Doing More With Less Since 1972
I didn’t get an Instafest from YouTube Music yet, but I was able to generate one based on my last.fm account. Actually was able to generate a different one for lifetime vs last six months. I’m happy with this one.
Two things of note here:
Ok. I’m weird. I’m the guy (the only one) who uses YouTube Music as my primary streaming service. I’m insanely jealous of all the cool Instafest auto-generated music festival posters I’ve seen lately, and I’d love to get in on the fun.
Unfortunately, when I try to generate one with my Spotify account, I’m 0-fer. Even if I use the “All Time” setting. I used Spotify a lot back in the day…even had a fair number of subscribers for my Damn Good Texas Country playlist.
Even if I could get that to work, it wouldn’t reflect all the new stuff I’ve been listening to since moving platforms. Yes…I’m aware Spotify’s user experience is slightly better, but it’s hard to move away from ad-free YouTube.
If any college student has some time, please write an Instafest-For-YouTube app.
Please and Thank You!
This song hit me hard the very first time I heard the lyrics. It’s challenging to someone who grew up in the South, lives in the South, is proud to be from the South, but also has the ability to see the world through (slightly?) different lenses now and then. At least I like to believe I can–maybe that’s just a story I tell myself.
And I have to say, it really did change my perspective. It made me look at racial inequality and police brutality, oddly enough, through my own eyes. That allowed me to see the whole situation under a completely different set of eyes. Ultimately, it challenged me to find a way to reconcile these views and try to get to the truth of what is actually happening.
I’ve read/seen a lot of reaction to this song, mostly by people who I don’t think fully get what Tyler Childers is doing here. Hell, I may not 100% get the whole idea, but I think I have the background to get it better than most of the people who’ve reacted to it.
It’s really clever.
How many boys could they haul off this mountain
Shoot full of holes, cuffed and layin’ in the streets
‘Til we come into town in a stark ravin’ anger
Looking for answers and armed to the teeth?
Tyler is appealing to a couple of different things that are common in Southern culture here. If you took this question completely out of the context of the song and asked any self-respecting Southern man how he’d react to someone from his community being hauled off and killed, he’s HONOR BOUND to tell you he’d do something about it. At the very least, that’s the story he has to tell himself–he wouldn’t stand for it.
Tyler is setting up a logical trap here.
Thirty-ought-sixes,
“Hell yeah…that’s right. I’d drive in with my rifle.”
Papaw’s old pistol
“AND my Papaw’s old pistol!” *In fact, you’d feel obligated to bring that pistol to honor your Papaw, who also wouldn’t stand for this.
How many, you reckon, would it be, four or five?
Now, when I first heard this lyric, I thought it was “How many, you reckon, would it be for a fight?” I took that as Tyler pointing out that you wouldn’t be alone in that thinking–your whole community would (or at least says it would) be a part of this trip into town. That actually works too, but that’s not what he’s saying.
I now realize what he means by, “four or five”. He’s again challenging the Southern man’s honor–it wouldn’t have to happen four or five times before we’d do something about it. We’d take care of this after ONE.
Or would that be the start of a long, violent history
Of tucking our tails as we try to abide?
Now you have to choose, Southern man. Would you take up arms and do something as you claim, or would you choose to tuck tail. For a proud Southern man, there is only one choice here.
So…why do you fault anyone else for making that same choice? You think they should tuck tail?
Notice that I’m not claiming to have the answer to that question.
[NSFW] I never answer my phone from unknown numbers, and yesterday I’m glad I didn’t. I received two of the best voicemails ever, which I believe were meant to be delivered to this fine fireworks establishment on the TN/AL line.
If you don’t know this song listen to it. Now. Just listen. It’s beautiful. Or you could read the lyrics and approach it as a poem. It’s deserving.
I’ve spent way too much time thinking about this song. It’s not getting old to me at all. I’ve been listening to it for at least 8 years, and it keeps getting better and better. This song keeps revealing more of itself to me as the years go by. I’ve even read a few other critiques and commentary about it, and I think they’re fair and (almost?) accurate, but I think they were based on people with limited listens.
I’m sorry, but this song just can’t be properly considered with only two or three years worth of listening–not by someone with my limited aptitude. Your mileage my vary. As I peel the onion back, I have to conclude that either Evan Felkner is an absolute genius, or I’m wasting my time uncovering clues and meaning that were never intentionally left. Radio silence on Evan’s part right now, so I’m going with the former.
So I just want to break down one little section of the song that took me down a rabbit hole. It’s the ambiguous placement of the words “I guess” in the leadup to the chorus. On the first few listens, it seems like it’s simply a way to find a rhyme with “loneliness”. But if you listen closely, “I guess” is a phrase used to bridge two statements, and there’s some ambiguity as to which statement “I guess” goes with.
When he sings it, it’s spaced like a run on sentence:
I’ve been livin’ with the loneliness.
It’s got down in my bones I guess it’s just another phase of bein’ free.
So, does he mean it like this?
I’ve been livin’ with the loneliness.
It’s got down in my bones I guess.
It’s just another phase of bein’ free.
Or does he mean it like this?
I’ve been livin’ with the loneliness.
It’s got down in my bones.
I guess it’s just another phase of bein’ free.
Why does it even matter? Well, because one thing is a definite statement, while the other is the narrator’s supposition. It all depends on how you read/hear it.
This weighed on my mind for a while. Yes, I do have more pressing issues, but there’s no harm in taking some time to appreciate someone else’s hard work/art and trying to understand it on the level it deserves. I went back and forth on what he meant, and I landed on the second reading as the answer.
I was happy to have some resolution, and I decided to listen to the full song again with this little piece of knowledge.
As I was listening, I realized I’d been swerved. Everything else that’s revealed to us in the song just didn’t add up to my conclusion. This guy is a screw up. He doesn’t know anything.
That’s when my mind was blown. I think Evan meant it both ways–he’s just a damn efficient song writer. “I guess” works as both the end of one line and as the beginning of another. It would be read like this in prose:
I’ve been livin’ with the loneliness.
It’s got down in my bones I guess.
I guess it’s just another phase of bein’ free.
He’s “guessing” about the whole situation. Just listen to the end of the song…
Guess her folks were right. Guess her folks were right. Guess her folks were right.
Also, when he says, “I had good intentions ’til I had to many. I was stupid I suppose”. And then there’s “Good Lord Lorrie I love you, could it go more wrong?”
This dude is “guessing” and “supposing” all over the place. Could it go more wrong? He doesn’t know. Even Lorrie herself says, “I wonder what we went through all this trouble for.” Between the two of them, there’s lots of wondering, guessing, and supposing.
Maybe you have to have truly been in love to understand the absolute certainty that you were absolutely meant to be together.
But these two? They don’t have that certainty. Nothing revealed in the song anywhere reveals any kind of certainty existing between them. It never did.
He’s “learning how to lose a thing he never laid a hand on”.
The only thing that is certain is that none of their relationship was ever certain.
Again Nashville…write me a song like this.
Here I Am
On my way
Down another road I have paved
With every good intention I’ve saved
And hearts that I broke
As for me I got scars
For every mile I’ve traveled so far
And some blood
On my hands
Here I am
With a song in my heart
And an attitude from the start
I took everybody apart
To see how they work
I got friends that I owe
I ain’t namin’ names cuz they know
Where they stand
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am
If I went back where I’ve been
And I knew what I know now then
Well I’d probably do it again
Cuz I’m just a man
At the end of the day
I ain’t got nothing to say
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am
Here I am
I’m not much of a sports fan anymore. I like to play sports, but I’m not that big on watching. I had an epiphany about sports as I celebrated Tennessee’s 1998 National Championship win and realized that I still had to go to work the next day.
I decided then and there that I would not get emotionally invested in something I have no control over.
But…I LOVE sports radio. Especially when Tennessee is getting ready to axe one of their coaches a question. There’s nothing like a coaching change to rile up the fan base and drive some high quality entertainment on the Knoxville ariwaves. Thankfully, I can still hear Tony Basilio over the internet.
With that, I give you the latest creation inspired by the trials and tribulations of the 2013-2014 basketball team.
Very hot on today’s run. This ain’t no Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.
She skips me like a rock
She rolls me like thunder
She knocks me down like a fifth of Tennessee
She’s a pitch that I can’t hit
She’s a joke that I don’t get
She’s crazy…that’s alright with me
I want to go much faster than the speed limit in a 196x muscle car with the original Van Halen lineup with this song playing on an up-to-date stereo system.
I’ll go ahead and volunteer to be the designated driver, but I want Michael Anthony to ride shotgun for sure. Alex can sit right behind me and kick the crap out of my seat or bang on the headrest to the beat. Ed can ride on the back seat hump with Dave on the passenger side. They can fight over space.
Also, the music needs to be playing loud enough to drown out whatever DLR happens to be talking about at the moment.
I can’t do this.
Chicks who play a Les Paul: +1
Really enjoying my Focus@Will beta account (thanks Lifehacker) this morning.
It sounds weird, but this is exactly what I need sometimes–music that I don’t like. I don’t dislike the Focus@Will stuff, but I’m not distracted by it, and I don’t find myself singing along.
I’m looking at you, Pantera’s “Vulgar Display Of Power”
Would like to hear my buddy Ryan do this song.
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