they are risen
should we resurrect old songs?
good sunday to you!
i know i don't usually send my newsletters on a sunday. i’ll probably further confuse the algorithms in your inbox with this. already, despite $85/mo to mailchimp, only a mere 20% of my actual list actually even sees what i send. so, more than likely, this email will go to spam. but don't we all, eventually? a question for the ages.
before i go any further, for the skimmers in the bunch, next month there will be news of live shows and new music. i promise you, it's all in the pipeline and very exciting in a thoroughly vaccinated way.
to continue:
i woke up this morning thinking about an old song. on easter sunday in 1993, when i was 15, i had a very typical teenage conversation with a family member. no need to recall details, i told this story onstage for years and don’t need to tell it again. but it had to do with the future, what i was going to do with my life, the best way to go about that, the hurdles i might face. the tone was a little "tough love", it was vaguely unsupportive, i am sure it was riven by both of our fears.
in my teenage angst, i went to the piano and a song poured out. that had never happened to me before. of whole cloth, a song came right out! about my feelings of betrayal and alienation on this supposedly most joyous of days. another family member was in the basement watching TV and the strains of the traditional easter sunday movie, charleton heston’s ten commandments, wafted upstairs while i was writing and certainly osmosed themselves into the song.
it was, if not the first “real” song i wrote, absolutely the best for quite a few years. i routinely trotted out the story in an aggrieved manner. i played the song all the time, even after it didn't make the cut on my first album. it landed on some other recordings i made, then i let it fade.
this morning i thought i would play it again. maybe i just couldn't resist a nice social media peg: my old song about easter sunday… on easter sunday! NEATO = LIKES & VIEWS!
5 seconds into playing the song this morning, i regretted it. it felt like putting on the wrong clothes. the lyrics felt overwrought and maudlin to me, the juice was decidedly gone. and i thought, without irony, THANK GOD. i don't ever have to feel like i felt as a 15 year old on that easter sunday again. THANK GOD time moves on, feelings change, we grow and grow older. sometimes songs stay fresh because they grow with us, other times we need to keep singing them to remind us of important things, but sometimes it’s totally fine to put a song in the tomb, roll the stone in front, and let it stay there.
if you do want to hear me play “softly moses” this morning (plus some other stuff you wont hear again) you can right here. if you want to hear another of my old songs that also uses easter sunday imagery and has aged better (at least to my ears) you can listen to me, dave chalfant & katryna nields play “how to open my heart in 4 easy steps” from the recent distillation 20th anniversary special.
FYI, if you took any note of the subject line of this newsletter, i’m not trying to declare anything re: my pronouns. they still trouble me, but “she/her” and maybe “they/them” still work. i dont know! honestly, i wish everyone’s pronouns were just “yes/please” and “no/thank you” depending on the situation.
also, i know newsletters are all the rage at this moment. just like podcasts, everyone is starting one. i want to gently remind the world that i, like most independent songwriters, have had a monthly newsletter for *over 20 years*. some of you have been there all the way. i salute you! but if you know someone who might suddenly be more receptive to these emails because they think thoughtful, informative newsletters are new, please do share this one with them. this link makes it easy.
i hope you have taken or will take a nap today, then rise again, refreshed.
x erin
¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS
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