Also, Damien Jurado is working on a new record with what looks to be Richard Swift. I've got a good feeling about this!

Damien Jurado at National Freedom from Lance Alton Troxel on Vimeo.

Glory Days, You're All Out!

I generally don't like cover songs. It's one of those quirky things, that I don't really know how to explain. I'd like to say nobody should sing them ever, but I've heard too many good covers to be that extreme.

I think that a good cover should somehow capture the best parts of both the person/group covering it and the original. A good cover shouldn't sound exactly like the original, but it also shouldn't venture so far away that it bastardizes the original message either. Let's use Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" as an example of a great cover. His voice alone is enough to make his version magical, but the instrumentation is also wildly different. Buckley's electric guitar is a far cry from Cohen's original synths, drums, and choir.

Another cover that I would call one of the ballsier I've heard is Cush's version of Prince's "I Would Die 4 U". It takes Prince's classic Minneapolis Industrial Dance sound and turns it on its head by stripping it down to an Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? style spiritual with only an acoustic guitar, country organ, and a dusty voice for most of the song (the solo is banged out on a typewriter). The result is something almost unrecognizable from the original. I had a roommate that was a big Prince fan and not even he recognized it until after many, many listens.

Old Derek Brown posted this version of a Springsteen song today and, although my first reaction was that he was trespassing on sacred ground, I think it's a fine example of how to properly cover a song.

Speed Trials.

I don't remember this album getting very much play when it was released, but I think it's one of Jurado's better recent efforts; much stronger than St. Bartlett, in my opinion.

My Love is Like Alaska

My friend Jeremy knows how to write songs. He gets distracted by remixing reggae dance tracks and making watches, but if he was more bohemian (or arrogant) he could have been somebody you've heard of.

He is releasing his double album, Divider/Destroyer, next week at Cause Soundbar. It's a departure from what he had mostly done in the past. Luckily, last month, he also released the North ep, which sounds more like what he usually does, whatever that means. Under all that reverb and (gasp!) auto tuning, there are beautifully mature songs that most songwriters could only dream about. Except for maybe that club version of "The Scientist".

Rosie Thomas Says It Best

It isn't melodrama when it's true, right? "I'm still in love, why aren't you?"

Line 6 DL4 and IMPROVED!

This starts with a metaphor: This device looks broken and useless to some most people. but others might see that could be under repair. I'd like to think that as broken and messy as I feel, I'm actually getting better somehow.

This was the first piece of equipment that I owned that made me feel like I was getting serious as a musician. I could be wrong, but I think this predated my first tube amp (a 4x10 Fender DeVille that I just sold for stupid cheap to my friend Jeremy). It always made me feel cool when I'd go see some of my favorite touring bands and they'd have the exact same piece of equipment that I had.

You're given a bank of over a dozen modern and vintage delay sounds that you can adjust the tones of as well as an accessible looper option. Once you get a sound you like, you can save it into one of the three presets and access it whenever with the push of a button.

Looking back, while I may have been able to justify using this back then, I certainly didn't use it correctly. One of the hang ups of the DL4 is that it's not easy to fiddle with. Even the slightest adjustments need to be saved, and it can become a tedious process. I never developed subtlety, either, so when we'd play a show at the Mews, I'd get frustrated that I couldn't ear myself and make adjustments so the delays were obnoxiously loud and repeated five or six times longer than necessary.

When I'd hear David play, his command of this seemingly untamable device always amazed me. Even his spazzy delay sounds were musical and controlled. I found out that he spent hours learning the specifics of each control and working to make each sound exactly what he wanted for each song. I just didn't have that kind of foresight, let alone patience.

Some people think that the sounds of some of the delays, especially the tube-or-tape-based echos, can't hold a candle to the real devices that they're modeled from. To this I will concede any number of points from immediate interactions to subtleties in the warble of actual tape. However, I will say that, even though the DL4 isn't inexpensive per se, it costs less money than almost any one of the

vintage units that it models. Prickett writes that when playing music, it's much more important to use what works, what's available, and what you're comfortable with. So if you have an actual tape echo, by all means use it. If not, don't think that not having one is going to prevent you from sounding great.

I recently discovered a great new company out of Oklahoma and sent them my DL 4 to get some work done. It wasn't broken, so they weren't repairing anything. They did, however, have to take the whole thing apart in order to upgrade the switches and install new LEDs. I asked them to put on some cool new knobs, too, and they look sharp. I guess the important difference between an upgrade and a modification is that a modification changes a feature, or adds a new feature, to an existing device. An upgrade allows the device to do just what it did before only better.

call it forgiveness

"here's to the few who forgive what you do, and the fewer who don't even care"

-the reverend leonard cohen

I think I'm going to start blogging about all the music equipment I've accrued and how much I don't know how to use it. Maybe I'll become so popular that A. Prickett will notice and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Due up on this blog are showcases of my guitars and amps, some effects pedals I've bought and some I've built, a microphone or two, and some odds and ends that I'm pretty sure would be put to better use in someone else's hands.

On the off chance that you read this, I'm sorry.