Airplane ModeThursday, January 24, 2013
I don’t typically talk about technical details, but this song marks an important first for Airplane Mode: Drums and backing vocals were provided by my friend Dave Hamilton, who really pushed me to dial up my game. DH lives in New Hampshire, so we collaborated by sending individual tracks back and forth via Dropbox and discussing changes online. It was a great, fascinating experience. Hopefully we’ll do more together.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
As you may or may not know, the poppy outro to Chasing the Train was used as the theme music for a podcast I do called Unprofessional. Since our regular release day lined up with Christmas, we decided to make this week’s show our holiday special. I also thought it might be fun to re-record the theme music in the spirit of the holiday.
Merry Christmas, everyone. Hug someone you like.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
I was a bit of a mess when I got back from Amsterdam. Not in any grand sense; I just had a hard time staying focused. When you know what you want and it’s thousands of miles away, it’s easy to be distracted wishing you were somewhere else.
The girl and I would email back and forth every day or two. She’d tell me—in her adorable slightly broken English—about her day and the crazy things that would happen with guests at the hotel. I’d do my best to walk the line between being easily understood and condescending, writing flowery letters and wondering how much harder things would have been without the Internet to bridge the gap.
It really did help, being so connected. Skype and broadband meant that we could talk as much as we wanted. With video, even. You hear stories about how video calls can create an emotional connection so real as to be overwhelming, but until you experience it for yourself it’s hard to get what all the fuss is about.
One day I took a walk around my own city of Denver and took a bunch of pictures for her. The wide streets and tall buildings. There’s nothing quite like it in The Netherlands, and I thought it might give her a better understanding of who I was and where I was from. When I traveled, I’d send her pictures of the cities I visited. The whole time, I’d write and record songs to send to her.
Somewhere along the way, we made the decision that I should go back for an extended visit. We both knew there was something interesting between us, and we wanted to explore it. Because she was finishing up school and I had the ability to work from anywhere, it made more sense for me to cross the ocean.
So I moved to Amsterdam.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
My friend Kyle isn’t really a relationship guy. He says he dates, but he’s kind of secretive about it and is totally happy being alone most of the time. Every so often when I talk about a girl I’ve met, he just rolls his eyes at me. He doesn’t understand why I get so excited. Sometimes he can’t take it any more and calls me on it. “You’re always into some girl,” he says. “But this is different,” I say. “You say that every time.”
You know what? He’s right. I do spend a lot of my time excited about some girl. But why should that be a bad thing? In my life, I hope I’m always excited about someone. Even if I’m 90 and I’ve been married forever, I hope I still wake up every morning with that same dopey butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling that makes me want to write songs and cross oceans. It’s the greatest feeling in the world.
So here’s my love-letter to the chase. It doesn’t always go as planned, but it’s always worth it.
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Tuesday, November 20, 2012
[This track is from my old band's record, Another November.]
Years ago I worked in a call center doing tech support for a cable company. My days were mostly spent telling people how to unplug their modems and then plug them back in. It wasn’t exactly fulfilling work. If you’ve never had the experience of working in a call center, they’re all just giant cubicle farms full of underachievers, working moms, college students entering the workforce, and process-friendly middle managers. It’s okay as jobs go, but the very smart and very dumb don’t last long.
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
A friend of mine was working on a video for a client who had written a children’s book. In the video a mother would be reading the book to her son at bedtime, and as she read, the room around them would come to life in the style of the book. My friend asked me to record something light and fun to go behind the narration, and this is what I sent him.
Tuesday, November 13, 2012
I have a rule: If you don’t know what to do, grab a guitar. It’s the reason I keep a guitar in every corner of my home. Even if… especially if the problem I’m stuck on has nothing to do with music, forcing myself to think in sounds gives new perspective. As a bonus, I’ve tricked myself into developing good practice habits.
As a kid when I didn’t know how to handle things I escaped to the TV. I moved a lot, so building lasting friendships was difficult, and my best examples of human interactions wound up being what I picked up from Full House and reruns of The Monkees. The hardest part of growing up was facing the realization that the world wasn’t full of smiling friends waiting to love and support me. Even if I understand it, I’m still not quite sure I’ve accepted it. What I have accepted is that everything comes with an expiration date, and that’s okay. There’s a fine line between realism and pessimism, but there’s nothing that says I can’t be a realist and a romantic at the same time.
I’ve always had a hard time with people. When I was sixteen I went to live with my dad in Missouri. High school was pure hell, so when I was faced with the prospect of having to start all over again in a new place, I decided to drop out instead. By nineteen I was so nervous around other people that I would wait until after midnight to take the trash out so I didn’t risk running into anyone. It wasn’t until my twenties that I decided I couldn’t take it any more and set about forcing myself to be social.
Years later, after a so-so first date, I was thinking about whether I’ve gotten any better at being around people or if I’ve just learned to fake it. I don’t know. So I reached for my guitar.
Monday, November 5, 2012
I have what you might call inebriation guilt. Whenever I get beyond “buzzed” and into “drunk” territory, I inevitably feel awful about it, like I’m a bad person for losing control. For a while when I was fighting with severe insomnia, I tried smoking weed to help me sleep. It worked really well, except that the years of DARE and after-school specials have my subconscious convinced that drugs are for shiftless slackers, so I would end up leaving myself notes in an effort to feel productive. “Dear Sober Dave, don’t forget to pay your car insurance. It’s due next week. Love, Stoned Dave”. I stopped smoking once my sleep schedule was normalized, but I sort of miss those notes.
One night I found myself at home on the couch with a glass of scotch. I suppose I went a little further into the bottle than I intended. I remember sitting there with my guitar, strumming chords. I remember mumbling something. And then I remember falling into bed. The next morning I awoke to find an entire song. Once I listened, it all came back to me.
I’ve thought about re-recording it or changing some lyrics, but I kind of like the way this turned out: a work of fiction, but honest in presentation. No deep scrutiny or over-analysis went into this recording. Just a drunk guy making up a song at 3am.
Monday, November 5, 2012
Now that we’re a couple weeks into this experiment, I’d like to share a few notes about how things are going.
Epilogue was featured as an iMore editor’s choice, we got name-checked on Inessential, I was invited onto Remasculate to talk about what I’m doing, these songs have been heard by thousands of people, sales have already surpassed those of my previous band, and daily traffic is well above my expectations.
Generally speaking, I’d say that’s pretty good. But there’s a lot more I’d like to do. If you want to support independent music, there’s a bunch of ways you can help. You could follow @airplanemode on Twitter, like the Facebook page, or rate the songs on iTunes. Or just tell your friends—this whole thing is powered by word-of-mouth.
I’m excited for what’s next. Thanks for listening.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
I’ve always wanted to write a lullaby.
It was raining the first time I went out with the girl from Amsterdam. We met at a hotel near the train station. She lived in Amersfoort and commuted by train, so it seemed like a reasonable compromise. We sat and had a drink in the lobby bar while planning our next move. She talked about her family business and finishing her degree, I talked about travel and music. Funny thing, she didn’t much care for rock and roll.