SONG OF THE DAY: Mountain GOD

Poe Mack is a slept on Appalachian MC. Mountain God is a good introduction to him. So many great musicians who have built a lifetime's discography that most of us known nothing about. Actually, for all we think we know because we got these 0s and 1s in our hands, we really don't know shit still. At least back in the day we knew we didn't know shit. Now think we do but still don't. Or worse yet, know a bunch of false shit and think it's real. There's an epidemic of that right now.

SONG OF THE DAY: Skin It Back (Parts 1 & 2)

One time me and Frank Sobotka rode up to south Jersey to meet a guy named Pussy about some stolen airbags to install in Honda Civics. We played this song the entire drive. He kept talking about some dumb diner he wanted to eat it in Delaware but it was just a fuckin' dumbass Flying J truck stop. I dropped like $20 in the claw machine, counting my stolen airbags chickens before they hatched.

SONG OF THE DAY: Thee Prayer

Was talking about praying in space today in the ol’ dorkball groupchat. That’s the kind of times we live in.

N0B0DY C4N S4V3 Y0V BVT...

nobody can save you but 
yourself - born again in heart, 
cleansing self of too much brain 

G3TT1NG FR0M TH3R3 T0 H3R3 T4K3S...

getting from there to here takes 
lots of internal miles, but 
I’d rather be a dirtgod 

SONG OF THE DAY: Streets of New York

Kool G Rap is highly underrated as an MC, popping up in that transition from old school storyteller MCs to new school boom bap era cunning linguists, somehow being able to do that tongue twister repetitive linguistical sound that eventually got played out by the end of the ‘90s, but still keeping the storytelling aspect to it, which when you listen to how so many of the “lyrical miracle” rappers went straight linguistics and helped kill that style, it’s amazing how much of a storyteller Kool G Rap remained. If everybody had done it like that, the style might not’ve got burned out. But there’s always gonna be 20 people doing an exciting style competently but boringly for every person doing it with 100% skill and talent. Sadly, boring motherfuckers get streamed the most and sold the most records, but that’s always been the case.

C0M1NG FR0M 4 BVST3D...

coming from a busted and 
half-broken background, one heals 
by piecing peace together 

SONG OF THE DAY: Git Ya Sheta

There is a digital cyst at the front of my forehead, and it’s making it so I can’t think clearly. I am applying yarrow tincture and various world funks in the hopes of breaking up the invisible wireless growth.

1 PR4CT1C3 P0W3R 0F L0VNG3...

I practice Power of Lounge 
as modern update to age 
old “shade tree mechanic” vibes 

SONG OF THE DAY: Algerie Maroc

I would like to say something clever but am unable to think of anything, yet still want to whittle down my list of "songs of the day" that I have an arbitrary rule about posting once a day, so that the backlog doesn't get too high that I become uncomfortable because of all the stupid arbitrary rules I apply to my life on a daily basis. Nonetheless, this is a great song, because it wouldn't be on my list if it wasn't. At least not to me.

TH3 CVLTVR3 0F P13DM0NT H4S...

the culture of Piedmont has 
plenty that bums me out, but 
it still shaped me at my core 

SONG OF THE DAY: El Gotero Orgulloso

Been doing a radio show locally called Slow Hand, playing old and new 45s at 33 speed, trying to spread the love of slowed music. You can stream the shows for two weeks afterwards (search for Slow Hand). It acts like I’m weekly but I’ve only been doing it every other week. I try to shine a light on the originators of slowed music too, both DJ Screw and Sonido Dueñez. Screw is fairly well known, having made 100 minute mixtapes in Houston of slowed down hip hop, with a large and expansive crew freestyling over instrumentals, through the bulk of the ‘90s. Dueñez is less known, but made cumbia rebajada mixtapes in Monterrey way back in the day, which created that whole rebajada genre. He’s enjoyed a bit of resurgence in the past few years, due to people finding out about Monterrey’s crazy various cumbia scenes, including rebajadas. I had read he was an air conditioner repairman in Houston at some point, living in obscurity, but the resurgence has him doing high profile DJ gigs now, and it’s so awesome to see an old dude thrive, just by loving the fuck out of music.

WR3TCH3D TR4SH 3X1ST3NC3...

wretched trash existences 
get worn as identities 
for those born without culture 

SONG OF THE DAY: Salam Alay

I was thinking about how full color vinyl records sort of corresponds with full color tattoos, neither of which are things that appeal to me, and feel a bit bougie. Anyways, I’ve been doing a radio show where I play 45s at 33 speed, and because of all this, and the over-fetishization of collections of records, I decided to return to an old practice I use to use, where I mark on the labels or sleeves of records I love. So every 45 I played last night, I vandalized somewhere on the 45 label or sleeve with a variation of a Dirtgod tag. Gonna keep doing this, and that way, twenty years from now, even if I’m losing my memory, I’ll know which records were the best by how fucked up they are from me scribbling all over them.

N4TVR3 R3CL41MS WH4T 1T C4N...

nature reclaims what it can - 
man versus nature requires 
in inhumane vigilance 

W3 T3ND T0W4RDS 3XTR4CT10N...

we tend towards extraction 
of resources rather than 
immersion of self, sadly 

SONG OF THE DAY: Egypt Egypt

Was walking out the grocery store, and a younger redneck tattooed couple with a Little Debbie ass kid in the hot rod shopping cart for kids was walking in at the same time. Being a courteous old school type, I pulled my cart aside to let the young family through, as they got to the automatic opening door a step before me. That’s just common courtesy; fuck politics. Now dig it – I’m a Turkish basketball jersey, got a mask on because covid is real but my blackberry bush beard is trying to bust out that motherfucker at all times, and my voice is still half-fucked from having had covid the past month and spending many a night hacking my damn lungs out. Young dude in the back of the family, small for an adult redneck, likely smoked too early (you hate to see it), was sporting a black shirt with white print of a smiling Willie Nelson giving the middle finger. It was dope. So as I passed, in my haggard bedraggled believing in science hillbilly voice through a mask, to the unmasked patriarch of this young and naïve family, just trying to get into the Food Lion on a Sunday evening, say, “Love your shirt, man.” Dude looks at me and goes, “Thank you, sir,” which was polite, and maybe a return on my own common decency already expressed, but goddamn if it didn’t trip me out to have a young redneck dude in a middle finger Willie Nelson shirt go “thank you, sir” to me. Made me think I might need a new bad tattoo in a highly visible place, maybe a “Smile Now Cry Later” design on my neck, but with hobo clowns instead of joker card clowns.

4 HVM4N B31NG C4N QV1T3...

a human being can quite 
easily blend with nature, 
clear of civilization 

SONG OF THE DAY: Maiden's Prayer

Nice, chill, back roads Virginia music. Used to bump some earlier releases by this dude before I realized he was actually local. Just great shit to vibe to. Kinda feel like you can study Americana music and learn acoustic instruments all you want, but if you don’t know legit back roads lifestyles at least a little, it’ll never sound right. Bachman hits that sweet spot with one foot in knowledge but the other in intuition.

SONG OF THE DAY: Graveyard Train

Grew up on Creedence, so much so used to stare at the album cover for Willy & The Poor Boys and I actually thought it was the little ass abandoned train town our post office was in. For reference, this was before school, so I mostly just hung out at home or at my grandmother’s trailer, no social activities, so riding from our house by a dairy farm to the post office in Rice, Virginia, where they had like six brick buildings all in a row together, that was big time. A few years back, when I was still married, me and the family were riding back where I had grown up, and I took them down the road that old house had been on, which dead ended into a lake now because they created a reservoir where a dump used to be. The house was gone, but the house next door was still there, and some old lady was sitting on the porch. I got out and asked her about the house that used to be next door, assuming she was an old lady so might’ve lived there a couple years, I don’t know. She didn’t live there when I was a kid. “What house?” she yelled, rather crazily. “In the field, there used to be a house, I lived there when I was little.” “Ain’t no house there now!” she yelled. “Yeah, I see. When was it torn down?” “Ain’t no house over there.” I gave up at that point. You can’t return to the past.

M4N V3RSVS N4TVR3 1S 4N...

man versus nature is an 
intellectual fault line 
we build hopelessness upon 

SONG OF THE DAY: Little Green Monster

It’s pretty easy to hate, getting mad at folks for not being the way you think they ought to be in this world. Been working on my own judgments lately, trying not to hate on folks, even if they’re not my type of people or somebody I’d trust. Folks can exist separate from you living full lives without you having to be all caught up in their shit. It tarnishes the enjoyment of your own life to be worried about that shit. Fake don’t realize it’s fake anyways – it feels real to them. And my real might be fake to somebody else. You get too caught up in all that shit, you’re consumed by self-doubt and external hating and resentment about things too far beyond your own control to be worrying about.
Side note: ain’t been writing much on here because I was down with covid for the past few weeks. My voice is still all sorts of fucked up, but when this song kicks off right after he says like his grandma used to tell him, and hits that “sha la la la la la lalala” – when my voice is right, I sing that shit to the cats smooth as fuck.

0LD SCH00L SVRV1V4L R3QV1R3D...

old school survival required 
deep knowledge of a place - far 
deeper than superficial 

H4RD T0 3SC4P3 S0M3 PL4C3S...

hard to escape some places - 
books or bullets both promise 
naive teens tickets elsewhere 

R1V3RS 4ND R41LR04DS R3PL4C3D...

rivers and railroads replaced 
by interstates, allowing 
suburbs to metastasize 

M0ST F0LKS H4V3 T0 P13C3 1T 4LL...

most folks have to piece it all 
together, in little bits, 
unblessed by economics 

4T 0VR C0R3, M0ST HVM4NS JVST...

at our core, most humans just 
want to be free to live our 
lives, hopefully happily 

3V3N TH3 WR0NG S1D3 0F 0VR...

even the wrong side of our 
histories is filled with folks 
forgotten and exploited 

TH3 STRVCTVR3 0VR M0D3RN L1V3S...

the structure our modern lives 
have been given was all built 
in the past two centuries 

TR4D1T10N4L 3X1ST3NC3...

traditional existence 
was oftentimes difficult 
(plus, there’s older traditions) 

0V3RL00K3D P30PL3 B3C0M3...

overlooked people become 
easily radicalized 
by myths of tradition 

Y3ST3RD4Y'S M0ST VS3FVL F0LKS...

yesterday’s most useful folks 
are easily forgotten 
as an empire progresses 

TH3 RVST13ST L34TH3R-SK1NN3D...

the rustiest leather-skinned 
scraps of western whiteness, loved 
only as cannon fodder 

W3 W4S N3V3R G0NN4 B3...

we was never gonna be 
kings in old worlds, and struggle 
here to hold dead presidents 

4M3R1C4'S PYR4M1D...

America’s pyramid 
scam promised salvation, but 
some of us just can’t be saved 

M1LL3D N3W W0RLD H0M3S FR0M 0LD GR0WTH...

milled new world homes from old growth 
woods, already occupied, 
but we were told it’s okay 

D0M3ST1C4T3D G4M3C0CKS...

domesticated gamecocks 
always ready for battle, 
feasting on the scattered scraps 

SONG OF THE DAY: Mama He's Crazy (chopped & kudzu'd)

At one point on my patreon, I was chopping and kudzu'ing old country songs fairly regularly. I got a twelve-pack of them together, which I released on my bandcamp, and then began doing southern rock ones for the second twelve-pack. But I got stuck somewhere along the way. I tried a number of songs, and some were okay, but none were slamming. I'm too much of a perfectionist in some ways, in that unless something is hitting me in that moment, I can't let it go. Which is strange, because in my other creative endeavors, I literally do whatever without thinking, or thinking as little as possible. Not sure why fucking with remixing old songs is different. Anyways, the first twelve-pack is nothing but bangers, including this track. I always forget to hype my patreon or bandcamp on here, or the haiku spikes I do, or the fact I've been writing poems on bottles I find in the woods. It's kinda hard to catalog what I do, because I'm chaotic good in human form. The point of all this is to say there is no point. I'm not a store. I'm not perfect. I'm not even consistent. I just am.

B4R3LY TRVST1NG M0D3RN G0DS...

barely trusting modern gods - 
always been recognizing 
authority as bastards 

W3 S1MVLT4N30VSLY...

we simultaneously 
took pride in work, while being 
too stubborn to take bossing 

MY P4RT1CVL4R BL00D L1N3...

my particular blood line 
came from same Pangean range, 
separated by ocean