After something like 25 years
living on different sides of a wide
continent, the two friends decide
to start writing music together.
He’d arrange a musical idea,
play bass guitar to a click track,
maybe add some keyboard,
and share these tracks with his
friend via the mighty google drive.
His friend, then, would download
these tracks into his own home
studio, play drums, write words,
and sing the words he wrote.
He’d do a mix of what he had done
and send the mix back to his friend.
At first just a lark, the duo end up
writing 20 songs together in the
span of a single year. More than
just a casual collaboration, they
realize they have become a band,
one that never rehearses,
one that never performs live,
but that is prodigiously writing
and recording. In their two
years of writing this way, they
accumulate 36 original songs.
A friendship that was made
intermittent and fragile by
geographical distance, becomes
close, brotherly, loving. In this
entire time, they’ve only seen
each other in person once
when traveling gave them an
opportunity to meet face to face.
Otherwise, every communication,
every collaboration is made,
rarely by telephone, but through
text messages and the google.
Nevertheless, notwithstanding,
they have an unmistakable and
almost telepathic musical and
emotional connection, the vibe
of the music, the words in the lyrics
becoming an expression
of their mutual and separate lives.
In one of the very first songs
they write, inspired by a title
suggested by the friend in Vermont,
“Where Is There,” the lyric-writing
friend in Oregon thinks of the
friendship growing and deepening
through music, despite the time,
despite the geography, despite
the thousands of miles between,
almost a letter to his friend,
he writes and sings,
“You’ll always be right here.”
Note: this poem tells a true story. The duo described in the poem is the songwriting partnership of Michael Jarmer (that’s me) and Adam Fagelson, who have formed the studio band called Project MA. You can stream their music from almost any music streaming service, and you can purchase their debut album HERE. For your convenience, here is a sample of the song referenced by the poem. If you’re on this service or another one, please listen to the whole thing!
michael jarmer 