She & Him "Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?"

If you're local, then you know this scene during Tourist Season . . .

You're in the grocery store.  There is a person.  Often older.  DEFINITELY a tourist.  They are standing in such a way that they are blocking the aisle and are completely unaware that you are trying to pass them.  There is just enough room for you to squeeze by, but you know that the second you try this, they are going to start walking and bump into you.

So there I was, staring at this tourist doing just this.  Staring at him.  Hating on him.

I mean really, is there ANY occasion where it is okay to wear an oxford shirt and a sport coat, with shorts?  Does that make any frickin' sense whatsoever?  How is it that when people go on vacation, they have no clue how to dress?

I was staring.  I was hating.  I was sure that if I looked down, he'd be wearing black socks.

Actually, I was wrong.  He wasn't wearing black socks.  He was wearing black sneakers, with white tube socks.  Ugh.

What do the socks have written on them?

HOLY SHIT!

He moved and I pushed my carriage past him.  I got about halfway down the aisle before I just couldn't let it go.  I turned around.

"Excuse me.  Sir?  Do your socks say 'I (Heart) She & Him'?"

He looked at me blankly for a second, woken from his trance of looking at flavored coffee.  Then he gave me a warm smile.  "Yes.  I love that band."

"Great band."

"My wife and I saw them years ago, in a little club, before they got big.  Have you seen them?"

I did talk about how much I liked them, though I didn't drop my M Ward story.

"Socks, huh," I said.  "Usually people get a t-shirt."

"You can get anything these days," he smiled.

Truer words were never spoken during Tourist Season.

"Have a great day," I said to him, and sped off with my carriage, wondering what grocery store weirdness my next collision might bring.


Hear the song on Youtube.

She & Him "Never Wanted Your Love"

Aaaaaannnnnnd . . . right on cue . . .

Last week I was struggling with that first-quarter-of-the-year issue of having lots of great songs, but few familiar voices to keep a good mvy-like balance to our playlist.

While we had plenty of holes in the playlist to fill, I resisted the urge to load it up with unfamiliar voices, knowing that I would be rewarded with patience.

No sooner had a reported my playlist to the trades on Monday morning (including new Adds from fairly familiar voices JJ Grey and Billy Bragg), then we received:

a)  A "for your ears only" private link to hear Lori McKenna's new album in full, which will be here in a few weeks

b)  Patty Griffin's first new single in 5 years, "Ohio," featuring Robert Plant.

c)  The new She & Him track from the forthcoming "Volume 3"

Playlist problem solved.  Balance restored.



Hear the song on Youtube.

Zooey Deschanel & Joseph Gordon Levitt "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?"

I tried to measure this video with my Cute-o-meter, but the Cuteness Factor overloaded my machine . . .

Happy New Year!


See the video on Youtube.

Death Cab For Cutie "Stay Young Go Dancing" (Part 2)

(Yesterday's post not withstanding . . .)

My wife is back to work, after being unemployed for nearly a year.

The upside of being unemployed was that she could be home, full-time, with our two small children. The downside to that was that, for a full year, she was nothing but Mom.

If you've never been a full-time parent, I think its hard to grasp what kind of mind-screw it can be to your perception of self.

When you spend your day fully consumed with taking care of your kids, little parts of yourself can easily go by the wayside.

People who aren't stay-at-home parents can compartmentalize a bit. I can be my work-self at work and be treated like an adult, and my home-self at home, where I am fully in service to others. If you're home full-time, you don't get the luxury of being treated like an adult for most of the day.

With my wife going back to work, and me working full-time too, it means we do some daycare now, and because my wife is a school-teacher, she leaves the house first, and I'm in charge of getting the kids out the door to daycare, before I go to work.

My wife has developed this funny ritual. Just a few minutes after she has left the house, the phone will ring. Inevitably, it will be because she has heard a song or a news story on the radio, and she wants to talk about it.

Most recently, it was George Harrison's "Taxman."

"He doesn't get enough credit. That song is amazing. I'd never really listened to it like that before."

But now that she has the forced sanctuary of her car, she takes the time to hear things like George's guitar playing.

"Remember when we used to do this all the time? Hear songs and talk about how much we loved them? I feel like that part of our lives is gone."

No doubt it is certainly obscured. The adult moments that we have these days, are inevitably devoted to "Business," meaning discussions about bills, Christmas shopping, the kids' daycare, problems with the house, etc, etc.

It's obscured, but I know it's not gone.

A few nights before, we were all in the car, and Death Cab For Cutie's "Stay Young Go Dancing" came on.

"Listen to this," I told her, putting my hand on her thigh as I drove. "It's one of the sweetest love songs I've heard in a long time."

She cocked her ear toward the speakers, straining to hear the radio, over the growing cacophony coming from the two kids in the back.

"It's got the line, 'When we move as one, we stay young.'"

She tried to hear it, but the distraction proved to great.

(In fact, to make a long story short, within a few minutes were were pulled over on a darkened sidestreet, so my 4 year old could pee on the side of the road, as she claimed she could not wait until we got home)

A few days later, all of us were together, before bedtime, in the kids' room. Legos and books and stuffed animals and trucks and balls and debris that is the result of a day-in-the-life, had been pushed to the center of the room, as we all tried to restore order before putting the kids to bed.

"I looked up the lyrics to that song," my wife said. "What do you think the opening line means?"

"Life is sweet/in the belly of the beast."

"This is it," I said. "We're in it. The belly of the beast. Life."

It's not always romantic. But it is sweet.


Hear the acoustic version on Youtube.

Death Cab For Cutie "Stay Young Go Dancing" (Part One)

Well, I had a post all ready to go for the Death Cab For Cutie song, but I hadn't posted it yet.

It was a little vignette about my wife and me, and our relationship to each other, now that we are in the thick of parenting. It's about love and romance and growing together, and it related directly to this song.

I hadn't posted it yet, when I heard that Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab) and Zooey Deschanel (his wife) announced their split up.

Does that news diminish this song for you?

This is probably my favorite love song of the year, with a bunch of killer lines ("When we move as one/we stay young").

And while I hear it and transpose my own life on it, I think I'm probably a pretty typical fan, for also imagining that Ben wrote this song with his wife Zooey in mind.

So if they are getting divorced, should I feel any apprehension about imagining myself in the shoes of the song?

I have to tell you, that just writing those words sounds stupid. I mean, c'mon, it's just a song.

But that's my brain talking.

From my heart, this song is a little less for me now.

That being said, tomorrow I'll post what I had originally intended to write.


See the video on Youtube.

She & Him "The Christmas Waltz"

Throughout the year, as we're picking songs to put into rotation on mvyradio, we go through the comparison process of "Great Song" versus "Great Radio Song."

And the same rules apply when picking a single from a Christmas album.

"A Very She & Him Christmas" has a number of highlights on it, and on first couple of listens, many of us really liked the opening track "The Christmas Waltz."

The advantages: It's a sweetly rendered version of a song that's not overly familiar, and to some will be "new," making it stand out from the pack.

The disadvantage: It's a little slow and spare.

Unfortunately, the cons win on this one. While it serves the album really well as a lovely start to a very enjoyable collection . . . if you put it on the station in the midst of regular programming, well, the pace drags everything down.

Ultimately, we choose "Sleigh Ride" which has a nice tempo and features vocals from both Zooey and Matt, plus a nice economical guitar solo. It fits much better, in the context of the station.

But here, without having to serve a larger mix, isn't "The Christmas Waltz" lovely?


Hear the song on Youtube.


Hear Sleigh Ride on Youtube.

M Ward "Never Had Nobody Like You"

We think a lot about musicians and their world surrounding shows. But what about when the shows are over?

I can imagine that life on the road puts you in some weird situations.

I know it did for M Ward. And that the weirdoes were we . . .

Newport Folk was over. Darkness had come to Fort Adams.

I was standing in the Quad, the grassy area within the walls of Fort Adams, where the mvyradio broadcast center was. Most of the mvy staff was long gone. The Quad stage was empty, dark. The hospitality tent was empty, dark. There were a few random crew people walking too and fro, but mostly everyone was gone.

Barbara and Jess had just said goodbye. Jess, still adrenalized from the day's excitement, was headed to The Newport Blues Cafe, where Ryan Montbleau was playing, and where Deer Tick and Friends would be playing later. Barbara, who'd given her all to her many, many interviews, was headed back to our owner's house, for some food and a glass of something to relax with.

Joe, mvyradio's owner, and I were the only ones left. We'd pulled the last of our wires and cables and connections and such from our tent, and were loading them into his Tahoe.

"I'm going to run out front to say goodbye to the NPR folks, and then we're out of here." I was happy for that. In my younger days, I would have been off with Jess. But in my more prudent 40s, I was ready to head to the house and raise a quiet toast with Barbara.

So there I stood in the dark, drinking a beer, when someone who'd been crossing the Quad, changed his course and approached me.

"Are you guys, by chance, heading toward downtown, and if so, can I catch a ride?"

"Yeah! We're leaving in a minute. Hop in!"

"Do you know where the, um, Blues Cafe is? I'm supposed to play with some friends there."

"Really? That's where I'M headed!" I said, much to my own surprise.

"I'm Matt."

"Yeah, I know," I smiled. "Hey Joe," who'd just returned, "This is M Ward. Can you drop us in town?"

So here's M Ward, somehow left behind on the grounds of a venue he just played, in a town he's not familiar with, in the dark, and he's left to figure out how to rejoin his friends, so he hops in a car with 2 strangers.

I'm sure he's been in this situation before. In fact, I bet he finds himself in this kind of situation more often than you or I. He seemed to know how to handle it.

He made small talk. Asked us our names and what we did. Joe gave him a detailed explanation of how we had fitted the whole of Fort Adams for wireless broadcasting, and Matt dropped in several, appropriately timed, "Oh wow"s.

He asked where I grew up, and when I said the North Shore of Massachusetts, he guessed Newburyport. Turns out he lived for a while in Newmarket, NH. We had a conversation about The Stone Church there, leading the conversation to where I really wanted it to go---his music.

I started grilling him about his upcoming projects, and he referred to "this other group I'm in" (yeah, that would be She & Him) and how they just finished a Christmas album. And he's working on a new solo record.

While all this is going on, I'm texting Jess, ("We're driving M Ward to town!"; "Bring him to me!" she replied) and he's texting his manager.

"My friends are at a restaurant near the club. Do you think you could get me near there? I don't mind to walk."

While all this conversation and texting is going on, Joe, a longtime Newport resident, is channeling his inner cab driver, trying to avoid the traffic clogging the post-Festival streets.

Matt has his GPS working on his phone, saying, "I think you can go down this street . . ."

"We don't want to go down that street. That's going to be a nightmare," instead banging a hard left and racing down a narrow Newport alley.

It was a little bit of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride for a few minutes, but after another alley (so thin that we were up on the curb for a moment), and a cut through a parking lot, we suddenly popped out right next to the restaurant.

I told Matt that I looked forward to seeing him play later and he thanked us kindly for the ride.

Joe then dropped me off at Newport Blues where I regaled Jess and Julie and Ryan and Jason Spooner (where did he come from?!) and anyone else I knew, with my tale of riding with M Ward.

Meanwhile, M Ward was somewhere with his manager in a Newport restaurant, no doubt not talking about his ride, as it was just another ride in another town after another show as part of a life on the road.


Hear the song on Youtube.

She & Him “In The Sun”

The bargain bin is littered with albums by actors who wanted a career as a pop/rock/country star. For whatever reason, we, the fickle public, often don’t want our movie stars to be good at singing, too. Or even average at singing.

It’s kind of ridiculous to somehow only allow someone to be good at one thing. I mean, movie actors so often start off in theatre, where they succeed in musicals. So yeah, they’d have to be pretty fine singers AND actors.

But it’s pretty rare that someone known as a solid actor, gets the kudos from critics as a singer, too.

The good news is, that when it DOES happen, it opens the door for a few things. Check out the video below. Who, of She & Him, is carrying this piece?

Musicians aren’t actors. We shouldn’t ask them to be. So M Ward does a very musician-ly non-acting acting job in his role as “Him.”

But “She” oh, “She,” who sings beautifully, gets to share her other talent---which is to be utterly charming on-screen, singing, dancing and acting.

So let a few through. Zooey Deschanel can’t be the only very cool singer, who is first a very cool actor. It makes for better videos.



Check out samples of 11 actors who made albums, including Leonard Nimoy, Minnie Driver and Robert Downey Jr. Some fare better than others.