'Caterpillar' Lyric Video
I decided recently to create lyric videos for all my songs. The first is "Caterpillar".
I think it was around the end of 2007 when it became clear that my band was breaking up. It was probably the most traumatic thing that had happened to me since college, where the worst I had suffered were a couple bouts with romantic heartbreak.
As band members started to leave town one by one, at first we'd replace them and carry on, but this time everyone but myself and a replacement bass player was leaving. I had no choice but to find something else to do. For years I had been writing songs with our co-founder and original bass player/lyricist, BC, and those songs were being sung by someone who had no hand in the writing process whatsoever. Now the co-writer wasn't even in the band. It was unsustainable. What singer would want to spend much time at all singing someone else's songs? For her, it was essentially a cover band, and she was leaving anyway.
For me it had been the best three years of my life.
So it became clear to me that I had to figure out how to write my own lyrics and sing my own songs if I wanted to continue playing music uninterrupted.
I started out by spending 2008 posting one new acoustic song per week for the entire year. I alternated originals with covers. It felt like boot camp for songwriting. The pace was fast and hard to maintain. Listening back to the work from that year, most of it is unlistenable to me. I've disappeared most of it, save a few covers, and I'm embarrassed to have let people hear much of it.
The turning point happened a year or so later, when my guitar mentor, Michael Chapdelaine, played a concert in L.A., and told me about his friend Steve Postell. Steve is a songwriter, guitarist, singer, producer, band leader, and much more. Michael told me that if I wanted to really learn to sing, I needed to talk to Steve.
I was extremely wary of vocal lessons. We had auditioned tens of female singers for the band who were straight out of vocal studios, and they all sounded generic and boring. Not a rock 'n' roll bone in their bodies. But at my first lesson, after I played a song for him, Steve said "You need to listen to Bob Dylan". I knew right then that this was the guy I needed to work with. Dylan is the antithesis of good singing for the "vocal coach" community, it seemed to me.
Steve taught me so much, and my voice changed a lot. It is now something I can listen back to without cringing. That's all I could really hope for I guess, being such a late bloomer and all. (That is, if I even qualify as a "bloomer".) I think my main problem was that I didn't trust my natural voice and was putting extra "stuff" on it that only made it sound worse.
Steve would sometimes ask me to help him out at gigs, setting up, being on hand in case of emergencies, and to help tear down after shows. One of these gigs was a campaign fundraiser for Marcy Winograd at a Venice church in May of 2010. Winograd was running against corporate Democrat (back then we used to think there was a difference between "progressive" and "corporate" Democrats), Jane Harman in the 36th congressional district. Artists slated to play the event were Vonda Shepard, Chris Shiflett (of the Foo Fighters), Matt Keating, Lili Haydn, Wendy Starland and Tom Freund. Steve was the band leader. It was an inspiring day of music, and I felt lucky to be there.
The highlight of the event was when Marcy got on stage and talked about the Gaza Freedom Flotilla which had just been intercepted by Israeli forces the night before. She spoke sternly about the Israel/Palestine conflict and I was moved to tears. I had never heard someone speak about this issue with such clarity of mind and courage. And she was running for congress? How cool was that? I was sad that I couldn't vote for her as I wasn't in her district.
At some point, I had learned the story about Rachel Corrie; a 23 year old U.S. activist who had been crushed by an Israeli military bulldozer operator for standing in front of it defending a Palestinean doctor's home. She was about the most heroic person I'd ever heard about. Other musicians have told her story, like Billy Bragg, Ten Foot Pole, and my favorite tribute by I Can Lick Every Sonofobitch in The House. (Just to name a few).
I don't remember when I wrote the song, but it was Winograd's speech that inspired it, and I think it must have been after the second Flotilla incident because I learned about another U.S. activist, a 19 year old named Furkan Doğan, who was killed in the raid, and decided to write the first verse about Rachel and the second about Furkan.
Everything came full circle when Marcy hosted a performance of My Name is Rachel Corrie, a play inspired by Corrie's diary, at an outdoor theater in Topanga Canyon. I attended and was completely gutted by the performance.
Marcy Winograd is now the coordinator of the CODEPINK Congress, and I've been a huge fan of CODEPINK forever. They produced a film called Shadow World that completely blew my mind. It captures Bush, Blair and Obama as nothing more than weapons dealers starting wars for profit in a way that's shocking even to those of us who already know why we are in these wars.
Once I was close to completing my studies with Steve, I thought I'd ask him if he would produce an EP for me. Three songs. He agreed to do it, and I just used the three songs I had lying around at the time. One was "Caterpillar". I never told Steve about the connection between the song and the gig he invited me to, but Steve can be heard on it, playing some guitar, all the bass, keyboards and percussion.
Steve taught me how to make an album with a band. I couldn't be doing what I do now that means so much to me if he hadn't agreed to produce this project. I drove him nuts, we spent almost a year on three songs. I hope he has forgiven me.
I did get to meet Marcy Winograd once at another music fundraiser in Santa Monica. Her head was shaved in solidarity with a friend who had cancer. I think I just told her how much her talk meant to me. It's too bad she didn't win her congressional race, but I'm pretty sure she'd be as controlled as the rest of the progressive caucus. She can do a lot more good in the CODEPINK Congress.
And please check out the Rachel Corrie Foundation for Peace and Justice, run by her parents. How beautiful is it that they keep her work and vision alive? They are amazing and are the only "foundation" I trust enough to donate to.