. I think I had three or four weeks before Earth day to get this thing done. I already had a mixdown called “Hmm Instrumental”, so it was just a matter of writing and recording the words. And of course making a video. At the time I didn’t have or know of a good way so suck video off the internet, so I actually spent hours googling for videos on pollution and environment, etc., and video taped my computer monitor playing the videos, and then arranging the video over the song. I did not win the contest. I’ve always been pretty happy with the video, but as is often the case, I’ve never been happy with the vocals.

In preparing this song for An Anthology of Sorts I once again had just a complete instrumental mixdown to work with and record new vocals over. I really always wanted a female with a kick-ass R&B voice to sing this song, but I haven’t been able to get anyone interested yet. Hit me up if you are that female and like the song ;^)}. I’m satisfied with what I got done here for now. As I was listening to mixdowns with the new vocals I realized the last chorus sounded kind of thin and empty even though the drums are going crazy and there’s two guitar solos on top of everything else. I realized that somehow in the original mix I had no rhythm guitar for that last chorus, it drops out right after the second to last chorus. I thought well this is one of those songs I recorded on my old software so I can’t open the original project, but I should have that guitar part sitting in a folder somewhere. I scoured my back-up of the old pc, and found everything but what I needed. The drums, bass, wurlitzer, leads, old vocals, no rhythm guitar. I though I could try to recreate that same sound that I got in ’07, but instead I tried something else. I took just the instrumental bit from an earlier chorus that has the rhythm guitar in there, and layered with this last chorus with the volume pretty low, and it works for me. Below is the let’s stop f%^&ing up the planet video.

Mama Baby

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 04:49:00 GMT

I know I never liked the feeling when I’m lying there alone at night lying

awake and wondering am I right am I wrong

All along a conversation going on in my head

I never got a straight answer from me

But when I think about it now it seems amazing cause a couple of lovely

ladies

My mama and my baby got me standing tall

It’s not a problem at all

Whatever I see there – they both always be there for me

I don’t know where I’d be without these ladies in my life

They keep me grounded I feel dumbfounded when I think about the love and the

blessings they surround me with

I don’t know where I’d be without these women in my life

(don’t need to say it again) but I’m gonna

my baby and my mama always standing in my corner for me

If I could take a trip in time I wouldn’t make it cause I finally got to the

place and now I love the situation I’m in

I never thought that I’d have been so lucky and happy

Know I’m soundin’ kinda sappy

Some people get to laughing and that’s all right

So well I’m sleeping at night

And it’s all day feels like that I wanna say

That I’m in love with a lady who’s in love with me

I got my mama on the phone whenever I need her to be there for me

I don’t know where I’d be without these ladies in my life

They keep me grounded I feel dumbfounded when I think about the love and the

blessings they surround me with

I don’t know where I’d be without these women in my life

(don’t need to say it again) but I’m gonna

my baby and my mama always standing in my corner for me

This is one of the first songs written for what would become The Kenilworth Project. The Kenilworth Project started with just Ben Gold on drums and me on guitar, we had a goal of starting a group that would be a little of everything, from ridiculously fast and heavy to slow and melodic. We were in a hurry to get things going, so we actually went into Gremlen Studios with four brand new songs within about 6 weeks of starting this new group, and Mama Baby was one of them. Ben played drums and I did everything else. The back up vocals and harmony came to me in the studio. Once I was able to hear the song with a bass as well as guitar I started to hear more layers that just needed to be there. At the same time Ben had booked our first show, and we needed to come up with a bass player quick, I was able to talk Patrick Cassin into giving it a shot even though his experience was with guitar. At the time Ben booked the show we didn’t have a name. When the manager of Uncle Snorky’s asked Ben for a name the first thing he thought of was the cold he was suffering from, and we were listed on the marquee as “All Hopped Up On Sudafed”. I sure wish we had taken a picture of that.

It was Ben that had the idea to write a song for our moms, and I expanded the concept to include our wives, because I really don’t know where I’d be without Ms. Wippit. I had folk/hip hop in mind and the more we worked on the song the more it seemed like a true hit. Shortly after playing that show we brought Patrick into the studio and he put his own bass lines down on these four songs, and he did a stellar job. I hadn’t been happy with the original guitar solo, and rather than waste more studio time I recorded a few at home and brought in the one I wanted to use. I swear we ended up with the wrong one, but I’ve heard it so many times it sounds like the right one. While I was working on the solo at home it occurred to me that an acoustic guitar strumming a rhythm would really give it the folk/hip hop sound I was looking for, and I recorded that at home too.

I don’t remember how long it was before we decided a “guest rapper” would really make this one a hit, but I know it was long enough that some people didn’t like it that way. Well we thought it was good. I added an extra four bars after the solo to give our friend Bobby the Dread a full eight bars to work with (copy and paste) and he worked on it in his own basement studio. If I dig around in enough old hard drives I can probably find an old version without Bobby, but me I prefer this version. And below you can see The Kenilworth Project (calling ourselves Cortechs at this point) playing the song on Mother’s day ’94 at the Double Door in Chicago with Jake freestyling the flow in the middle.

Be Here Now

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 04:07:00 GMT

I never had the eyes to see into the present

I never was the one to be here now

I’m forever searching for the place where I am standing

I never seem to set my feet aground

But I’ll get there

When I’m good and ready I’ll be there

You’ll find me living for a future that won’t happen

Reflecting on a past that’s never been

One day I’ll finally find myself living in that very special moment

And I hope that you’ll be there

And I’m dreaming again

What did I miss I’m finding wicked ways to pinch myself awake

I see you screaming again

Cause I forgot to read your lips

I wasn’t listening again

Don’t hold it against me

A holy man once said just be yourself the answer lies within

Do you know the way?

How do I get there? Am I getting close?

I’ve been trying to be everyone and everything that makes me want to stay

And I’ll get there

When I’m damn good and ready I’ll be there

I keep trying to listen for the sound of silence

All I here is a white noise coming from my brain

It seems I just can’t sit still long enough to see what I’ve been holding onto

And let go of the pain

And I see it again that magic dream I once knew

Could it be I’ve been my own worst enemy?

Can I be it again that super hero I once knew?

Back when everybody still believed in me

I lost it and I just can’t feel it

Try to drop it but I keep on holdin’ on

Wide open and I can’t stop bleedin’

Try to drop it but I keep on holdin’ on

I wrote this song sometime after The Kenilworth Project was over, and it was the first time I sat down to write with an acoustic in a decade. As such the song quickly became personal and introspective. There are a few songs I’ve written where the words just seem to come out with no effort and this is one of those. It’s as if the song had been waiting to be written. And after years of playing full throttle punk/metal/ska stuff it was probably overdue. I touch on my own perceived shortcomings – hearing loss, lack of focus, using the past as an excuse for not succeeding, all things that keep me from living in the moment – thus the title.

It seems like there’s an unwritten rule about the fact that there’s supposed to be more than two parts to a song. Of course there’s the verse and the chorus, but it’s not a complete song without some kind of bridge or pre-chorus or something that uses a different progression/melody than the other two parts right? Well I thought I’d go ahead and call this one complete without that third part. At some point though I started doing this little two chord thing at the end that was a little different, and words came for that part right away to so I kept it. Once I got the instruments recorded on this one I began the endless process of trying to get an acceptable vocal. Eventually I got something I could live with, but even back in ’07 when I finished it, I knew I’d redo the vocals and saved an instrumental version just for that purpose. I proceeded to shoot and edit what should be widely recognized as the worst green screen video in history. I paid $6 for a green screen over the internet, hung it on a wall in my living room and shot myself in different outfits with the different instruments. I shot on a couple of different weekends so I could get a hair cut and varying amounts of facial hair. It never occurred to me to check and see how the green screen thing was working until I had collected all my footage. You can see the result below. I had a lot of fun though and it was certainly a learning experience.

Fast forward to 2012 and I’m getting ready for An Anthology of Sorts and of course I want to redo the vocals. Back when I recorded the original I was using Sony’s (Sound Forge when I started using it) Acid software to record. I still have those files but I’m using Adobe Audition now, so if I wanted to do anything with the instrumental mix it would mean hours of pouring the guitar and bass takes and trying to line them up again, or buying a fresh copy of Acid to remix this song. There are a couple of things I would have liked to tweak, but not that much. So new vocals over the instruments from ’07 and I’m still not 100% happy with the vocals, but I think it’s ready for prime time.

UPDATE:
Fast forward to 2023 and I've had the song rerecorded by Aerugo Productions and just added new vocals from myself. This is what you hear above, the original is what you hear below.

Opener

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 03:59:00 GMT

It’s another day that I feel like I want to quit

Another psychopathic look at how rough the game can get

It’s easy to see how I’ve been telling myself a lie

Got so damn sure I’ll get it all before I die again

But I redeem myself in the end

I know that I’m changing

I know that I’ve lost

Those pieces of those pages

Where I gave up and walked

Got ripped away and I know that it’s gone

Something else I must do over

Before I move on

I got to stay

And I carry it all

I’m telling myself something every time that I fall

I get to stay

And I deal myself the same hand

The game isn’t changing

The picture’s the same

The only thing that’s different is

I try not to get in the way

And it takes so long

To know I’m doing nothing when I’m building up walls

I get locked away

Inside of it all

I’m telling myself something every time that I fall

I see people by my side along the way

I can’t see no logic to the ones that slip away

Some hidden force just seems to take away their faith

They don’t know… they drop out of the game

But I redeem myself in the end

I know that I’m changing

I know that I’ve lost

Those pieces of those pages

Where I gave up and walked

Got ripped away and I know that it’s gone

Something else I must do over

Before I move on

I got to stay

And I carry it all I’m telling myself something every time that I fall

I get to stay

And I deal myself the same hand

The game isn’t changing

The picture’s the same

The only thing that’s different is

I try not to get in the way

And it takes so long

To see I’m doing nothing when I’m building up walls

I get locked away

Inside of it all

I’m telling myself something every time that I fall

I see a head trip I want to get away

All that’s left in the way

If I could get out of the way

Then this is the last time I’ll stay

It’s already happened-I’ve already seen how it ends

I’ve already looked from the other side- and I see… my friends

If there’s one song on the Anthology of Sorts that I think will make people ask, “Damn Dr, what did you put that one on there for?”, this is the first one. But it’s important to me, particularly the words. And I do think the music is good, but probably somebody else could do it better. Help yourself. It’s one of my many songs that touches on my belief in reincarnation, and for me it really does sum up the cycle I believe we go through over and over until we get it right.

The music started out as a Nova Brain song. It never really got as far as words with them, but I liked the chord progression, the back up “Heeey-ay-ay”s, and the speed up part at the end. So I just needed to come up with the verse part which I did. When I recorded this for Dr Wippit’s 1st Time Out, I went ahead and had Joe and Andy from Nova Brain play their guitar and bass parts, and I did everything else. In the end I could not get over the fact that Joe’s guitar sounded out of tune. And I was never really happy with the vocals. I called the song “Opener” because I was using it to open the album (after some Wippit Theme of course), and it’s not an Opener anymore but it is the name of the song so there you have it.

On re-recording this for Anthology of sorts I decided to keep the bass and drums, and do everything else over. The bass is a little distorted so I had to keep it lower in the mix than I’d like, but I sure wouldn’t do a better job Andy, it’s the perfect bass line. I’m okay with the vocals now but not excited about them. I did steal Joe’s descending guitar lead for the transition to the fast part, other than that I played pretty much the same guitar as before through better gear. In the end, it’s really up to me whether or not it’s any good, eh?

Pocket of Hope

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 20:59:00 GMT

I get stuck in never letting it go

Feels like I’m wasting time

I see the face of my position

Standing still is getting behind

How do I get to the place

Where I don’t need this…

How did I get to this place

I can beat this….

Foot’s in a pocket of hope

And I keep on pushing along

My foot’s in a pocket of hope

I keep on rolling down the road

My foot’s in a pocket of hope

I never know how far it goes but

My foot’s in a pocket of hope

And I’m never gonna give it up cause I know

When I get beat I wonder why

I get beat all by myself

I see the culprit coming from the inside

I ain’t well

I see the hopelessness

I’ve been surviving for so long

It’s time to live

All the things I waited for

Never gonna give it up

I’ve been giving it all along

And I’m comin’ home

Foot’s in a pocket of hope

And I keep on pushing along

My foot’s in a pocket of hope

I keep on rolling down the road

My foot’s in a pocket of hope

I never know how far it goes but

My foot’s in a pocket of hope

And I’m never gonna give it up cause I know

FFeels like your walkin

Just markin time

Feel like you been workin so hard

And you look back

At all of this time

Looks like you haven’t gone up down left right

Forward Back

Everything looks the same

How do I know

How do I know?

Cause I believe

And I can look

And I can see

The change

So I still got my feet on the ground

One night in 96 or 97 I set out to write a Janet Jackson/Paula Abdul song. At the time my friend Brian had the old 8 track analog to cassette set up in his kitchen, and he sat a few feet away in the living room watching tv, while I put the headphones on and got to work. As was often the case in those days the song started with making some beats on the Alesis drum machine. I made up the three different beats, and arranged them into a song structure, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-breakdown-chorus out. Next I put down a bass line, and that’s where I developed the chord progression. Next I put down the keys, trying to throw in some syncopated rhythms through out the verses, rockin organ on the hook, and bluesy piano during the breakdown. Finally the wah-wah guitar, cause it had to be funky. I had a complete song, and I don’t know that it sounded like Janet or Paula, but I was pretty happy with the results, and figured I’d save the words for another day.

The one phrase that I kept hearing in my head as I listened to the hook for this song was, “Foot’s in a pocket of hope”. I wrote some lyrics about getting out of being stuck and moving toward success, and just not giving up. I figured I had a bonafide hit on my hands. The one thing I wanted to record better from that first night was the bluesy piano. I tried to bring in a ringer, but I ended up redoing myself, and that’s what ended up on Dr Wippit’s 1st time out. I had a buddy mixing it down, and I noticed he pulled all the keys I had put down in the verses. “Oh that stuff just sounded like a bunch of fart noises.” And he was right. The back up vocals are a mix of me, me with effects, and a female.

For the reboot you hear above, the Anthology of Sorts version, I kept the drums, bass and guitar from that first night. I now had access to a semi-professional keyboardist who gave me a couple of organ sounds to choose from for the verses and choruses, as well as a regular piano and Rhodes piano to choose from for the breakdown. The results are outstanding. I redid the vocals as well, including the backups in falsetto, and I have to say this sounds like the song I was trying to write all those years ago in Brian’s kitchen.

Crumbling Towers

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 20:46:00 GMT

If it’s possible to wait too long to try I think I did

Suddenly I’m feeling all my weight

Didn’t hear the ticking of the clock somehow I missed it

Time just slipped away and now I wonder where it went

Crumbling towers that

Were never more than a fantasy

Seem to have brought me to my knees

If I could make it look like an accident

It’s easier on everyone involved

This time I’m in too deep to run

If there’s a way to get too old I think I’m there

I don’t feel it but I read it in the lines

I see myself reflected in the youth

Resurrected with no proof

Even I can’t believe the lies

Crumbling towers that

Were never more than a fantasy

Seem to have brought me to my knees

If I could make it look like an accident

It’s easier on everyone involved

This time I’m in too deep to run

I read somewhere years ago that Keith Richards said he doesn’t write songs, they are just floating around in the air and he catches them or something like that. This song is one of those. I was playing guitar with my step-son Sean playing the drums, and out of nowhere he broke into this really fast straight rock drum beat. I started playing the guitar riff that makes up the opening and choruses of this song, and it was as if the riff was always there. Had to finish the song.

It became apparent to me early on that this song was coming from REM’s Reckoning era, and I embraced it. I have to give years of playing with Ben Gold on the drums credit for my drum programming on this one (as well as If You Could Read My Mind). While I have certainly done my time playing drums, and was a percussion major for a couple of years, Ben’s playing was as a rule about twice as fast as the rest of us were even thinking. So now when I’m programming something this fast I can already hear all the kicks and fills in my head because I got used to hearing them out loud. Once I had a verse-chorus structure I had to complete the song by adding the third part, which in REM eighties songs is two new chords back and forth and some kind of ohs or ahs or Michael going I-Hi-I or something. I decided that ohs were better than ahs or I-Hi-I’s. I threw in a stab at this “Talk Box” effect that I hadn’t tried yet on my Zoom Twin Tube G9.2tt.

I’m sure I wrote the first line first, and it quickly became one of my many songs about realizing I’m old, especially for a wanna be rockstar. Aside from feeling old there’s the realization that, unlike other times in my life where I would just disappear when things got tough and start over, that just isn’t an option anymore.

Never Again

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 06:50:00 GMT

You snuck up from my past

I swore to you this time that It was gonna last

It’s easier to see

How far apart we had to get…. together

It started all over for me

Looks like this love will never be

I kiss the morning when I wake up and I see the light

It all makes sense when I realize that I was right

I wait til you're old enough that I could never make you cry

Old enough that you could rip me up inside

I never want to see you again

Cause the truth can’t hurt me bad enough

To believe it had to end

I don’t believe the lies you told yourself to set you free

That’s why no one can ever get that close to me

It’s a picture perfect world

A door that once lie open becomes a scar I needed

The knife comes back to me

I let you see the only side of me that bleeds

I’d keep it going I know you're mistaken in my mind

If only I had something to live for besides my pride

I’ll take it as long as it takes to make you depend on me

It’s gonna take your pain to set me free

I never want to see you again

Cause the truth can’t hurt me bad enough

To believe it had to end

I don’t believe the lies you told yourself to set you free

That’s why no one can ever get that close to me

I don’t ever wanna heal because I hold on to the pain I feel

And if everybody holds a knife how could I ever let another soul inside

I kiss the morning when I wake up and I see the light

It all makes sense when I realize that I was right

I'm keeping an empty space where you were living inside of me

It's gonna take your pain to set me free

I can’t wait to see you break your promises again

Because the only thing that’s real to me is that this pain will never end

I don’t believe the lies you told yourself to set you free

That’s why no one can ever get that close to me

I’m pushin’ along…makin’ it strong…movin' along…holding on

Never again is my first true heartbreak ballad. The first one that comes from a very real, deep, adult heartbreak. The kind that leaves you messed up for weeks and scarred for life. I remember my drinking partner/shoulder at the time telling me I should be grateful that no one would ever get that deep inside again, Celebrate the scar tissue.

Somewhere there’s a cassette of a version I did with a tiny little keyboard and a four track. I played the keys along with the little drum beat from the keyboard to one track, leaving me two for vocals and another for guitar. I didn’t have these words written yet, but I recorded a couple of vocal tracks of just improvised falsetto in an effort to get a melody written that I could write words to. Somewhere else there’s another cassette that has a mix down of my first 8 track version, and I really wish I could find that (or better yet the actual 8 track tape). When I recorded that I was in the band Nova Brain, and we had a practice spot downtown where we kept the old 8 tracks to cassette machine. I had the song fully fleshed out with words, and I went down there by myself to record the song. I recorded the drums first (real drums!), then keyboard, guitar, and vocals. In my mind the vocals were to be a two part harmony like Jerry Butler’s “He Will Break Your Heart”. The mixdown of this song was perfect except a minor hiccup in the drums. This being an analog cassette, that sort of thing wasn’t easy to fix like it is these days so I knew I’d have to re-record it eventually.

As I was compiling songs for “Dr Wippit’s First Time Out” in the late nineties this was one of the first songs I got to work on. I put down essentially the same drum beat as the previous eight track version, this time with a drum machine. I had remembered that my brother told me he wished there was more lead guitar in the last version, there was just the one lead bit that’s in between the first two verses. So on this new version, in true Dr Wippit fashion, I completely slaughtered the song with annoying leads almost everywhere.

When I started working on the redo of this song for An Anthology of Sorts, I decided to keep the drum machine and keys from the nineties, and re-record the vocals and guitars. There was never any bass in any of the versions, I always thought the keys had that covered. I knew I needed to go easier on the lead guitars this time. I’ve kept that bit between the first and second verses the same for the third version now, this time I doubled it. You can hardly tell it’s two guitars because I’ve done it so many times now. I wish it could sound as good as it did the first time I played it, but that was a moment in time, and you can’t go back. I tried a few different things with the next lead and it worked out best to use two of them for a few seconds and then just one. I was playing a mix down for one of my drummer friends and he said the snare on the pre-chorus was bugging the crap out of him, and as soon he said that I heard it too. So I used my current drum machine software (Beat Craft) to create a new pre-chorus part and inserted it between the old drum machine parts. I kept the annoying snare in for the very end. Of course the other thing that I didn’t have access to back in the nineties was that auto-tune all the kids are using these days, and if there’s one song here (and one singer) that cries out for some of that auto-tune this is the one.

Figure 7

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 06:41:00 GMT

She don’t read too many books

And she don’t wear too many clothes

She lives on Strawberry Street

I see her drinking at the Avenue B

She’s gettin’ freaky with the Wizard of Oz

Sippin’ and trippin’ on Alice’s tea

She sleeps in a velvety bag

Waitin’ for the day when she don’t have to wake up no more

It was around about seven o clock this girl had made me stop and it was getting late

This one she makes me wait all the time – but that’s all right – I don’t mind you gotta set ‘em free and if they come back to you well then I guess it was meant to be

It was about that time that we walked into the party everybody could see this girl had already started

From the look in her eye from the wave of her hair everybody starts to stare – like she’s really gonna care

Met her at the corner down at State and Main

And she took my heart away I said maybe I’m to blame

But she went up to the corner and tried to get a hit

I can’t be there with this …..

And she don’t read too many books

And she don’t wear too many clothes

She lives on Strawberry Street

I see her drinking at the Avenue B

She’s gettin’ freaky with the Wizard of Oz

Sippin’ and trippin’ on Alice’s tea

She sleeps in a velvety bag

Waitin’ for the day when she don’t have to wake up no more

I said hold up hold up right there cause she was walkin’ up to me

And I had this other girl sittin’ on my lap you see – it was a catastrophe

And I wasn’t sure what to do but she just laughed at me

Cause I was lookin’ a fool

She’s takin’ it easy watchin’ me takin’ rough

She’s gonna tease my but then I’m callin’ her bluff

Because I know that girl can’t stand to leave alone

She never takes me all the way, but she always takes me home

I interrupt just to get a cup of tea

By the end of the night that mouth was around me

I tried to pull it from her mouth but it wouldn’t come out

So I dropped that girl when I was allowed

And she don’t read too many books

And she don’t wear too many clothes

She lives on Strawberry Street

I see her drinking at the Avenue B

She’s gettin’ freaky with the Wizard of Oz

Sippin’ and trippin’ on Alice’s tea

She sleeps in a velvety bag

Waitin’ for the day when she don’t have to wake up no more

She sleeps in her room alone – picking up the pieces of her broken soul

She puts them in a paper bag – cause she knows it’s time she’s got to let it all go

As she’s watching the flames rise can you not see the tears that fill her eyes?

Not because she’s gonna die but because she don’t know why everybody has to lie and they won’t stop takin’ and breakin’ and takin’ and breakin’ and takin’ and breakin’ and takin’ and breakin’ and it down

And she don’t read too many books

And she don’t wear too many clothes

She lives on Strawberry Street

I see her drinking at the Avenue B

She’s gettin’ freaky with the Wizard of Oz

Sippin’ and trippin’ on Alice’s tea

She sleeps in a velvety bag

Waitin’ for the day when she don’t have to wake up no more

If you’ve ever been in a band with drummer Ben Gold (and I’ve been in a couple) then you know that as often as not, an original song starts off with Ben describing an idea in his head of a new song, and the rest of the band works with him to turn that idea into reality. This was one of those songs. Ben had an idea that was something like a fast rap part over this drum beat which would then turn into a half time ska beat and then we’d rock out this chorus. He set to playing the drums, and we came up with a simple four chord progression and we had a structure pretty quick. I know this was right about the time Jake joined the band, I honestly can’t say for sure if we started working on it before he joined or not. I know the first words that got written were the hook, and that Pat and I quite literally took turns making up lines, which leads me to believe we might have started it without Jake, but we hadn’t got far.

I’m not sure why it became a song about a girl, but somehow Pat and I seemed to have the same girl in mind right away. Not a particular person, but a personality type, a tragic one at that. She’s a beautiful disaster, for whatever reason she doesn’t like herself enough to take care of herself. She does heroin, or she drinks to much, whatever it takes to keep her from success, but she’s still having a good time and seems to be happy. I remember Pat came up with the line, “She sleeps in a velvety body bag” and I couldn’t make it all fit so it became “velvety bag”. Things like that are the real reason for this blog. The song started off named Million Dollar Girl, and the noise bringing the song in is a recording of Ms Wippit saying, “She’s a Million Dollar Girl” with a crapload of effects on it. You’re just hearing the syllables “Millio…” over and over.

So we had a hook and a song structure and now we needed some verses. I decided to be the guy who’s hopelessly in love with this girl, but I never get anywhere because these girls need to have at least one guy who’s just a friend, the one guy who would take care of her and treat her the best, gets kept and arms length. And so Jake became one of the “other” guys, and now we’ve got a complete song. I recently stumbled across an old basement recording of the song that was made at the same time as “Wake and Bake” and was part of a three song cd we passed around for a minute. On this version I clearly had absolutely no idea what my second verse was, but I think I like the solo better. This older version also has Pat going to town on the back up vocals. By the time we re-recorded this at Gremlen Studio Pat didn’t want to sing that bit on the chorus anymore, so Jake sang it and Pat did some subtle, more like talking vocals, and doused it in distortion. I think it’s awesome because it blends right into the guitars, if you listen you can hear him saying, “She’ll walk away with your heart today…..”. Since this was something like a hit for us, (it got some airplay on Ashland University’s station in Ohio when we were there supporting Scorefor) I decided to take all the live footage I have of us playing the song, and make a video with the studio recording. Shows were from ’04-’07.

If You Could Read My Mind

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 06:30:00 GMT

I don’t know how long ago it occurred to my that Gordon Lightfoot’s cheesy love ballad would make a great fast punk/pop song, but it’s been at least 15 years. I know I thought about it when I was in the band Stalemate, we were rocking up songs like Jack and Diane, Stuck In the Middle With You and Like a Rolling Stone. Even though it’s a four chord cheesy pop song, it’s a long one with a couple of changes that feel a little unnatural if you haven’t heard the song a bejillion times, so I don’t think I ever brought it up. Once it occurred to me I could never hear, “I never thought I could act this way and I have to say that I just don’t get it..” without thinking this really needs to be fast and he really needs to be yelling.

I can’t tell you exactly what finally made me decide to get it done, but once I started it was one of those things that just needed to get finished. I programmed the drums, recorded the guitar and when I went to put the bass down there was something wrong with the electronics in my bass (we’d had a flood and it took on a little water), so I recorded a bass line with the guitar and dropped it an octave with the studio software. Sounded good enough to put some vocals down so I went ahead and in one day I was done. I played it for family and friends and it sounded pretty good. Heck people make videos of covers all the time, I think I’ll make a video.

The video was also a one day affair, at least as far as getting the footage recorded. How could I not start with a guy trying to play it the original way and…something’s just not right. I went through two costumes each for guitar, bass and vocals. I didn’t have anything like a drumset left in the house since the flood, how do I do the drum guy? Got a Bodhran…

So in truth this is the moment that leads to the release of this Anthology. I was already using Reverb Nation to get my songs up on Facebook, and I had seen something about them having a way to get a song on iTunes. Can I sell Gordon Lightfoot’s song? How does that work. Some internet searching turned up a publisher that owns the rights to the song and I hooked it up. That’s right Gordon gets a few cents whenever somebody buys my version. Then I figured out it cost the same to release an “album” as a “song”. I need to get an album together. I started the process of gathering songs and making them sound as professional as I could. I even re-recorded the bass for this cut with an actual bass guitar. Can you tell the difference?

Wippit Theme

Sun, 26 Aug 2012 06:13:00 GMT

Back in the late nineties when I was putting together my first “solo” album Dr Wippit’s 1st Time Out I thought Dr Wippit really needed to have a theme song. I commissioned A. Wippite to put down something with turn tables that I could throw a guitar on top of and there it is, the Wippit Theme. A. Wippite put down four tracks of turntables onto the old 8 track to cassette machine we were using at the time (and which I recorded all of Dr Wippit’s 1st Time Out on) and I played some guitar on top. It came in at around four and a half minutes, and in the end we decided the right thing to do was to fade in and out the first minute and a half or so, and then bookend the rest at the end of the album. So for the ’98 version above, that’s what you’ve got, the two bookends together. I don’t remember where the beat came from, but the samples are from Doctor Detroit, and of course Devo’s Whip It.

Fast forward to 2012 I’m releasing an anthology and I want to include the Wippit Theme. I am blessed to have Eaten By Machines interested in putting together the 2012 remix for me. I give them A. Wippite’s original four turntable tracks. I can’t say enough about how cool it is that I can dump the analog tracks out of the old 8 track to cassette machine and into my pc and pass them around and screw around with them. The caveat? Well although it was an 8 track you can only record or dump four tracks simultaneously. Not a problem here because A. only put four tracks of turntables down and I’m doing new guitar from scratch, but it’s a problem on some other tracks. Anyway, Eaten By Machines did a phenomenal job of creating something entirely knew from the old tracks. And just like in ’98 I played guitar on top a couple of times, kept what I liked, and here it is. This time I’m opening the album with the full cut because you just can’t force people to listen to a whole album at once anymore, it’s all about the download. The Dr likes to keep up with the times.

No Time

Wed, 11 May 2011 22:31:00 GMT

What does it feel like

What is it like

To try to do things

To make it your life

But it don’t go

Where you want it to go

So you just let go

Just let it flow

Now there was a time

Before all of this

There was a time

When life was pure bliss

But now you’re at home

Your time ill spent

Cause you never did give

One hundred percent

I sit and watch with no resistance

I’ll never lose if I don’t try

Is it just fear that I’m running from or should I even care

That I’ve lost my life

you could have done more

you could have gone on tour

but drugs filled the music

burned out to the core

of existence

resistance

excited measures no longer

come with this

now your half ass troubles

fill half ass mind

you sit in the corner

wishin to rewind

your life and time

askin everybody why

askin god for help

yet receiving no reply

Maybe it’s time I pay attention

I never laughed until I cried

When did I forget where I’m coming from – when did I get scared?

When did I die?

waitin on the corner

for the midnight train

mind in the gutter

drugs on the brain

waiting so patiently

to just end the pain

every single memory

always feels the same

lost your sense of time

watching through the frame

friends don’t call

girlfriend doesn’t feign

love anymore

lifes such a bore

cant do nothing right

just hold yourself tight

Is it too late to change direction?

I used to have so much inside

Is there a chance I’ll get it back again or am I too fucking old?

Is there still time?

I don’t remember where the two different chord progressions came from, but I think this was one that Ben started the ball rolling. He would do this thing where he had an idea in his head, and he would describe and sing the guitar part and play the drums he had in mind and we’d figure it out. I think that’s where the first part came from, and the second part I remember having the discussion about how to descend from A to E and I think it was Pat that came up with the f# on the way instead of going for the obvious f. Whoever it was it was perfect for writing a chorus over.

Jake was gonna write the verses and I was gonna write a hook, and he emailed me a word document with three verses about the guy with potential that just fades away. They were clearly chronological and the logical thing to me then was to progress chronologically as well, thus it became one of those songs that doesn’t repeat any lyrics, the “hook” is different all three times like the verses are, and it’s essentially call and response. I totally remember mixing this down at Gremlen and I think it was Ben who had this brilliant idea to slam the first bass note of the second half of each chorus and wow was he right. Listen for that. And singing this one for me always hit me pretty damn close to home.

About the Authors

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 22:21:00 GMT

We’re all faceless

If you can see

These bodies are cages

You’ve got to agree

Words are hypnosis

They leave us behind

Always failing

What’s in my mind

Fake an interest in what you say

Words don’t matter anyway

Guess I’ll lock myself away

It’s takin’ my mind away

You’re wasting time now

Telling me what you’ve seen

It’ll never add up to

The places that you’ve been

Nothing has happened

There’s nothing ahead

This is all you are now

Everything else lies dormant

Fake an interest in what you say

It just don’t matter anyway

Guess I’ll lock myself away

It’s takin’ my mind away

They don’t mean anything but

What you assign to them

You’re so confined to them

Do you remember what you’ve seen?

Did they ever tell you you were wrong?

Do you remember all the lies?

Do you really think they’ll ever stop?

This lie is useless

This lie is real

It’s what you know, it’s what you are

It’s all you know how to feel

You life is worthless

You cease to be

All you remember

Is what they agreed upon

Why don’t you tell me what you know?

You’re everything that you’ve been told

Why don’t you just buy back your soul

You’re everything that you’ve been told

So far away

This is one of the first songs I wrote after Chronic Jaywalker had picked up Steve as the fourth member of the band. This would have been around ’93, and at the time I was reading a lot of Robert Anton Wilson and Carlos Castaneda type stuff that my brother was recommending, so this one is about what’s real and what isn’t. This song is my attempt to get across the concept that when we try to share experience and knowledge through words, we are limited by the words we have available to describe things with, and therefore we never fully share an experience or idea with somebody. Words are only worth the meaning that one assigns to them, and we assign different meanings to the same word from person to person. I was also trying to get across the concept that these bodies are just vessels that allow our souls to have the human experience, and while our souls are capable of having profound experiences within these bodies, we are limited by words and expressions, at best art, to share these epiphanies, and does anybody really “get” it?

I came up with a simple chord progression that I could sing the words over. The plan was to take this simple framework to band practice and everybody would come up with their own riffs or lines to fit with the chords and it would be a complete song in no time. So as I’m showing them the new song I’m just banging away on these two chords and singing over them and the guys were quickly bored just playing these two chords back and forth. I was telling them they need to come up with something else to do over these chords, forgetting for a second there that I’m the only one with any kind of formal training and/or knowledge of what notes we could make riffs and such out of. So I said “Steve why don’t you do something like this…” and I came up with this riff that was based on notes of the chords with a little descending thing happening throughout, (you can never go wrong with a descending thing), and Brian was immediately interested in doing the same thing on the bass.

This was also about the same time that Chronic Jaywalker adopted a “none of us are singers so let’s not try to sing” kinda rule. Lord knows I tried to sneak it in here and there anyway, but for this one, the bark like a dog yelling thing that was getting to be all the rage would work, especially now that we had this heavy descending riff thing going. It was early ’95 before we finally finished our CD, engineered by Ray who was also working with Loudmouth at the time, and went on to have a pretty significant part in getting Disturbed up and running. I have to say Ray made us sound pretty heavy given the crappy equipment and lack of chops we brought to the table. We sent in a CD to Q101 hoping to get something played on the local music showcase. The guys were worried that Q101 would play the song Martyr, a clear case of my trying to sing over a borderline pretty chord progression, and then people wouldn’t realize how heavy we were. I was actually writing a letter to someone while listening to the local music showcase and writing “wouldn’t it be something if they played us”, when Carla Leonardo said we were coming up after this song, and I had one full song to call everyone I knew in Chicago and tell them to turn the radio on. She chose About the Authors, and even played the crazy sample intro, and after it was over she said “rough and raw, the sound of Chronic Jaywalker!” Darn that was exciting.

So what is that crazy sample intro you ask? One of our earliest shows was at Club Stodola on the north side, and we happened to have a video camera. There was a hallway heading back to the bathroom and our “back stage room” (a storage closet). Steve was following the singer for the other band playing that night with the camera as a banged his shoulder into one wall and then the other (if you’ve seen Altered States you remember this bit) and the ceiling tiles started falling down from the ceiling, so what you here is Lenny and Steve’s camped up reaction to the ceiling caving in.

Never Let Me Go

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 22:15:00 GMT

Say you love me and never let me go
Haven’t known you that long but I love you so
You let me be the way that I feel
I’ve never known
Anybody so real as you appear
You’re so sincere to me
You make me feel like I’m finally free

You’ve got to tell me if you want me
You already know how I feel so now you’ve got to help me
I couldn’t have been any clearer
I gave you everything I had inside
The least you could do is just love me or leave me alone

Maybe someday we could be as one
We’ll be just like the rising sun
We’ll never set ‘til the day we day we die
We’ll soar through the air just like two birds we’ll fly
We’ll be as one just like the rising sun
We’ll never set until the day we die

Yet sometimes I feel like I’m pushing my luck
I don’t know how you can take so much
I feel fragile and ready to fall
I wonder if I really know you at all
So say you love me
And never let me go

I’ve been playing this song longer than anything else I’ve written, and really most of the songs I wrote around the same time are long forgotten. It’s a cheesy love song at best, but the lyrics don’t make me cringe, even now, it’s a catchy riff, and also my first attempt at two guitar arrangement and vocal harmonies.
It was the high school musical Grease that introduced me to the muse for this song when I was 16. I played guitar in the "pit", which was really inside a lighted jukebox on stage. and she worked on the show off stage. As I was busing to this high school with 14 or so other "halfway house kids" in this small town a couple of hours away from home, she was the brightest thing in my dark life, and the words came naturally and instantly once I came up with the music. She worked on the set, and my involvement in the musical gave me opportunities the other guys at the house didn’t have, as far as being alone with a girl is concerned. I could walk her home on my way back to the house.

When I wrote the music I was thinking about Sting’s “If I Built This Fortress” and the way he just pulled a couple of strings at the beginning of each chord change. I wrote something with very much the same rhythm, but different chords (I only use two). I used this song in a one act musical I wrote for my theatre class that semester. The musical was based on the theory that Hell is really a rehab, and the Devil’s not evil, he’s a sponsor. ‘Never Let Me Go’ is one of two songs that had reprises in this musical with different lyrics, a great way to add to your show without having to write a new song.To complete the assignment I had to score piano music for all of these songs, and that’s when the signature riff came to me. Once I created the rhythm between my left and right hands on the piano, I could never go back to the Sting version again. I mimicked the piano riff on the guitar, and for the first time I felt like I had written a bona fide hit.

Tony and I played this song all the time. I would introduce it in my best British accent, “This is a song I wrote for the band, it’s called, ‘Never Let Me Go’”.

I don’t remember when I wrote the bridge, but was after high school. I know I had been playing the song a long time when I decided it needed a third part and it came pretty naturally. It was the first song on the Tracers 1989 release, Sunday at Sam’s. By that time I had worked up what I thought was a decent solo, and I had Todd and Tony singing harmony backups. That's what you hear in the mp3 above. I prefer this version, and if you do want to hear it with distortion, check out the version on Chronic Jaywalker’s Religious Holiday, which adds a fourth part to the song as well.

‘Never Let Me Go’ was also one of a couple of originals performed by The Attitudes caught on video at my dad's 40th birthday with Tony on Drums and Simon on Sax. On that same video there are several covers, some pretty ugly improv, and Simon did Steven Wright jokes in between. Having sat and watched the video a couple of times since, there are definitely some sad spots and I think there are also some moments of genius. I’m glad there’s a video at all, as I didn’t know too many people with video cameras in the mid eighties.

One night in college I was caught in a storm while I was playing my acoustic guitar walking the campus. I went under the shelter of an overhang at a college dorm, and I was getting some brilliant natural reverb. Feeling a million miles away from anyone, I had my eyes closed and I was giving the song the passion of a real broken heart. At some point I got the feeling there was someone standing right there, but I didn’t open my eyes until the song was over. There was a guy about my age standing there, pretty wet, and admittedly impressed to hear the song was an original. Those are the kind of moments that make songs. If even an audience of one is touched by a song you wrote just once, that’s a great song.You’re a songwriter, don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

Songs Blog

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 05:49:00 GMT

After spending over twenty years as a veteran of the independent rock scene that often goes unnoticed, I eventually realized that the "reality"-driven audience might be intrigued by the stories behind original songs, after all, every song has a story. Throughout the years, I’ve penned and collaborated on dozens of songs with some truly remarkable artists, and I’m confident they resonate on mathematical, intellectual, and emotional levels. More importantly, I can vividly recall the actual events and individuals who contributed to the creation of these songs, and I believe those stories hold up against any form of "reality" entertainment out there.

I’m starting to document the back stories behind each of these songs, along with the lyrics I’ve preserved over the years, and both old and new recordings. I've released fifteen (well, technically sixteen) of these tracks on Dr. Wippit's Anthology of Sorts, available across all digital music platforms, and these will be the first entries in the blog. Ultimately, I'm envisioning some sort of e-book filled with links to audio and video files. In the meantime, I feel that the current blog-reality landscape offers me the perfect opportunity to share a chapter at a time. Don’t hesitate, click on one! ��