Rich

had a dream I was rich

I adjusted  to it

I painted people 

struggling with it

I became like 

Marie Antoinette 

mechanics

of the system

were brilliant

latest things

rarest species

silences cover 

the streets

lawyers in dreams

buy everything

tell me 

anyone can be an artist

I was so white 

had servants with accents

pizza every night 

topped with gold carats

I decided 

to sing

hired coaches 

from Brazil

a child said I sucked

I sued him and won

I then decided 

to make films

Golden

perfect 

no words for it

once distant 

we now walk around it

a golden childhood

bites an adulthood

quiet now- 

don’t upset it

summer vacations

birthdays, cousins

love if you were lucky

and even if you weren’t

growing up what were 

they thinking

nothing’s impossible

someone’s watching

like it was golden  

pulled by the roots

cleaned, cut up

salted, and cooked

you’ve never forgotten

how sweet it tasted

your stomach aches

without explanation

Word Problems

we have to make a living 

do we have to make a killing 

think of what we're doing 

in the one life that we live

it can't be lived in fear

we're not means to an end

let's just be present now

amongst our dozen friends

In this struggle we are free

others are watching 

it's the cult of you and me

in a world of feeling things

we might never get what we need

from these polluted streams

If we don't become our dreams

well then, what, then?

UpSydrome

hold me wipe my mouth

I get tangled in my thoughts

I need to be reminded 

what to do with myself

another stain on my slacks

I'll do better on the next task

I made you a card  

but the glue's still wet

I feel up syndrome 

when you're around

I'm not functioning at all

but I'm not ready to fall back down

I feel up syndrome 

when you're around

I see you trying to help me now

I can't help it it turns me on 

kiss me blow my nose

remind me where to go

with these blue socks on

I'm unequalled I know

restrain me hold me down

punish me really hard

I don't know why 

I do what I do

I feel up syndrome 

when you're around

I don't trust the other ones

they hurt me when I'm alone

I feel up syndrome 

when you're around

we shouldn't question these thoughts

just release them when the light's off

tucking me in bed

I get strange thoughts 

I'm sorry to 

make such a mess

will I see you on the weekend 

how long will you stay here

they don't pay you much 

that much I know

Soundcloud

The Art of Forgetting

I don't remember
never said that
really,
I forget

moment to moment
is how I live
these moments
don't connect

what were you
thinking about
how was your day
yesterday

what will you do
tomorrow
how have you been,
really

one day I'll shed my skin
one day I'll open my heart
one day I'll go traveling
without taking anything with me

Tiny Poverty Diary

I've given up being saved 
I don't need to buy anything
I've narrowed my expectations
they fit around my mornings

I enjoy texts you send me
I don't eat organic
I write down every dream
Instead of watching tv

doubts are my companions
now that fears have fled
the beauty I've caught in glances
Is enough for me, I guess

sounds of engines and announcements,
concrete symphonies
your deep silences
sound like melodies to me

The Bar's Only Question Is...

  ...will ten people pay to see you play on a weeknight?

You may never be rich or famous, but consider yourself a success if:

1. You are writing original material

2. You can get others interested in playing it

3. You don't have to pay them for the privilege

4. You can get a gig in a bar

5. The bar invites you back and...

6. You're adding fans that aren't your friends to your fb page and...

7. You haven't given up after the age of 28 when everyone's hormones and wallets are telling them, "Enough."

....we played everything too fast, but otherwise, ok. Photos by LC Varella:

The Poet, The Musician, and The Singer

...are three different people. It took me years to understand that they don't necessarily understand each other.

Most commonly, musicians and singers view songwriting as something they can do between exercise workouts.

Sometimes a well-written song is the last thing someone notices in the presentation of an artist. I've played with musicians that don't get me at all.

I've sat through countless horrible modern classical pieces where someone has treated a poem as something that could automatically be "songified" as if they just had to apply some opera scales to it.

However, a good song cuts through. I'm reminded of that old joke:

Little girl asks mommy, "why don't I have a penis like Johnny?" Mom replies, "Honey, as a woman....you'll be able to have a penis anytime you want one." 

A good songwriter can have good musicians anytime they want 'em...

Getting To First Bass...

You're a teenager and in love with music. You don't  know the how's and why's; you just want to make it. Someone suggests that you buy a bass- they tell you it's easy to play- no chords. And you've noticed the bass, particularly if you grew up in an era when funk and disco put the bass out front. For me "New Wave" (no one called it "post-punk" back in the day) was as much about white English kids responding to funk as it was about "softening" punk.

My father was a music professor. He bought me a p-bass copy when I was a junior in high school and got me some lessons. The lessons didn't stick. I couldn't articulate what I wanted, but learning scales from a guy that looked exactly like your prototypical prog-fusion cover boy didn't seem like a direct line to anywhere. I just had a sensual attraction to the bass. I wanted to put my hands on it and start to chisel out simple lines. I thought of it like a giant pencil in my hands.

I read interviews with band leaders like Andy Partridge whom I thought were really cool. I don't think I fully understood what I really wanted to do- I wanted to write songs. I tried answering some ads and they were probably some of the most humiliating moments of my teenaged life-I couldn't play, I couldn't even play scales. I just wanted to trade records with the people whose ads I answered and it was really confusing to me how they could play and sing and yet seem so stupid.

They could do something I couldn't (play) and yet they could be stupid. It took me years later to figure out that musical intelligence was its own thing, that someone didn't have to be cultured or literate in any way to be an excellent guitarist or vocalist. A songwriter was something different.

It took me years. Years of reading to realize that writers found their own ways in the dark; that there was a path, an obscure one of being a songwriter...and it meant you didn't want to be a virtuoso; you didn't need to be in the closet and be intimidated by these muscle-shirted guys in music stores while you stole glances at a Rickenbacker or Jazz Bass. There was a fine tradition of songwriters who couldn't play very well, stretching back at least as far as Irving Berlin.

The bass is a pencil and a drum machine could be a typerwriter.

Nerves

Nerves…

a sudden
tightening
around
the throat

heart's
pumping
double-time
didn't you practice
enough

the lights
are going down
you miss
some chords

hands
turn
into
claws

looking nervously around
the drummer's confused...

keep trying to get into
autopilot mode,

the plane's
taken off
without
you

We'll Make The Money Later

Finding someone as passionate about your music as you are-and then finding you make a good fit together. With LC Varella in Greenpoint.

My Rider

1. If you’re a friend, I’ll give you the art. It’s a postcard. It’s an extension of us and our friendship that has enriched the work. 

2. If I like your stuff, i'll buy it. It’s a way of showing that something has resonated. Something has taught me about the world or myself. It'll actually be a pleasure handing you the money. It's money I would have wasted on a bad meal or another guitar. I probably won't be able to afford anything much more expensive than that, though.

3. If you’re a band, I’ll pay up to $10 on a weekend to see you. Some of you are professionals and have families; I respect that. $20 for a national. $25 for an international; I can’t afford more. The live experience has as much to do with non-music factors as the music. 

4. If I'm hiring you for one of my little projects, I don’t expect you to charge me your corporate rate. I assume you’re working with me because you like my work. I recognize that you have bills to pay, too, but I’m not a corporation and most of the work you do for corporate profits frankly sucks. 

5. If you’re in your twenties and have a $20,000 kickstarter project, I’ll give you $20 once.  I too was once in my there and thought there was a direct line between my family home life, university, and an artistic career. You have technical ability at this age and probably not much else. I'm sure we’ll have great conversations in about 10 years' time :).

5.5. Alternately, you should be able to create something interesting that won’t make you broke.

6. If you come to one of our spoken word events as a comedian and leave right after your set, I will mock you when I’m on stage. This event is not a stepping stone to fame and fortune. I don’t have any friends that talk about their “dicks”, how “white people” and “black people” act, or make observations about things on TV. If you haven’t had a significant human interaction this month, you should try to have one at the event itself, or at least try to meet people before you run out the door.

Thanks,
Bob

In The Vault

I still buy a fair amount of new music every month. Technology has allowed us the ability to swap whole music collections with friends- this is amazing. I believe that critical listening to the other artists is completely essential to developing as a songwriter. It sounds obvious, but what is also apparent to me is how many of my peers fall back on familiar sounds and motifs essentially derived from their earliest listening experiences.
Books like This Is Your Brain On Music have documented how the music of our adolescence is deeply imprinted on our consciousness.

We'll always have the sounds we love the most, but there is a process of stretching yourself as a listener that is crucial. Helping you along the way is connecting with other music fans, reading up on writers, and being engaged in trying to get behind the illusive answer to the question, "Why something works and why it doesn't."
Before I ever wrote a song, I spoke to friends endlessly about favorite tunes and what was it exactly that made them so great. Creating mixtapes can be seen in this way as a form of proto-composing.
Singer, writer, and musician are often three different careers that each take a lifetime to perfect. It's rare to find greatness in all three areas in one person. It makes collaboration, practice, experimentation, and further study all the more important. Your music collection is your textbook.

Finishing What I Started

Sometimes it's better to wait. Let those babies gestate, grow into teenagers that cause problems.

Wait for the people that get you, that are on your wavelength. The non-careerists. Then let those teenagers out into the world.

Indian Poetry in English

is the best. There are many great authors. Check out Modern Indian Poetry in English by Bruce King (2001 Oxford India) for hints.

Here is something by Vinda Karandikar (from The Sacred Heresy):

The Ganges of Sweat

The Ganges of Sweat knows no pause.
She flows on gaspingly
from infinity to infinity,
pounding rocks with the thrust of her head,
breaking all the cliff and crags,
skimming over hill and dale.

The Ganges of Sweat knows no pause.
She breaks all bounds and barriers
of country, religion and blood.
She waters soils, both black and white.
Look, how she flows over the entire world,
how the boat of life canes on her stream!

The Ganges of Sweat knows no pause.
She flowed in the past, flows in the present;
flows day and night morning and evening;
as much in summer as in winter.
A fuming cobra as it were,
She bites the one who stamps on her.

The Ganges of Sweat knows no pause.
She flows onward in sheer abandon.
She flows behind those ploughs in the fields;
she flows beside the machines in the mills,
flows through the mines, and behind the swords,
effacing stamps and effacing titles.

The Ganges of Sweat knows no pause.
She levels the hills; fills up the pits;
makes even all that lies around.
she changes her course from age to age
and thus fulfills the Universal will:
brings down to dust the tyrant's throne.

The Ganges of Sweat knows no pause.
Her mud is red; her water is black.
Singing the songs of revolution,
she explores the ultimate ocean
of unity, of freedom, of a new millennium,
with multiple mouths in multiple ways.

Brazilians

I have made friends with Brazilians. They have happiness technology. This is important for songwriting as there are many reasons to be depressed and they make for crappy songs. Brazilian artists for the most part have respected the division between the poet, musician, and singer, which has led to a very rich tradition. I first started listening to Brazilian music when I was in my early 30's. I had tinnitus so perhaps I was subconsciously attracted to softer sounds. I don't make Brazilian music. I'm not a wannabe, but I am constantly amazed by the culture's rich output.

I befriended a circle of people through Suely Mesquita, an interesting writer with whom I've worked with in several roles. Now, I'm the Brazilian Songwriter Embassy in the Bronx.

Bethi Albano visited me last week. It felt like a 4-day conversation that never flagged. She's a great composer and will finally be releasing an album of her own next year.

"Collaboration lies at the heart of creativity," says Milton Nascimento. Yup.

She's Not In The Band. Yet.

My name is Bob Gaulke and I write songs in NYC

Matt Carrillo plays sax and keyboards. He's very good. I'm not a good musician, but I buy him drinks so he doesn't notice.