SONG OF THE DAY: I Need Your Love

I am alone in my own head and world about half the time, so I tend to have about 17 monologues pretending to talk to somebody else like the one at the end of this song. It helps you get your spacing down right as if somebody else is actually talking. You gotta practice shit like that. Gotta practice everything, in your head, constantly, because you never know. YOU NEVER FUCKIN’ KNOW.

B34MS FR0M TH3 0VTS1D3 W0RLD...

beams from the outside world 
promised adventure to a 
young nowhere larval dirtgod 

L1F3L0NG JVGGL3RS R3C0GN1Z3...

lifelong jugglers recognize 
it’s nigh impossible to 
successfully hand balls off 

STVDY1NG TH3 W0RLDS 1NS1D3...

studying the worlds inside 
wires too hard, we lose sight of 
the moon itself, mapping paths 

4TT3MPT1NG T0 B34VT1FY...

attempting to beautify 
life by scattering wild arts 
as easy as possible 

SONG OF THE DAY: Evil Ways

Willie Bobo is one of the all-time greatest stage names. In looking him up, I found out through Wikipedia that when Mongo Santamaria moved to America from Cuba, playing with both Tito Puentes and Cal Tjader, a young Willie Bobo was assigned to be Santamaria’s translator, and study under him. Both are so fuckin’ great, and it’s wild to learn that direct lineage. Anyways, I’m not a big cover song guy, but take a regular, well-known song and then spice it up with that New York City Latin jazz sound, and fuck man, I gotta admit I listen to this type of shit a whole lot the past few months. Even got a Fania All-Stars patch to put on some overalls.

4TT4CK1NG 34CH D4Y W1TH 4...

attacking each day with a 
stubborn simplicity, since 
shit’s too damned complicated 

SONG OF THE DAY: Town Called Nowhere

I’ve had a couple Skip Mahoney songs in high rotation in recent months, but I didn’t really know nothing about him other than he was chill as fuck. Of course when I googled him, first pic was him smiling in a purple suit, looking sharp and pure lounger. But then also he died in 2020, and actually came out of DC, playing a lot in DC/Baltimore back in the day, with his group The Casuals. He ain’t even got a Wikipedia page, which is a sign of quality lounger in my opinion. Only assholes have Wikipedia pages.

1T'S N0TH1NG T0 DR1V3 S3V3N...

it’s nothing to drive seven 
states away, just to see a 
certain face for half an hour 

34RLY L1F3 BVRN0VTS L34RN3D M3...

early life burnouts learned me 
which paths allowed best traction 
for doing dirtgod nonsense 

SONG OF THE DAY: Gumbo'! 4 tha Folks, Hold On

My clankyjangers in the yard need some maintenance. I had put screw glue on the main fulcrum screw, so that they didn’t spin out of their holder. But some of the clamp screws spun their way out recently, due to high winds, and this has left the clankyjangers in disrepair. Out of five in the six in the yard, only two are fully functional, with a third at about 2/3 functionality. This is unacceptable. But also the daffodils haven’t bloomed yet, so I’m waiting to know when’s the right time to not only get these noisy industrial yard flowers cranking again, but to put up the other ten or so I’ve got all the parts laying around to do. And then when it’s windy, it’s gonna be the most obnoxious yard around (except for the guys down in the bottom who burn trash all the time and sometimes accidentally set a camper on fire and also there’s gunshots now and then). Clankyjangers are just a poor man who’s done come up’s camper fire, to be honest.

N3V3R W4S M34NT T0 C0LL3CT...

never was meant to collect 
dust, but sometimes your wheels stop 
spinning and don’t start again 

B0TH 4 BL3SS1NG 4ND 4 CVRS3...

both a blessing and a curse 
being born to lose… few folks 
remember the hardly known 

3V3N TH0VGH TH3Y'V3 M4PP3D 0VT WH0L3...

even though they’ve mapped out whole 
world, if properly dwelling 
in shadows, you’ll stay unknown 

SONG OF THE DAY: Joy And Pain

I was thinking today how weird it would be if the internet just went out, like it completely stopped working, and as they frantically tried to put it back in place, it was all janky, so you’d have five minutes where it worked but your email would just download all these fuckin’ useless BIG 50% OFF SALE TODAY ONLY at some website you bought a single item at seven years ago, so you didn’t even get any real emails you needed to see in that tiny window of function. Eventually, we’d have a lot better mind frame, less poisoned by a thousand trending demons all at once, but man, that collective detox period would be FUCKED UP. Anyways, I hope it happens before I die.

C0M1NG FR0M S0VTHS1D3 SCRVB P1N3...

coming from southside scrub pine 
existence, steeped in greater 
Appalachian tendencies 

BL3W WH3R3 W1NDS 0F CH40T1C...

blew where winds of chaotic 
good took me, thus landed in 
perfectly imperfect place 

SONG OF THE DAY: Dirty Laundry

I had some inane thoughts I started to write about clotheslines and laundry or whatever the fuck, but to be honest, got some bad news yesterday and still not feeling like writing my stupid thoughts down just to post a song. But somehow I still did it.

R1D TH3 S4M3 R04D F0R N34RLY...

rid the same road for nearly 
two decades, but Earth shifted - 
signaling time to move on 

G0T THR33 CH1LDR3N H4LF-F1LL3D W1TH...

got three children half-filled with 
my genes, each blessed with better 
sense than myself already 

W00DS D0NE F3LT B3TT3R TH4N W1R3S...

woods done felt better than wires 
my whole life… disappearing 
down to the creek for decades 

C0VNTRY B0Y RVR4L S0VTH3RN...

country boy rural southern 
life teaches callousness - thank 
god for better sense grandmas 

TH3 34RTH 1S TH1CK W1TH 0PT10NS...

the Earth is thick with options - 
unlimited paths even 
after beard’s gotten greyer 

SONG OF THE DAY: Ghetto: Misfortune's Wealth

As famously sampled by Eric B & Rakim for “In the Ghetto”. I love grabbing all these old compilations and finding stuff that was source material for bangers. The other day some song came on and I was like, “wait a second, that’s the ‘Super Hoe’ beat!” and sure enough, as soon as the song broke into a hook, it was just the original cadence of what BDP turned into “Scott La Rock has ‘em all… he is the super hoe!” I don’t know why people ever considered hip hop to not be music just because of sampling, because it’s all so layered, buried, and who the fuck cares. Intellectual property is still bullshit (and neither one).

3DVC4T3D B3Y0ND MY...

educated beyond my 
natural intelligence, 
so had to learn to forget 

SONG OF THE DAY: Love Wars

Been thinking basic thoughts lately. Has me scared I got concussed and didn’t realize it, and am gonna start waiting in line for fast food tenders from a chicken tenders only place, and I’m gonna tell people “oh you gotta try it, they’re great… get extra dipping sauce though!” If that happens, please stab me behind the ear with something that will put me out of that misery. Thanks in advance.

N4TVR4L B0RN C0VNTRY B0Y...

natural born country boy 
once removed, but still with that 
inherent raggedyness 

SONG OF THE DAY: yamships, flaxseed

It’s winter but today was warm, except I didn’t know that entirely when I walked out the house with the dog to go down the road until we get to the crook in the gravel where some other dog gets all loud and obnoxious up at that dude’s compound, so we turn around. But this meant I got to rock one of the greatest styles known to man – the stocking hat barely on your head. Started with it over my years, but it was way too hot for all that, yet still enough chill to the day (“airish” as they say) that wasn’t no need to tuck it into my back pocket just yet. So I pulled the hat up so it was off my ears, higher on my head, barely holding on, like a condom receptacle. Such a lovely style, and one you can tinker with constantly, slightly tilted to one side (a classic), or even all the way up on your head so it’s not even like you’re still wearing the hat – it’s just floating along with you like an aura of a hat. That’s a top quality style, and I can actually think of a number of dudes I remember rocking an exceptionally floating stocking hat at one time or another throughout my life. A good stocking hat float really sticks in your mind, because it defies physics, and mainstream sensibilities perhaps. With my hat like this, found a bottle stash I’d made a while back, before the snow, which finally melted, and there was a pack of four bottles I must’ve dug out from further into the edge by the river. I walked over just in the off chance there were more, and found a raccoon skull, with a strip of pelt still decaying, so I stuck it in a tree to come back to later, just like the bottles. No rush on anything. You rush too much and you’re fuckin’ hat might fall off. It just ain’t worth it.

FR0M TH3 V3RY B3G1NN1NG...

from the very beginning, 
always regarded fences 
as more obstacle than rule 

T3ND3NCY T0 WR1T3 FVTVR3S...

tendency to write futures 
without even trying - keep 
the power of art in mind 

SONG OF THE DAY: Hobo's Meditation

I kinda hated the Trio record as a kid because my folks played it too much, and I had already transitioned into a know-it-all don't-like-shit-your-parents do teenager. But I've gone back to those records in recent years, because somehow I ended up being an older fucker instead of dead in a guardrail, and that shit's pretty great. "Hobo's Meditation" is one of my favorite old school traditional songs, even if it isn't traditional, I know about 19 different artists that done it. And I've come to appreciate Dolly even more because I have a Dollywood tattoo on my crotch. That's like a tramp stamp for men. I ain't ashamed, but it is ignorant as hell. Whatever. I wasn't put on this Earth to be perfect; I was put here to lounge.

H34RT H4LF-FVLL 0F FR13D G1ZZ4RD...

heart half-full of fried gizzard 
grease, but still magically 
staggered into simple home 

H1GHW4Y 15 4RT3RY...

highway 15 artery 
intersecting James River 
blue vein - that X marks my spot 

S0VTH3RN G0TH1CC FVTVR1ST...

southern gothicc futurist - 
piecemealing peace from the trash 
scattered through environment 

SONG OF THE DAY: Canola Fields

Whenever I see somebody talking about how great Sturgill Simpson is, I want to talk to them about James McMurtry instead, but I know it’s a waste of time so I don’t bother. That’s like trying to convince fortysomething punks in the city they’re not first wave gentrifiers. It’s best just to keep it moving until you end up somewhere in better company.

T3ND3D T0W4RDS R3TR34T1NG...

 

tended towards retreating 
to creative solitude 
as defense mechanism 

SONG OF THE DAY: Country Boy

This song makes me miss my dad, and think of going to Tom’s Country Store to get hot dogs for lunch with him, then sitting up in the park where he ate and read the paper every day, even though he only had a 7th grade education. I mean, he read the paper every day until he replaced it with a fifth of vodka entirely, not just partially. He also had a little blue Ford Courier pick-up that we painted a grim reaper on the hood of, based off a t-shirt of mine as a delinquent metalhead teenager. That truck was great, classic wheelbarrow truck – so tiny, with the tweeter kick cassette player, but with that grim reaper hand-painted on the hood, it was pretty sick. When I first got my license, I got to drive it to school now and then, blasting some shitty metal, grim reaper on the hood, blowing into school like the misfit I was, living River’s Edge in real life, but nobody got murdered necessarily, just ripped off. Kinda come to realize as much as I hate all those charts where you plot yourself, I’m about as Chaotic Good as it gets when I’m properly synchronized with my ultimate dirtgod raven mack ultramagnetics. I'd rather be Chaotic Good than anything else, but especially Lawful Neutral. Way too much fuckin' Lawful Neutral out here, fucking everything up with its nothingness.

BEEN B4CK R04DS 4ND TR41N TR4CKS S1NC3...

been back roads and train tracks since 
the day I gained consciousness 
(which remains work in progress) 

SONG OF THE DAY: 365 Is My Number/The Message

I’m close to another 365 round the sun, and in fact my oldest sister (younger than me) hit that spot in the sky today. Always thankful for folks like us to have lived another full spiral through our little corner (which ain’t a corner) of the universe – each one should be celebrated instead of feared, because it means you have survived all sorts of shit, and still stand, like a human middle finger at all that which have had you done otherwise by now.

G0D S3V3N T1M3S G0D S3V3N...

god seven times god seven 
divided by all the dirt 
equals about where I’m at 

SONG OF THE DAY: Never Been Tooken Out

NEVER BEEN TOOKEN OUT holographic bumper sticker on a 2069 Toyota Spaceship body but with a retrofitted 2034 Rivian big block, brung back to Earth (where all us forgotten marginalized types still live), sitting in my back yard because I’m saving up for rims, 42” 240-spoke gold Daytons. I found some on Meta Marketplace but the guy only had four and I really need all six plus probably a seventh for the spare. That’s when you really do shit up, when you have that extra wheel for the spare… pure fuckin’ class.

W33DS H4V3 M0R3 4VTH0R1TY...

weeds have more authority 
than me over most of which 
I see… learn to get along 

PVTT1NG CL41MS 0N 4 FVTVR3...

putting claims on a future 
which isn’t our’s to be part 
of - we never seem to learn