Getting Back Into Getting Back Into Life

The Silver Jews have a new LP coming out in a few weeks and I am so excited my feet hurt. Drag City has a song from it up on their site and it is indeed great. Many people have heard it and are unable to tell me how good it is because they are still weeping and silent in the presence of the album's greatness.

When Matt and I were young, we had a band and used to play "New Orleans" (from Starlite Walker). I remember buying the cassette in Cut Corner in Lexington, Kentucky, and driving around Man O' War painfully early, the next morning (I had to take Johnathan to the airport) and listening to it for the first time. It was Fall, cold, grey, and I rolled down the windows after I dropped him off for a freeze out. I was perfect. (Not a typo.)

I bought American Water from Ear X-tacy in Louisville and listened to it on the front porch of our house on Hubbards Lane, alone, with a warm beer in the October air. Leaves stopped falling, clouds stopped dissipating and trains stopped leaving town (around this time there was a serial killer on the loose, following the train tracks up from Nashville and they went right by our house. I just knew he would kill me.)

Ryan sold me my copy of Bright Flight at CD Alley. "It's great," he told me. "I knew it would be." It didn't catch me right away, but in the last year I have grown enough to appreciate it. Some time if you don't like an album right away it isn't because the singer didn't do his job--it's because you aren't doing yours.

David Berman is not only my dad, but he keeps giving birth to me. Why?

I have nothing to add to the dialogue now going on with regard to the new album. Go to Dust Congress, Soi Disantra, or SJBB (if you like to curse) to engage. Me, I am just waiting.