It is altogether possible that I spend too much time contemplating my belief system without any real catalyst for naval gazing. It’s Tuesday. Do I posess free will? Congress is in recess. What happens after I’m dead? Those flowers are pretty. Do we have souls? Christmas, as you might imagine, exasperates this preexisting condition.
Today, I’m driving home from that hillbilly pit of Chinese manufactured Hell known as Wal-Mart, explaining to an eight year old why religiosity is bad for business, when I am confronted by a deep philosophical conundrum:
Did I buy enough?
I mean, what if I bought more for the boy than I did for his sister? I would have to go home and count. So, I counted. Same number of gifts for both kids, but his presents have more presence. Her gifts are dwarfed by his. I need more! I mean, she needs more! THEY need more!
Inevitably, I think of Charlie Brown in moments like this, the poor boy curmudgeoned by rampant commercialism, but the commercial aspect is only a piece of the problem I’m having. I want my family to be happy on Christmas day, and I don’t want it to be material, but the material is intrinsic, isn’t it? Without a belief in the birth of Jesus Christ, am I left with anything but the equally fictitious annual arrival of Santa Claus?
Let’s do the math. First, let’s boil Christmas down to the essential and recognize it for the simple winter solstice celebration that it is. That’s Christmas without Christ, just like Hanukkah or Saturnalia. Second, let us remove the materialism, the herd mentality, that quest to trample the weak when they stand between us and what’s on our list or on sale. What are we left with? The way I see it, if I’ve done my math correctly, is a celebration with our family and our friends.
We celebrate the solstice because the days will now be longer. We celebrate because the snow and the frost have numbered days. We celebrate because the spring will wake up and bloom in the months to come and breed new life amongst the skeletal trees of grey winter. We will plant seeds and provide for our families, the same as years previous. This is reason to celebrate.
This is reason enough to contemplate beliefs.
Christmas may be just another day with the weight of cultural expectation heavily added, but I say, “Use it.” Use it to explore what the holiday may have wrapped up for you, be it uncanny or be it practical. The examined life is a gift in itself.
My girlfriend’s six year old is a sweet little boy. He’s thoughtful, he’s intelligent, he’s loving. Sometimes he hits his sister. He knows it’s wrong, he doesn’t feel good about it, but she was being mean to him and not listening to his pleas. The frustration becomes overwhelming. He erupts. It may be messy, the violence may be reprehensible, but welcome to humanity. We’re not the logical beings you may want us to be.
When my parents were small children, black men were still being lynched in the Jim Crow south. When my grandparents were small, their own grandparents could tell first hand accounts of the Civil War. Racism is not a long ago historical artifact. Culturally, there are still open wounds. Healing takes more time than we’ve had. There are still grievances to be aired and voices to be heard. When ignored, people are going to lash out. It’s human nature. Let’s keep this in our collective hearts and minds when we discuss the news of the destructive actions being taken in Ferguson, MO.
A violent act doesn’t balance out any other violent act. Understanding might. I understand that Darren Wilson may not be an overtly racist man. He may have been afraid for his own well being in a situation that has to be lived in to be fully grasped. He may have fired his gun again and again and again at Michael Brown because in that moment, he felt he had to.
I also understand that taking the life of another human being is a crime in this country, and that whether you are a police officer or a civilian, you should stand trial to be held accountable for your actions. In a trial, both sides get to speak for themselves, unlike the one-sided grand jury that went down in Missouri recently, where no rebuttal was offered.
Who knows… A trial probably would have come to the same conclusion the grand jury did. Officer Darren Wilson would probably have been absolved of any wrong doing. Would there be rioting afterwards? Maybe. But maybe the time a trial takes would have provided some healing. Maybe folks would have felt as if their voices were being heard and at least given careful consideration.
The boy will hit his sister again. To her, I impart the importance of being respectful and actively listening. To him, I disparage the counterproductive nature of violence. When it happens, all I can do is show loving kindness to both of them. They may not be the logical beings I want them to be, but maybe if I hear them out, I can guide them on that path.
Listen, before you go any further, you should know that Tales of the Birdman is intended for mature audiences only. The views expressed within do not reflect the views of WordPress, Shiny Red Nothing, or myself. Read at your own risk and enjoy. Life’s too short to be offended.
Tales of the Birdman by Wayne Bird
II: Hotels, Drains, and Ships That Sail
4: The Birdman vs March Of The Penguins
Bruce and I broke down somewhere in Indiana, lost and drunk on Thanksgiving day afternoon. There was no help to be found, so we went sled riding. My cell phone could catch no signal, and there was no way I was getting back into Bruce’s car. I had been watching the red glow of the Brake Light on the dash as he took the country roads at sixty, cruise control set, clutching my vintage Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom lunchbox thermos (full of gin)- sometimes with both hands. You should know that Bruce has no use of his legs and drives his car using a hand-brake and hand-accelerator.
We were laughing about the movie I had bought for my parents, March Of The Penguins, and the improbability of it being good, when we realized that we were on our way to a head-on collision. Both lanes coming around the bin up ahead were occupied by cars, speeding alongside each other. Things did not go in slow motion, and I remained calm, though I knew we might have been about to die. The white car in the oppisite lane slowed and the red car in ours sped up and maneuvered around us.
There was silence before Bruce said, “They were racing.” “They were racing,” I said. “I didn’t panic, though. I just hit the brakes and stayed on course.” I noticed the thermos was at his feet, all of it’s contents emptied onto the driverside floor. “If I would’ve swerved left, we would have collided head-on and we would have wrecked with both of those cars or have gone over the hill and down into the cemetary there. If I would’ve swerved right, it would have been into the ditch- that creek. I just slowed down and stayed course. We took them head on.”
By this point, I was shaking and sweating, panic having was amazed by Bruce’s zenlike calm. “We almost died,” I said. “I almost die every day,” he deadpanned. “We need break
“Let’s stop and I’ll put some in.” “I don’t have any.” “Let’s stop at a gas station.” “Where’s a gas station?”
set in late. I fluid.”
“I don’t know where we are.” I find the map gin soaked at Bruce’s feet but know it doesn’t really matter. We had been lost for hours and were too fucked up to care. Plus, I didn’t really want to see my family anyway.
Bruce started to giggle and I couldn’t see his eyes because of the cheap wrap-around sunglasses he was wearing. I was suspicious.
“What are you thankful for, Wayne?” We are at the top of a giant hill. He began to roll down the windows and said, “It’s like a roller coaster!” and the next thing I know we’re barrelling down the hill at eighty miles an hour, Bruce laughing hysterically, gin chilling at his feet, screaming, “WHAT ARE YOU THANKFUL FOR, WAYNE?”
Seatbelts. Jaws of life. Morphine. “Tell me,” he says as we are driving up the next hill. He rolls up the
windows and cranks up the heat. “I’m thankful that your heater works and that we can stop at the church
at the top of this hill and maybe call Triple A.” “Okay,” he says, “I’m drunk anyways. Where’s the gin?” I remind him that it’s pooled at his boots as he pulls into the narrow
driveway that parrallels the church. The building is a fairly large, white, old fashioned country church, complete with steeple. At least a third of the paint is chipped, wood exposed, camoflauging the church against the backdrop of hills, snow, and dead trees. The driveway dove steeply, down and around the church to the parking lot. Bruce rode the brakes down, but they were pretty much gone and we slid right out of the parking lot and onto the hill that rolled down for about an acre where woods began. Luckily, a tree stopped us from getting more than a few feet out onto the snow covered grass.
Bruce looked at me and grabbed my arm. His glasses had fallen from his head where a smile was growing on his face, wild like his eyes. “I am invincible, and you will be whenever you are with me.”
We rode sleds that were left behind the church at the bottom of the path children had drafted into the hill, between the church and it’s driveway. The real fun would have been taking the hill that we had almost gone down in the car, but I couldn’t imagine dragging Bruce back up and didn’t want to do it alone.
“I’ll do it,” he assured me, thermos refilled. He yelled various dog names at the woods below, which were beginning to accept the sun where they bordered- shades of orange and pink cast across the horizon and it’s clouds, reflecting on the snow covered trees below. “But if I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right. If I’m going down that hill, I want wild dogs or coyotes or some shit there to greet me and claim me for Thanksgiving Dinner.”
Instead, we rode the hill alongside the church, me dragging Bruce in his red-plastic-disk-sled up the hill over and over again, telling him about what super powers I would have if I could have super powers. Bruce told me that he didn’t have time for nonsense like super powers, but then again, he did want to sleep with every girl he ever saw. I asked him if Dorothy, his social worker, the woman he has claimed to be his personal Succubus, would come to him if he wanted sex right now. He says she would, but even succubi deserve to have a Thanksgiving off.
The sun went down and after a time, I became exhausted and too drunk to drag Bruce around. He wasn’t cooperating anymore, anyways. So we went back to the car and cranked the heat. No cars drove passed us. If any had passed while we were riding sleds, we hadn’t noticed.
“I haven’t been sledding in twenty years, man,” Bruce said, long after I thought he had fallen asleep.
“It’s been a while,” I agree.
“I’m just gonna let the car run out of gas, man. There’s not much left. If no one comes by morning, you’ll have to walk back to that farm a half mile back or so.”
“Okay.”
Before we fall asleep he asks me what VD, my girlfriend, was doing for the holiday. I admit that we had broken up, and I tell him the truth about her and he is shocked.
You should know that no one could have been more shocked than me.
— –
In the morning, we were woken by a kindly preacher and an asshole tow- truck driver. The preacher didn’t seem to mind that the car smelled of gin and pot, or that we had wrecked into a tree behind his church, or that we tore up the yard riding sleds. He was just sincerely glad that we were alright. “Thank God,” Bruce says, showing me his teeth. The tow-truck had us out of the yard in minutes, and damage to both car and tree appeared minimal. Brake fluid was found in the backseat of the car, and Bruce assured me that it would be enough to get us home. I slept the whole way.
— –
Antartica looks beautiful and eery. It’s desolate and nothing should live there, but life does persist and does what it is we all do best in life: go out of our way to get some ass.
I watch the Emporer Penguin males huddle close together, sheltering their eggs from the winds in a large mass of warm bodies, snow and ice battering the group. I pull my favorite blue blanket up to my chin and am glad to be home, on my couch, and alone. Bruce and I had had White Castles and shared a forty ounce bottle of Little Kings for Thanksgiving Dinner at two in the afternoon, and that was fine by me. I knew what to expect from my family, and I knew what was bubbling under the surface and looming overhead.
Christmas.
But for now, I put it out of my mind, and watch my movie in my dark little apartment. I am alive, and I am Thankful for that.
I wonder about the filmmakers of MOTP and what they must have endured to make that movie. They battled the coldest temperatures on Earth right alongside those Penguins, and what they captured is beautiful and even moving. The landscape is unforgiving and harsh, improbable and alien. The Penguins act in unison and carry out an ancient ritual before the cameras, and I want to drink with those Frenchmen and hear their harrowing stories.
You should know that they suffered it all for the same reason the Penguins did. They wanted to score.
Of course, the world gets a beautiful film, and we all learn a little and get the thrill of watching Penguins court and mate (are they mating? I think they’re mating!), but the fact of the matter is that those filmmakers made that movie to impress chicks so that they could get laid and propogate our species. Isn’t that why we do everything we do? Instict.
I don’t know.
Mostly, I find myself wondering, if I were a Penguin, after marching seventy miles, would the one chick that was attracted to me invariably be the most fucked up Penguin I have ever met? The kind that attempts to steal an egg from another expecting couple after her own egg has been frozen? The kind that would teach me to carry the precious orb above my claws and under my warm little belly, only to abandon us after leaving with the other female Penguins to march back to the ocean for food? Will that make me fall in love with her?
The phone rings and it is Dorothy. She and Bruce will be accompanying me when I drive back to Indiana for Christmas. It doesn’t matter that they are not invited, Bruce has convinced her that I could use their support.
I could.
After we hang up, I close my eyes and dream of dragging Bruce on his red- plastic-disc-sled across the frozen tundra alongside the marching Emporor Penguins. Bruce is sipping gin from my vintage Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom lunchbox thermos and telling me about how, when we finally stop, he’s gonna have to give Dorothy a call. All of a sudden, he commands me to stop and removes his sunglasses to look me in the eyes. He shows me his teeth andsays, “When you are with me, you are invincible.”
Listen, before you go any further, you should know that Tales of the Birdman is intended for mature audiences only. The views expressed within do not reflect the views of WordPress, Shiny Red Nothing, or myself. Read at your own risk and enjoy. Life’s too short to be offended.
“Leave me alone/ is all that I say/ when I have nothing/ in me to give away/ a purple marten in her house/ she hollers at me/ why be inhuman/ why be like me/ like so many robins/ like so many doves/ like so many love birds/ with so many loves/ like the songs of the bobwhite/ without any words/ when we are inhuman/ we’re one with the birds”
— Will Oldham
“Homer no function beer well without.”
— Homer Simpson
Tales Of The Birdman by Wayne Bird
I: Keeping Our Vices Warm
1: The Birdman vs VD
The trick is to fry it in butter first. You get it kind of brown, kind of brownish-green really, then you add it to the mix and eggs and water or whatever, and then pour the batter into a well oiled cake pan. It’s just standard brownie baking from there, but allow a couple of hours for them to kick in. You’ll think that they aren’t going to work, but trust me, Bruce says they will.
I’m baking pot-brownies because my girlfriend punched me and burst a blood vessel in my right eye, which is nestled in a warm bed of swollen grey flesh. My friend Bruce told me that it would relieve the swelling, like with cataracts or something, but I think that sounds like bullshit. I’m only doing it because it will piss Vin Diesel off (Vin Diesel being my special lady friend- we’ll get to her in a bit). Besides, this is college. My junior year. And college is meant for this kind of stuff, right?
Bruce turns me on to crazy music. Let me tell you about him: Bruce is thirty-seven years old and a veteran of the first Gulf War. He is suffering from “Gulf War Syndrome,” among other afflictions I’m still not to clear on, and is confined to a wheelchair. He lied about his age when he applied to UC and somehow managed to get a dorm room. Two and a half years later and still no one seems to have noticed. I should also say that Bruce is kind of crazy. Maybe you’ve seen him about campus? He has long black hair and a shaggy beard, is a hippy, is usually in cheap black sunglasses, and is usually in an Ed Hall t- shirt- unless it is winter, when he’ll wear a thermal shirt or two under the Ed Hall t-shirt. He’s a sophomore now, but still has no major. He’s taking all sorts of classes in all sorts of subjects.
Bruce turned me on to The Moldy Peaches and I turned VD onto it. “Vin Diesel” is not really her name, but she just changed her major to drama, wants to be a director, and claims Fast And The Furious as her favorite movie. All I get is the finger and maybe a bruise on my arm (roughly the size of a big metal pentagram ring) for my honesty. I will see her through this, but it’s “Vin Diesel” until she switches majors.
I was telling you about The Moldy Peaches. They’re miles away from what I usually listen to, but I love them because they are retarded, and I knew that would endear VD to them. Bruce said they only had one good song, but they were worth checking out. They kind of remind me of The Vaselines, who Kurt Cobain suggested that everyone should check out way back in 1991 or earlier. Like The Vaselines, The Moldy Peaches are very lo-fi, fun, and a little naughty minded. Unlike the Scottish two-piece, the New York two-piece are really foul-mouthed. A little too much for me, but VD flipped over them.
I woke up one morning at seven AM with her sitting at her desk in her underwear, looking perfect and beautiful but for a large upside-down cross tattooed on her back between her shoulder blades- down her spine- all elaborate Celtic knot-work. Not that she’s an Irish Satanist or anything, she just thought it would be bitchin’, and I admit, seeing it there for the first time, it kind of was. The horizontal portion of the Celtic-knot-upside-down-cross runs the length of the small of her back and has Japanese markings in negative space across its middle. It’s as if the artist had placed tiny stencils of the characters over her skin and drafted the knot-work around them. Actually, I have no idea how it was done, nor will I ask, as I enjoy the mystery of the whole thing. The vertical plank of the cross begins at her neck’s beginning, slopes along with her spine, and ends just above her ass crack.
So, it’s seven in the morning and she’s blasting The Moldy Peaches from her Bose, singing along at the top of her lungs to a song about sucking cock for money.
I tell Bruce this story after English class while we get high in his Oldsmobile (which he drives using a hand accelerator and hand brake- contraptions I had never known to exist before Bruce). I tell him how much it pissed me off to be waked up like that and leave out the part about how much it turned me on. He is obviously aware of how much it must have turned me on. He gets a kick out of it and tells me that he never has to worry about getting laid, that he has a succubus named Dorothy.
You should know that girls at school don’t talk to Bruce. Every once in a while, some blonde and naive seventeen year old freshman girl will approach him out of pity (in the summer, his chicken bones climbing out of his cut off camo shorts- ending in flip-flops at the wheelchair’s foot rests. In July, his toe- nails were painted royal purple, and he had talked VD into painting perfect yellow smiley faces onto his big toes’ nails). He hits on these poor girls in spectacularly inappropriate ways. “Thank God for sending me a sweet young little girl like you. I haven’t made love to a woman since shrapnel took my prostate, and I have been praying to Mary and Jesus every night for you.” Oh, I forgot to say that before he said that, he had taken the hand of this innocent miss to admire her High School class ring. He stared her in the eye with sincere intensity, a hint of a smile creasing his cheeks. Mostly, word has spread, and girls make wide circles around him to keep away. That’s the way he wants it, I suppose.
But none of this is important, because Bruce has a succubus named Dorothy. He tells me she is very short, 5’3 or so, and has shoulder length black hair that is always styled differently. She consistently looks amazing. He emphasizes this with various hand motions and signals and adjectives I’ve never used and I expect are invented. Once, he wanted a redhead and Dorothy showed up as a redhead. She was like that, somehow able to know what he was going to be in the mood for when she arrived. And had she always had those freckles, those freckles like any natural redhead would have? They were slight. Perhaps they had always been there and she was a natural redhead and he had just never noticed. He was on a lot of medication after all. But, still, her pubic hair was black as an AC/DC album cover. If the question would be: how much blacker can they be? The answer would be: none. She had been visiting him ever since the army had moved him to an Ohio VA Hospital after the war.
You should know that we got really stoned while Bruce told me about his succubus in his car around the corner from Chipotle. I’m new to marijuana and never would have considered it in High School. I went to church every Sunday morning until my senior year (some time I’ll tell you about the time I taught the birds and the bees to a junior high school aged Sunday School class). Anyways, pot is new for me, and is yet another thing Bruce introduced me to. I had never talked to VD about it because it had yet to come up in our month long relationship. Neither of us have ever really even drank, but, like I said, I believe that this time to try new things. We have discussed this. She agrees. She wants to try new things too. You can imagine my surprise when she absolutely flips out upon seeing me after Bruce drops me off at her apartment.
Her parents are potheads. Her ex-boyfriend, not the one she broke up with six months ago and not the four year relationship before that where the boy broke her nose because he thought her jeans were too slutty, but the boyfriend before that. Tommy. He was a pothead and prioritized Final Fantasy video games and his bong (which he called “The Incredible Hulk”) over her. I am not open minded, but stupid, and that giant freckle/mole on my right side is probably cancer.
I’m all: fuck, honey, darlin’, I’m sorry this is fun and harmless and you should try it and you look so pretty today and how was class. And, apparently, she feels that I should be violated in a violent sort of way with a grilling utensil and now my “My Chemical Romance” CD is broken in half because she hates it and I’m an asshole.
I was so ridiculously pissed that I went directly to Bruce’s dorm room to listen to old Velvet Underground records, original first pressings you should know, and to get his recipe for pot brownies. He introduced me to Zima as well. This was not the first time I tried one, but the last time it was just one. This time it was seven. And three rum and Cokes.
So, I walk all the way back to VD’s apartment in Covington, Bruce’s Gulf War army helmet, stolen from his closet after he had passed out, strapped firmly to my chin. I make a stop at Blockbuster, a retailer known for it’s disaproval of helmets, to buy up all the Vin Diesel movies I can find and an assistant manager follows my every stumble until I check out and leave. I bust into VD’s unlocked apartment singing that Moldy Peaches song about sucking cock for money and declare that we will have a movie marathon prior to shaving her head to look Vin Diesel. With any luck, it would come back black, just like Dorothy The Sucubus’s hair.
The doctor said that her punch was not as bad as I was making it out to be, and her pentagram ring had only busted a small blood vessel and it was no big deal. Black eye and all, it should be healed up in a few days or so. Meantime, I’m packing for Thanksgiving, and calling Sally “VD” in this column to piss her off and get some revenge. Also, I am making these brownies, which I will trick her into eating.
I should tell you before closing that if you see Bruce about campus or in his dorm building, you should ask him about his sucubus, as he loves the idea of having his life published for entertainment value. Do so at your own risk, though.
Recently, there was a consumer and media backlash against the retailer Urban Outfitters. Their website had briefly promoted a Kent State garment that appeared to be blood-splattered, an apparently morbid reference to the massacre of student protesters at the university by the National Guard in 1970. The retailer feigned ignorance, saying it was a misunderstanding. The shirt was vintage and fading, they said. This was all a trick of the eye. Sure it was. They took the item down, and only one question was left behind: Who would buy such a thing, let alone wear it?
Wayne Bird would.
Wayne has always had a sense of humor all his own, with the driving idea behind it being that if it’s uncomfortable for you, it’s funny for him. This is not sadism. Wayne’s actually a sensitive, compassionate guy. He simply believes in confronting and challenging that which keeps us… In society’s neat little box. Bird questions everything, and he tries real hard to have a laugh over it, no matter how bad things get. Laughter, after all, is the best drug.
Wayne knows a thing or two about drugs.
Maybe I’m being unfair.
I met the Birdman back in 2005(?) when he was attending the University of Cincinnati and interning for the pop culture website I See Sound, which I also worked for. We had a lot in common besides our mutual passion for writing: indie rock, comic books, music, friends, and The Power of Myth. We were fast friends. I loved the guy like a brother. I’m so glad he never wrote about me.
See, Wayne wrote about his life through the lens of the pop culture that he loved, and these writings took him through a very difficult year. He wrote some of the most fucked up stories I’ve ever read. Stories that still disturb me when I think of them nearly a decade after I read them.
When I caught up with him on Facebook recently, I told him this. This elated the man, but he told me that his story was never published in completion. I See Sound had gone defunct before his last two submissions could run. He saw Tales of the Birdman as a book with a beginning, middle, and an end, but the conclusion never saw the Internet’s soft glowing light. His faithful readers were left dangling. This still bums him out.
So, I told him I would republish it here.
Listen, before you go any further, you should know that Tales of the Birdman is intended for mature audiences only. The views expressed within do not reflect the views of WordPress, Shiny Red Nothing, or myself. Read at your own risk and enjoy. Life’s too short to be offended.
Tales of the Birdman is episodic, with every three stories working together as a trilogy and all of those trilogies working torwards a grander narrative. The point here being that you don’t have to read the whole manual in order to use the machine.
You’ve been releasing albums as For Algernon (starting with Orange Watches and Lost loves, if I remember correctly) since… What? 2002? 2003?How many have there been?
2003. There are 7 for algernon albums out there.
Why isn’t this a For Algernon album? What does M. Moncrieff mean? Is this a character you wanted to play, a new personal direction, or something else?
It’s not a for algernon record because for algernon has evolved into a band with multiple personalities. We were nearly 50-60% complete on a new record at the time of the wreck and then we all sort of went through some life changing events. Deaths, births, wrecks… The album was left in limbo. As I began writing, I kept fleshing out these new songs on my own, without the bands input, and that’s not what I wanted the next algernon record to be. We all had worked too hard and too long to just skip it, move on and come back to it. The name comes from (1/2 of where for algernon came from) Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance if Being Earnest.” One of the lead characters is Monsieur Algernon Moncrieff.
The M. Moncrieff album liner notes talk about a car crash and a move to the country. What happened? Why were these such life altering events?
Driving home, a car pulled out in front of me, and as I swerved to avoid it, I lost control and hit a parked car. It was a pretty serious wreck. I cracked my sternum and broke 3 ribs, burns from the airbags, concussion and my passenger was injured severely too. The wreck still plays out in my mind, in nightmares, when I’m driving… I just keep thinking of how close I came to dying or killing someone. I blacked out after the impact to the head, so I can’t remember anything up until after I woke up, and that makes it worse. A near death experience will rattle you. It’s how you deal with it that makes or breaks you, and it broke me. After about a month or two, a series of events lead me to a move 75 minutes east of Cincinnati. The closest store is 35 minutes away. It was a huge adjustment from what I knew. It’s taught me to prioritize and the beauty of silence. Often I would go a day or two without speaking a word. Finally, I began writing as a way to heal.
Will you play shows as Monsieur Moncrieff or will For Algernon perform these songs?
I’ve been playing Moncrieff stuff when I play solo. I doubt algernon will play them. It’s not out of the picture, but it wasn’t developed for that.
It seems to me that this album is a transition into adulthood for you. Is this a correct observation? Did this happen in your life and music at the same time?
I’ve been slowly adjusting to adulthood these past few years, and I don’t think I was really comfortable with where I was at till a year after the move. I didn’t plan on these songs to be that per say, but I guess it kind of is. The first song really sums it up for me these days. I’ve had some rough times, good times, I love music, I love writing & singing about it, I may get lost in it, I love my friends but what I really love most is coming home to someone at the end of it all and I don’t care how lame that may sound. I guess that’s an “adult” thing?
All but two of your albums have been self recorded, and they all have a lo-fi vibe. This one’s no different, but it feels even more raw and performance oriented than some of your others. Was this intentional? What kind of a sound were you going for? How does this sound differ from what you would have done if this were a set of For Algernon recordings?
That’s funny you say that because I was doing a lot of lo-fi tricks, but this album was huge. The biggest undertaking I’ve done. I used various recording methods, studied different ways to capture vocals, found that it’s fun to slow things down on a reel to reel, and played more things than I ever have. I really took my time on it. Not that it sounds like a big studio record but that was intentional. I only recorded vocals when I was in the mood of the song, and I would try them drunk, sober, half asleep, with strep throat… I would record the song in different tempos and melodies and build on the one that captured the essence of the song the most. I wanted it to be a very organic but warm sounding record, and the songs to work just as well acoustic or with full instrumentation as on the record.
Compared to what the forthcoming algernon record is, it’s not even close. Jon Williams is producing it, and he is a wizard. Had this been recorded as for algernon today, it would be a very different album. I doubt the same songs would even be on it. Even if it was pre-Jon, I still would’ve had other people play parts. I guess the beauty/fault of me doing it on my own is that I hear what I want, but struggle to actually get it out, so I think you hear the struggle in the music. The guitar solo in “arrow” took me 3 painful hours to do because I doubled it on acoustic and electric and couldn’t remember the notes, and i think that comes across in the recording. Had this been for algernon, I would’ve said, “Hey, Jon. What do you think goes here?”
What bands/artists were you listening to while writing/recording “At the Lake, Just After Dark?”
Primarily, I was obsessed with Ólafur Arnalds and Max Richter, but there was a little Woodpigeon, Sparklehorse, Tom Waits, The Antlers, Ape The Ghost, Adam Green & Binki Shapiro, Lee Hazlewood, Lucinda Williams and Dean Martin
The liner notes also talk about the possibility of you abandoning making music altogether. Knowing you as I do, this sounds impossible. Why would you consider leaving your recording gear behind you? Are you still considering it?
Yeah. Music is so personal to me. It gets tougher and tougher to go out and play. You do so much work and hustling to get a show together and then two people show up and tell you to keep it down so they can hear each other talk. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter, and you’re doing this because you love it, but I can love it just as much sitting in my studio and not go through all the heartbreak of a terrible gig. But then, you get that great show and I eat all my words.
You’ve written hundreds of songs. Which is your favorite and why?
Seriously? I can’t pick one. It’s like picking your favorite child.
If you’re an avid music fan, you may know that the Cincinnati area has had a firm finger in the piano lid of rock and roll history for a long time. If you’re kind of obsessed with indie music in particular, you’ll probably name-drop the phenomenal Heartless Bastards or the fucking awful Afghan Whigs. Maybe you’re obsessed. Perhaps you own a Wussy t-shirt or know where Coltrane Motion used to eat chili. In that case, Jason Wells is probably your hero.
Believe it or not, this is the least douchey photo I could find on Jason’s Facebook page.
I met Wells ages ago. We were at an open mic, and he was pacing back and forth in a hall perpendicular to the bar, an electric guitar hanging on his back. He was a tortured soul, looking (oh-wee-oh) just like Buddy Holly. I don’t recall what broke the ice, but I taught him how to play “About A Girl” by Nirvana that night, and it wasn’t long after that that we started a band called “The Drunken Monkeys” with Rich Lewis, later of The Lewis Brothers. This was 2001. A Jason Wells solo record, called Public Diary, came along shortly after, and a parade of excellent, self-produced/released albums under the name For Algernon marched on through the years afterwards.
This album is about an escaped prisoner with a hook for a hand.
Calling For Algernon a “band” is a loose descriptor. See, the members have consisted of Wells and whoever else was able, willing, patient, and available within Wells’ notoriously ever-changing parameters. There have been a diverse troupe of talented players involved in the decade-plus existence of the group, but the thing to know here is that it was always Wells’ show, and Wells’ show was mostly an insular, obsessively crafted, recorded one. “Public Diary” was the most apt of names for his first record. All of the assemblies of recordings to come have been public diaries as well, with each being a little better than the last. The hook was always Wells’ impeccable pop craft, his ability to casually shake off a melody that lodged itself in the crevice where your brain meets your heart, where we take comfort in the companionship of shared human suffering. It was only relatively recently that Wells seemed to have settled on, more or less, a live band line up. Like many past incarnations, they were a dynamic emotional force. Unlike the past line-ups, this one was pretty tight.
Every one of these guys has a third nipple.
Then Wells crashed his car. Again. Then he moved. Again (this time to “the country”). The charismatic Mr. Wells found himself at the elbow of his personal trajectory.
Enter M. Moncrieff, Wells’ first album under this alternative moniker. “Near the Lake, Just After Dark,” continues the tradition established with the For Algernon code name. The songs are self-recorded, lo-fi ditties that sit you on the floor next to Wells’ production desk while he pours his heart out to you with a cheap but drinkable bottle of scotch. The striking difference here; the element that sets it apart from his previous work, is the contentment it expresses. My favorite track is the opener, “An Ounce Of Honey,” an ode to coming home to the one you love and forming lasting, resentment free bonds.
This is not the sad bastard output of a youthful artist. “Near the Lake” finds Wells settling into himself as a confident adult, somewhat at ease, with the dramatic hinge of the album being the struggle to accept the transformation. The track “Hard Heart,” easily the album’s most accessible and catchy tune, is a great example of this evolution. The titular hard heart of this song has hurt our narrator, but instead of pacing the dark halls of his broken heart, Wells stands proud to say that he’s had enough of her shit. A similar sentiment is given in the scathing admonishment called “Board Games,” where some poor fool is eviscerated in a fashion that’d make Bob Dylan proud.This newfound confidence could, perhaps, be a fitting enough reason to change one’s name.
It’s difficult for me to place M. Moncrieff musically. I’ve been listening to For Algernon for so long that it is it’s own beast to me. Upon the first listen, it sounds like a For Algernon album. Cool, but whatever, man. Then I listen again… And again… You may site Elliot Smith as an influence, as folks often might, if you’d please. Maybe Grandaddy. I would, however, put this record in the hall of heroes with the Velvet Underground circa Loaded, early Belle and Sebastian, and Lou Barlow with dry eyes. It doesn’t sound like those bands exactly, but they’d all get along fine at the dinner party as long as that scotch was drinkable enough.
The production value is best described as homemade. Homemade with a weary passion, a trait that really stands out the most in the sleepy vocals of “4 Seasons,” one of those tracks that exists like a contented sigh from an alright dude with a less than alright half-full bottle of…
…Well, the scotch is probably gone by now, but I bet there’s some Jameson around here somewhere. There’s a pot of grandpa’s chili on the stove too. Help yourself. Cheers. Here’s to history.
Shiny Red Nothing 