if we were vampires on ukulele.
I have a special love for this song and for the artist who made it, Jason Isbell. To me it is a perfect song. It’s about how death makes love more poignant than it would otherwise be. How beautiful is that?
I’ve been playing Vampires on guitar for years, but if I was going to record it I wanted to do something different.
And as everyone knows, the only thing better than a ukulele is two ukuleles.
I figured out a way to play it which was challenging because I don’t know the names of any uke chords. They are the same shapes as on guitar except with 2 less strings and the shapes make a different chord than they would on guitar and if this is confusing to you that makes two of us. It hurts my brain. Somehow I eventually came up with something I liked.
Then my friend Abigayle Kompst (my guest for Morse Code Podcast #115) was kind enough to make a few harmony passes. I dropped those in there, and, just to bring a little controversy in, I programmed an AI bass. Let me know if this is evil, but only after you listen to the song.
You can buy If We Were Vampires on my bandcamp here. My new original song Yakima is up there too.
I really spent a long time on the audio and I’m proud of the result and I’m really excited to share it with you.
As for the video. Well, that is more of an experiment. See what you think.
Here’s how my creative life is going right now: During the week I’m busy doing work stuff, big picture things, jobs for money, and the Morse Code Podcast and its only when the weekend rolls around that I am able to play and take my wilder chances.
It’s important to me, generally speaking, to finish what I start, which usually means everything has to be done in one day.
I originally recorded the audio a few weeks ago but I wanted to try to make some kind of video for this song. Yesterday Randa was out with her girlfriends which meant I had about three hours to make something up.
I didn’t have any ideas was the problem.
So I just started setting up a camera and recording myself playing the song from different angles and distances. I just recorded it as many times as I could before she got home which was when it was time to walk the dog and eat dinner and do life.
I still had no idea what I was going to do with all those takes, but I trusted I would figure out something. I ended up having a fantastic evening! Sipping cocktails at the Urban Cowboy with some of Randa’s friends who are now my friends and then I rode my bike a few blocks over to the Basement East to see the Jerry Garcia tribute my friend Jay put on. It was so good! Sometimes I love going to shows by myself because music stirs up all kinds of ideas and feelings and I can stand in the crowd and assimilate them at my own pace without having to maintain those pesky social norms.
I realize I’m beginning too many paragraphs with the word “I” but it’s too late to turn back now.
I went to bed last night knowing two things: one, I had no idea what to do with the footage I shot, and two: I would figure out something. I set me alarm for 4am and watched the last episode of Presumed Innocent in bed with my good girl.
I woke up at 3:40am and turned the alarm off so it wouldn’t wake Randa. I was excited! I was going to solve this vampire video problem and I knew I needed to give myself as much time as possible.
The first two hours were fruitless. Everything looked stupid. I started getting worried I wasn’t going to pull it off. But I had to. There was simply no choice.
By 6am, which was a little less than three hours ago, I felt like I had a solution I could live with. Part of the challenge was making the video work with the audio, and because the audio was heavily effected with delays and doubling and stereo pans and other words which wouldn’t mean anything to the laypeople, doing a live kind of filming didn’t work. It didn’t feel good to see it that way. I didn’t believe it.
But why not use the video tracks to underscore the sonic artifice that is studio recording? Unlike with my song Yakima, which was mostly just a guitar and me singing, Vampires had two ukuleles, Abigayle’s harmonies, multiple tracks of me singing, and the programmed bass. It was a world of sound and illusion, so why not lean in to that visually?
Also I had what I had, so I used it. What you see is the result.
The best part? It’s DONE. I mean here it is 8:55am and In a few minutes I can send this off and then you can listen to the song and watch the video. Some of you guys won’t like it, some will, and a few of you will REALLY like it. Awesome, and in a way that’s none of my business. I did my job and I am really happy with the result.
I should say this while we’re here, if what I do means something to you and you want to help me keep making it, consider joining my substack as a paid subscriber. It helps me pay for the podcast and keeps the lights on too.
Speaking of the podcast, I had a ton of great feedback on my last episode with Alex Wong. It posted Thursday, and among other things, featured a challenging discussion between him and me about… well you’ll have to listen. I’ll just say the comments I got back were enthusiastic, because, even though we feel differently about some things, Alex and I were able to listen to each other with open ears and have a respectful and ultimately productive conversation. Check it out.
