February Newsletter: Grievances

Happy February!

Photo by Dylan Randolph

Your free demo of the month is… 

“Grievances”

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(Each month I send a free secret demo like this to my subscribers — you also get access to all the past songs I’ve sent out!)
(keep reading for more info on the song)

It feels inappropriate to start this with “Happy February!” Of course I do wish us all a happy February, but my heart is heavy right now. As I’m writing this, it’s been less than two days since Gabby, our African Grey parrot, passed away unexpectedly. Adam and I adopted her in September 2015, and since then she’s been an enormous presence in our lives. She changed us in ways only a talking parrot can, influencing the way we speak, teaching us all the funny phrases that were embedded in her before we met her. Her absence is profoundly painful. I'm not anywhere close to comprehending it.

January did give me some reasons to be grateful. I played three fabulous Sofar shows in New York City, Boston (post 1, post 2), and Seattle (post 1, post 2). The opportunity to perform for an attentive, appreciative audience means the world to me.

In Seattle, I debuted a brand new song called “Grievances”. The inspiration came from a Mephistophelean bargain I made many years ago. I was young and in a vulnerable position, and it involved someone in a position of power over me. It wasn’t truly a diabolical pact, and it didn’t actually start with signing a contract in blood. On the contrary, it was very insidious, and only in hindsight does it bring to mind the scene from The Little Mermaid where Ariel meets Ursula.

For years I was reluctant to give this ordeal enough of my attention to write a song about it. But for the amount it still weighed on me, I knew it needed to be dealt with somehow. I wrote “Grievances,” and while I don’t consider it to be my best work, writing it did allow me to finally air some of my grievances.

When I played this song in Seattle, I decided to give the audience a chance to air their grievances as well. I distributed an anonymous survey asking audience members about their grievances. Then, before my set, I collected the surveys and flipped through them quickly to get a sense of their contents. We did a call-and-response during the song, first with the audience singing the lines “I don’t like to be pressured, I don’t like to be pushed.” Then, following the lines, “I’ve made a list of the grievances that I never got a chance to air,” I went through each slip of paper in front of me and sang-shouted the anonymous grievance, and then the audience echoed it back to me.

There were grievances about cramped spaces, Seattle traffic, confusing point-of-sale systems, passive-aggressive emails, being led on, going alone to friends’ weddings, people being nosy about sobriety… and more. It was fun and funny and, I hope, cathartic.

This is a no-frills piano-and-vocals demo. I had intended to work on it more, but then everything happened with Gabby, so I’ve decided to share it as is.

I’m actually planning to release a piano-and-vocals EP later this year. If there are any songs I’ve written (even songs that I’ve recorded already) that you’d like to see on this EP, let me know.

I’ll have other new music coming out even sooner, but I need to wait until next month to announce it.

If you’re in the Bay Area, I hope to see you at Berkeley REACH on February 13th or at at my Sofar Sounds show in the Mission District of San Francisco on February 15th. I’ll also be returning to Seattle for a Sofar show on March 28th.

Thank you so much for letting me share new songs with you, and the stories behind the songs. And remember, I always like hearing from you! You can email me, or reach out on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Take care,
Stephan