It’s my pleasure to present the second song in this new experiment in recording and releasing music here on the newsletter. Each month in 2025 I will be recording a new song to my 4-track tape recorder, pairing it with an original paper collage, and then sharing it it exclusively with all of you. And as always, the songs will be available to download for free (and share!) from the media player above.
I hope this practice will be a way to recenter my experience sharing music online, a way to shift my centre of gravity from those more mediated and contingent forms of online media to something that is delivered right to your inbox.
Today’s song, “My Two Hands,” is the first one I shared with our inaugural and ongoing cohort in the City Kid Song Circle. The experience was so edifying and inspiring. Sharing works-in-progress in a group setting is a new adventure for me but one that has proven to be very worth while. We use two questions to guide the feedback we offer to one another: 1) What is working in this song? 2) What in the song could go further?
I love these questions for generating creative stimuli because they assume two crucially important points: each song is already a minor miracle insofar as it exists at all, and for a song, to exist is a good thing. What we are doing together is attending to a song’s emergence into its own full flourishing. Each person both sees something of the song’s special existence and sees how that existence might continue to appear.
After our meeting in January, I took home two precious bits of insight about “My Two Hands.” One participant suggested that the concluding moment of the song might be an opportunity to return retrospectively to some of the previous lyrics. Another participant noted that finding some dissonance in the song’s arrangement might complement the song’s otherwise pleading melodies. This second insight inspired the song’s bass line, which in the introduction and interludes rides the root note adding a tasty 7th whenever the acoustic guitar slides up to the 2 chord.
Playing Ping-Pong on the 4-track
Recording this song involved a big step forward for me in my journey with my 4-track tape recorder. You might have noticed that this song features a lot more than 4 elements working together—there is an acoustic guitar, main vocals, back-up vocals, electric guitar, bass, drums, shaker, and a fuzzy organ sound. The secret to fitting all this onto just four tracks is the “ping-pong” method in which instruments are recorded separately and then bounced down to a single track, opening up the original tracks for new sounds.
To make the ping-pong method work, I decided to let the old laptop play a larger role. During the bounce down step, I sent the tracks through my laptop to apply some compression and EQ together with a light reverb on all of the elements together. This step is meant to unify the sounds and “glue” them together. I’m pretty impressed with the results!
Lyrics
The song explores a personal theme through a series of impressionistic images. It’s a kind of song I love to write. Rather than beginning from a more definite idea (as, for example, in last month’s song, “More”), I start with a musical texture and then gather words, phrases, vowel sounds, and syllables that for some reason just feel right together. And step by step, the soul of the song starts to reveal itself. For me right now, this song is about the difference between my own limited perspective, and the provident perspective that includes mine in itself.
It’s always the little things
pulling me under.
The feeling or impression of a sound
tears me asunder.
But here I am,
my two hands
pull and they wrench
on my own man.
My two hands.It’s always the simple things
holding me softly,
the presence, then the absence, of the light,
the rhythms in all things.
But here I am,
as I stand
on feet ever circling
this same land.
Here I stand.Just when I’m sure that I know,
I know where I am,
I find I’m knee deep in the images
that made up my home town.
And just when I think this whole thing
was poorly began,
I find I’m caught up past the visions to a face
where I’m hidden and home bound.It’s always the little things
tracing the through line.
The cool touch of water in the night
fills up my whole mind.
And here I am,
and all my plans
sleep in that sweet honeyed moment.
All my plans.
My two hands.
Here I stand.
Here I am.
Updates
Mark your calendars: On Thursday, April 3, The City Kid Song Circle will host its concert showcase at the Bus Stop Theatre here in Halifax. Stay tuned for more details!
Three of my poems have recently been published in The South Shore Review, an online literary journal based out of Shelburne, Nova Scotia. The editor was kind enough to feature them on the home page. (The first poem arises from the months and months I spent with pagan greco-roman polytheism during my Master’s program. I wrote the second on a trip to Blarney Castle in Cork, Ireland. The third is a love poem which I hope speaks for itself.)
The New Canadiana: If you missed it, last week I posted a lovely interview with the talented local song writer, Rachel Kimmelman. A highlight of our conversation for me was her reflection on the ways that songwriting is like a haunting.
Day Paint: For months now, my brother-in-law has been sharing without commentary or preamble, one painting a day (or so). You can subscribe to his newsletter here. When I receive the emails I often mistake them for just another piece of digital communication. Upon opening, more than once, my life has been changed. A favourite so far:
Get connected
🪕 Listen to my new songs, “Water in my Mind” and “The Grey Line.”
✉️ Send me an email.
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