Erin McKeown's Fax of Life
Erin McKeown’s Fax of Life
all you need is love
2
0:00
-10:10

all you need is love

it's 1990 again
2

today’s audio comes from a time machine. it is 1990, and you are listening to my 12 year old self, just a few months into playing guitar, singing the beatles’ standard, “all you need is love”, complete with a little scouse accent on “ALL”, pronouncing it like “ULL”. i remember very clearly recording this, and i think it’s a minor miracle that it survives in any form, even this wobbly, hard to hear version.

when i hear it now, i am struck by the simplicity and feeling of my playing and singing. i had just learned all those chords, and you can hear me struggle a bit to change them at the right time. i certainly missed a few and made up my own progression at moments. if i were learning the song now, i’d probably suggest putting it in a different key so that my voice rang out more, but that would have been way beyond my ken at 12.

at age 12, i had just gotten into the beatles and had started playing their songs at my weekly piano lessons, jettisoning the classical exercises and repertoire i had played since i was four. my piano teacher was all in with this change. i think she could see that to keep me interested, we had to go where my passions lay. so i took my piano music for “all you need is love”, deciphered the little guitar diagrams above each measure, and stumbled my way through one of my favorite songs. i am surprised i didn’t try to sing the background parts or the famous trombone answers.

starting in fourth grade when my mother went back to work, i came home from school to an empty house. for a few years, i obsessively watched the soap opera “santa barbara” on these solitary afternoons. but once i started playing guitar in the summer between fifth and sixth grade, i would use this precious alone time to practice without fear of being heard. i even started to record myself and listen back on my red sanyo boombox.

i experimented with recording in different parts of my house. did it sound better if i recorded in my closet, in the hallway, in the basement? i had heard showers sounded great, so one afternoon i tried that, and that’s where this recording came from.

i went into my parents’ bathroom, emptied and dried off the shampoo rack, and balanced my boombox on its wire shelf. it turned out to be the perfect height to capture both my voice and guitar. i remember the cool, dark half light of the late afternoon. i couldn’t turn the overhead light on because it was connected to a fan and the noise would spoil the recording. i remember feeling so safe and free in the shower stall in the empty house. i could sing and play and no one would know. time was meaningless, passing by in a blur. i was completely focused and completely fulfilled. 

i would record and listen back over and over again, and eventually over the course of a few weeks, i got good versions of six songs including the bette midler hit “the rose”, the folk standards “one tin soldier” and “stewball”, the beatles’s “a day in the life” and “all you need is love”, john lennon’s “imagine” and “give peace a chance”, all songs i learned at summer camp. plus i sang the camp theme song “thinking of tomorrow”.  you can see where my interests lay.

i used a xerox machine (somewhere!) and made cover art, which i watercolored over then wrote liner notes on top of with a typewriter and white ink correction sheets. here was my first album! i gave it to my dad for christmas. i remember being very excited about this, and i think he loved it too. for years the cassette lived with the other cassettes (xanadu! rip olivia newton john) in the velvet lined drawers of our family stereo cabinet. at some point in high school or college, i grabbed the cassette and stashed it in my burgeoning archive.

i was thinking about this recording recently, and wanted to share it with you, because i have really been enjoying making this podcast essay thing in a way that recalls my earliest music experiences. starting with my red boombox in my parents’ shower, i have continued to record at home. always simply - with a cassette four track, then a digital one, now with a laptop and simple interface - but always to my endless delight.

but listening again to this artifact of my younger self, i also think, “how naive”. back then i really did believe that “all you need is love'“. for me that was love of my cats, love of being outside, love of this new relationship in my life: the guitar. i loved my family. i loved the earth. subsequent events and life experiences have given me doubt in this idea. you can love someone and still hurt them. you can be loved and also suffer enormous pain. love does not fix racial inequality - structural changes to laws and policy do. love does not heal trauma - mental health professionals can guide you to a better life. love does not stop the glaciers melting or russia from invading ukraine. love doesn’t feed a family or pay the rent.

but the recording remains, and today i am choosing to focus on the delight of that moment. i am my happiest when i write a new song then make the first demo of it. i love being able to imagine and then play all the different parts of the music - the drums, the keyboards, the guitars, the bass. one of my favorite things is singing backup for myself. creating an arrangement with these simple elements gives me the similar satisfaction of arranging 4 flowers in a vase. the message is there at its clearest and cleanest and most essential. there’s something wonderful i am able to capture in those first moments with a creation that seems to slowly erode the longer the song gets exposed to the world.

it has made me so happy to share these little proto-songs with a wider world via this newsletter. it’s not that i dislike more complete or polished recordings or collaborating with other talented artists. i love that too. but the private discovery and self-contained joy of exploring my own creativity and voice before i invite others in, remains a real source of solace for me. i’ve often wondered over the years, if i’d be happier just making these little gems, sharing them, and leaving it at that. no tours to leave me in debt, no albums to disappoint fans or critics. the calculus is simple: low stakes, high reward.

from the notes i’ve gotten from people, it seems y’all are enjoying this project too, so let’s keep going. if you haven’t tried listening yet, please do. you can add this essay pod to whatever podcast app you use already, and it will just show up in your feed. click the link next to the audio above to get started.

and in case you’re behind from summer business, maybe take a moment to catch up. recent episodes have included essays on serena williams, being small and having a large dog, getting stuck and unstuck with the seasons, plus brand new songs you cant hear anywhere else, in the versions that make me happiest: my 45 year old self recalling the delight of my 12 year old self and sharing it with you.

x erin

ps - your requisite #carlcontent

have you ever held a head so big? or so soft?

pps - i had the coolest gig ever this weekend. me and 35 rad music lovers hiked to the jewell hill overlook for a concert.

¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS!

  • i know it’s problematic, but i kind of loved the queen. i am sad she is gone. but beyond that, man o man do i love a historic funeral. the bbc has been having rolling coverage that is much better than any american network. tune in and weep, not for the queen, but for whatever you have been holding inside and need to release.

  • i love meghan markle.

  • leslie jones on the G.O.A.T. serena. if you missed it, i wrote about her too, last episode.

  • people are always telling me, “hey you look like someone i know”. they might not be wrong.

  • because i am who i am, i happened to have recently read this biography of george V (QEII’s grandfather) and this biography of edward VII (QEII’s great-grandfather). dig in!

  • something about the end of august is always melancholy for me. to cheer myself up, i usually reach for mac miller’s classic “swimming”.


UPCOMING SHOWS


Oct 30 - Cambridge MA
Atwood’s
TICKETS

***
Nov 10 - 19 - Wilkes-Barre PA
Miss You Like Hell at King’s College
MORE INFO

Nov 17 - 21 - Richmond VA
Miss You Like Hell at University of Richmond
MORE INFO


LOOKING AHEAD TO 2023


Jan 19 - Feb 19 - San Jose CA
Miss You Like Hell at City Lights
MORE INFO

Oct 14 - Nov 11 - Seattle WA
Miss You Like Hell at Strawberry Theatre
MORE INFO


If you have further questions or concerns about COVID protocols, please contact the venues directly.

Reminder, Erin does not appear in productions of Miss You Like Hell


2 Comments
Erin McKeown's Fax of Life
Erin McKeown’s Fax of Life
New songs and personal essays from the unique mind of musician, writer, and producer Erin McKeown.
Listen on
Substack App
RSS Feed
Recent Episodes