Bartlet picks up the speech off Will's desk.
BARTLET
"A new doctrine for a new century, based not just on our interests, but on our values across the world." Well, that's pretty spicy stuff.
WILL
You wrote it, sir.
BARTLET
Yeah, I know. Why is a Kundunese life worth less to me than an American life?
WILL
I don't know, sir, but it is.

There’s a new Storytown track, and it is better than any track online. Nobody has made a better track of music. And no other band has streaming numbers like this. These are streaming levels that have never been seen before. Everyone knows it. Make Listening Great Again.

I’ve long thought that folks who are blessed with certainty about things – their opinions about themselves and others, their sense of “rightness”, if not even righteousness – are empowered by that certainty in a way that I have never been (or ever will be, apparently). I get the feeling that, while they certainly do and will make mistakes, their chutzpah empowers them to be effective and, ultimately, to succeed. This is probably ridiculously naïve. But one can dream….

ChatGPT prompt: “write a short story in the style of Eudora Welty, told in first person, about a Rice University engineering dropout who becomes a famous guitar player but then dies of a drug overdose”

Lies lies all these lies. Pull the wool over my eyes. Lies lies always lies. I want to speak out but I am speechless.

It’s said that nothing’s neither good nor bad. But thinking’s the thing that makes it so. And nonetheless sometimes bad is really bad.

Homage, and a tip of the hat, to Karl Wallinger.

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. Everybody wants to rule the world, but nobody wants to try. So now what?

This song is based on a nonsense poem I remember from elementary school. And a kind of homage to "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite". Why do we remember what we do?

Are we all trying to accomplish a thing, over and over again, and yet failing? Does this mean we’re insane? Or is it something else?

Although it can take a certain kind of maturity and wisdom, I think we should be appreciating each other’s idiosyncrasies and “faults”. And in my world, nobody’s in charge, each of us is a full partner, and intimacy and the familiarity that comes with it make the heart grow fonder..

…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness etc.], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…

We all struggle with inner demons. If you say that you don’t, then you’re lying. I’m not myself. I need help. I’m anxious about my health. Can somebody make it stop?

I want to save part of my life for myself. There's a catch to it though, it's gotta be part of the young part. You know, retire young, work old, come back and work when I know what I'm working for, does that make any sense? - Johnny Case, Holiday.

I wanna be great at something. I wanna make a mark. It can be anything. Just wanna knock it outta the park.

I could sure use some good news, 'cause these blues are bad news. Maybe no news is good.

Ever feel like you're been semi gaslighted? Doesn't feel very good, does it?

How can a single person’s actions make much of a difference when the problems are pervasive and entrenched and where the forces that resist change are so powerful and stubborn?

“I know that I know nothing”. Actually I know what I know. And as this new song clearly says, “All that I know is what I know”.

If you hold on too tight, you kill the thing you love. So you've got to let go of something to have it. But when I let go, I feel as if I might disappear.

That frisson you experience just before you act, just before you make a choice, just before the thing you’ve been anticipating happens. We’ve all had that experience where the anticipation turns out to be better, more exciting, than the thing itself.

You want to point out to someone how great they are, how they have a certain “something” that’s unique to them and how they don’t realize how great that thing is and how important and valuable it is to you and to others. So you talk to them about that special thing that they have, and you say to them, “it’s your superpower”.

So I must address, up front, the elephant in the listening room, so to speak. I suppose that this new song qualifies as easy listening. When you submit a track to CD Baby for distribution to the streaming services, you have to indicate the genre. And I did indeed say it was easy listening. So sue me. I do love me a pretty melody and a bit of lushness, sometimes. But the subject matter is another thing altogether: cancel culture. This track is “playing against type”, one might say.

We’re all cogs in a big machine
One so vast that it can’t be seen
It’s got no soul so its conscience is clean
Let’s surrender now

I’m not a “car guy”, but I did fall in love with one particular teacher’s car when I was in junior high school. This song is a tongue in cheek, double-entendre laden paean to that car. I had planned to arrange this song in the style of some of those early classic car-themed rockers – “Rocket 88”, “Little Deuce Coupe”, “Fun, Fun, Fun” – you know the ones. But every version I attempted in that style was crap. So the song ended up with a sleek, groovy, medium tempo triplet feel (and you know much I love my triplets). A well-oiled machine. A sweet ride.

I wrote about this song a while back in a blog post, so I recommend that you check that out for more extensive thoughts. I do note that this song is a bit of a “corrective” to our recent snarky and cynical song “I Hate Politics”. And I again just offer this quote from Barack Obama:

“Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it and to work for it and to fight for it.”

Though I’ve gone away
Left the place that made me what I am
Guess I’ve gone away for good
Though I’ve gone away
North toward home but not forgetting
I won’t even if I could

Everybody says “write what you know”, and a while back I had the idea to write a song about where I come from. I’ve been in NYC for so long that I suspect my Mississippi roots are hard to detect. But they are there.

Yeah, I know, kinda cynical. Is there some better way to get things done around here?

Well, I just need to get this out of my system so I can get back to being earnest and hopeful and constructive. Thanks for your understanding.

“When I stopped caring
When I lost faith
I lost my bearings 
But lifted a weight”

Sometimes you try and try and try, and even though we’re always told to never give up, maybe sometimes that’s what we need to do.

“There’s a cost to what I’ve lost
But for now
It’s ok somehow.”

In 1891 my great grandfather Brooks Story and two brothers robbed this train express office in Durant, MS, of $2394 (roughly $77K today). Brooks was sentenced to 10 years in the Mississippi State Penitentiary and spent the next decade on the run, involved in many daring and dangerous exploits. Hear about it in this episode of Sam Dingman’s Family Ghosts podcast.

In 1889, my great grandfather’s younger brother Eugene Story murdered a man, was arrested, broken from jail by an armed gang, then was on the run until re-arrested in 1891 after a shootout in Louisiana in which he killed a second man. Eugene was executed in a public hanging in this square in Lexington, Mississippi, a small town on the edge of the Mississippi Delta. Roughly 1000 people witnessed the hanging, and 30 armed marshals were present to prevent any gang from freeing him.

In this song, I sing to my grandfather Eugene, whose father was Brooks and who was presumably named for his uncle Eugene, the murderer.

It is what it is, we like to say. I say it all the time. Then I shrug. How helpful is that?

But what is it exactly? Why don't we just say it. SAY IT!

Or don’t.

Ever feel ignored, dismissed, irrelevant? Well, here's some advice for you. JUST FORGET ABOUT IT.

And speaking of forgetting about things, I won’t forget it if you listen to our music. No I won’t. So try it out. I’m tired of feeling ignored, dismissed, and irrelevant. LIKE Storytown! Now, don’t forget! ;-)

I got married in the early 80s (not to my present wife, whom I married in 2003 and with whom I get along splendidly). That earlier marriage lasted about nine years. We didn’t have any kids. Some of you knew me then and knew my wife as well. It was great at times, but in the end it didn’t work out. This song is about that. It was the 80s.

WHERE’S THE SOUL

I’m never satisfied with my songs or arrangements. I wish my guitar playing was better, I wish the grooves were funkier, I wish the songs were catchier. My lyrics are overwritten — too wordy — they’ve always been especially hard for me. And I wish it were all just more soulful.

A while back I was having a moment, really lost in and marveling at a well known track by a fantastic artist we all admire and love — no names, sorry — and I thought, I’d love to be able to write something like this. This is what I aspire to. Groove, and soul, and all that deep good stuff.

It’s got a beat; you can dance to it

I’m not much of a dancer, but I love a good groove. My favorite may be a mid-tempo shuffle (if you know what that is), but I love them all. A lot of today’s indie music doesn’t seem to embrace the groove. The groove, the beat, was and continues to be a big part of what moves me musically, along with melody of course. OK, and lyrics. And soul. Of course there’s plenty of music that’s soulful that’s not all about the beat. Maybe I just wanted to talk about the beat. It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.

Cults of personality! Conspiracy theories! Ponzi schemes! Multilevel marketing! Cults!!!

Why do people keep falling for this stuff? With my unrelenting skepticism I feel like a grumpy, stick-in-mud kill-joy. Why not give in to it? Live a little! Get rich quick! Solve your problems!

“Get rich quick” schemes are perennially appealing and yet never pan out. Cult followers believe they have found the answer. Conspiracy theorists think they have the inside scoop on what’s really going on. Maybe I’m inventing a connection, but I think there’s something in common among all these — a suspension of conventional disbelief and some kind of non-rational belief in an “answer”. All seem to reflect our very human discomfort with uncertainty and our hunger for solutions.

Note that, if everyone who joins an MLM (multi-level marketing) or Ponzi scheme recruits just 2 new people each day, the entire population of Planet Earth will have been enlisted by the end of the month. Just sayin’.

Leaders are supposed to lead, and sadly, these days, that too rarely translates into doing the right thing. Apparently it’s much more important to ensure their own re-election or not inflame their constituencies. I’m so disheartened by their inaction on things that are clear and compelling and egregious or just plain wrong. I wonder if these folks have children and, if they do, if they’re proud to tell their kids about what they are not doing, what they are not fixing?

I have generally been a “go along to get along” kind of guy, which does have its plus side. By nature I’m not an activist. My instinct is to keep my views to myself. Writing this post is itself a bit of a stretch for me. But, given how strongly I feel about all this inaction stuff, maybe I should be doing more, maybe more than just writing a song — which I did last year. To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, is writing a song anything?

Inaction by so-called leaders continues (what is wrong with people?), and every day I find myself asking, if not now, then when? And … what about my own inaction? What should I do? Write another song? Is writing a song anything?

Hope. Languishing. Divorce. Injustice. 

Enough with the earnestness!! Enough with the issues, with the caring! ENOUGH ALREADY!

My father was really good at sarcasm — he could make you feel pretty bad with a quick, cutting comment. I try to avoid sarcasm because it seems like a cheap shot, and I don’t want to model that for our kids. But it’s SO easy, a cheap, though ultimately unconstructive, thrill.

This song has no redeeming social value. I thought I’d write something about being, uh, gratuitously oppositional, so to speak. It’s from the point of view of somebody who is smugly dismissive, a jerk, really. The song is just for fun. Because too much earnestness can be too much. 

Like it or lump it.

It takes a kind of leap of faith for me to attempt a new song. The leap is fueled by hope, by a sense that the quest is worthy, and by a belief that I have something to say — a resounding rebuttal to the discouraged feeling behind “Why bother?” But when I’m languishing, when I’m “down”, it’s hard to get into that head space, much less spin up into some real flow. Well, it just turns out that I have taken the leap with a song that addresses this challenge. Somewhat inexplicably, it has a kind of groovy, 70s vibe.

And remember, if it’s not the pandemic, or the current state pf politics, or egregious actions by foreign actors, it’s gonna be something. Why bother? Because the alternative is clearly inferior.

In an episode of my friend John Peden’s podcast, Sidetracks Liner Notes, we discuss the making of our debut album Welcome to Storytown and go through it, track by track. John includes nice excerpts of every track, so it’s a nice way to get a sneak preview in advance of the album’s release. I talk about the stories behind each song and go inside the arrangements. And in a few cases, John provides surprising band associations that some of the tracks evoke for him. I’d be interested in whether you agree with him.

Twelve tracks, ending in the explosive Broken Promise Land, with guest vocalist Fawzia Afzal-Khan.