Keepin' me alive

Throughout the past fifteen or so years of my life, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers have consistently enthralled and inspired me and my own creative endeavors. Even before knowing much of the band's own history, Petty always came across to me as the genuine article. For all the band's success and MTV exposure, he never seemed to me a guy who would compromise his artistic vision or take any shit from anyone. When Miranda and I became friends and started dating several years ago, the music of Petty and the Heartbreakers often played on the car stereo and always showed up multiple times on mix tapes. The summer after we started dating, we celebrated my birthday under the stars at Deer Creek Music Center enjoying Petty and company along with the incomparable Lucinda Williams.

This Christmas, santa brought us a copy of the new Peter Bogdanovich film, Runnin' Down a Dream, which I've been dying to see since its release back in October. Over two nights, Miranda and I sat down and watched this detailed four hour film tracing the inception and the history of Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Since finishing the film, I've been revisiting all of the Petty albums which we have collected in our home with an invigorated and deepened admiration for the man and his music. The song Miranda and I have listened to over and over and over again can be found as a lost track in the 1995 box set Playback. The song is featured during a studio take in one of my favorite parts of the Bogdanovich film. The title of the song is "Keeping Me Alive" and was actually cut from the Long After Dark sessions. In the film, Petty admits that fighting producer Jimmy Iovine for the addition of this track and a few other acoustic based songs would have made the album stronger, to which Iovine replies "Yeah, after the third album you should probably shoot your producer." Maybe this song was just too incredible to be included on an album. It stands on its own as proof of Tom Petty as one of the truly great american songwriters.

Ghosts of christmas presence

As has become the custom over the past five years, the mustard room has produced yet another holiday offering as a gift to all those who have chosen to join those associated or "in cahoots" with this particular room. This year of 2007 has not necessarily been one of which we look back on with particular fondness. It's been a year of great celebration and devastating heartbreak for us. Yet, in four short weeks, I was struck with the ridiculous idea of simultaneously writing and recording on four-track tape the sounds and songs what have become "Ghosts of Christmas Presence." It's our little audible christmas card to you our family and friends. The songs here were forged among painful memories and hopeful futures. They have become very dear to us. Thanks for listening. We love you. Here's wishing you a joyous new year!

-joel & miranda

The immaculate Concepcion

An aural supplement, episode 10

Running Time: 1:17:24| File Size 71 MB
Download: .mp3
To subscribe to this podcast: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ARockeyHomeCompanionPodcast

November has come and gone and the frigid winter greets us with a harsh wind as we pull those whom we love nearer. Somehow, the over saturation of holiday music piping through the aroma of sweet espresso while sipping gingernog has left us wanting. Now it is time for that which brings us to a refreshing place of meditation during this seasonally sacred moment before the christening of a new year of opportunity. We missed you. We hope you missed us as well.

1. Blind Boys of Alabama w/ Tom Waits “Go Tell It on the Mountain”
2. Otis Redding “White Christmas”
3. Okkervil River “Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas”
4. Death Cab for Cutie “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)”
5. Feist “Lo, How a Rose E're Blooming”
6. Jill Sobule “Merry Christmas from the Family”
7. Clarence Carter “Back Door Santa”
8. Nicole & the Dreamcatchers “What a Day for a Dog of Gold”
9. Half-handed Cloud “Asian Meteorologists Predicted the Heavens to Snow Down a Child, a Child to Us”
10. Create(!) “Hymn for St. John of Shanghai”
11. Sufjan Stevens “We Three Kings”
12. Lyle Lovett “Christmas Morning”
13. Steve Earle “Christmas in Washington”
14. Tom Waits “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”
15. Bill Cosby “Christmas Time”
16. Vince Guaraldi Trio “Skating”
17. The Staple Singers “Who Took the Merry Out of Christmas”
18. Marvin Gaye “Purple Snowflakes”
19. Joel Rockey “The Twenty-Fifth Day”
20. The Carpenters “Ave Maria”
21. The Peanuts “Hark, The Herald Angels Sing”
22. Damien Rice “Happy Xmas (War is Over)”
23. Ray Charles “That Spirit of Christmas”

Every man's a liar

"God is the one who made me and gave me everything that's good. I'm friends with him most of the time, but he's friends with me all of the time."

-David Eugene Edwards

Over the past few years, my good friend Chris has turned me on to some artists of song whom I owe him greatly for. Most notably would be Bill Mallonee of Vigilantes of Love and David Eugene Edwards of Sixteen Horsepower and Wovenhand. I've recently been enjoying the Sixteen Horsepower DVD titled 16HP. Found on these two discs are videos with haunting imagery, concert footage and interviews. Most revealing is Edwards' interview with Paul Epstein in which he recalls his boyhood travels with his grandfather, a Nazarene preacher, making visits to the ill and attending funerals and weddings of people he didn't know. He also discusses how he connected profoundly to the somber, simple music of the church. During a break in the interview, Edwards shares a couple of intimate performances, first of the old hymn "Wayfaring Stranger" and second, a beautiful rendition of Bob Dylan's "Nobody 'Cept You".

Lately

drinking much coffee

writing

recordingthinking

drinking more coffee

missing our babies

crying

hoping

drinking more coffee

connecting

listening

giving

drinking more coffee

still learning how to die

still learning how to live

still drinking coffee

Thank you aunt patti.

Look what I inherited over the weekend. Jealous?