to die for

will i or won't i?

Oct 23, 2024

Transcript

todays audio is my song “pretty little cemetery” from my 2016 EP MIRRORS BREAK BACK. i wrote the song in an afternoon at my friend emily’s house. i had come back a few days early from a months-long tour, and the folks that had been living in my place weren’t out yet. as i stayed at emily’s and waited for my house to be available, i picked up that week’s game prompt, and this is what came out.

as it happens, this song garnered one of the best things anyone has ever written about my music. the website Bright Young Things said of “pretty little cemetery”:

“It’s fun, it’s flirty, it’s morbid, but it also bangs.”

i swear, you could write that on my tombstone, and i would feel satisfied.

speaking of the game, our game architect, master planner, deus ex machina , matt the electrician just left my house. we walked carl, then had lunch at my local dinette. matt is camped out in western mass for a few days between gigs, having what i call “limbo” days, something i miss a lot from my years of touring.

for various reasons, you can’t play a gig every night - you need rest; getting to the good gigs requires travel days; shows on mondays and tuesday are notoriously hard to sell - so often on the road i would end up with days where it made the most sense to just stay put in a town. you might stay with a friend, but even better you might have the good fortune to stay in a hotel. boy, do i love hotels. blank spaces, spaces without personal responsibilities or social needs, a place to sleep, a space to think and imagine and recover.

i relished my limbo days in a hotel in some city or other. i’ve had memorable ones in places as disparate as roanoke VA, madison WI, toronto, or glasgow. on those days i would find a canal path or a rail trail, borrow a bike or go for a long run, pick out a theater performance that looked interesting, take a chance on a new experience. or i would stay in the hotel room all day, eating unhealthy food and laying very still. i spent my 44th birthday in a hotel room in fairfax virginia watching football and eating an entire reese’s ice cream cake. it was one of my favorite birthdays ever.

i got a lot of nice feedback on the last episode, heralding libra season and written in a looser style and tone than i usually do. it’s funny, what i think of as unhinged, still makes sense and appeals. i will try to take that into consideration as Fax of Life continues. speaking of, i decided awhile ago that i will do this pod / newsletter fusion for 5 years and then move on. all things have a natural life span. we’re about to wrap up the third year of this project, and i reserve the right to let the Fax continue to evolve and become weirder, and then to decide when the evolving is done.

evolve or die, as the biologists say.

heyo! lots of news to share this month!

first, the anti-holiday season approaches, and you all are the first to hear these glad tidings: on november 1, i will be releasing “F*CK U TOO” a companion EP to my 2011 anti-holiday album “F*CK THAT!”. there will be 5 brand new songs for this upcoming season, plus a revised second edition of the hymnal so you can learn to play the anti-holiday songs yourself.

look out as well for our 4 big anti-holiday shows this december, now all on sale: dec 3 in chicago, dec 7 in northampton MA, dec 19 in boston, and dec 21 in brooklyn. i’m still looking for cranky carolers in all 4 locations, so drop me a line erin@erinmckeown.com if you’d like to join me onstage for some anti-holiday hijinx.

next, i’m so proud to have contributed a song to the new compilation “songs for sex” which benefits the national women’s health network. besides my track, a live version of “today/sex”, the album includes unreleased music from jason isbell, andrew bird, thao, my brightest diamond, tift merritt, and more.

and finally, in may of 2023 i flew to minneapolis and then drove 4 hours north to ely, minnesota at the head of the boundary waters, to join the cast of my dear friend tessa blake’s feature film. i play myself in a sweet small town 4th of july celebration, and even got to do a little musical improv with actor Chris Jackson, he of HAMILTON fame. in another part of the film, a character sings my song “slung-lo” on the ukelele. the final film is a beautiful story of a young man in a small town grappling with an unexpected tragedy. it recently premiered at the Twin Cities Film Fest and the Woodstock Film Festival. stay tuned for where you can watch it too.

whew! that’s it for this episode’s news. as always, thanks for listening and please consider upgrading your subscription, telling a friend, or rating, reviewing or subscribing on your audio app!

speaking of evolving or dying, we arrive at this episode’s topic, appropriate for spooky season. a few weeks ago i made an appointment with a lawyer to make my will. i’m now 47, and i suppose this is the sort of thing that is part of being this age, the time of life when it starts to become apparent that you will be the recipient or executor of a will and also need to make a plan of your own.

however responsible this appointment was, however adult-like, i’m not gonna lie, it was still very very weird. rarely have i been presented with so many decisions to make, in such a short time.

while i do imagine carl’s death all the time, in hopes of preparing myself for the inevitable devastation (look, i know that’s naive but i still do it), i don’t think about my death that often. or at least probably not more often than someone assigned female and highly independent does when they travel alone across the world, often at night, in strange places. ok never mind, i think about my death all the time. will it be this airplane ride that’s my last? what about that late night drive? or the latest empty parking garage at 2am? not to mention that i live in a very old house that could catch on fire in the night from old wiring. or be swept away by any number of the century floods we now get multiple times a summer.

i guess what i realized in this meeting with the lawyer, was that while i imagine many many scenarios that would result in my demise, i never think about what would happen after in any practical way. yes, i do imagine everyone being devastated at the loss of such a genius as i, but when the lawyer asked if i wanted to be cremated or not, i was brought up short.

“uh, i guess cremated?”

“excellent,” the lawyer said. “and where do want your ashes put or spread? “

wait, i thought being cremated meant you don’t have to think about any of that? but then i guess you do. did i want a grave marker? where? what would it say? so many possibilities.

of course, the overarching question of all this: who is this for? it’s not for me, that’s for sure. i will be dead. and i am not romantic about post-death. i don’t believe i will be around for haunting or guardian-angel-ship. so why do i have to make this decision? the lawyer reminded me of the many scenarios where folks didn’t make these choices clear and their grieving loved ones were left in a state of distress and confusion. who wants to willingly put people through that? time to make some decisions!

not having a spouse or children and not owning a home in some ways made all the decisions simpler. but also… again…. strange! marriage and children are such shortcuts from hard decisions. if you don’t have those easy answers, the questions are harder.

of course a part of me has these conversations and thinks about my career and life as public artist. of course i want to have a grave like jimi hendrix or karl marx, a place of pilgrimage and importance. i’d be lying if i didn’t admit that i hold out the hope that someday i’ll be more famous and my contributions more recognized than they are now. stranger things have happened post-humously to artists. especially women artists, whose contributions are rarely recognized in their lifetimes. so how do i plan for that? especially when i have 100s of songs and recordings that might continue to be performed or with the infinite pool of the internet, discovered at any time?

the grave of karl marx, in london’s highgate cemetery

the lawyer did not blink at these musings of mine. i imagine that they have heard some pretty unusual stuff in these conversations. so someone sitting here wondering if the smithsonian should get their green gretsch did not ruffle their composure.

and yet, this sort of thinking starts a slippery slope for me. i need to be satisfied with where i am, in the moment, today. i need to write the will for who i am in 2024 and make sure that’s all clear and taken care of if i died today, most likely by eating the expired potato salad in my fridge.

i have decided that whatever assets i do have at my death, will benefit a range of non-profits that i have had long, personal relationships with. these are not activist-type choices, these are choices that reflect gratitude for places that helped me become a better person or offered home-like spaces for me as a young person. it was actually a delight to prioritize their needs in my planning.

and that made me start to get the point of this will-stuff in the first place. it’s a chance to say “thank you”. it’s an opportunity to give a gift to places and people that supported you.

i will still imagine a world where 100 years from now someone will discover that there once was a musician named erin mckey-on, mack-own, mackay, erin fucking mckeown who made music that was fun, flirty, morbid and banged. and i will still imagine a world where people make the winding trek through the woods of western mass to find a small stone with the letter “e” on it, next to the grave of “carl richard marx”, philosopher ballad king. and i will imagine a world where my song legacy will contribute quietly to a summer camp and a few arts non-profits.

what a pretty little cemetery!

x erin

¡ME GUSTA! : SOME OF MY FAVORITE THINGS!

it’s NFL SZN. ever wonder how they choose the music for commercial breaks?
one of the best episodes ever of one of the best podcasts ever.
my dear old pal jess klein has a podcast now, and she recently had on my dear new pal
Badass Cross Stitch
as a guest. listen in and get inspired.
the best site to send help for the asheville NC region, where i have alot of friends, have played alot of shows, and dearly love.
an art project + experience that attempts to solve height disparity at parties. i for one, think tall people should have to be in a pit, rather than me wear stilts.
WHAT AN HONOR to have drag king Luke.N.Good perform my song “You Sailor”.
i love all things history, british, mid-century, so of course i ate up this wonderful biography of the astounding pamela harriman.
speaking of, here’s a new doc about the relationship between QEII and her horse trainer.
you never knew curling could be SO DRAMATIC!! 🥌🧹
this made me think twice about having a song of mine become the theme song for a candidate.
politicians and their tattoos.