Big magazines/websites/entertainment weeklies don’t typically do retrospective album anniversaries for albums nobody’s ever heard.
But I do. It’s a DNA-deep part of my thing. I bundle up in blankets of nostalgia. I warm my hands by nostalgia’s pixelated, flickering fake fire. I sniff, in hopes of a whiff of its faint smoke or stale cologne. I drift off in the reveries stored in the still-functional, still-semi-accessible areas of my brain. Nostalgia is my drug. One of them, at least.
On that note.
This past April marked the 20th anniversary of my first album, You Might Regret You Ever Cared. Check out this hunk and his borrowed aviators:
I’d been in bands before. We’d even written more than a few of our own songs1. I’d written my own songs not for any specific band, too. But I’d never documented it besides a boxful of home-recorded cassette tapes, usually something like an old Michael Jackson cassette with the top taped over (remember doing that?) that I’d stuck into a cassette recorder and played/sang into, either in hopes of not forgetting it or in an attempt to be able to hear it objectively (or both). Or something recorded at my friend Spencer’s house and uploaded to an old IUMA website or MySpace or the musician site du jour.
But I’d never made an album. A complete work. The accepted format for music at the time.
Making—and, far more importantly, finishing!—You Might Regret You Ever Cared was a monumental accomplishment for me, beyond just being a first. Making (finishing!) can be tough for me, as someone who has grappled with my share of crippling perfectionism and worried anxiety2. I start a lot of things. My Voicenote app, for instance, is bursting with song starters, orphan lyrics, midnight screenplay concepts, Lower Lights arrangement ideas, indecipherable mumblings, piano meanderings, 3 am grumble-whispers. Starts? Pfftthh…they’re easy. It’s the finishing—the allowing of something to be done rather than the safer, less-committal “in-progress” that protects me from having to say “I did this” because, you know, how can you “did” something that is not “done”? Are you starting to see why a first album being completely done might be an issue here? The finishing is so often the thing.
So, with a lot of help, I got done. I got the first official taste of my music out there. I do remember, as we finished mixing the last song, producer/friend Scott Wiley turning to me and saying, “Well, we did it” and me thinking, “But…is it really done?” because perhaps something else could be….done? The finality freaked me out. (I have a problem. A few of them, actually. But being scared to death of a project’s finality is definitely the one we’re touching on here today.)
I released the album the same week I finally graduated from BYU. I spent far more time that week on my CD Release concert (rehearsals, an in-studio appearance on KRCL, logistics, promotion), to the point that I opted to not even walk with the rest of my graduating class, if that gives any indication of what mattered to me (sorry, mom and dad). There is no picture anywhere of me in a BYU cap & gown. The album was the accomplishment3.
None of it would have happened without—well, without a lot of things and people, but principally without—Scott taking me under his wing and saying basically (not unlike Ron Simpson from an earlier post), “I think you are good at this and I’d like to help you make an album.”4 He and bassist George Brunt—of my favorite local band Sunfall Festival—rallied their musician friends to play on my songs and make of them more than my limited imagination (and budget) could ever have imagined.
I essentially borrowed my favorite band Sunfall Festival5 in their peak era as my house band6, which was a dream in and of itself. I’m not exaggerating at all when I say that, if you had asked me in 2002 to list five guitarists I’d love to play on my songs, The Guy From Sunfall Festival would’ve made the list7. It’s still true 20 years later.
Ultimately, I think there are maybe 3.5 good songs on the album:
Doomed (I wish I could be cool and not tell you that I sadly still think this is up there with the best songs I’ve written8)
Black & Blue (I love the outro of this one, when the drums kick in and Mark Owens’ background vocals kick in, the nice guitar and mellotron combo)
Pen To Paper9
Ashes (too long, so it only gets half)
The album still has moments that can give me chills all these years later in 2023. First to mind: when the whole band kicks in after 5 full minutes of acoustic melancholy on “Ashes”—Chris Peterson obliterating his drums and Scott’s guitar growling and Scott Johnson’s shaking organ, that’s one. There are a couple of Chris’ drum fills in there that give me life. I never once thought, earnestly strumming the song alone in my bedroom, that it would ever sound so big, so epic. When you make a record, you quietly hope it’ll do the things you love about the huge rock albums you love. And you realize it might not. But when it does? Hair stands up on end.
Another moment: Dominic Moore’s background vocals on “Sorry” do everything I love about Prime Adam Duritz era’s background vocals on The Wallflowers’ “Sixth Avenue Heartache” and Nanci Griffith’s “Going Back To Georgia” and Sordid Humor’s “Barbarossa.”10 It’s a tightrope walk to do something iconic like that without stealing too much spotlight, capsizing the balance of the song. Dominic nails the trick.
Did I not put “Sorry” in my initial 3.5 good songs? Well, yeah, I guess I still like “Sorry” too. I had a songwriting instructor at a songwriting camp criticize it for the way its words and music fit together. “You need to sing the syllables the way you say them.” And I think that idea—he called it “prosody”— makes sense a lot of time, so I thought about that for a long while before eventually realizing how many songs I love that don’t do that. Taylor Swift does it all the time and nobody’s arguing that her songs are not singable by entire stadiums.
”Sorry”’s bridge was my best (Dixie) Chicks impression, which is interesting because I was still very much in the camp of I’m Not A Dixie Chicks Guy (it was post-Fly and pre-Home, which is the album where I repented). But the bridge, especially its harmonies, feel very Maines/Erwin Sisters11-esque. And the key change is country all the way. Oh, and Craig Miner’s banjo and mandolin are subtle and perfect.
The wordplay in the verses is fun. Trying too hard to be clever? Probably. But what else are first albums for? I was trying stuff out. I haven’t tied words together in quite that way since, if that’s any indication of my evolving feelings about wordplay.
So… 4.5 good songs. Not too shabby.
What about the other songs?
Overall, the album rocks more than I remember for a quiet, melancholy folkie. Credit there has to go to Scott Wiley who was on the record NOT wanting to just make a folkie acoustic record. He was also on the record of wanting to capture the intimate acoustic side of things. Just didn’t want to leave it at that.
Missing and Lost Highway aren’t bad, but they’re basically Ryan Adams/early Wilco cosplay. My best facsimiles of two artists I liked a lot at the time. I mean I’d love to say “Lost Highway” was a cred-gaining by-product of my deep love for either Hank Williams’ song or David Lynch’s film—and I was aware of both—but really I liked how the words sounded and, at the time, Lost Highway happened to be the record label for Ryan Adams, Willie Nelson, and more.
Pictures Poems & Songs has a good concept executed at medium level. And a theme I’d revisit a lot: missing someone. I like the bridge chords and melody a lot. Extra credit for slipping “Modigliani” into a song.
Lullabye has the song version of mild ADHD. Is it a lullaby for children? Or is it a song for a girlfriend? I couldn’t decide. Went back and forth. So the song has some purgatorial question marks right down in its genes. It’s the unresolved spinning top of my songs.
The Wall is a carryover from a time when I was decidedly more folkie. It drips with novelty song vibes. There are some friends who still believe this is my best song. They’re wrong, but I appreciate the support nonetheless.
Every Day’s Another Turning Page was a heartfelt exercise in trying to do a character study. In the same way that Missing/Lost Highway were Wilco/Whiskeytown cosplay, this was my stab at doing a Tom Waits song. Just verifiably not as good. It tries valiantly, but doesn’t quite get there in its first-person examination of elderly loneliness. Peter Romney’s cello part is pretty cool, though. Let’s just listen to John Prine’s “Hello In There” instead. I mean, you could say “Let’s listen to (any John Prine song) instead of (pretty much any other song)”, couldn’t you? So it’s no insult.
Don’t Say Goodbye is just too darn long. I still like the bridge, but—like the rest of the song—would prefer it to be half as long. Scott Johnson’s keyboards on the song are perfection though.
The CD Release show was held in some old building at the foot of the mountains in east Provo (you can see above on the poster, it says “behind 7 Peaks”, just for an indication of how not official it was). My recollection is that the building was inhabited (and rented out) by some group of Ren Faire/LARP types. Our stage was backed by some charmingly homemade-looking castle, probably the set of some play. I knew it wasn’t ideal, but got over whatever perfectionist streak I had when I realized how much venues cost and also that I wasn’t exactly teeming with fans (or money). I just needed somewhere to play. The Ren-Faire stage was that.
About a month ago, Scott texted me grainy video footage of the show out of the blue. I didn’t even know the video existed. Here are a few screenshots.
Did I watch the footage? Because I am a glutton for punishment12, I watched the whole thing. Of course I did. Some takeaways:
I kicked off our set with a brand new non-album song “Lost & Found”, which is a flex. “Here’s a song not on the album you came to hear/buy!” Wilder even is the fact that the song ultimately didn’t make the cut for the next album. Musically, it was extremely David Gray-core13. Lyrically, it was trying to do some stream of consciousness/conversational stuff14 combined with the alien perspective on human life found in Radiohead’s “Subterranean Homesick Alien.”
The between-song banter was painful. I’d like to say I’ve improved—and it’s probably true but not anything close to drastically. The biggest change is probably mostly my confidence, not the actual content.
I’m still the same guy as I was in 2003 in a lot of ways: he feels way too shy to look up while playing, to just acknowledge audience enthusiasm15; he just really, really HOPES you like it; he doesn’t really know what to say but knows he’s probably supposed to say SOMETHING between songs; he needs lyric sheets to his own songs because of nerves; he’s confident that the songs are good yet still worried that they’re not.
And he’s different too. Let’s just start with: a Cleveland Indians hat? I think I liked the logo or something, but I’ve literally never been a Cleveland Indians fan. Yikes. This is probably one of maybe four times I ever wore that hat. Also, I played covers of Prince (Purple Rain), Tom Petty (Don’t Come Around Here No More) and Neil Young (Helpless). I don’t think 2023 Paul would feel like he should be singing Prince songs. Oh, and my friend Dominic was kind enough (besides opening the show) to be my guitar tech for the night. What that means is basically that we had a few guitars on hand for me to use and, while I was playing one, he would be busy tuning the others. I use quite a few different tunings, so Dom’s was a full-time job. But it spared me a lot of anxiety and the audience a lot of dead air. There was a time, after this, when I would bring a few differently-tuned guitars to a show. But now I don’t feel quite the same nerves as I used to and will often just use one (and make sure to plan a thing or two to say while tuning). Progress!16
So many memories twenty years later. It’s a shame, for a lot of reasons, we never even did a release show for 2020’s Two-Headed Hearts. It just sort of got sucked into the void that was Covid and quarantine and pandemic and 2020 and 2021 and all that. Glad to have some memories of the other two (don’t worry; I won’t be writing 4000 words about Paul Jacobsen & The Madison Arm until at least 2028.)
A sampling of early song titles just for kicks:
Maybe Not Today
Where’s Al?
Verl Newbold
Tossing Pennies
Banana
Sunset Gun
Boner (ugh…it was about a skeleton, I promise!)
Drowning
Lemonade (we were there before Beyonce)
Weatherman
After Today (for my friends Barrett & Alli’s wedding)
Untitled (original!)
Shirley
My Only One
Puss In Boots
The Way We Go To Get Back Here
Clinging
After the release of my album, I was at dinner at my parents’ house and my dad was asking about the album. Because he has an engineer’s mind combined with a very practical/frugal side (and because he is a parent concerned with his son’s decisions and future), the conversation quickly pivoted away from the actual music and to the actual cost. I told him what I had spent—between studio and musicians and artwork and manufacturing and so on. In retrospect, this might have been a good time to—in the words of Jon Brion—not necessarily lie but to withhold the full truth in some crafty way. Dad immediately crunched the numbers in his head and announced how many I’d have to sell just to break even. And, just like that, the proverbial bouncy house deflated. (Sad trombone sound.)
Even if the cap & gown continue to pay the bills.
And none of THAT would have happened if my friend Cherie Magill (who I’d met in Ron Simpson’s songwriting class) hadn’t invited me to open her backyard CD release show a year before. I played the show and, afterwards, a guy came up and introduced himself as Chris Peterson, the drummer of Sunfall Festival (have I mentioned they were my favorite local band?). He loved my stuff and thought maybe I could play some shows with them, which I did the next fall.
Minus singer Amy Gileadi, who I would’ve loved to have sung on the album but it didn’t work out that time. It’d be another 3+ years before our voices would mix (Little Drummer Boy, me being Bing, her being Bowie, fittingly), another 5 before she’d sing on one of my songs (You’re The Song), and 19 before I’d get to sing with her live (at the Low tribute earlier this year).
Plus appearances by Dominic Moore, Eric & Alex Peterson, Dustin Christensen, Peter Romney, April Meservy, Mark Owens, Craig Miner, and more.
In 2002, the list would’ve probably looked like:
The Guy From Sunfall Festival
Gerry Leonard (I knew his playing from work with Duncan Sheik and Jonatha Brooke, but he also played with Bowie; it was a true thrill to get to meet him when I opened for Suzanne Vega and he was touring as her guitarist)
Jon Brion
Johnny Greenwood (Radiohead)
The Edge (U2)
“Sadly” because you hope your creative trajectory leaves the earlier stuff in the dust, that you progress enough that you get markedly better as you go. I do believe that I’ve gotten better across the board, but “Doomed” still feels strong to me.
I have a friend whose spouse just CANNOT with “Pen To Paper” solely on the basis of what I guess is the controversial line “you warm me up like beef stew.” I’m not saying it’s Pulitzer material. But it fits the tone and narrator of the song.
Does anybody else remember an 80’s western film called Barbarosa? It starred Willie Nelson and Gary Busey. I watched it at my neighbor’s house but couldn’t tell you a single thing about the plot. I just remember my friend’s dad loved it.
No one calls them the Erwin Sisters. Should I have gone with Emily & Martie?
I have almost never watched a video of a live performance that captured what it felt like to be there. Video can’t get the air in the room, the energy, the buzz, or even the feeling of the sound. I’m almost always disappointed and usually wish I’d not watched it. That said, while there were painful parts, I actually really enjoyed this as a time capsule and seeing what a good band 3/4 of Sunfall Festival were.
To the point that I even stole the cadence of his line “One day we’ll all shine.” I loved that sentiment enough to bald-faced steal it, I guess.
“I’ve been thinking ‘bout lightbulbs
And how one day they all go out
And you’re left in the darkness
Wishing you had a match
But that matchstick
Either it’ll burn you
Or else it’ll burn out
And either way you are screwed.”
Eeesh. It wants so badly to be deep while also being colloquial (“screwed” is very on-brand for Paul Jacobsen songs, I have to say not complimentarily). Hats off to the kid for leading with an unproven new song, though. And hats off for not worrying about the rhyme scheme. I was pretty indoctrinated by songwriting rules at this point, so I have to tip the ol’ hat to 2003 Me for being willing to lead with a song that doesn’t care about that.
This is absolutely connected to my structural inability to take a compliment.
I still stink at tuning, though.
I still listen to this album. A lot. Thanks for the shout out, Paul. I didn't know you wore Eric's shirt.