21 for 2021: My Top Indie Music Releases of the Year

Hello there, and welcome to a list that some random dude made for no reason at all. What's in this list, you ask? Well, only 21 of the very best indie music songs that were released in 2021. Who says they're the best? I do! Why are they the best? Because I say so! Is there really such a thing as "the best" of an art form like music? No, of course not! What is indie music, anyway? Shut the fuck up and scroll down.

Alphabetical order, because why not?

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Andy Shauf: "Jaywalker"

ANTI- Records

I was an early adopter of this excellent singer-songwriter from Regina, Saskatchewan. He made my list last year as well, deservedly so (interestingly enough, that year he also made Barack Obama's list, because that motherfucker has good-ass taste). "Jaywalker" is off his new album Wilds, which came out in September. I really love Andy's use of instrumentation that doesn't often appear on rock/pop music of the modern era, such as the clarinet. I love the mellowness of "Jaywalker" along with its great melody, and the roly-poly cat in his video.

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Big Thief: "Little Things"

4AD

A few things here. First, I wrote a song called "Little Things" in maybe 1992 with my friend Michael Gale, but that's pointless to even bring up. Just a silly coincidence. Second, Big Thief isn't a little band; they're very important in the indie world, and have a global following and received a bunch of Grammy nominations (which also has no bearing on this selection). Third, I am an equally big fan of the solo work of their front person, Adrianne Lenker, and both she and the band have been on this list in the past. None of this matters; I find "Little Things" to be terrific on its own. Very simple on the surface, the way it's produced with varying elements coming in and out at different times is super neat to me. Hats off to whomever mixed this. Also, note that the album it's on does not exist just yet; Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe in You (yes, that's the title, apparently) is scheduled to drop in February 2022. But this song hit in August 2021. It's a weird time in the music world due to all the factors that make it a weird time in the rest of the world as well.

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Charlie Martin: "Swirl"

Grand Jury Music

Here's a story. I heard "Swirl" one day in May of this year, and it burrowed into my brain so deeply that I covered it at my very next show. And then covered it at the show after that. And the next. I've probably played "Swirl" more in 2021 than any song I've personally written, or any other cover, and I'm not at all burned out on it. Charlie is a member of Austin, TX-based indie rock/pop band Hovvdy, whom I also enjoy (and who has been on my list before). "Swirl" is short and sweet, and has a great vibe. It has some interesting sonic things going on. It's also in Bb, an underrated key. Charlie's album Imaginary People came out in April.

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Cooney Thatcher: "Take Your Turn"

Cooney Thatcher

This is a great little home-recorded tune that I enjoyed the moment I first heard it in March. I know very little about Cooney Thatcher apart from having chosen the name of this project to preserve the matronymic names of his family that would have otherwise been lost to patriarchal practice. I also know he's out of Greenfield, MA, which is about as far away from everything else as the moon. It seems like a nice place to write this kind of unique folk with a Latin rhythmic flavor. Side note: the recording on this is really fantastic, and I am super particular about those things. Love the sound of this record. His album There's Your House is all really good.

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Cory Hanson: "Bird of Paradise"

Drag City

So, this requires a short story. For a good number of years, I'd enjoyed the music of an L.A.-based psych rock band called Wand. Their albums Plum (2017) and Laughing Matter (2019) were both on my "best-of" lists in their respective years. That being said, I hadn't really bothered to learn the names of the people in Wand, because I'm old now and I'm a shitty fan. Anyway, back in March, I stumbled across an artist named Cory Hanson, who was putting out these simply amazing songs. Haunting, uncannily beautiful through and through, Pale Horse Rider may very well be the very best collection of music put out in 2021 period. I really gravitated toward this song, "Bird of Paradise", and began covering it in my live shows immediately. Anyway, back to my story. I had no idea that this was the guy from Wand despite the audible evidence thereof, and I loved it completely on its own merits. So that's cool. That's the story. The end.

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Enumclaw: "Fast N All"

Youth Riot Records

I've got another story here, one about discovery. I saw a tweet from Jordyn Blakely, the indie rock queen of drums, who was performing with a band called Maneka. Then I saw a tweet from Maneka with an article about black indie rock bands and artists. And that is where I happened to find Enumclaw, the grungy Tacoma, WA-based band with a sound that I know and love, which only occurs when people don't know their instruments very well but still manage to put together some damn good rock music. It reminds me of my first bands when I was in high school. We did cool originals because we weren't good enough to play covers.  I like everything about Enumclaw, from the fizzy guitars to Aramis Johnson's sort-of non-vocal that fits the tunes so well. Here's the best thing of all: they had a mini-viral hit with "Fast N All" and appeared on KEXP before they'd ever played a show as a band. I truly love that. You can check out their whole EP Jimbo Demo, and you should.

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Fake Fruit: "Yolk"

Rocks In Your Head Records

This was my official "put this song on to snap out of a shitty mood" song of 2021. How can you stay mad with Hannah D’Amato yelling at you? Right away, I heard the same things that enjoyed so much about bands like Romeo Void, X, and many more. Raw and primal indie punk, Fake Fruit's self-titled debut was released in March (what the hell? March 2021 was an insanely good month in music). When I first found the track, I tweeted that the band's singer sounded like she gave no fucks. Hannah replied, "You're right! I do give no fucks!", and I am looking forward to everything they ever do forever.

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Far Caspian: "Attempt"

Tiny Library Records

Here's all I know about Far Caspian. Far Caspian is Joel Johnston, an Irish singer-songwriter and producer. That's literally it. His debut album Ways To Get Out was released in October, and he plays everything on this by himself. You'd probably be surprised about how many bands you hear are basically one person, or maybe two, in a bedroom in some town you've never heard of. I like that. Anyway, Far Caspian seems to have a very solid international fan base, and I like the atmospheric chill vibe of this tune that's somewhat reminiscent of things I like about Deerhunter and related bands.

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Furrows: "Burial"

Self Released

Once again, here's another person doing pretty much everything on their own and just being a band because they can. Peter Wagner wrote all the tunes and recorded 90% of the sounds for his album Fisher King which came out in October. I love the tightness of the arrangement while being submersed in spaciousness with the production. Just a cool fucking tune that straddles indie pop and proggy psychedelia. If you don't know my main criteria for determining coolness, it's super easy: if I can envision myself driving a Jeep through Joshua Tree at sunset listening to it, it's fucking cool.

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Hand Habits: "Concrete & Feathers"

Saddle Creek

It was a few years ago that I first really took notice of Meg Duffy, who records as Hand Habits. I randomly found their song "Placeholder" and immediately posted it in my semi-weekly new music recommendations. But their new album Fun House is unquestionably one of the best of the entire year, and while it veers a bit from mood to mood, vibe to vibe, so do I. Meg is a very respected musician in the indie realm, having played with The War On Drugs, Weyes Blood and others. They are an outstanding songwriter, a great guitarist, and "Concrete & Feathers" might be my favorite song of the year. Not saying it is, but it would be okay if it was. 

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herbal tea: "apogee"

Balloon Machine 

Helena Walker of Bristol, UK creates music as herbal tea. She'd released a few singles previous to her 2021 EP unwrap, but this project is full of dreamy, atmospheric, bedroom-recorded indie folk. I love the open sparseness of this song, and it also passes my "driving aimlessly in the desert" test of coolness. I might also have a cup of coffee on a rainy day with this as my soundtrack.

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José González: "El Invento"

City Slang

José González is, perhaps, the most well-known artist on my list this year. He is beloved globally for his uniquely soft yet driving sound, both as a solo artist and as a member of Junip. If you don't know about José's story, he comes from a family that migrated from Argentina to Sweden shortly before his birth. This disparate source of musical influences makes José a very unique sound in the world of indie folk. Released in February, "El Invento" was the first single from his latest album Local Valley, which came out in September. It's such a nice tune that I learned it and covered it despite in being sung in Spanish, an anomaly as such in José's catalog.

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Macie Stewart: "Garter Snake"

Orindal Records

There are many, many occasions where I enjoy the music of a band, and then find I really like the solo work of a member of that band. There have already been a few instances of that on this list, and Macie Stewart is another one. She's half of the Chicago-based indie band Ohmme, of whom I've been a fan for several years. Macie is a tremendously talented multi-instrumentalist and has a wonderfully expressive voice, and her avant-pop album Mouth Full of Glass is terrific. My favorite cut by far is "Garter Snake", a tune I've covered at shows a few times.

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Mega Bog: "Weight of the Earth, on Paper"

Paradise of Bachelors

My tastes in music are varied but there is usually some aspect of consistency in what I like. But every year I do this list, there are always a few choices that defy any sort of categorization. Mega Bog is Erin Birgy, an experimental artist from the Pacific Northwest that follows in the Laurie Anderson school of being tremendously interesting no matter what she does. It's always amazing to me how the artists I enjoy end up having some attachment to each other that I didn't know before liking them independently of each other; Mega Bog is connected in various musical and personal ways to both Big Thief and Hand Habits. The indie world is a small world after all. Give the entire Life, and Another album a spin if you're feeling adventurous.

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SEB: "seaside_demo"

Mom+Pop Records

Sometimes a song is just a good fucking song, okay? SEB took off this spring when this obvious bedroom recording became massive via TikTok and YouTube. It is perfect in its imperfection, laid back and summery and genuine. I absolutely love it. It sounds like it was recorded on a whim in one afternoon, and I wish my brain wasn't so cluttered up with shit that I could get back to doing that kind of thing where it doesn't matter if the guitar is out of tune or some of the vocals don't exactly blend. Side note: SEB shot this video on the bluffs in Palos Verdes, CA, very close to the same spot I chose to do my video for "Falling Down". I've covered "seaside_demo" and I'm sure I'll do it again.

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Snowy: "Whatever You Want"

Spunk Records

Liam "Snowy" Halliwell is well known in Melbourne, Australia as a member of The Ocean Party, a band that prodigiously released album after album in the 2010s that went from jangly power pop to indie folk to garage rock, but "Whatever You Want" is none of those things. Rather, it's spacious and introspective, and just fucking beautiful. Pretty, pretty song that is somehow both melancholy and hopeful at once. This was a great discovery for me in 2021, and one of my favorite tracks to play on repeat. Check out the album Alternate Endings.

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The Spirit of the Beehive: "The Server Is Immersed"

Saddle Creek

Of all the songs and all the bands on my list this year, none are as truly fucked up as Spirit of the Beehive, and I mean that in the best of ways. Genreless and truly experimental, they are relentless, offering no refuge for their listeners. Sometimes called "your favorite band's favorite band", this is music that is so far out on the edge, it's my assumption that most casual music fans would never understand how this is even listenable. It may be weird and confrontational, but it's also fucking genius and fearless. The entire Entertainment, Death album blew my mind this year in the best of ways.

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Sungaze: "Body in the Mirror"

Self Released

Have you ever looked at someone and developed a whole storyline about who they are and what they're all about despite having no evidence or information that would back up your assumption? Sungaze, a husband/wife band from Cincinnati, OH, totally freak me out for no good reason. There's something about Ian Hilvert and Ivory Snow that makes me think of cults and drugs and deviant pagan behavior... not in a bad way per se, but it's definitely there. Musically, their blend of shoegaze, psych rock and dream pop fits right in my wheelhouse, and "Body in the Mirror" ended up on their album This Dream released in August. Incestuous indie side note: the song "Storm Chaser" off this album was mixed by Cory Hanson of Wand, as seen on this list above. I sometimes think all of indie rock are about eight people who each have six projects and just work on each other's albums.

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T. Evann: "Falling by the Wayside"

Nice Guys Records

T. Evann is Tyler Darrington, a London-based producer and songwriter who creates lush psychedelic texture-filled music that is wonderfully amorphous, fading between intimate and atmospheric sounds. "Falling by the Wayside" is fucking great; spidery guitars interweave with a killer bass line, with neat sonics and filters sustaining interest in the harmonized vocal lines. This is just good. Upbeat and dark, dynamic and cool. His EP Pocus came out in October.

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Tobacco: "Sorority"

Rad Cult Records

Hitting my list with the only straight instrumental track of the year, Tobacco is a somewhat mysterious dude named Thomas Fec. He uses analog synths and tape and processors to create the evolving textures and dynamic beats you hear here. I'm not sure what it was about "Sorority" that grabbed me, but it's somehow both synthetic and organic, repetitive yet changing. I like it, and it definitely passed the "drive in the Mojave Desert" test when I went in June. It's off his album Fucked Up Friends 3 that was released in March. Yes, there was a Fucked Up Friends 2 and an original Fucked Up Friends, because of course there was. 

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Wednesday: "Handsome Man"

Orindal Records

Hailing from Asheville, NC, Wednesday is a band that makes me acutely aware that we're now far enough from the '90s for there to be young people who do "retro '90s stuff". Sigh. That being said, this grungy shoegaze is done remarkable well. It feels very genuine, and the band occasionally adds a little more twang than you'd expect in this genre, courtesy of lap steel player Xandy Chelmis. The whole album Twin Plagues is fucking outstanding, and Wednesday is definitely one of my favorite new discoveries for 2021.  

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Honorable Mentions...

• Ailsa Tully: “Parasite” 
• Aloa Input: “Atlas Daze” 
• Biig Piig: “Remedy”
• Cherry Glazerr “Big Bang”
• Crumb “Tunnel (all that you had)”
• Dana Gavanski “Letting Go”
• Ethan Tasch “Blocked”
• Grouper “Unclean Mind”
• Horse & Wells “Halloween”
• King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard: “Catching Smoke”
• Lucky Lo “Mary Mind”
• Lucy Dacus: “Thumbs Again” 
• MAH KEE OH: “Twist”
• Mini Trees “Cracks in the Pavement”
• Niall Summerton: “Palm of Your Hand”
• Ovlov “Strokes” 
• PACKS: “Silvertongue”
• Renwick: “Bella Vista Motel”
• Sam Evian: “Never Know”
• Sand Duney “The Julia Loop”
• Smile Machine: “Pretty Today”
• Swanes “Fallback Man”
• Unknown Mortal Orchestra: “Weekend Run”
• Walter Sprig: “Peelin’”
• World Brain: “Always on the Line”

Hotel Chelsea (12.07.21)

Rocking a Tuesday night at Hotel Chelsea. Photo by Kat.

I don't know what it is about December and my health, but it's pretty amazing that regardless of various circumstances, I seem to have some aspect of my wellness go downhill this month nearly every year. Seriously, it's often right here in this very blog. I was sick on December 12, 2020. On December 16, 2019. On December 11, 2017. And so on. I'm assuming I was also sick in December 2018 but just didn't blog it.

Anyway, it's just weird. I know there must be a commonality here, some factor that causes me to be less than optimal at the same exact time of year, every single year. Rather than one magic bullet, it's more than likely a variety of causes. My stress level is always high in December, with my workload increasing by a lot in preparation for a new year of product announcements, business events and so on. Obviously it gets colder in December, and that might be one of the many impetuses. There might be other aspects that are relatively difficult to detect... mold spores, pet dander, and so on. And finally -- and perhaps most likely to be the cause of many of my ailments -- I continue to smoke cigarettes, a vile habit that has been very difficult for me to stop. Regardless of the cause, the empirical evidence shows that I do indeed get sick every fucking year in the same two-week span. It's downright bizarre.

What's Wrong With You Now?
Oh, this year is one of my more benign years, illness-wise. For the past week, I'd been experiencing the very familiar bronchitis symptoms that have plagued me so often. Coughing fits, and the disconcerting wheezing when I exhale, especially in the mornings and evenings. But it's been minor this year compared to previous issues of this nature. The fact is, being relatively isolated due to COVID protocols, and wearing a mask any time I'm in public, has allowed me to go for more than two years without getting nailed by typical common colds and flu to which I've been susceptible in the past.

Back at Ocean Medical. Truth be told, I was already feeling pretty good by the time I went in. However, I needed a refill on my Albuterol inhaler, and the pharmacy wouldn't do it without a new prescription, and the doctor's office required me to come in for that. I'm fine, really.

So all things considered, I've been lucky in 2021 compared to previous years when I ended up with serious bronchitis, pneumonia, and other related respiratory issues. And of course, the biggest thing of all is that I've managed to avoid infection by COVID-19 through social distancing, staying home whenever possible, and getting vaccinated. All in all, things could be so, so, so much worse. I truly am a lucky guy.

Staying Fit

While we're on this topic, I'd like to note a positive aspect to my health and wellness. On Monday of this week -- the same day I had to see my doctor -- I hit a milestone in my exercise regimen. It was in December 2010 that one day, while doing some holiday shopping at Best Buy (back when I'd actually visit retail stores to buy things) that I saw the Wii Fit system on sale. I must admit, this was one case where advertising was effective on me. Nintendo had been running a campaign featuring Helen Mirren, of all people. She would have been in her mid-60s at the time, and the ads showed her going through a variety of exercises using this simple balance board along with the Wii gaming system. I was only 41 at the time, and figured if she could do it, I could too.

We already had a Wii at the house, something my son used for games, so on a whim, I bought the Wii Fit board and Wii Fit Plus software. Little did I know that 11 years later, I'd still be starting each weekday morning by going through a series of yoga, strength training, and aerobic exercises. I can't tell you how drastically this affected me in a positive way. Previous to that, I'd been having to see a chiropractor on a regular basis; this allowed me to strengthen my core muscles to the point that not once in the time period since have I had those kinds of issues.

In case you're wondering, 4,000 days is 10.95 years. You're welcome.

Anyway, Monday marked my 4,000th day on the Wii. Other than times of illness or when traveling, I've barely missed a day. It's become part of my routine, and on days that I can't do it for some reason, I truly miss it. I'm convinced that regular exercise has also been beneficial to my mental state as well. I don't endorse many products, but I'm proof positive that Wii Fit is truly helpful for people like me who would otherwise never make time or effort to go to gyms or do other more traditional workout routines.

How About That Show?

Oh, right. So, between my greatly increased workload and too much stuff going on in general, I'd barely touched a guitar or sung a single note in the month-long time frame between my previous show at Hotel Chelsea and this one. Especially with my lungs acting up in recent times, I was concerned that I'd have serious problems doing an hour-long set.

But that wasn't the case at all. I did make it a point to warm up more thoroughly than I usually do, and everything went fine. Better than fine, actually; my voice and guitar playing both cooperated very nicely for the show.

I also had a concern that, after seeing I didn't have my pal Max Kleene doing the show in the slot before mine, I'd have a very light crowd, but that wasn't the case either. We had a nice-sized batch of people in the audience, and everyone seemed to be having a great time. The set was mostly made up of tunes that I don't do very often, including a couple of holiday-ish songs that I only do for shows this time of year, and it was good to dust off a few of those.

Trivia: Kat can't stand the song "Long December" by Counting Crows. I neither love nor hate it, but I do play it every December regardless. Photo by Kat.

One nice thing about Hotel Chelsea... I really never feel like there's any style of music that won't be acceptable there, and that they welcome everyone who comes in with no kinds of dress codes or other behaviors of exclusion. I play what I want, people can be who they want, end of story. Photo by Kat.

That's right; still masked, just like real life. When the time comes that I no longer need to wear a mask in public in reality, the mask will come off in SL as well (though frankly, I am beginning to forget what my avatar's face even looks like after almost two years). Photo by Kat.

How About That New Mixer?

Ah, yes. Between my last show and this one, I finally replaced the ancient Mackie mixer that had faithfully routed my signals for all of my SL shows and home-based recording projects going back to the early 2000s. The Mackie was still working -- they made very reliable products back then -- but it was slowly starting to run into problems. The left channel was becoming fuzzy and occasionally cutting out altogether, and this was beyond the point of being acceptable.

In mid-November, I bought a Soundcraft EMP8, an inexpensive but high-quality analog mixer. It seems everyone these days either a) doesn't use a mixer at all, or b) uses one that functions more as a control surface, with DAW interaction and onboard effects and built-in USB interfaces and so on. I didn't need any of that, which probably explains why the Soundcraft was so comparatively cheap. But I've used Soundcraft mixers for many years, going back to the late '80s when my college's recording studio was built around a large-format Soundcraft 6000.

I like the fact that the Soundcraft EPM8 is compact but has all the routing I need for pretty much any situation that I require on a regular basis. Oh, and faders. I missed faders.

I swapped out the new mixer and got it up and running in minutes, and was super impressed with the immediately noticeable improvement in audio quality and functionality over my old mixer. But there was one thing I'd neglected to do, which was to actually test the mixer for live broadcasts. I mean, I hadn't even plugged in a single cable until about a half hour before my show. Tsk tsk. This isn't what they teach you in audio school, I promise.

That being said, it worked like a champ. Ran my condenser microphone and guitar straight into it. Its outputs are normally back into my audio interface, and my broadcast software recognized the signal right away. It was super nice having full-size faders (as opposed to little knobs) to control my levels. That being said, right as I was starting the show, I immediately asked my audience to let me know if anything was sounding off... weird balance of guitar and voice, too loud, too soft, distorted or whatever. And everyone immediately responded that it sounded great, and that was all I needed to hear. Anyway, looking forward to many years of shows and music recording with this new machine.

December 8

Another note. Today, the day I'm writing this blog post, is December 8. I've written before about this date. I'm not a superstitious person, truly, but I've had an unusual amount of interesting things happen -- some good, some bad, some just plain weird -- on this day throughout my life. Notably, on December 8, 1980... I was 11 years old, and did my first big public guitar and vocal performance, i.e., the first Zak Show. It was a huge triumph for me, but on the way home from that event, we heard the news that John Lennon had been killed in New York City. I'm not going to dwell on it, but in years since, a number of odd things have tended to happen on this date. Hopefully, I'll make it through today without anything notable going on.

That's me, the fuzzy-headed kid in the middle. December 8, 1980.

Hotel Chelsea set list...

How Lucky (John Prine)

Shame Chamber (Kurt Vile)

Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth (Traditional/David Bowie)

Fade Away (Zak Claxton)

Here I Land (Nicholas Stevenson)

Fire and Rain (James Taylor)

Swing Lo Magellan (Dirty Projectors)

You Wreck Me (Tom Petty)

Peace Love & Understanding (Elvis Costello)

Long December (Counting Crows)

River (Joni Mitchell)

Swirl (Charlie Martin)

Huge thanks to everyone who came out for the show, with super duper extra thanks to the following who helped support it!

not4gods Resident, Camden Wrydan, KellyMay Georgia, Rusty Seisenbacher, Kat Claxton, Richy Nervous, Christine Haiku, noowun Wind, Alex Zelin, Trouble Streeter, my terrific manager Maali Beck, and Hotel Chelsea manager Shyla the Super Gecko!

Refurbishing a 12-String Acoustic Guitar

You make me feel brand new... or at least look that way. Photo by Kat.

Each day, I make a point of watching David Lynch give his weather report. It's at the point that if I miss even a single day, I feel a sense of loss, admittedly minor. Anyway, on the weekends, David says the same thing, which is wishing people luck on their weekend projects. In at least that aspect, David seems like me; he is happier when he's being productive. You have work that you have to do during the week, usually for the benefit of someone else, but on the weekends, you are free to do the things you want to do.

This weekend, I awoke knowing I indeed had a project to do; it was the restoration of my friend Bunny Knutson's 12-string acoustic guitar. I'd been planning on this for awhile. The guitar not only had been missing some strings but also the bridge pins that would allow the strings to be replaced. Also, after of years of disuse and storage in the closet, it had accumulated layers of dust and grit. It wasn't pretty. I planned to make it look and sound new again, or close to it.

Entropy Increases
Let's talk for a moment about the second law of thermodynamics. Weren't expecting that, were you? But I promise, it's applicable. On a literal basis, it says that as energy is transferred or transformed, more and more of it is wasted, and that there is a natural tendency of any isolated system to degenerate into a more disordered state. That disorder is known as entropy, and on a general basis around the universe, things go from an orderly state to disorderly. Entropy increases.

If you find yourself interested in more detail about entropy than a blog post on fixing a guitar will provide, learn more about Ludwig Boltzmann, the guy who is so well known for his brilliant entropy formula that it is inscribed on his gravestone. 

Reversing Time

In a more poetic (as opposed to physics) sense, the increase of entropy seems to happen in many areas of life. You start with a plan but unpredictable and random events make your plan more and more difficult to accomplish, with unforeseen variables derailing your goals. In this case, a guitar that sits around unplayed has many factors going on. Oxygen corrodes the steel strings. Dust settles on the finish. Humidity affects the wood, which expands and contracts. In the worst case situations, a guitar can become forever unplayable as time takes its toll, just by sitting around.

One aspect of entropy in physics is that the greater amount of disorder that occurs, the less reversible those changes are. Fortunately, in the case of Bunny's Fender DG-10/12, an inexpensive 12-string dreadnought model manufactured in China from 1995-2005, the arrow of time and the resulting increase in entropy hadn't yet gone far enough to make it unsalvageable.

You'll Need Things

The first step was getting a few items I'd need. Dunlop makes a very handy maintenance kit called System 65. It includes guitar body polish, fingerboard cleaner, and a couple of microfiber cloths. Side note: Bunny's Fender has a satin finish, but this routine works equally well on gloss-finished guitars.

I don't think this lemon oil has any lemons, which is good. Keep reading...

The next thing I'd need were replacement bridge pins, since Bunny's guitar was missing a couple of them. These are the pins that hold the string in place at the bridge of the guitar. I wanted them to match the existing pins, but fortunately the standard black pins with white dots are easy to find and relatively cheap. I got a set of Fender pins; might as well go with the original, and they cost all of five bucks.

Thirdly, I needed new strings. I went with D'Addario EJ36, a light gauge 80/20 bronze string that I felt would be particularly playable on this guitar. They're about $10, making my total cost of restoring the guitar a massive $30... not a big investment to make an instrument usable once again.

Step 1: Dust in the Wind

A lot of what made Bunny's guitar look bad was simply dust. What is dust? If you want to be grossed out, be aware that about half the dust inside your home is dead skin cells. True story. In my home, which includes four cats along with four humans, dust also includes bits of hair and fur and so on. But as we know, on an overall basis dust is fine particles of any sort of solid matter, and they accumulate on surfaces left untouched.

The first thing I did was take a soft cloth that I dampened slightly, and just wiped off every surface of the instrument. Frankly, I didn't want to even be near it before that first step. My respiratory system is prone to allergic reactions, and I didn't want to spend the next hour sneezing and blowing my nose.

Gross! Then better.

Ew! Then ahhhhh.

Step 2: Old and In The Way

I don't know how often Bunny had changed strings on this Fender, but by the time I did my maintenance, the strings were covered in various kinds of corrosion. Again, corrosion on guitar strings is generally a result of the human factor. Oils and dead skin cells collect in the windings of the strings. Non-wound strings are exposed to oxygen and water vapor and they rust.

I carefully downtuned the guitar. At this stage, when the tension on the neck has been relatively constant for so long, I tend to be extra gentle so that nothing really bad happens -- like the bridge detaching from the body or cracks happening in the area of the headstock or body joint. I tune down a little at a time across all strings so that the release of neck tension is gradual.

When the strings are low enough that they are flopping around, while leaving the strings secured on the tuning pegs, I use a needle-nose pliers and gently pull out the bridge pins and put them somewhere safe for the moment. Make sure to pull straight up from the bridge, not at any kind of angle.

I'm not saying Bunny should have clipped these strings, but Bunny really should have clipped these strings. They were a hazard to life itself. 

I remove the strings from the bridge and then just unwind them from each tuning peg. Side note: old guitar strings can be recycled like any metal, if you're environmentally minded. The saddle of the bridge is usually not secured down in any way; remove it and put it to the side for now. After removing the strings, you're now able to finish the job of removing any extraneous dirt and dust. I did another wipe down with my soft damp cloth, and then, using some wet Q-tips, I cleaned out the smaller crevices, like around the neck joint and bridge. While you're got the strings off, it's a time where you're also able to clean the surface areas that are usually more inaccessible, like the headstock and around the rosette.

Step 3: High & Dry

Now that you've got the dirt/dust handled and the old strings removed, it's time to polish the guitar's body. Spray your polish onto the cleaning rag, not onto the guitar. A little goes a long way. You don't want to use so much that you end up with a waxy buildup.

I like to do this in sections. I start with the top of the guitar, followed by the sides, followed by the back. I also give the beck of the neck a polish, as well as the front and back of the headstock. I then follow up with another rubdown using a clean and dry microfiber cloth to make sure I haven't inadvertently left any polish on the instrument.

I don't even know what was going on here. Pretty sure it was a new civilization of microscopic beings who'd claimed this unfortunate spot for their home in the universe. They're gone now. Goodbye my little friends.

Step 4: The Sound of Silence

Again, while we've got the strings off, it's time to do something you're definitely not able to do when they're on. The constant tension on the tuning posts can eventually loosen the tuner nuts. Using a 10mm nut wrench (or, if you're like me and tend to lose your tools, a pair of pliers) just give the nuts a quick righty-tighty. You don't need to overdo it. Just make sure they're secure. If the frets themselves are showing signs of corrosion, another thing you might want to do at this point is take some 0000 steel wool and give the frets a light rub. Brush off any particles, and now it's time to treat the fingerboard.

What you use to clean the fingerboard is, like so many things in the world of music, a matter of mild controversy. Like many guitars, the fingerboard on the Fender DG-10/12 is rosewood, and lemon oil is often vilified because it can dry out the fingerboard, leading to cracks and other unpleasantness. However, the products like Dunlop's System 65 barely contain any actual lemon oil; it's mostly mineral oil with some lemon scent and yellow coloring. It's perfectly fine for rosewood, ebony, and pau ferro fingerboards. Other people will say to use linseed oil as opposed to any lemon-based product. Do your own research. Side note: if you have a maple fingerboard (which is likely finished, unlike the other woods), don't use any product at all; just wipe it with a damp cloth to clean. 

The project took about two hours total working slowly. I spent part of the time listening to my favorite album from 2019, Deceiver by DIIV.

Step 5: Rise of the Fenix

Now you'll want to put new strings on your now clean and happy guitar. I'm not going to tell you how to restring your guitar, but I will gladly show you a video of my friend Tom Watters of Takamine doing it the right way.

My only note when it comes to restringing 12-string guitars: the higher, thinner, octave-up string comes first, so in order from top to bottom, the strings go (my string gauge in parenthesis):

• High E (.027)
• Low E (.047)
• High A (.018)
• Low A (.039)
• High D (.012)
• Low D (.030)
• High G (.008)
• Low G (.023)
• Regular B (.014)
• Regular B (.014)
• Regular High E (.010)
• Regular High E (.010)

And yes, the two highest strings are the same... simply doubled. Side note: with any instrument that uses two strings that are plucked at the same time, those are called a "course", whether or not they are the same pitch doubled (in unison) or an octave apart. A 12-string guitar is comprised of six courses of strings. A mandolin has four courses of strings, each set in unison. Now you know.

Step 6: Getting in Tune

The very final thing to do is to tune your guitar. Like everything with a 12-string model, this is twice as much of a pain in the ass as a standard 6-string guitar. My advice: if your guitar doesn't have onboard electronics with a built-in tuner, just get a simple clip-on tuner. I use this one from Snark. It's fine, but use whichever one you like.

Tuning 12-string guitars is a special section of hell, because the strings are so close, it's super tedious striking one and tuning it without inadvertently also hitting the paired string. But there are plenty of worse things in life, and before you know it, you'll be done.

Kind of. See, especially in lower-end guitars, the tension of the string and the wood of the neck and body need to settle in for a bit. I was actually impressed that once I'd tuned Bunny's DG-10/12, it actually held tune pretty well for awhile. The following morning, it had gone flat across the board, but another quick tune-up and it's good to go. For this reason, if you're using your guitar for a gig or recording session, trying changing the strings the day before as opposed to the day of.

Last note: I'm sure Bunny will eventually want to take possession of this guitar again, and he'll be welcome to do so. Now that it's playable, I might have to record some kind of goofy-ass 12-string song, so perhaps that's my project for next weekend.

Hotel Chelsea (11.02.21)

Rocking more of the alphabet at Hotel Chelsea on a Tuesday night. Photo by Kat.

At my previous show at Hotel Chelsea in Second Life, I decided -- without a lot of planning -- to do my songs in alphabetical order, and chose a song to represent each letter of the alphabet. Being that my show is an hour long and I typically do 12-13 songs per set, I actually got through exactly half the alphabet with songs starting with A through M.

Frankly, I hadn't really thought through the aspect of continuing this at a subsequent show, but as I started putting together my list for this gig, I felt compelled to try the same thing with the much more challenging N through Z zone. While I already had plenty of tunes in my solo music repertoire, which has now bloated to over 650 songs, I found I only had one song that started with Q ("Queen Bitch" by Bowie, which I didn't feel like doing) and didn't have any songs at all that started with X. What a conundrum. Or was it an opportunity?

Life in Late 2021
Before I get to more details on the show, I wanted, as I'm apt to do, to make some random notes about life as we experience it in the current time frame.

• It's now been about 20 months since we Americans first recognized the event that would literally change all of our lives... the COVID-19 virus. Honestly, I find that I miss 2020. It felt for a little while that we were pulling together and that positive changes would come as a result of our fight against this disease. But 2021 has been chock full of contentious bullshit. I have a bunch of vaccinated friends who've had breakthrough cases of COVID. They'll all be fine, thankfully. But the fact of the matter is that a whole lot of people are acting as if COVID has done and gone, and are going about their lives as if everything has returned to 2019-level of normalcy. Let me tell you: nothing is fucking normal and I'm more certain than ever that it will never return to normal, and not just because of a virus.
• Speaking of "normal", normally I'm able to enjoy NFL football this time of year. It's something I've done for a long, long time. Following that sport is an escape from the responsibilities and pressures of daily life. My NFL fandom goes back to when I was a child. I participate in pools, and have a pretty good understanding of the intricacies of the sport, probably more than most casual fans. But in the past 24 hours, two things happened that are completely bumming me out regarding football. First was the shocking event of Las Vegas Raiders' wide receiver Henry Ruggs III having killed a motorist at 3:30AM on Tuesday, and going from a star player with massive potential to being a) released from the team and b) facing a possible 20 years for felony impaired driving. The second thing, a story which just broke a few minutes ago, is future hall-of-fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers being diagnosed with COVID-19. My first reaction was, "Well, he's vaccinated so he'll be fine," until I read further and found out that there's a good possibility that he's not vaccinated. This boggles my mind. I can't think of something more irresponsible for a person who is supposedly a role model, and who seems in other ways to be a relatively smart human being. So now, these two situations have really soured football for me in a way I could never have expected.
• And while we're on the topic of apparent idiots, a crowd of people -- sorry, a crowd of QAnon psychos, I meant to say -- went to Dealey Park in Dallas, TX yesterday because they were under the impression that John F. Kennedy, Jr., a man who died 22 years ago, would appear and reinstate Donald Trump as president for some reason. I'm not going to comment on this. It speaks for itself, or res ipsa loquitur, as Hunter S. Thompson would have said.

Sigh.

Sounds Like 2021 Is Really Shitty, Huh?

I mean, yes, but no. Life has given me a healthy perspective about what the real definitions of bad and good are. I have decent income and roof over my head; my family and I are relatively healthy. We don't live in a war zone. We're not suffering through massive drought or starvation. We're not yet so affected by climate change that our home is unlivable. Many people -- probably a greater portion of the world than I care to acknowledge -- have it way worse compared to us. I don't share the typically American trait of boundless and unfounded optimism, but my reality must allow for the fact that nearly every aspect of my life could be way worse than it is.

How About That Show?

Yeah, so... this turned out to be a really good show. As usual for my monthly Tuesday shows at Hotel Chelsea, I performed directly after my friend Max Kleene, and I was happy to see that once again, a good portion of his sizable crowd hung out for my show as well.

I know for a fact that playing after Max has led to some people discovering me who would not have otherwise heard me. It's always appreciated. Photo by Kat.

Me, alone onstage as usual. Still in a mask? Yeah, I thought that would be done by now, just as many of us presumed the pandemic would be over. But the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and here we are. I'll take off the mask in SL as soon as I am safely able to take it off in real life... not a moment before. Photo by Kat.

As mentioned above, I did the second half of my alphabetical show theme, meaning I began with a song title that started with N and continued through to a song that started with Z. I found it to be really fun, both the act of putting together the set list and then performing it. Not every song was among my favorite to play live, but they all came out reasonably well, with some of them being really good. Surprisingly, I'd never covered a song by Liz Phair before, despite appreciating her as an artist.

If you're ever in New York City and find yourself at 222 West 23rd Street, between Seventh and Eighth, it looks a whole lot like this. Photo by Kat.

Hotel Chelsea set list...

Northern Sky (Nick Drake)

Over My Head (Fleetwood Mac)

Psycho Killer (Talking Heads)

*Questions (Buffalo Springfield)

Rikki Don’t Lose That Number (Steely Dan)

Say Goodbye (Beck)

Tea for the Tillerman (Cat Stevens)

Uncle John’s Band (Grateful Dead)

Voices Carry (’Til Tuesday)

Wichita Lineman (Glen Campbell)

*X-Ray Man (Liz Phair)

Your Song (Elton John)

Ziggy Stardust (David Bowie)

*Indicates the first time I've performed this song in SL.

Big thanks to everyone who hung out for my show, with super duper thanks to the following who helped support it!

Still Dinzeo, Ariztheo Resident, Jeff Plumday, MirrziLu Resident, AlexPeaceSoul Resident, noowun Wind, Maximillion Kleene, Kat Claxton, Nina Brandenburg, my terrific manager Maali Beck, and Hotel Chelsea manager Shyla the Super Gecko!

I Love My New Computer. I Hated Setting It Up.

I am, at this very moment, writing my first blog post via my shiny new computer. To say it's an upgrade from my last one is a huge understatement, even though in theory it's the same machine... an Apple Mac mini. It's the latest in a long line of Macs I've owned and used going back to the '80s, and this one, with its 8-core M1 chip, 16GB RAM, and 2TB SSD, is by far the most powerful computer I've ever called my own.

My previous machine was also a Mac mini... from eight years ago. It's still chugging along pretty much fine, and that computer, a third-gen mini with its Intel i7 chip, has been the primary hub for my marketing business, doing professional graphic and web design as well as video editing, as well as for my personal creative endeavors in music production since 2013.

This little computer in this little box is hundreds of times faster and more powerful than a computer that would have cost me ten times as much a decade ago. If you don't appreciate things like that, you're a pretty unhappy person in general.

Eight Years Later
But eight years is a long time in the world of computing, and other than the external form factor, this new machine is almost nothing like my old mini. In addition to the insane power of the Apple M1 chip and having twice as much RAM and twice the drive space, it's running macOS Big Sur, an operating system that my older machine was too decrepit to make use of. Comparing this machine to my previous Macs... a couple of MacBook Pros, a G4 Mac Pro tower, an original G3 iMac, and so on going back to the Macintosh SE that I was using for word processing and MIDI sequencing in the late '80s... it's simply astounding how fast and powerful it is.

Without getting overly geeky about it, the M1 chip that's the centerpiece of the latest generation of Apple computers is an 8-core CPU that delivers up to 3x faster processing performance than the previous generation of Mac mini... and my previous one wasn't even the last generation. It's mind blowing how fast and efficient this computer is. Photo from Apple.

Setting Up... Not My Favorite Thing To Do

My Mac mini arrived on Wednesday. In the midst of a typical frantic work week, there was no way I was going to be able to stop everything I was doing and pop in a new computer. That turned out to be a very wise choice, as per what I'm about to tell you.

I want to first note that the actual act of getting started with a new Mac of any kind couldn't be easier. If I was doing a fresh start with nothing else involved, the act of plugging in a power cable and connecting a monitor via HMDI and plugging in a keyboard and mouse takes about two minutes or less. But over the course of a life where computers are an integral part, the one thing most people don't have is a fresh start. Far from it.

The physical setup of the newest Mac mini could not possibly be more simple. I have had to do a little rearranging, since most of my peripherals have been standard USB rather than Thunderbolt, but everything is working out fine. Photo from Apple.

Data Migration and App Updates and Logins, Oh My

As my primary work computer in a small business, I needed to be sure that I was fully operational by the time Monday came around. That meant a few things. I had to be able to get into my email and other work communications tools; I had to be able to use the software that I require daily; I had to have access to the files -- both current and evergreen -- that I use as part of my job. Makes sense, right?

Apple has a very good solution for this. In the utilities folder of every modern Mac is an application called Migration Assistant. In many situations, it's all you need for porting over the content of one computer to another. But my situation was a bit different. First, my previous mini was using an OS that was a few steps behind Big Sur, which meant that their functionality was a bit different. Second, I wanted to take the opportunity to do a long-needed cleanup of ancient files that had gone unused for years and years. In other words, while I did make use of the Migration Assistant, I didn't just bring everything over in one fell swoop.

At various points in the migration from old mini to new, the utility informed me that it would take about 11,000 hours to complete the job, meaning it would be done in early 2023. Fortunately, the time estimates on data transfer are notoriously wrong. It took a little over six hours. 

Side note: my old machine was damn near out of space on its 1TB HDD. That meant I had a lot of data to export/import. The process took about six hours over Ethernet. With the stuff I didn't want to automatically migrate, I decided to use Dropbox to port over the selected folders that I knew I'd need on the new machine. That took some time too.

Mac Mail on Big Sur Is Great... Once It Works

One of the things that should have been the fastest and easiest aspect of getting rolling with the new Mac -- setting up my email on the new machine -- turned out to be a giant pain in the ass. I like using a local email client as opposed to relying on Gmail or the like. It's a big part of my workflow.

While you'd think that setting up an email client is one of the easiest and most common IT projects ever, I ran into problems. I set up fresh passwords on my web host's server, went in and plugged the info into the new Mail accounts, and nothing. Continual connection errors. I was practically tearing out my hair after several hours of this, and even bit the bullet and had a long support text chat with my web host, who were very helpful in trying out a variety of solutions -- shoutout to Hostdime and their CSRs. Ultimately, I had to troubleshoot the entire process from start to finish and finally found the issue. I did not want to wake up today and have to be going back and forth between the two machines just to read and respond to mail. It got handled, but I think I aged a decade over those few hours.

Side note: now that everything is up and running, I really like Big Sur's Mail app. It's one of the biggest improvements found in the operating system. I'm still getting used to the changes, but I already see how it's going to be helpful for me.

I have memories of every macOS back to System 1.0 in 1986. Big Sur is a huge advancement, and I immediately recognized that a lot of the things that people love about the iOS operating system found on iPhone and iPad has made its way to the desktop. Photo from Apple.

Ancient Apps Renewed

Finally -- and this was something I was well aware of long before the arrival of the new machine -- I had a number of software tools that were severely outdated and would no longer be functional on the new machine and its shiny new chip and operating system. One of the big ones was the Adobe Creative Suite of applications that I use daily in my marketing career. While this wasn't a big deal in terms of the effort, the act of updating everything did require some organization and planning.

One last note: if you're like most people, you probably have encrypted login passwords stored in various places... in web-based apps on your local machine and in the cloud. Guess what? Not all of those logins are accessible when you switch machines, so I spent a good amount of time recovering passwords that allowed me to get into various places I need to go on a regular basis for work and other activities. Everything from multiple accounts on social nets like Facebook and Twitter to web sites I manage to software companies from whom I required updates and downloads required some back and forth while I got my login shit together. Good times.

Not Done Yet, But Everything Is Fine

What I did manage to accomplish was getting all the high-priority stuff up and running on the new machine. Most of my apps are updated and functional. The content that I work with daily is all on the new machine.

Once I have everything seriously dialed in, one of the things I'm most looking forward to with this new Mac mini is opening Logic Pro X and really diving in on some new music creation. Photo from Apple.

That being said, I have a whole second tier of old files and such that need to eventually make its way over. I will be doing that over the course of this week at various times. I also have several other email accounts, less used than my primary ones but still important, to set up. Also, one important piece of software -- the broadcast tool I use for my live music shows -- had become obsolete years ago, and is entirely non-functional on the new machine, so I need to find a new solution for that (and test it thoroughly) in advance of my next scheduled show.

But all that will happen in due time. For now, I am up and running, and reveling in the unquestionably higher performance of this new Mac mini. I'll probably have more to say about it and Big Sur as time goes by and I become more accustomed to these marvels of technology.

Hotel Chelsea (10.05.21)

Rocking the alphabet (at least A through M) at Hotel Chelsea. Photo by Kat.

Believe it nor not, it's coming up on one year that the first Tuesday evening of each month, I've been performing at Hotel Chelsea in Second Life. Even though it's only a monthly show (as opposed to a weekly or bi-weekly like most of my previous regularly-scheduled venues in SL), it really has become kind of my home turf these days, where I feel very comfortable and can count on a good crowd and can do fun shows without a lot of effort.

Gratitude to Max Kleene
For most of those shows at Hotel Chelsea, I am following my friend and fellow SL performer Maximillion Kleene. I may have told this story before, but it's worth repeating. When I was really just getting started in the SL music performance scene around 2007/2008, Max did something for me that I'll never forget. He had his own little venue, an outdoor place that was on a beachside with a fire pit in the middle; I don't remember what it was called. But Max had me out to perform there and brought in his considerably large base of fans to check me out. It was tremendously helpful to my little career as an SL musician, and I feel it was the kickoff point to help me cultivate my own fan base.

Since then, I've not only shared stages with him at various gigs across the SL grid on many occasions, but we've also had a great time performing together at a number of live SL jams in places like San Diego, Nashville, Minneapolis/St.Paul, and Orange County, CA. He's a talented guy who knows how to engage his crowd, and is vary capable as a solo artist... not something every musician does well. Max lives in Canada, so it's pretty remarkable that the two of us would have had the opportunity to do live music together despite being so geographically isolated. It's part of the magic of Second Life, and I appreciate it.

Max and me at our first real life gathering at the San Diego SL Jam in February 2011, over ten years ago.

Another time rocking with Max, this time at the SL Jam in the Twin Cities, fall 2016.

What Happened to Facebook/Instagram on Monday?

You know sometimes how you think you know something, but then you have to wonder if what you think you know is just what someone else wants you to think you know? That's kind of where I am with Monday's spectacularly bad fail of the Facebook-owned online entities. Even the part that seems to be acknowledged as the truth is such a bad look for that company, it's amazing it could happen at all.

The long story short is as follows. Someone at Facebook, who has presumably since been taken out back and shot, accidentally (as far as we know) sent a little note to the routing protocols of the Internet that told it their servers were gone. This happens every once in awhile... usually with smaller companies that forget to pay for renewal of their domain name. When it happens, someone says "oops" and pays the bill, and their site is back up a short while later.

While the massive outage of Facebook and its subsidiaries Instagram and WhatsApp on Monday seemed bad, it's certainly not as big of a deal for the company than finding themselves under intensive governmental scrutiny for greater regulation of their content or even anti-trust rulings. Image by Dado Ruvic/Reuters.

The problem with Facebook is that everything they do runs through their own systems. Once their servers went down, there was no way to even begin to rectify the situation. There were no outside systems that were off the Facebook tool kit in place for a contingency like this one. Not only could they not log into their own now-vanished system to fix it; even the employees' key cards were coded to the same system so they physically couldn't get into the areas of the company where the repairs could be made. Hence, they were way more fucked than most companies in the same situation, and it took more than eight hours -- the longest downtime since Facebook was founded -- before their servers even seemed to exist on the Internet, and then more time before the content propagated around the world and it was functioning properly.

Is That True?

This whole scenario is embarrassing enough that it very well might be true. Per reports, it cost the company more than $50 billion in stock declines during that fateful day (which, of course, jumped right back up after the debacle). At the same time... it's bizarre that this happened the morning after a damning 60 Minutes whistleblower interview report about Facebook's "profit over ethics" policies came out (and the day of said whistleblower's testimony to Congress). It's not a big stretch to think that the timing of this massive outage was too bizarre to be coincidental, and that either a) it was done maliciously by someone inside or outside the company, or b) that Facebook themselves shut things down while cleaning up the evidence that would implicate them in some way. 

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen testifying before Congress on Monday. Photo by USA Today.

So is the "we're incompetent and our systems were designed with no contingency plans" excuse true? Yeah, probably. I have no way of knowing, and frankly I don't care. I use Facebook professionally for my marketing clients, for promoting my music, and in vain efforts to teach people about political and social/cultural things that probably affect them. If not for those reasons, the entire platform could fall off the face of the Earth, and I'd find suitable replacements to cover the very few areas where Facebook and its other brands are personally useful to me and are positive influences on the world.

Rocking the Alphabet

Let's get back to my show at Hotel Chelsea. I am trying to curate my recent shows so that they're not generic and interchangeable. Figuring out some kind of theme for my set has two advantages. First, it forces me to reach deeper into my repertoire and play things that I might not have automatically chosen. Second (and more importantly), it's a much more memorable and fun experience for my audience. It's only a matter of laziness (or, more accurately, simply not having the time) when I don't put together some kind of themed show for each and every performance.

People having fun at my show. You know, I never care if people think of me as some extraordinary musical talent, or if they love every song I do. I only want them to have a good time for whatever reason they do. Photo by Kat.

For this one, while scrolling through my alphabetically-arranged list of song lyrics, I realized that it might be fun to not only do them in alphabetical order, but to select a song that represented each letter of the alphabet. So that's exactly what I did, per the set list below.

I had a request toward the end of the show to continue next time where I left off, meaning I'd have to come up with songs for the much more difficult N-Z section of the alphabet, but it sounds like a fun challenge and I think I'll plan for that at my next Hotel Chelsea show.

Me, rocking in my mask. A relevant side note: of my vaccinated friends who've still come down with breakthrough cases of COVID-19, a big percentage of them are live musicians doing real life shows, and not having the option to sing with a mask on. Photo by Kat.

Hotel Chelsea set list...

Accidents Will Happen (Elvis Costello)

Barely Breathing (Duncan Sheik)

Carolina In My Mind (James Taylor)

Don't Let It Bring You Down (Neil Young)

Everything Counts (Depeche Mode)

Fool on the Hill (Beatles)

Garter Snake (Macie Stewart)

Hannah Sun (Lomelda)

If You Could Only See (Tonic)

Just Like Heaven (The Cure)

Killing Me Softly (Roberta Flack)

Learning to Fly (Pink Floyd)

Mexican Radio (Wall of Voodoo)

Huge thanks to the folks who hung out at my show at Hotel Chelsea, and extra special thanks to those who helped support it!

Jeff Plumday, noowun Wind, GingerPandora Resident, Trouble Streeter, Kat Claxton, and Chelsea's great GM, Shyla the Super Gecko!