Roger That!
I greatly enjoyed making the album ‘God’s Radio’. It is my 20th recorded effort and the second in my rejuvenated music career after a 7-year hiatus. I’ve embraced newer tools and more modern recording techniques while still trying to maintain the integrity of analog capture and the ethos that I built my entire musical foundation on. I believe in keeping in simple and continuing to cultivate the naïve charm of my early releases, which was basically honoring the legacy of pop song craft, 1950s R&B, 60s British Invasion Rock, and 70s New Wave as channeled by a schizophrenic Black man.
My career began in the bathroom of a mental hospital with an acoustic guitar, a portable multi-track recorder and a composition notebook full of songs. Though I’ve now got a suitcase full of songbooks and acquired decent gear and software, I never want to feel like I’ve lost touch with the resilience and self-determination of those early, desperate days or the ingenuity of seat-of-your-pants creativity born from lack and gumption.
No longer a hothouse flower, cultivated under extreme conditions, and having the privileges of an apartment/studio with a modest digital audio workstation, I feel it’s time to commit some of the best songs from that suitcase to the ether. While I will always see myself more as a painter who writes and records music, I have indeed created a secondary life and career as a songwriter and recording artist. I don’t perform live but I do love building a song from a promising acoustic demo into a multi-tracked freak pop opus.
As I plow through the best of the rest of my songs, some written in an asylum and others while free and exploring new possibilities as a Black man with mental health issues, I hope to remain present and truthful and, God willing, will continue to do so…because He’s got an awesome radio, and He's listening. So, if you’re a fan of D.I.Y. Indie Psycho Folk and Bedroom Pop, and dig songs about MAGA nuts, Malcolm X, NYC, corporate culture, lottery winners and losers, freedom from the asylum, pure love, drug abuse, and things that go bump in the night, then you’re ready to listen to ‘God’s Radio’.
“Let Them Hurt”, written in late March of 2004, shows how the MAGA Republican mindset is not a recent phenomenon but something more insidious that was seeded and cultivated for decades. The song was written from the perspective of a frustrated right-wing racist who’s reached their empathy threshold. He rants about liberalism, welfare, foreign policy, immigration and finally hippie baby boomers, before confessing his disdain for The Beatles like a freed secret and triumphant kick in the teeth.
“X (The Unknown)” is a co-write from the Asylum Years (somewhere around 2007) with my most consistent collaborator Tim Noe. Truthfully, I’d already completed most of the song when I initially played it for him, and he contributed the ending riff. It may seem strange to dedicate a heavy guitar pop tune to Malcolm X, however, aside from several paintings over the years, this is the best I could do to honor his legacy and sacrifice, and I hope those who hear it can feel the love. Respectfully includes actual Malcolm audio in the outro.
“Another Day In New York City” came to me at 5 in the morning in early April 2012. It’s a slice of city life based on things I’ve observed and actual news events of the time. Speaking as a lifelong New Yorker it’s sad and probably obvious that things have not only not changed in this great city from the time of this song’s writing but gotten worse. Think of this as a love/hate song. Thank you, Mel Torme, for your resurrected ghost with a sample of a 1963 recording and nod to the 1894 song “Sidewalks of New York”.
“Company Man” was written in early April of 2012 in the back of a NY State van while on a trip upstate to perform a couple of songs solo for Office of Mental Health administrators and beg for funds to record my band DSM5’s first “official” album. (That 12 years previous hospital administrators confiscated and killed the band’s homemade debut CD is a story for another time). This song was inspired by the intensity of the quintessential Wall Streeter and Japanese “salary men”.
“The Lottery” was written in April 2012 while still living in a halfway house on the grounds of the mental hospital. It was a bit of wishful thinking inspired by dire financial circumstances and, more directly, the upstairs and downstairs tenants making noise and being nuisances. Of course, I didn’t linger too long in the land of want and greed before the song revealed the truer results of instant wealth, especially when bestowed on the have-nots. Thank you Mega Millions announcer John Crow for your awesome exuberance.
“I’m Free” was written one afternoon in early May 2011, while living in a halfway house on campus of the asylum I’d just been freed from after a 19-year commitment. The song is clear and concise and cuts to the heart of the joy of release while roping in the looming threat of American authoritarianism. While most of my work at the time had a distinctly pop flavor, marrying my usual themes to pseudo-blues with supercharged guitar was uncharted space that I now comfortably and happily inhabit.
“Love’s Alchemy”, written in late March 2012, is a loving ode to my longtime partner of over 30 years. We had weathered the storms of institutionalization and then her getting out and choosing to wait for me, so her being a muse and getting several songs written about her is the least that I could do. This song incorporates a call and response of our combined pop cultural loves and touchstones, making it a rich stew of Western mid-to-late 20th century fascinations, ending with hope and an end to gun violence.
“Runaway Train” was written on April Fool’s Day, 2012, proving to be a very fertile period for me as a songwriter. It was vaguely inspired by an old flame who drunk texted, engaged in what she dubbed “retail therapy” and certainly smoked too many cigarettes. She was on the precipice of a nervous breakdown, caused by stress and mental health issues, but I took artistic license making the culprit drug addiction. This is the second train-themed song I’ve recorded on my career, believing you can’t keep a good metaphor quiet.
“Boogeymen” was written in the morning in early December 2011 after a particularly unsettled evening of back-to-back nightmares. For many years I felt haunted, by the memory of my mother’s death and my culpability, though it was unintended. Often feeling as though damned and struggling for redemption for my soul, this is one of several variations on that theme. For levity I used a variation of the riff of “The Munsters Theme” thus making it spooky but in a cartoonish kind of way.