19 Sharp Pencil
With this one I just played a little guitar then wrote some passive aggressive words. Another short little idea in the spirit of Instrumental #18.
Instrumentation:
Guitar, Vox: Andy King
Lyrics:
I’ll sharpen that old pencil,
sharp enough to use in a fight.
Write down some fightin’ words,
then erase them before they’re heard.
I’ll write down a thousand words,
bear down real hard.
When I erase the words they can still make them out,
then maybe they’ll hear me out.
My dad used to make these tapes with one guitar where he would run through the form of a song twice. Each tape had about 25 songs on it. This reminds me of those tapes. This will turn into something more grandiose in the future but for now its just nostalgic.
Lots of ground loop noise to deal with on this one… so I compressed the hell out of the telecaster to get what I could out of it… maybe next time. Dealing with the bad signal/noise ratio made me do some things I would have never done otherwise. So maybe I learned something. Telecasters ain’t easy but always sound really cool.
This one wasn’t easy… I had the block today big time!
Once I played with a bad guitar cord. It made the guitar have a strong high end sound. After I replaced the cord the sound became warm again and I was bummed because of this. On this track I was trying to get that sound again. In the next few days I think I will try to write a few songs that feature this sound.
I always enjoyed movie soundtrack music and thought that Tim and I could record a short piece in that mindset. This reminds me how much I love checking out early electronic music. If you have never looked into this stuff you should check it out. Pretty cool stuff!
This song is another international instrumental. This song is influenced by Femi Kuti. I saw Femi twice live at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta Georgia and thought the shows were amazing. If you have not had a chance to listen to Femi you should check him out at
Another instrumental pass at the covered drums…
Wanted to make a really messy song that could hardly be understood but still have a leg in pop…
Stay young…