Daytrotting
Ya’ll remember Daytrotter? That website was so crucial for me as a young musician and music fan. It was a collection of live in-studio recordings of all the cool bands, very few of which I had heard of. Their studios were in Rock Island, Illinois. A lot of websites and radio stations might have done something like this at the time (the website was active between 2006-2018 and I was very much of an early admirer) but Daytrotter was different. There was their in-house fine artist Johnnie Cluney that did beautiful cover art for every release which really gave the whole operation a singular aesthetic. Sean Moeller, the founder (and my dear friend of almost 20 years at this point, which is nuts), would write these incredible reviews/interpretations/explications to go along with the songs. They were art pieces in of themselves and they always added a new dimension to the artist/band. It was always reverential and celebratory. He would highlight the mysteries and power of the music in its effect on him; the total opposite of all the reviews at the time that loved to assume (and explain why) they knew more about the artists’ intentions than the artists themselves did.
The last key ingredient was the recordings themselves. While most websites offering a similar experience for bands kept their recording processes digital, streamlined, convenient and therefore a bit antiseptic, Daytrotter had Patrick Solley at the helm. They recorded everything analogue to 2” tape and everything came out sounding so good and so complete. And it’s not just the tape, it was Patrick’s gifts as an engineer. It all felt like alternate master recordings of whatever albums each artist was there promoting.
All this to say - it was a special place. This is where I discovered artists like Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes for the first time. Our first band Simon Dawes even got to record a Daytrotter session in 2006. Here it is…
https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/simon-dawes/simon-dawes-daytrotter-session-jul-6-2007
(Daytrotter is now owned by Paste and they keep all the recordings still available)
And Dawes did a couple sessions too. One in 2009 and one in 2013. You can easily find those recordings as well. Looking back, that first one in 2009 felt like a major turning point for the band. I remember thinking “if we could just land a Daytrotter session, we could get this thing up and running.” That’s how much I revered what they did.
Now it’s 2024 and Sean Moeller is, like I said, a very good friend. We toured together in a bunch of barns (look up “Daytrotter barnstormer”), watched some Bob Dylan and ELO shows side by side, and even send each other writings we’re working on. A few days ago Dawes played in Iowa City and he made the drive down from the quad cities to catch the show. After the set we went to Dave’s Foxhead Tavern to catch up.
As always, we found ourselves on the subject of writing. There was a convergence of factors that led us to some particular observations…
1 - I’ve been listening to Tom Petty a lot recently because my son Gus currently can’t get enough. It’s got me appreciating the power of his songs again. How they are detailed enough to draw me in, and yet spare enough to evoke personal, emotional responses. They maintain a mystical power through their sense of economy.
2 - On our drive to the bar we had listened to John Anderson’s “Straight Tequila Night.” It’s a song describing a woman at a bar who is drinking white wine and is very much approachable if you’d like to talk to her, but if it happens to be one of her “straight tequila nights” then “she starts thinkin’ about him and is ready to fight.” It’s a pretty bizarre concept but is flawlessly executed.
So somehow our conversation was circling around these 2 points. I was extolling Petty’s writing and lamenting that my songs don’t do that same magic trick as often as I might like. I was pitting it against “Straight Tequila Night”, claiming that Anderson’s song was so detailed and fleshed out that no room was left for my own imagination’s projections into it. Not that that was a bad thing; just a different ambition.
That’s when Sean politely objected. “But is it fully fleshed out?” He then reminded me that the “he” in “Straight Tequila Night” is never explored or explained. Anderson leaves it to the listener to decide what this man might mean in this woman’s life. We get to invent this mystery-man’s whole relationship to the song, allowing our imaginations to run wild and, in some ways, personalize some of the meanings.
And that’s what got me thinking (and inspired this long winded post today) - does a song’s power hinge on something that’s left out? Is there only magic when we, as listeners, can fill certain holes, make certain assumptions, invent a chunk of the story ourselves?
I think the answer is yes and no. It’s definitely true with Tom Petty songs in my opinion. And thanks to Sean, I was convinced the same powers were at work in this John Anderson tune. Which got me thinking about my own songs…I can see there being varying degrees of interpretability in a song like Still Strangers Sometimes, or even Most People or Little Bit Of Everything - there’s a certain amount of connection or invention needed from the listener to glue it all together. But when I think of a song like House Parties or The Game, I wonder if the story is more completely told? I’m not patting myself on the back. If anything I’m wondering if there’s a certain magic that these songs are deprived of for this reason.
But as the days have gone on, I’m reminded that it takes all kinds. I love the straight and clear Bob Dylan singing songs like Joey or Hurricane and I love the Bob Dylan that sings It’s All Over Now Baby Blue even though I have very little idea what that song is actually about. I love Loudon Wainright’s almost conversational observations in songs like Surviving Twin and I love the murky impressions gleaned from Wilco’s Ashes of American Flags.
So despite these conclusions being rather obvious and inevitable, I’m reminded that there’s no wrong way to do this. There may be good and bad songs, but there might not be such a thing as objectivelygood or bad songs (despite my occasional efforts to insist on their existence).
I love that my conversation with Sean grabbed me by the proverbial shoulders and gave a good shake. He reminded me to pay attention; to be aware of my intentions (if only for myself), so that I can knowingly pivot and shift approaches when the work might benefit from it. It’s inspiring. In fact, I already wrote a new song since hanging out with him.
Well, I hope that was enjoyable for some of you! Attached, for the paying subscribers, is a demo of a song called Little One (along with some well-times sounds from my son Ozzie when he was almost a year old). I’ve played it at a few shows in the acoustic segment, but for now we haven’t recorded it in the studio. It feels relevant to this post because it’s a pretty specific song. The target audience gets pretty narrow by the end of the chorus, I guess. Sometimes I wonder if that’s a hindrance or if that’s its special power. Depending on the listener, it’s probably both…
Enjoy!