January 2023: Planet B-Sides
post originally published january 5, 2023
Dearest space travelers, we bring you...
"The Other Planet I'm From (B-Sides Pt. I)"
Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube | Bandcamp
The Backstory
The original “Planet I’m From'' album, just seven songs, took three rather fraught years to finish. We started recording it in 2018 in Brooklyn, moved the process to Nashville in 2019, were ready to leave the thing altogether in 2020, and finally released the little planet in 2021. Along the way, many of the recordings were left behind. Hard drives never sent. Miscommunications. I had a handful of mp3 files with no way to separate the drum sound from the vocal, or turn down a blaring bass. But I kept returning to those mp3s. They had that certain “thing.” Not quite ready for the public eye, but communicating something I liked. Most of the tunes were from the original Brooklyn studio sessions with Hans Bilger (bass), Lawson White (drums), and I playing live together – polaroids from a few long nights.
Which brings Shawn Barry into the story. Shawn is one of my oldest friends and music collaborators from the 5th grade and beyond! He is a gifted composer, producer, and a creative goliath. I showed him the tunes, he believed, and we hatched the idea for a “B-Sides” project. Shawn worked with the songs making little additions, bringing certain frequencies up or down, doing a lot of music producer wizardry I don’t fully understand. He created a world for the tunes to take root, adding little moments and leaving others untouched. Shawn, ever traditional in his approach, added sounds from (to name a few) an acoustic guitar played with a cello bow, a saxophone trio pitched down an octave, and a clarinet recorded through the back of a piano. All with his playful and deft ability to protect “that thing.”
And so it became…"The Other Planet I’m From (B-Sides Pt. I & II)" !
Part 1 features “Nothing New” and “Pick Up The Phone.” Lonesome songs on either side of a restless sleep. A light bulb that won’t stop whining. A shoe mistaken for a hand. In Shawn’s words, “You let the ghosts bash through the door only to find they had something encouraging to tell you.” And as an unabashed fan of “extremely subtle” drumming, these are some of my all time favorite Lawson White drum performances.
Part 2 takes place in the daylight. On a street. In the kitchen. “Goodbye” is mostly in El Paso around a bowl of Guacamole with a candle stuck in it. “My Mother’s Hands,” is halfway into a batch of chicken soup in Hudson, NY. These songs were completed in slightly more traditional ways. Mainly because I had driven to Asheville, NC sometime in 2019 to record electric guitar parts with guitar Jedi Mike Sivilli (Dangermuffin), and bless the gods of hard drive backups, Mike was able to trace back and find the original sessions from 2019, allowing us to separate out individual tracks and instruments. Certain things were still baked in – vocal effects, layering, etc, but overall, part 2 takes on a more “bandly” shape.
And so you have it. A book finally closed. The other planet. Moon cheese. A look underneath the hood. I hope you enjoy!
Image from a Songwriting Workshop at the Folk and Forage music festival in October 2022
Winter 2023 Virtual Songwriting Workshops
Tuesday Evenings in Feb – "Song A Week" – Register
Mar 18-19 – Weekend Intensive – Register
"Having the sheduled time to focus on writing and the opportunity to discover and share song ideas with new and interesting people was invaluable. Jenner is a gifted songwriter, story teller and teacher. He presented ideas that broke loose an old tired belief of mine that I wasn't capable of writing songs." –Song A Week 2022 Participant
A wonderful and urgent poem
by Ayisha Siddiqa
On another panel about climate, they ask me to sell the future and all I've got is a love poem
What if the future is soft and revolution is so kind that there is no end to us in sight.
Whole cities breathe and bad luck is bested by a promise to the leaves.
To withstand your own end is difficult.
The future frolics about, promised to no one, as is her right.
Rage against injustice makes the voice grow harsher yet.
If the future leaves without us, the silence that will follow will be an unspeakable nothing.
What if we convince her to stay?
How rare and beautiful it is that we exist.
What if we stun existence one more time?
When I wake up, get out of bed, my seven year old cousin with her ruptured belly tags along.
Then follows my grandmother, aunts, my other cousins and the violent shape of their drinking water.
The earth remembers everything,
our bodies are the color of the earth and we are nobodies.
Been born from so many apocalypses, what’s one more?
Love is still the only revenge. It grows each time the earth is set on fire.
But for what it’s worth, I’d do this again.
Gamble on humanity one hundred times over
Commit to life unto life, as the trees fall and take us with them.
I’d follow love into extinction.