. . . began early in the studio, recording some vocals for a SuperWave demo, a cover band I’ve been playing in over the last six months or so, a band that emerged from the ashes of another cover band that three of us had been with for quite some time–for one of us, nearly a decade, for me, six or seven years, for our guitar player, a couple of years. What happened to that group? That’s a very good question. The three of us remain somewhat mystified and smarting. But, as you know, the only constant in the universe is change. It is inevitable. Sometimes change comes with some level of trauma. One could say that about this change, but what we ended up with, SuperWave, and how we are all proceeding together, has had some major, life-giving, healing properties. We are happier now, all three of us. Tomorrow night we play our first “big” stage together in Portland at a club called The Ponderosa Lounge. We are very excited.
Demo vocals almost complete, I ran some errands: a trip to the office supply store for a mailing box, a trip to the Post Office to mail said box full of goodies for my buddy and partner in crime, Adam Fagelson, the other half of Project MA, who lives in Vermont, all the way across this great continent. I dropped off some paperwork to the Oak Lodge Water District that says, “please don’t charge us a million dollars because of that leak in our main water line that we didn’t know about, the one that we just fixed for $10,000.” And then–to the grocery store for odds and ends, mostly seltzer water and weird stuff I had coupons for. Almost got into a wreck with a mail truck who went straight across the intersection even though he had his left turn signal blinking. Close one.
And then–back into the studio! This time, I’m working on the first single for 2025 from Project MA and my partner René is lending her talents as a background vocalist to this original song, a kind of anthem, I hope, for disappointed and traumatized liberals (of which I count myself) on the cusp of Trump’s second inauguration. Adam sent me the basic tracks for this song (sans drums, sans vocals) about a year ago and, as is his wont, he sent those tracks with a song title. This has been our practice. He’ll send with the initial tracks, before a single lyric is written, a title–and in 30 songs written as a duo over the last two years, I have NOT run with his suggested title only once or twice. His titles sometimes have this uncanny way of finding something that will intrigue me, fuel the creative engines for lyric writing–and this particular title, inspired as I think it was by a dark spell in Adam’s life, has this new relevance now beyond the personal and into the political. The song “Paper Bag” begins with this lyric: “I think I need a paper bag to breathe into for a while.” It seems about half of us Americans are going to feel like that through most of the next four years.
As I write this, it’s about 5 PM, and, while I am a little tired, I am exceedingly happy. I’m going to shoot for another perfect day, meaning that for the rest of it, as I have been doing up to this moment, I am going to continue to do the things I love doing. Maybe René and I will finish this song. Maybe I will do some reading later. I’m writing in this very moment. The only thing absent from today, so far, has been 20 minutes on the cushion, forgone this morning because I didn’t get up early enough and had a studio date at 9:30. I rarely meditate at night, but it’s not out of the question.
Moving forward into 2025, this should be my motto: it’s not out of the question.
michael jarmer 