NEW RECORD 'rooming house' IS OUT NOW
I moved into a room in a house in a tightly-packed neighborhood just south of downtown. I didn’t have a car or much stuff even, but it was a pretty small room. Anyone in the house who wanted to have their food to themself would not want to keep it in the kitchen, but the roaches who also shared the house would find it no matter where you kept it. I bought a little roach trap and set it up in my room. It looked like a tiny pup tent with a sticky floor and had horrible graphics on the side depicting a crowd of overturned and dying roaches. Apparently that didn’t deter the roaches from climbing in and getting stuck anyway, and then other roaches came to cannibalize the poor unfortunates who were stuck there. I threw the little pup tent and its occupants away and cleaned my room. I developed bad dietary habits from being unwilling to store food in my room or in the kitchen and I would eat cold spaghettios from the can or buy those little orange crackers at the corner store on my way to work. The vending machine at my job had sandwiches and chips and by the end of that winter I had lost several pounds and felt pretty rough. When springtime came I moved into another house over in Dinkytown where I didn’t see any roaches and had a room next to the kitchen where students staying up late would cook too much food and always offer me some. That summer I quit my job and spent a lot of time practicing guitar and walking around the city at night, slacking off in a very general fashion. All in all, I lived in four different rooming houses in the space of about six years or so, from the West Bank to downtown to Dinkytown and back. I think a lot about the community I found there, united against roaches, sharing food, making and receiving short-term loans, occasionally arguing about cleaning the bathrooms or remembering to turn off a DIY irrigation system that someone had rigged up to water plants in the room above mine and now my ceiling leaked. If I was a stranger when I moved in, I wouldn't stay that way for long; sharing food has a way of melting one's apprehension about others – maybe you’re not friends yet, but you’re definitely not strangers now.
Anyway, my new record is out, and it’s mostly just about that kind of relationship that grows out of shared space, not necessarily shared ideals or interests. The folks who live in my imaginary rooming house all share food, they all get sick sometimes, they all want a good night’s sleep and a relatively clean bathroom, and they develop the kind of relationship with each other where everyone wants everyone to be OK. In this house there is no zero sum game, no one benefits when someone loses it all, no one feels good about eating all the food at the table if someone else hasn’t eaten any. In the end there’s the inevitable sickness and death, but there’s also gratitude for the company of neighbors and the meaning found in sharing common spaces with them.
So that’s it, it’s not really autobiographical, my experiences are always where I start but my goal is to write my way into the unknown, and the story isn’t really even based on any real situations or people, although I have lived in several rooming houses around the twin cities and I look back on those years with a lot of happiness, so everything I saw then leaks into everything I write now. I met so many kind folks, and had so many amazing conversations, learned a great deal, and saw acts of great generosity and kindness from folks who had barely enough to get by on but chose to make do together rather than see one of their housemates go without.
I’m looking forward to playing these songs at the State Theatre and on tour across the country after that. I’m grateful to be able to make another record, grateful to play the guitar whether it’s just in my own kitchen or on a beautiful stage, grateful for dear friends who’ve come along and supported me and my weird little stories.
Order the new album on vinyl + CD HERE
