Tag: reviews

---

Continuing from Pt. 1 – this entry contains the songs and stories behind the songs I wrote and recorded during the first half of the 30 day song-a-day challenge in July 2017.

---

Ten To One

This is a historic song for me — the very first song of the very first song challenge I ever attempted. One thing I discovered over the course of that first month was that in order to keep up with the demands of the task at hand, I would need to take the following approach: every day start something, and every day finish something. With that said, I had actually started working on the song I would submit for day two — Following — the day before the challenge began. But I decided that to start off right I should hold myself to writing and submitting something completely brand new on the very first day. So essentially both Following and Ten To One were written and completed within a 24-hour window, but I would wait until after I woke up on July 1 to begin work on Ten To One.

The title refers to the period in which I slept that day — going to sleep at 10 AM and waking up at 1 PM. I can’t remember what if any reason I had to stay up until the day was already underway, but truthfully it’s not out of the ordinary for me. I believe I was up working on Following, and the excitement of this new songwriting venture surely had something to do with it.

This song and a few others are tied in my memory to the house in Arcadia, California that my mom rented for about a year after leaving our house on Acaso Drive. It was there that I stayed up all night, slept just a few hours, and woke up to write this song. It’s a short and simple song — I employed some jazzier 2-5-1 type progressions that I wouldn’t typically reach for, especially these days. There’s really not much to it. I think I wrote and arranged it within just a couple of hours, went into the garage, set up a couple of microphones, and ran through it until I got a take I was happy with. Sleep deprived and excited for the month to come. This recording would be the very last time I ever played this song — really just a song for the moment, for the challenge, something I wouldn’t have written otherwise. And with that, we were off.

“Ten To One”

One Two
Three hours of sleep
How I rest my eyes
Three hours of sleep gone by

Stayed up for the sun
Went to sleep alone
Woke up spooning this new tune

Thought I'd catch up on Z's
I woke up to Saturday
What happened to the week?

One Two
Three hours of sleep
How I rest my eyes
Three hours of sleep gone by
(And the day waits)

---

Following

Following would have been the first song I actually began writing going into the challenge, but I bumped it with the decision to start something new on the day itself. With Ten To One out of the way and Following mostly written, I had a chance to dedicate the day more to the guitar arrangement and recording. I have a faint memory of recording this not in the garage but in the spare bedroom — I believe it may have been my grandma’s bedroom. I’m not sure where she would have been at the time, most likely visiting with some uncle or my aunt, but I seem to remember recording the vocals in the middle of the night, almost at a whisper, sitting on her bed along with the guitars.

If you know me or if you’ve read other entries on this site, you may know that I don’t have warm feelings about social media and the influence it has across the world. From my first exposure to Instagram and Facebook I felt that they were deeply rotten and threatening to our minds and behavior. I had become pretty fixated on the idea that our relationships and social skills were being tarnished — social life being reduced to symbols on a screen, the meanings of words like friend, follow, share and like being slowly reassigned away from their original meanings into abstract digital concepts. I would elaborate on this in Unplugged, which began during this challenge and was revisited during the 2018 song-a-day challenge. Whereas Unplugged focused on that reappropriation of language, Following was written from a more satirical place.

What pushed the song was how often at the shows I was playing and attending there would be this obligatory moment where the band would face the crowd and say “follow us on Instagram.” I never felt any deep enthusiasm behind it — mostly desperation, and some embarrassment. It is a desperate situation that essentially the most viable path to connect with an audience runs through services designed to be as addictive as possible, to engross as many people as possible, to generate as much revenue as possible for grotesque companies. Not to mention around that time I remember at any social gathering, a party or after-show hangout, it seemed like people couldn’t wait for the moment where they go to say “do you have Instagram, can I follow you?” Passing their phones back and forth and calling it “connection.”

The song is written as a parody — from the perspective of someone who has fully given themselves over to the platform, maintaining a curated false reality, following the trends, maximizing their engagement, telling themselves they don’t need to go outside because they can see the world through their phone. By the end the narrator asks with some desperation if you’ll follow them back.

I’ve gone through cycles with this over the years — spending months or years at a time with no social media presence at all, deleting accounts entirely, which in some cases meant losing contact with certain people forever. A ghostly presence as only a lurker, not a poster, which is roughly where I’ve been lately. And at other times actually posting updates and sharing music, which truthfully has been positive in the periods I’ve taken that route — which I find all the more conflicting.

Unlike Ten To One, this silly sarcastic song found life after the challenge as an irregular but frequent enough appearance in the sets of The Planet Of, where it took on a heavier and more rocking tone. I’ll include an alternate demo featuring my brother Ryan on bass and Scott McTaggart on drums. I’ve always imagined a music video for this one. It still lives in my head. Someday, perhaps.

“Following”

Following the leader
Following the path
Who carves @ my name
I'll laugh when yer lookin'
Like it's all a gas
Who will pick me up
When I'm cryin' when I'm lyin'

I could see the world
Don't even have to stand
I could be a man
I could take a pic I could
poke it in my hand
I could be a brand
Would you buy, what I'm supplyin'

I don't really know you
Still I adore you
I've looked into your wall one thousand times
I may never see your eyes but I'll
look at whatchu let me
Baby I'm subscribed

I'm following you
Will you follow me
I'm following you
Are you following
I'm following you
Will you follow me
I'm following you
Are you following

---

Will Hide

I have such a vivid, dream-like memory of the day surrounding this song. Just the third song in and I already felt fully in the throes of songwriting obsession. I was back at Rad Pro, back in my little recording space in Ontario, and one of the key moments that sparked this song came when I was walking through downtown Ontario and a black SUV passed me with music blaring. Meanwhile I was in my head, trying to dig up an idea for the next song.

I began to imagine a song that essentially haunts me — something that comes from outside and finds me anywhere I go. I meant for it to be the story of an earworm. I was imagining a melody I cannot stand, maybe just something playing from that car, now playing in the store, now playing in my mind wherever I go. An inescapable force.

It felt like a natural meta exploration of what was already happening during this period of intense writing. When I’m working on something I will listen to it over and over and over — headphones on, walking laps around downtown Ontario, taking notes on anything I want to change or add, then going back in to keep pushing. These days I do the same thing on the road or at the beach or walking through the forest. That pattern never really left. In the story of Will Hide though, the separation is that usually when I’m working on something I’m excited about it — I want to develop it and see where it goes. But in the story of this song, the melody is something I’m trying to escape. Something I don’t like. A torturous earworm that follows me everywhere.

The chorus is really the most direct commentary on what was happening during the challenge — another day, another song, another chance to do it all wrong. The rest of the song follows the listener trying to escape this melody before ending in a kind of resignation, an acceptance: I’ll be better off if I just learn to love it, and whether I love it or hate it doesn’t really matter. That resignation was a key realization that came to me during this challenge — that perfection is impossible, and the kind of thinking that tells you something isn’t good enough yet will take something exciting and turn it into nothing. Dust. Working through a song every day meant I couldn’t be too picky. I had to take something good enough and follow it to the end.

Between working on new songs day to day I would also return to these ideas and develop them further — and in this case, having the demo done gave me the opportunity to collaborate. My brother-in-law Andy Egyud sent me a pass with many different bass ideas, I asked him to experiment, try melodic parts, try different things throughout the song — and what you hear is a composite, heavily edited from the original take he sent. I’ve always wanted to return to this one to record live drums, fresh vocals, and remix the track. I believe I did do a remix around 2022/2023 and that’s the version included here. It’s a strange song but I still enjoy it, and I’m particularly fond of the vocal harmonies — which was very new territory for me. Just a few days into the challenge and I was already stretching beyond anything I had written or recorded before.

“Will Hide”

Walked outside wasn't feeling very happy
Wasn't happy happy at all
I heard a tune playing in a car driving by me
I didn't like it didn't like it at all
That feeling that stain on the street
I think I'd rather have stayed inside

Another day another song
Another chance to get along
Another jam another lesson
One more blind experimentation

I kept walking I went to the store where
On the ceiling I heard that same blasted ear worm
Then I went to the park and I heard it on someone's phone
It follows me everywhere I roam

Everywhere I roam it follows me
Everywhere I roam it follows
Outside sounds so loud
Can't turn em off
Outside sounds so loud

So I
(will hide) In a basement
(will hide) With my guitar
(will hide) Behind the glass
(will hide) From the mess
(will hide) From my enemies
(will hide) From my friends
(will hide) From beginnings
(will hide) From the end
(will hide) from the tunes
(will hide) in my head
(will hide) in the night
I will never go to bed
(will hide) From my demons
(will hide) Or I will try
(will hide) From all the sounds my ears don't like

When I come out of hiding I'm stuck to the street
I'm stuck to the sounds inside and outside of me
Hiding or not a song will play on
Love it and hate it I must tolerate it
If I learn to love it I'll feel a lot better
If I love to share I'll get along anywhere
If I learn to love it I'll feel a lot better
Love it or hate it doesn't really matter

Another day another song
Another chance to do it all wrong
Another jam another lesson
One more blind experimentation
Another day another night
Another chance to get it right
Another jam another session

---

Bad Kitty

Ft. Ryan Feliciano (Bass, shred guitar)

Bad Kitty represented a major shift from the previous songs I had written for the challenge. I had spent the day and night pulling together Will Hide — a lo-fi, almost trip-hop inspired track — and before that I had kicked things off with Ten To One, which is basically a jazzy folk song. I wanted to push myself to write something very different. I decided I wanted something heavy, with scorching guitar solos, leaning into some of my earlier influences in heavy rock and metal.

It was within those first few days that I was sharing my demos to SoundCloud and sending them to a few friends and close family outside the group. My older brother Richard made a request — after listening to the first couple of songs he asked if I could write a song about a terrible cat. He was referring to his cat Judy, whose Instagram handle was @judytheterrible. I’ll note that the account is still active — she just hasn’t posted in a while, as her admin team has been busy raising my niece for the last five years.

I had this in mind already and almost instantaneously, when I resolved to write a hard rock and metal jam, the concept of Bad Kitty just clicked. I conceived the ending before anything else — it would all lead toward some over-the-top, absurd grand finale, a chorus of cats just singing meow meow meow meow like the demented metal cousin of the Meow Mix jingle.

I wanted to lean into the 80s metal that influenced me as a teenager and I think that guided the tones and riffs that started to shape the song. It was honestly difficult to record a lot of the guitar parts — it demanded a type of playing I hadn’t done for years at that point, which in itself made it more challenging than composing the piece. The lyrics are simple and tell the story of a bad kitty, a cat that bites. Judy loved and still loves to bite. I think she’s bitten me almost every time I’ve seen her since she was a kitten.

As I was putting the song together I realized the scope I wanted to take with it was beyond what I was fully capable of technically, so this was the first song in the challenge where I brought in my brother Ryan for collaboration. I had already recorded the overall form — the first guitar solo you hear was composed and performed in chunks by me, channeling my inner Yngwie Malmsteen — but by the time the lyrics hit “baaaad kittyyyy” and the ferocious harmonized guitars begin, that’s Ryan’s contribution, along with his soaring shredding guitar solo at the end.

I’ve never been married to genre. I’m constantly moving between different influences and I love lots of music. Across the song challenges I’ve really enjoyed doing genre shifts, setting the intention to lean into something different for a day. If I didn’t have that openness I wouldn’t have managed to compose such a ridiculous rock anthem for my brother’s cat. And there would be no fun in that.

Razor sharp claws
Biting is her game
But she's not playing
There's terror in her name

Terror is her business
Business is good
Business is damn good
You better watch out

If you've got a back
Don't you ever think about turning around
Beast out for the attack
She is built to tear you down tear you down

Kitty
Kitty

Bad kitty
Bad kitty
Terrible kitty
Terrible terrible kitty
She sings!

Meow meow meow meow
(ad infinitum)

---

Young Love

Young Love is a song about exactly that. During the challenge I was constantly fishing for ideas and this one started with just a few riffs I had arranged in a GarageBand project. Something about the quality and flavor of those riffs took me back to a sort of preteen state, reminding me of bands like Coheed and Cambria — never a favorite of mine, but one I listened to occasionally in my early teens. Once those teenage years were evoked I started digging into feelings around a high school relationship.

I had a conversation with a friend recently who expressed how much he misses the feeling of being in love the way we experienced it in our youth. We talked about whether that intensity comes from naivety, lack of exposure, immaturity, or just pure hormones — but whatever it was, we both agreed that it felt so consuming, even just having a crush as a kid or teen. And how relationships as adults feel more measured, less all-consuming, more subtle.

With that said, the phenomenon I’ve experienced is that as time goes on my understanding and capacity for love seems to grow. With every relationship, every experience, something expands. I had this idea that the relationship of my teenage years represented the maximum amount of love I was able to give and feel at the time — but as I went into more mature relationships and experienced greater depths of connection, so too did I experience greater depths of love, and that capacity kept growing. Yet when I think back to that young love I can still feel that part of me. It’s like that love is still there. It was the strongest I had known at that time, but in looking back it was just a cup in a well of love there is still to know.

One more thing worth noting: the intro to the song is actually one of the earliest pieces of music I ever wrote, from my teenage years — a small instrumental that came out one day, which I notated in transcription software and managed to hang onto all these years. I wrote it at that time with my girlfriend in mind. So there’s a little piece of 16-year-old me at the top of this song.

Young love
Passed sure
But never lost
I remember how I filled my cup
And overflowed with you
Since then
I tipped the cup
I dove into a full on pool
Filled with other souls with whom
I've sunken into tenderness
So deep now that I can swim
In love so deep now that I swim
I still remember the young love
I still remember the young love
Still remember how I filled my cup
And overflowed with you
And overflowed (still remember young love)
Still remember the young love

---

Insomniac Stupor Rag

This was the first instrumental I wrote for the challenge and came from a desire to pivot again — I remember feeling a little burnt out, or at least struggling more than I had the previous days to come up with a lyrical concept I felt strongly about. In a song-a-day challenge the rules are pretty loose, as I covered in the background entry, and plenty of participants don’t submit lyrical pieces at all.

As the title suggests I was essentially living as an insomniac at this point, sleeping very few hours, spending most of my days and nights developing and recording songs for the challenge. Even a song like Bad Kitty demanded an all-night session to piece together and record. I usually record through the night anyway — so that’s what inspired the title. Sleep deprived, I decided to write a simpler piece for guitar in a ragtime style.

This kind of fingerpicking style represented a significant shift in my playing. It was later that I would really dive into it, getting turned onto the ragtime blues of artists like Blind Willie McTell. And probably the first piece in this style I ever learned was one of my favorite songs — These Days, written by Jackson Browne and recorded by Nico from the Velvet Underground. It was in my traveling years around 2013 to 2015 that I was really learning pieces like this, playing around with this bouncy picking that combines bass, chords and melodies all at once — it greatly changed my approach to playing guitar. I enjoyed putting this piece together as a way to connect with those influences.

---

Sister

I believe this is the first song from the challenge where I lifted some lyrics I had written previously. A few months before the challenge I had gotten into an argument with my sister, who was in her late teen years at the time. What I had hoped could be a constructive conversation quickly turned into a communication breakdown and came to an abrupt end with no resolution. I wrote a few words then but hadn’t really considered it as a song until this day.

The song moves from those feelings around the miscommunication into something much warmer — ending with some kind words to clarify that I love her, that I think she’s brilliant and capable of doing anything she wants in this life. Both success and failure are guaranteed, but there is nothing to fear. When I played it to her she said she was put off at first but ultimately thought it was sweet. I couldn’t ask for much more than that.

The song features Ryan on bass, who really nailed the poppy, punchy feel that tied it all together. It’s a musically strange song, and it featured what I think was the most ambitious vocal melody I had written up to that point. This ended up being a regular song toward the beginning of The Planet Of performances.

Sister
Can you step outside
With me
Absolutely
You can
But will you please

Please listen for meaning
Not implications sis
Meanings are here now
Implications will become
Much later on
I'm here with you now
Where is your mind?

You've run away from home with your implications
You've run away and you left all of your potential
You've run away from home with your implications
You've run away and you left all your potential

You are beautiful you are smart
You can do anything
Just as you please
No soul to come of the earth
Can stop you
So long as you believe
You are powerful
You are smart
And clever to do as you please

You will run far with your intuition
You hold the world in your hands with great potential
You will run oh so far with your intuition
You will take the world on with your boundless spirit

You will succeed don't be afraid
You will also fail please don't be afraid
You will succeed don't be afraid
You will also fail don't you be afraid

---

The Witch & The Wizard

This was the second instrumental I wrote for the challenge and another stylistic departure. Here I was leaning into the kind of guitar instrumental music I listened to a great deal during my teenage years. My playing is nowhere near the masters of this style, but a clear and direct influence here is the album Erotic Cakes by Guthrie Govan.

Once I started piecing together the backing track I had a strong feeling that I wanted the song built entirely around a couple of solos, so I reached out to Ryan and asked him to write a solo over the form. We recorded our solos independently and I pieced them together with a short bridge in the middle, and an intro and outro to sandwich them. In my mind the Witch and the Wizard are real characters – I could see and hear them in this song.

---

Sharks Not Sharks

This song has very clear inspiration in real events. The day I wrote it was the day of a long event at a legendary DIY venue in downtown LA called The Smell. I was performing with the band Xinxin for an event being put on by my dear friend Karen Joyce, who publishes music under the name Take Kare. Take Kare – Bloom music video

There was drama that unfolded over the course of the event that I wasn’t aware of until near the end of the evening. Essentially there was a conflict between Karen and a friend who had been co-organizing the event. As I understand it, the friend took serious issue with a piece Karen was performing — an avant-garde jazz performance in which improvised music was played while Karen read out the names of individuals who had been killed in instances of police brutality. I thought the piece was poignant and deeply compelling. But the co-organizer, who Karen had considered a close friend, accused Karen of using the names of these victims to seek attention, and told Karen that if the piece was performed, she would have nothing to do with the event.

This was sprung on Karen the day of a major event they had planned together for some time. After going back and forth, Karen made the decision to perform the piece. The co-organizer performed her own set early in the evening and left with some attitude, leaving Karen to handle everything the two of them were meant to do together. The event went well. The performances went well. But once I heard what had happened it seemed clear to me that this was less a moral objection and more something ego-driven — some kind of competitive instinct, a drive to sabotage. I got back to the studio that night and wrote this song.

It’s essentially an acknowledgment and rejection of those who claim to be friends, collaborators and supporters, but ultimately act from bad intentions brought on by their own insecurities. I started calling them sharks, then quickly realized that was unfair to innocent sharks. As I wrote into the song — a shark would never tell you what not to do, especially not to do something good for you. This one’s for Karen, and for anyone who’s got haters.

Don't be discouraged
We live in a shark tank
Where everyone feeds on blood
They try to cut you
Compulsively
So they can feed

I'm being unfair I shouldn't compare
Them to sharks
A shark would never tell you what not to do
Especially not to do something good by you

But somehow these folks have it in them
To dominate you while they call you friend
These days friendship is only a click away
They hold up their bodies to lurk in the clouds
Think they look down with great understanding
But they're only looking down
On the world
On themselves
On the world and on you and I

They say stay woke
But they only stay home
They sleep on the same mattress
Every night and every day
They treat us like screens
They be projecting
They want to push us sit back and escape

Masters of manipulation, worshippers of death
They prey on words, to lay good to rest
Make any case to halt progress for they want us idle
But we know the depths of pain, that come with feeling
We know the stress of being, gracious yet painted as villains
We know how pretentious, the sharks of this land can be
But we know not the misery, of wanting so badly for others not to succeed

I'd hate to imagine
Don't get discouraged
We are evolving
We are on the rise
This is why
They try to gut us

We'll make our own cuts
We'll keep our hearts open
We'll feed the world
We'll keep our minds open
And our feet in the ground
Where the sharks can't bite us
The sharks that ain't sharks

---

Bar Rats

This song is essentially an instrumental, although there is some singing at the end. I started writing it with a concept in mind — a bar band. My understanding of what a bar band is has changed a great deal since living in rural Oregon for nearly a decade, but at the time I was going to a lot of bars and hearing a lot of bands around LA, particularly in the San Gabriel Valley and Inland Empire music scene. I had this image of a band that only plays bars, doing some kind of retro psychedelic surf rock, and I thought it would be funny if at the end of an instrumental jam the whole band sang a gang vocal of the words we are bar rats. So I wrote the piece — different melodies, a guitar solo, all leading to that final chant.

Ryan contributed bass to this one, and came up with the great idea to record a bass being tuned at the very top of the song — that’s where I added the ad-lib “come on man, start the song” in the intro. My favorite thing about this recording is the way the vocals came together. I took a walk through the studio and started asking anyone around if they would come sing on a track. I ended up with myself, Mikey, and a trio from a band called the Frick Fracks all crowded around a single pair of headphones. It was the Frick Fracks who suggested the additional vocal harmony at the end, which made the whole thing.

Check out The Frick Fracks – Parallel (Music Video)

---

Chasing Cars

This is a very sad song about a sad day and a sad event. It’s about death — I witnessed the hit-and-run death of a small dog, which in hindsight followed what was essentially the death of a relationship. I didn’t even realize it when I wrote it.

The events unfolded like this: I went to visit the gal I was seeing at the time and everything just felt off, the way it does sometimes toward the end. We hadn’t spelled anything out, just had a detached and awkward meeting. When I was saying my goodbyes at her front door I heard a commotion down the street. She had told me previously about a neighbor’s dog that would roam the street and come visit with her and her grandma on occasion. Across many visits I had never actually seen the dog — until this day.

I walked out and looked down the road. I could see the dog lying in the street and an SUV driving off. I walked up the road and as I got closer I could see he was still moving slightly. He was a small dog, some type of terrier mix. I knelt down and said something to him and he let out his last exhale. I looked over to my right and a young woman was walking out of a house looking concerned. I asked if it was her dog. She said no, he’s my uncle’s, and asked if he was dead. I looked at him, then back to her and just shook my head.

It was just a day or two later that I wrote this song. Within a week she and I would meet again and make clear it was the end. That visit to her house was the last time I went to see her with the idea that there might be something between us. In a sense there were two deaths that day. RIP.

I heard a screech, I heard a cry
So I took to the street
I saw an SUV driving
I didn't realize
It was a getaway

Left behind in the road
I saw a shape I saw a twitch, I saw a tail wag
I rushed over but in that time
He stiffened up, he had leaked out
I said hello asked are you there
But there was no response
He had gone, he had flown

Little dog
Chasing cars
Little dog chasing cars
Til he got too close

Saw a woman asked is he yours
She said no he's my uncle's, sir is he dead
I touched his head, and sadly shook my own

Dogs chasing cars
Dogs chasing cars
They get so close
Dogs chasing cars
They will run they will bark
Til some day they catch one
Little dog
Chasing cars
He ran and he ran
Til the day he caught one

---

Flower Man

This song was inspired and informed very much by my friend Enrique — who I will undoubtedly write several future entries about. We are from different countries, him from Spain and me from the US, and we met in Cuba, where we had an instant musical connection and began an adventurous friendship that took us across Cuba, the US, and Spain together. He is still making great music under the name Caro Raro. Check out Caro Raro – Cora De Papel (Music Video)

The idea that initially inspired this song came from a story he told me about his childhood and his dad. He said that as a child his dad would tell him — and I’m translating from Spanish here — essentially, son, you were born with a flower in the ass. His dad said this because as a kid everybody loved him and life just seemed to work out. He was lucky from birth. There are a couple of close English expressions — your shit don’t stink, sunshine coming out of your ass — though they tend to carry a more negative connotation. This was the positive take. Another expression Enrique taught me was comeflor — literally flower eater — a somewhat derogatory Spanish term for hippies. I love it. I’ve been called a hippie in a derogatory way over the years and it still happens occasionally, and I don’t mind it at all. There are much worse things to be called and much worse things to be. As an old hippie friend once told me, being a hippie is just about being free.

Instead of writing about Enrique’s anointed childhood I wrote about my own life as a hippie — traveling with minimal worries, trusting in nature, trusting existence to provide what I need, preferring a life in nature over material pursuits and the world of man. The song becomes an account of wild animal encounters I’ve had around the world: walking amongst wild boars in the hills near Barcelona, interacting with monkeys in Costa Rica and Israel, walking up on rattlesnakes several times over the years including in Joshua Tree, feeding raccoons near Montreal — and most notably, after a long day on a beach in Puerto Rico, sitting on a blanket by the shoreline playing guitar when a sea turtle appeared next to me, stopped for a moment, then made its way up the sand to nest and back to sea when it was done. That whole saga deserves its own entry.

And so if I’m a comeflor, if some people look down on my lifestyle, my lack of grooming or presentation or status — you can call me a hippie, you can say I was born with a flower in the ass, and I will laugh.

This basically became the anthem of my life as a traveling hippie, and it became a staple in The Planet Of live performances — providing a more chill departure from the otherwise high energy rock sets. The live arrangement was extended for a tasty guitar solo from Kevin Miller. Soon I’ll share a live take alongside the original demo.

Flower Man (Original Demo)

Flower Man (Live with The Planet Of)

NEED TO FIND IT!

Some say I was born with a flower in the ass
I laugh 'cause I know just what they are getting at

I've been broke I've been traveling the world
I'm still broke still traveling home
With or without coin, just a flower in the ass
I will keep my cool to sip the water from gas
With or without shelter I sleep well
With or without certainty I trust in nature
I know she will protect wherever I go
I know she will provide if I'm immersed in flow

I don't worry, I don't sweat
The littlest things

I can't say I'm a fan of the world of man
The endless quest for power and hunt for paper
I dropped out of the race, I won't play it safe
I'd rather chase the happiness I find in nature

I'm not worried, I won't sweat
All the littlest things

I'm a lucky duck and a naturalist
All my tunes make reference to the animals
Sharks rats dogs n cats I love them so
I could write for 30 days about the beasts that I've known

Monkeys and raccoons who've eaten from my hand
Wild boars I've ran with in the night
The sea turtle that came to me playing on the beach
Coyotes owls and rattle snakes that startled me

Bats lizards humming birds and flower man
Bats lizards humming birds and flower man
Flower man
Flower man

---

Cynics In Love

Another song that became a staple with The Planet Of — I’ll include the live arrangement alongside the original demo.

This song had some lyrical content written over a year before the challenge, but the concept came from something I had felt in a relationship. The dynamic was this: a partner and I had built a kind of cocoon around ourselves where we would connect and indulge in shared criticism and critique of the world. It brought us closer in a way — created a sense of dependence, a safe space for vulnerability that felt closed off from the outside. It wasn’t too bad, honestly. But I recognized it wasn’t ideal for me. I want to grow in love, be more vulnerable, more open — not more sealed off.

The song takes that dynamic and pushes it to an extreme. It’s written about a couple fully given over to this — two people who indulge so deeply in shared negativity that it becomes the thing that holds them together. I really indulged in the negativity of it. There’s more I could write about this one, but I’ll leave it here for now.

The image that anchors the whole song came to me during a Vipassana meditation retreat — ten days of silence, no entertainment, just walking a path in the desert between meditations. One day I came upon other retreat participants gathered around something on the ground. Ants eating a bee. The bee was still alive, barely, moving in pain as it was being swarmed. The line came immediately: ants tear a writhing bee apart / that’s them / the ants their minds / and the bee their heart. I hung onto that until the retreat was over and I could write it down.

Ants tear a writhing bee apart
That's them
The ants their minds
And the bee (is) their heart
They share the nutrients and pain
They share the passion
As they share the blood lust
Like rabid beasts, two cynics in love
They hiss and spit at anyone who comes up
Meanwhile they sit back and watch
With a sour spot they sit and curse the whole lot
Misery loves company
The worst wine is more bitter shared
The abused become the aggressors
These victims can't stop with each other
On and on two pessimists in love
They gather and laugh at how the worlds fucked
Though they're knee deep in the shit
They just happy, they each created half of it
Two cynics in love, that's them
They gather and laugh at how the worlds fucked

---