I'm trying to get better at my traditional music-reading and jazz notation skillz, so I'm making myself do things like this. I want Matteo to play this piece. We'll have to change keys, but I think it won't be too hard now that I've put this initial work into writing it out. Look at me go!

Rural Politics and the Spring Runoff

In my parents' silver Sequoia, aptly named for its stocky presence, we clap mosquitos between our palms, a kind of somber applause. My mom, dad, and I are driving toward two large, vinyl, geodesic structures that sit visibly on a shrub-covered hill that rolls between Dry Creek in Bloomington, Idaho, and Worm Creek on the St. Charles side. The property my parents own in Bloomington looks well tended-to, courtesy of new mowing blades on the tractor and the morning we spent working with the raspberries. The structures on the hill, the ones we're driving toward, are pale green. They blend well with the vegetation up close, but they reflect sunlight so vividly as to glare bright white from the highway. This seems opposite, to me. In the country, a building should inhabit its space closely, the way a wooden barn sinks into the dull yellow of a field of timothy grasses, (I'm just now learning to inhabit my own apartment this way, with this closeness); and if a building is to appear impressive, should impose itself only in intimacy.

Sharpest Sky

Friends, I am so excited and genuinely honored to be playing with Matteo at the Utah Arts Festival this Saturday afternoon. Lots of exciting things are happening for Matteo this summer, but for me, this Arts Festival show is among the most meaningful. It represents a tier of local music that I've never operated from before, and a level of recognition that I think Matteo deserves. I'm happy to be playing with this group, happy that it's warm outside, happy that my life is so full of music and art, happy to have friends who care about me, happy to be reading good books (Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams and Basin and Range by John McPhee, at the moment), happy happy happy. 

Come see us on Saturday, if you can. If not, there will be other chances. I'll keep letting you know.

Love,

Luke

Cinco de Birthday! vol. 2

Last year on my birthday, I posted a video of myself playing a fun, bouncy cover. Then, about a week ago, somebody videotaped me playing another fun, bouncy cover at a show. A suspicious coincidence, no? Maybe it will be a tradition.

I had a birthday, but I feel younger (less mature, less self-aware, less sure of my world) than I have in a long time. I think it's a good change. I finally burned and printed that plate I etched half a decade ago, and it didn't come out like I thought it would. It's a wonderful discovery, a force for new energy, new work, more art, and forward motion. It feels great. Re-evaluation is a good thing to do on your 21st birthday, I think, and a good springtime activity in general.

Thanks for all the love.

(From the same show, my friend Leah Wilson.)

Some thoughts, after attending a lecture by Dr. bell hooks.

I am not a spontaneous combustion, no great creator. I am a feverish collector of the beautiful, the dark, wabi sabi, the beleaguered, of sounds and misspellings, and from that mixed bag of sensation, a constant vibration which I keep myself open to (it is boorish but also kind), I ejaculate pictures and thoughts and sometimes songs, which are never more than words on a ransom note, oily and strong-smelling, a particle made from a wave.

[ransom note news]

My songs, poems, essays, these are not creations, not my children, I will not make that metaphorical association like so many male thinkers have, and so casually, they take what is not theirs, that act of creation, as does the Judeo-Christian God, of whose womb the Bible speaks literally. That hermaphroditic God is a cruel and stupid Father/Mother, to normalize a gender split so foreign to his own image. His/Her creation marks Him/Her anomalous, His/Her creation which fears anomaly.

[this isn't the painting I was looking for, but it'll do. I always liked wizard-Jesus.]

For I know nothing of creation, I have not once sung beauty or hideousness that was my own, in any way that can be likened to the literal construction of a human body which a woman molds with inherited tools and prescient chemical instinct, deeply and genetically is this act taught by the womanhood of all her ancestors, taught by the unspoken cycles of seeds, and blossoms, and understood by the cold and plastic cultural acts with which she is sexualized.

[see what I did there?]

Though I am feminine, for a male, and though I write, or draw, or sing, my creativity is only mimicry and when I combust, it is through a chaotic and wild transformation of the present materials, fuel, and friction. The product is not new life; it is a taxidermied cross-species. It is mysterious to me, but my exploration of that mystery will not be so selfish as to confuse an act of secretion for a child.

[This is the physical manifestation of my songwriting process.]

Dr. bell hooks

Spoon Animal

A note: I spend an embarrassing amount of time at my computer lab job watching short-form videos that are at times mildly amusing, mostly underwhelming, and don't often make me laugh, as in, really laugh. This one did, for some reason. maybe it's because I wasn't expecting it, the first couple jokes are dumb and predictable, and then it just flies off on a jetpack of its own silliness.

I chuckled, out loud, and this lady looked at me, disgusted. She's annoying anyway, and always needs help with the printer and never thanks me, so I just smiled at her and kept laughing. I'm wearing all black today, which is weird. I wonder if people who met me today think I'm sad.

It occurs to me that this is hardly a reason to update my blog, and that's why I started rambling quasi-lyrically just now. I'm working on a real blog post, I promise. New songs, writings, comics (I started drawing comics). I think it's time to actually use this blog again. See you again soon.

Live Video!

Luke Williams- The Seamstress Live from Dada Factory on Vimeo.

Hey, blog-friends! So, Mr. Davey Davis of the Dada Factory filmed this more than a year ago, and we just got around to releasing it. It's footage from a show where I was playing a lot of the Weary As We Are material for the first time, so i'm playing a different (and sort of awkward) early version of this song. I think it improved a lot by the time it got on the album, but I also think it's fun to watch a song evolve, and I stand behind this performance and the feedback I got afterward as an important part of the development of the thing, musically. Plus, I think the rawness of the live footage and the rawness of this performance are conceptually well-fitted to my vision for Seamstress as a song.

Immense thanks to Davey for putting together this awesome video, and to all the beautiful people who came out to this show and who continue to support my music. If you don't already know about Davey's current adventures in Palestine, I highly encourage you to check out his blog. He's doing great things, that one.

I really like words.

A lot. Maybe it was all the word games my mom would play with us, or reading with my dad, or helping my uncle Paul come up with mirror palindromes (a palindrome that only uses letters that are mirror images of themselves, so you can literally hold them up to a mirror and they still spell the same word. TOM, AM I MAMOT?). Regardless, if you're ever wondering what I'm thinking about, the answer is probably rhymes, or puns, or sentence rhythms, or ambigrams, or fonts.

Today I've been thinking about words that are spelled so differently from the way the sound that, for varying lengths of time, I've thought they were two different words for the same thing.

For instance, until a couple summers ago, when I worked in a jewelry store learning, among other things, to solder, I pronounced that word soul-dur. I knew it had something to do with binding metal to metal, maybe even synonymous with a word I would've spelled "sauter". The day I realized they were the same word was a singularity of embarrassment, a mental leap that seemed significant and silly at the same time.

The first words word I remember combining in this fashion were was genre (zhahn-ruh), which at the time I was pronouncing (jen-uh-ruh). I'd heard people say the word Zhahn Ra, but it seemed about as mystical and scholarly as the egyptian gods it alluded to (third grade, Mrs. Papadakis, all my friends had Mrs. John, learning ancient mythologies, masking tape over the nude picture of Aphrodite on the bookshelf, Mrs. John's class was decorated like a jungle but Mrs. Papadakis was from Crete and when she talked about Mt. Olympus she paused between thickly accented words for the deep exhales of homesickness). I remember coming home and frantically telling my mom how I'd figured it out, about genre. She smiled. I wasn't embarrassed then. I was a triumphant explorer of language.

I don't know if you've had this specific experience, but if you haven't, it's not that different from  thinking, for example, maybe until you were 14 or so, that the lyrics to this song were "If you'll be my buddy, God," making the "I can call you Betty" line more than a little sacrilegious, and getting laughed at, riotously, even. Maybe your family still brings it up from time to time, when they feel like making fun of you.

Damn it, Paul Simon, annunciate!

Announcing...

A few more things:

The album will be $10,

 and cover the admission price.

***

No opening acts, 

but guest musicians will include:

Julia Mecham

Beaux Underwood

David Darais

Matteo

The Williams Family Band

***

There will be yummy things to eat.

***

I'm really, really excited for this!

***

I'll probably make a couple more posters that are less vague,

and don't make it look like the band "weary as we are" 

is releasing an album called "Luke Williams." 

Mostly because I like making posters :)

***

Asterisks look like snowflakes.

***

I love you!

Luke

"I want to punch him in his stupid face."

I'm doing some research for one of my final papers, and there is a twenty-something woman with dark hair and a small chin standing directly to my right, talking on her cell phone about how much she hates the "pretentious douchebag" on the other side of the coffeeshop who is having a loud (and admittedly rather one-sided) conversation, which is bothering her while she is studying. Such wonderfully thick contradiction.

Neither of them, incidentally, have stupid faces.

technically? maybe.

If I'm sad about the visceral, beautiful, oppressive smog, and it pulls a thick cough from the throat it's coating, and saline tears from my blue-green eyes, am I crying?

Happy Birthday Jeff, and Mama, You've Been On My Mind

Jeff Buckley would be 44 years old today if he hadn't walked into Wolf River Harbor with his steel-toed boots on. Luckily, although he only recorded one studio album, he left behind a ridiculous amount of live and bootleg material, most of which has been posthumously released and is easy to find. If you're anything like me, Live at Sin-é (Legacy Edition) is the album to get. Gone is the 90s grunge-flair of his studio recordings, which actually turned me off from his music for a couple years. The songs on Sin-é are stripped down, just the man and his telecaster. Most of the tracks are too long to keep the average blog-reader's attention (myself included, I know how it goes), but I'll link you to some of my favorites in case you're interested. Otherwise, just check out this great Bob Dylan cover for now. It's not from Sin-é, but it'll give you a taste:



Mama, You've Been On My Mind --- Bob Dylan


Perhaps it is the color of the sun cut flat
An' cov'rin' the crossroads I'm standing at,
Or maybe it's the weather or something like that,
But mama, you been on my mind.

I mean no trouble, please don't put me down, don’t get upset,
I am not pleading or saying that "I can't forget you."
I do not pace the floor bowed down and bent, but yet,
Mama, you been on my mind.

Even though my eyes are hazy and my thoughts they might be narrow,
Where you been don't bother me or bring me down in sorrow.
I don't even mind who you'll be waking with tomorrow,
But mama, you're just on my mind.

I am not askin' you to say words like "yes" or "no,"
Please understand me, I have no place I’m callin’ you to go.
I'm just whispering to myself so I can't pretend that I don't know,
But mama, you're just on my mind.

When you wake up in the mornin' and look inside your mirror,
You know I won't be next to you, you know I won't be near.
I'd just be curious to know if you can see yourself as clear
As someone who has had you on his mind.

The best of Jeff Buckley on YouTube, curated by Luke Williams
More Dylan covers: If You See Her, Say Hello (starts @1:09), Just Like A Woman
Original Stuff: Lover, You Should've Come Over is the good original from Sin-é on YouTube.
Etc: If You Knew (Nina Simone cover), The Way Young Lovers Do (Van Morrison cover).

Holy hannah, that's a lot links. Most of those songs are 7-10 minutes long, too. Sorry. I don't know, I guess if you're bored, and you need some background music, there you go. Myself, I can't get enough of it.

Happy B-day, and thanks, Mr. Buckley.

Cyr

This is mesmerizing.

Part circus routine, part modern dance, total respect to this guy for 1) his talent, and 2) his graceful performance.

The piano/cello backing track makes the whole thing seem so serene, not a display of physical strength or even human ability, but something cycling, a flowing series of movements, as natural as a wave breaking over the sand on a calm morning.

Weary As We Are

The record has a name! Jan's getting all the artwork figured out, and Simon and I are hard at work on a new website (if it works, it's going to be a pretty little thing).

It's snowing in Salt Lake City today, and I will be soaked and cold when I get home, but I'll make coffee and sit by the window and be truly happy and grateful to have been given the chance, for a moment, to experience my animal physicality, pushing my legs against the wind and through the slush, my breath hot against my scarf, lips, cheeks, fingers burning in my gloves, and to have the earth experience me, a little conglomeration of flesh and water and proteins and language emitting heat as I brace against its cold, emitting CO2 as I run my muscular processes on its icy oxygen, and occasionally emitting songs in the tradition of its birds, whales, humans, crackling rivers, growling volcanos, humming winds. Days like this remind me that we are not so removed from these cycles and traditions as we so often allow ourselves to believe. 

I love you!

Luke

"everything your twisted smile conveys"

I've never listened to much Amos Lee, so credit for this one goes to my dear friend Julia Mecham, who put it (different version, though. I like this one better. I am better than Julia) on a mix for me when I was stuck in bed with mono.

I like this song for a lot of reasons. Basically, I'm a sucker for:
1. Anything played on a Wurlitzer 200a (want another example? What? Another?) Listen to this in your headphones and let that vibrato cradle you gently into the stratosphere.
2. Motown, or in this case Motown-influenced soul music. I love it even when it's riding that fine line between great and sap-tastic (which is the same fine line that the Wurlitzer 200a walks, now that I think about it). It has something to do with the fact that my first love was the electric bass. In high school, I wanted to be a James Jamerson. And by "in high school," I mean still, right now, every day. One finger, guys. He played all those lines with one finger. They called it "The Hook." He had all five, that's just the way he got things done. Moving forward,
3. Black people's voices, and
4. Bass!
5. Simple lyrics that are also good.
6. Sad lyrics that are also good.
7. Well placed gospel backup vocals that don't sound slapped on by record producers (you're the best thaaang!).
8. Songs that end with a good breakdown.

Maybe you don't share those affinities with me, but you might like the song anyway.

Reminiscence

Some night in early 2009, a soft snow fell across diffused cones from yellow streetlights, and I put off writing an essay to go to an album release show. It had only been a few weeks since the more humble release of my own EP, and that was on my mind as I stepped heavily out of the white and into the old brick entryway of the Post Theater. A Logan musician I'd never heard of named E. Stohl Chipman was the man of the hour, but I was there because my good friend Julia Mecham was one of the opening acts. The other opener, Asher in the Rye, caught my attention not so much for the vocalist and songwriter, but for her one-man backup band, a skinny dude impressively playing percussion, bells, keyboard, banjo, and singing harmony, often simultaneously. He left the show early, but I found out a few things about him: he was learning the entire Amelie soundtrack (Composer: french genius Yann Teirsen) on the accordion, his name was Beaux, and he had become a new musical hero of mine.

As 2010 wears on - at the moment getting fitted for its own Salt Lake City winter - I'm playing in a band called Matteo with three wonderful musicians who I am proud to call my friends as well as my musical collaborators, including lead singer Eric Chipman. I myself am the skinny dude playing one-man backup band (albeit less impressively) for Julia Mecham, who is without a doubt my favorite musician in Utah. This past week, I became a member of a band called St. Boheme, playing french cafe music on accordions and banjos and vibraphones with Beaux Underwood. And in December, my new record will come out, and I will have a release show, and I hope you'll put off writing your essay to come see it. I can't promise it'll subtly present you with the genetic sequence that spells out your musical projects for the next two years. But it might be snowing, even softly, and I will give you a close hug.

Bowling for Hash Browns

I am the re-setting machine in a one-lane bowling alley. You only have to get one pin, way over in the corner, and before I can think about it I'm sweeping the whole array back into the depths of my throat with a big mechanical arm and starting over from scratch, simultaneously sliding the ball back to whoever is next in line. The whole process is slick, perfect, rubber, composite wood floors reflected in every waxy surface, and the ball spins airily, pushing the pins over with a softness that betrays the sound of the contact, cracking and popping like a big ceramic wildfire. I might be a single-function machine, but you're wearing someone else's shoes.

I'm hoping that when somebody buys up this old bowling alley -- It hasn't turned a profit in years --  they'll have the guts to recontextualize me instead of just throwing me out or putting me on the wall, a showpiece that has outlived its utility. If you turn the place into a diner, you can suspend me from the rafters, and when someone finishes their eggs and coffee, I'll swoop down with the mechanisms I know so well, everything into the soapy bucket and then new settings lowered down, silverware and glasses and jam and butter and a napkin at each place. It wouldn't be one of those corny themed places, "Come on down to Dine & Bowl" and signed memorabilia on the walls. Just your homemade buttermilk waffles and a good friend helping you bus tables.

Reality? Check.

I just had my sanity re-evaluated by a perfectly normal looking stranger in a green fleece jacket. He introduced himself with a joke I didn't understand, peering into my computer lab suspiciously and then laughing, "I'm just kidding, how are you doing?" After that entrance, he walks in and begins talking about graduating from West High, but he wants something more from his life. West High, so do I know this guy, is that why he's talking to me? He doesn't look familiar. He says he doesn't want to take away my time, but could I tell him where he could get a new Air Force Uniform? He needs a new one, he says as he pulls from his wallet a laminated picture of himself, a few years younger, in full regalia.

"No, I'm sorry, I really wouldn't know where to get one..."
"The VA, maybe? Sorry, I don't mean to be rude."
"Yeah, I'm sure they can point you in the right direction anyway."

Some talk follows from him (with no space for contribution by me but smiles and affirmative nods) about West High, new beginnings, getting his credits transferred to the U, his dad works here, he doesn't want to go back to the gravel pits, he's riding on the second wave of his life, and this is a letter from his bishop saying that he could use some on-the-job experience. Girls don't like him because he never served a mission, but he doesn't think that's too important.

This man is smiling an immense, braces-laden smile as he talks, finding humor in every few sentences, enough to laugh and watch me to make sure I'm smiling too. He looks young, fresh-faced. He looks like he belongs in the front row of a freshmen chemistry class. He is not the fast-talking conspiracy theorist that rides your morning UTA bus to work, who blinks too often or looks past you with glassy eyes when he talks. He looks vaguely ethnic, but in a sort of American Melting Pot way, nothing identifiable. He has shallow, sad eyes, and he takes his steps without purpose, as if he'd walked into my lab but might just as well have walked into any room in any building on campus.

"My uniform was stolen, you know."
"Oh, .... I'm sorry."
"Yeah, It wasn't you though. Or you," pointing to my co-worker and little brother Clayton, whose eyes are understandably glued to his computer, "or my dad or anything. I think it was a former roommate of mine. Not you though. I don't know. I've got this whole stack of paperwork." He laughs again. "So I just want to get the things back that are mine, you know? I'm trying to get things back that are mine, and it really upsets me. But it wasn't you."

I'm pretty sure by now that we're about to break through this dreamlike mess of an interaction. I'm convinced that the illusion of insanity he's cast will break down any minute and, in spite of his genuinely harmless appearance, he'll ask us for money or drugs, or try to sell us some kind of contraband, or make a grab at my laptop, because if the interaction moved to that level it would become concrete again, and I'd know immediately why he was here, talking endlessly in apparent non sequitur. But he gives me no such shift.

"So can I do that next week, can I get my credits transferred from West High and the Air Force to the U and start taking some classes, because I don't want to go back to the gravel pits," laughter, "I want to figure out who I want to be, if I want to be a teacher, or a car collector, I just don't know, but my plate is full of possibilities."
"I'm really sorry, but I can't really help you with any of that, I think you want to be talking to student services, they can help you get your credits transferred."
"Ah, of course, yeah, I don't mean to be rude..." he stretches his hand out for a fist-bump, which I give him slowly.
"Well, good luck with your uniform and getting your credits transferred," I say after he's talked again for a little while about wanting to go to school, more or less.

At first he's unfazed, but with his next disjointed sentences, he puts his picture back in his wallet and starts walking back toward the door.

"Well thanks, you know. I'll come back though, with some more time. I'll be back with some more time."

Mrs. Cold

So I know Kings of Convenience are old news. But I'm sick of the insistence in blogging culture, and music culture, and internet culture, on making newness and undiscoveredness our most important measures of worth. I get it, nobody wants their online presence to appear un-savvy, but it's tiring, and I'm tired. Plus, back when I was first shown these guys at 15 or 16 years old, I was still a pretentious music snob (only in the other direction; newness was an indication of detriment). Even when they were shown to me again two years later by my girlfriend at the time, who deserves the entirety of the credit for delivering me from my musical pretension, I thought they were a carbon-copy - minus Paul's virtuosity as a songwriter - of Simon and Garfunkel. The bottom line is, now that I'm ready for them, I'm excited about it and I'd like to share that with you, okay? So we could talk about musical pretension in all of its forms, including my history with it, and you could stutter through your teeth, "Luke, I'm mad, because when I showed you *insert band/musician I now like* you hated them!" and I would say with a sigh and half a smile, "I know I did. I'm sorry. It's not your fault. I am sort of annoying." Or we could talk about girlfriends, or we could talk about real worth in music, or we could talk about how freaking awesome Paul Simon is. Seriously, we could talk about that. But for now I'd just like us to listen to this song, which is good.