The second time moving through
the collection A to Z and finding
myself. Both literally and
figuratively, I find myself
in the music I make, and I find
my friends, my most favorite
people on the planet. It’s true.
With very few exceptions, my
deepest relationships with
other human beings have come
from making music with them.
A few years ago, Adam, a bass
player who played with Here
Comes Everybody in the 90’s
before he moved to the East
Coast, with whom I had kept
in touch irregularly
over the decades, started
chatting with me over text
messages back and forth until
finally, one of us suggested
(I don’t remember which one)
that we try to write a song
together long distance. That
happened. Over the next few
years, that happened about 40
times, resulting in these
two records and another two
records worth of bonus material,
one of which is streaming right
now. Adam’s still 3,000 miles away,
we can’t gig, so one might
wonder: why bother pressing
these tunes to vinyl? Mostly,
because I was so proud of the
songs we had written I wanted
almost 100 copies just for
myself. I remember in the 90’s
being excited to get 100
copies of an album of our
music on a cassette tape.
In 1997, opening up an album
of ours on a CD was a step
up, but now, almost as if
it was 1985 or something,
listening to our music on
vinyl is a peak experience.
An expensive peak experience.
I’d do it again, and I just might.
Meanwhile I long for Adam
to come from Vermont to the
Northwest so we can make
our weird music in public
and so that we can write our
next album while we’re in
the same room. I can’t describe
what we do. I have no
objectivity, but I do know
how I feel about it. I know
that if I heard this music
made by somebody else I’d
become a huge fan. I know
that while I’m proud of it
for its own sake, I’m more
enamored by what this music
represents: an enduring
friendship, and a creative
sympatico that I have only ever
experienced with one other
person in my lifetime.
Notes on the vinyl editions with links for purchase:
- Project MA, You Are Here, Refrigerator Records, 2024, translucent blue vinyl.
- Project MA, Bees, Refrigerator Records, 2025, translucent orange vinyl.
- Or Listen on your favorite streaming service: TIDAL, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Qobuz, etc.
In case you don’t already know: I’m listening to almost everything in my vinyl collection, A to Z, and writing at least one, sometimes two or three long skinny poem-like-things in response for each artist, and on a few occasions, writing a long skinny poem-like-thing in response to more than one artist. As a poet and a student of poetry, I understand that these things look like poems, but they don’t really sound much like poetry, hence, I call them “poem-like-things.” I’ll admit that they’re just long, skinny essays that veer every now and then into the poetic or lyric.
