Tonight 8/22/25 Beach Haus Brewery in Belmar, NJ 7:00-10:00 (Acoustic Duo)
Sunday 8/24/25 Special ticketed event at Screamin Hill Brewery in Cream Ridge, NJ 5:00-8:00 (Acoustic Duo)
Happy Friday!
Sometimes songwriting goes like this:
You sit in a space and repeat the same riff over and over again on your guitar. If any living person is in earshot they are very annoyed. Hell, you might even be annoying the dog. But you are in a trance, mesmerized by this amazing riff coming out of your imagination, birthed into this world by you and yourself.
Next you start mumbling some words. A melody. The words don’t mean anything but the vowels and consonants feel right. You start to write things down in your notebook. They don’t make any sense but you go with it.
Time to record a little demo so you don’t forget it all tomorrow. You realize the words that were just place makers still really don’t make any sense. So you spend some time trying to decide what you wanted to say and that’s when it all falls apart.
My solution (and I’m not the only one to do this—it’s actually very common with songwriters and singers)? I mumble words. I make a mumble track.
This is exactly how things went for me yesterday and today with this new song. I was having a good old time playing the riff. I decided to make the choruses a girl’s name (temporarily?). I have a list of names I keep—a recent one was “Emmeline”. When I sang it, it sounded more like “Emily”…so I switched to Annalene. Then when I was playing it back I thought “Abilene” sounded better. Maybe this song could be about a place? In Kansas? I’ll figure it out later.
As much as I enjoy lyrics and writing lyrics I’m often awfully unaware of the correct words to songs. For example, back in the Dipsomaniacs days we used to cover “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana—I memorized the vocals and really had no idea what the words were. I was just making phonetic sounds, still the anger, the melody, the strangeness of it all appealed to me greatly. Plus I just loved singing “a mosquito…my libido…yeah!”
So have a listen to this song—I’m letting you in the building while it’s still under construction, not totally a safe space but maybe interesting to those who like to look under the hood (I sure am mixing my metaphors here!).
Thanks for reading and listening. Enjoy your weekend! - Mick
UPCOMING SHOWS
Fri. 8/22, Beach Haus Brewery, Belmar, NJ, 7:00 (duo)
Sunday 8/24, Screamin Hill special event, Cream Ridge, NJ (duo). More info here. 5:00-8:00
Sat. 9/6, AmericanaRama Music Festival at River Studios in Bordentown, NJ, more info soon (full band)
Fri. 9/12, HOB Tavern, Bordentown, NJ, 8:00 (full band)
Sat. 9/13, Spellbound Brewing Co., Mt. Holly, NJ, 7:00 (full band)
Our full schedule of upcoming shows is here.
