The Nautilus Studio M31 Files interview singer-songwriter Marilyn Kroeker (part 1)

Studio owners Yves LF Giraud (Studio M31) and Mr Bill (Nautilus Studio) interview singer-songwriter Marilyn Kroeker (part 1).

Find out more on Marilyn here:
https://marilynkroeker.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Flowers of the night gleaming from the moisture and the what is it?

SPEAKER_02 0:32

Alright, guys, well, welcome to another uh the Nother Little Studio M Fail You On Files interview. And today with us we have Marilyn Croker. Marilyn, could you uh tell us where you're from?

SPEAKER_04 0:45

I'm originally from upstate New York. Uh I ran away from home at 19. You did? Yeah, I I really did.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Was that I'm sorry, okay. No, it was the right thing to do. Well, I'm assuming it was the right thing to do.

SPEAKER_04 0:59

You know what I like to to say is uh my mom was pregnant with me and went to Mesa Verde. She didn't know she was pregnant with me. She gave birth in New York and it took me 19 years to get back home.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:15

I think she picked me up here.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Wow, how funny. That's wow. So you lived in New York then, uh, the first part of your life? Yes. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:25

Um it was uncomfortable. No, um upstate.

SPEAKER_03 1:29

Upstate, okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:30

Yeah. Um my parents split up or were in the process of splitting up, so there really wasn't a home for me, so it was good timing to run away.

SPEAKER_02 1:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:40

And by that I mean, you know, they sent me off with a nice breakfast.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

And you had a car, I take it.

SPEAKER_04 1:48

Oh, it wasn't mine, it was a friend's. But yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

And you guys went together?

SPEAKER_04 1:52

Yeah, we landed in Durango and hung out there for a while.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

What made you come here? Like what what from all the way from New York? I mean, that's pretty much crossing all all of them.

SPEAKER_04 2:02

We were keeping our eyes on everything across the country, seeing what potential there was. We might have stopped anywhere.

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Oh, so you saw all the places first, and then somehow you got all the way here.

SPEAKER_04 2:15

Yeah. I remember um Aspen and thinking, oh, probably not, as we came all the way down through Colorado. And she had relatives in Durango that lived there. Oh, okay. So they kind of housed us for a little while, and suddenly there was work and give you time to kind of look around too, and yeah, okay. We did a little stint in Florida too, and I I actually played in a band down there. Well, Crossroads, yeah. Um, we were there for three, maybe four months. Well, you should have patented name.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

There's no right no one on that crossroads. Yeah, Crossroads, yeah, with Maryland in it. Yeah. It's the one we were there long enough to have a little band put together though.

SPEAKER_04 2:57

They were looking for a lead singer and rhythm player. I'm like, oh well, that's me. That's it. Back in the days when it was in a newspaper.

SPEAKER_02 3:04

Nice.

SPEAKER_04 3:05

Yeah, it was fun. Yeah, very cool.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Yeah. And w what Paul of Florida was that?

SPEAKER_04 3:09

Uh Panhandle. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. I liked that area very much. I'm a little more um concerned about it now with uh climate change and where the ocean actually is.

SPEAKER_02 3:22

Yeah, whether you go there, I'm not sure. Yeah. I think this is good.

SPEAKER_04 3:26

I'm staying, I'm I'm in.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Yeah, I think we're yeah, me too. I've looked around and I think uh we're pretty lucky right around. That's right, that's right.

SPEAKER_04 3:36

We made the right decisions when we made it.

SPEAKER_02 3:38

So you ended up in uh Durango, you said. Uh-huh. Okay. And uh well tell me, tell me from there. Well no, uh the first thing I want to ask you before you get to Durango, how did you get into music? What was that?

SPEAKER_04 3:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Because you you were already doing that, right? Right before Durango.

SPEAKER_04 3:57

Right. I started playing guitar in fifth grade. Okay. Yeah. Um I remember it was Christmas, oddly. I wanted a guitar very badly as a Christmas present, and mom collected green stamps. You might know about that. Um you at the grocery store would get these stick-on things, and then you fill out a book of green stamps, and you can turn them in for merchandise.

SPEAKER_03 4:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 4:22

As you save them up, they're coupons essentially. Well, mom sent me upstairs to get the green stamp books from under her bed, and I felt something weird, and I pulled it out, and it was a guitar in a case.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

Before uh Christmas? Before Christmas.

SPEAKER_04 4:41

And I knew I could not speak about this. So I went back downstairs and handed her what she needed and uh waited till Christmas morning. Christmas morning rolled around, and underneath the tree was the guitar case.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

For someone else.

SPEAKER_04 4:59

When I picked up that soft guitar case, it went like this over my hands. She had filled it up with yarn. Uh oh.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

You think she had a notion that you might have already peeked?

SPEAKER_04 5:13

She might have had a clue.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

And mess with you.

SPEAKER_04 5:16

And then she uh said go upstairs and look on your bed, and they had tucked the real guitar under my bed.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah, she was onto you, okay.

SPEAKER_04 5:26

That was pretty funny.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

Do you remember what it was?

SPEAKER_04 5:28

Was it a silver tone or it was it was bought with green stamps.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

Yeah, I'm figuring K or Harmony.

SPEAKER_04 5:36

I'm sorry, I don't remember. It was uh that uh sunburst with a white pick guard.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 5:43

And pretty small. Did it play okay or compare it?

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Whether you compare it to it. Right, I loved it.

SPEAKER_04 5:51

My fingers were bloody in the end of 24 hours, but I didn't care.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Right, right. Yeah. Yeah, you figure that's it. That's the price you paid for being a rock star, baby. Right. Yeah. My my first one didn't have a name. I the the guy told me what he thought it was, but you know, that tells you how good it was.

SPEAKER_04 6:13

But looking back on it historically, um, we started the first cooperative I did with some friends in a restaurant called Candy's, which would have been where La Mesa is right now. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cute little thing, and then Candy sold the restaurant, and then we went to the space where the boat house is right now. Okay. That was our first year at Artisans officially.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

That was do do you remember when?

SPEAKER_04 6:41

Um twenty six years maybe?

SPEAKER_02 6:46

And then after Oh, I was gonna I I thought you were telling me the year, like twenty-six? Well, well not there yet. Twenty-six years ago. Yeah. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_04 6:53

Yeah, like that. And then after a year in that space, I was able to find us the the corner space where Artisans currently is. Okay. After five years, I was able to move across the street with a man named Steve Sykes. And he was the money guy and I was the time guy. As an artist, that was really tough, but I did use that space to create art. But he's the the one that was responsible for the rent. He lasted a year and needed to move to a lower elevation. So once he moved, he thought it would close. And I said, now wait, I know what to do because I'd done all the homework with all the other cooperatives. So we opened a Ravenhouse Cooperative.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

That's how that happened. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 7:37

Yeah, and that's in year 17.

SPEAKER_01 7:40

And you were by yourself a sole proprietor, essentially. Or how does that work with a co-op?

SPEAKER_04 7:47

I was because it simplifies everything. You don't it doesn't take a committee to, you know, um decide that the floor needs to be vacuumed. Yeah. But on the first, I would just I would just sit still and and um do the bookkeeping. I would also, this is a brag and I'm sorry, but Kelly Kilgore Chilcott, who's on the corner, spent four years in Raven House, and Bomb Digity was in Raven House for a year as well.

SPEAKER_01 8:16

So are you still throwing pottery?

SPEAKER_04 8:20

That is my main source of income.

SPEAKER_01 8:22

Really?

SPEAKER_04 8:22

Yeah, it really is. Artist Sunday here in town was kick butt in my um and I love making pots. You know, more than 30 years later, I still love making pots.

SPEAKER_01 8:33

I'd like to see what you're doing these days. I haven't seen anything for years.

SPEAKER_03 8:37

Well, it's country on the picture.

SPEAKER_04 8:42

Sure, sure. Um I expanded art forms um a lot. There's watercolor, there's copper. Um my copper horse is uh in the brand um monument uh in the park in Boyle Park. Yeah. You can see my copper work on that. Yeah. Um watercolor, if I didn't say it.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

So is copper work uh a finish or a plating over ceramic?

SPEAKER_04 9:09

No, separate separate altogether.

SPEAKER_01 9:11

You mean are you soldering copper?

SPEAKER_04 9:13

I I can.

SPEAKER_01 9:14

I bet you can, baby. I like to enamel. Yeah. Wow, very cool.

SPEAKER_02 9:20

She scales it in base. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:25

Um, speaking of being afraid, I was terribly afraid that this was going to be an intervention of some kind. Oh my goodness. Do you deserve an intervention? Well, I really I really thought it would be about um having too many cats. Which I don't.

SPEAKER_02 9:44

If you don't have more than eleven, it's okay.

SPEAKER_04 9:46

Oh, see? Another fifty for you.

SPEAKER_01 9:50

Wow. That's this kind of yeah, I gotta get in on this crazy trail. Rabbits? You got some silly wabbits in there?

SPEAKER_04 9:58

I still do have two rabbits in my pottery studio, actually.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Really? They just wr run wild?

SPEAKER_04 10:04

No, they're in cages and pooping everywhere. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Um Z uh uh rabbits, New Zealand uh let's see.

SPEAKER_04 10:15

One is a black um lop, and the other one I can't remember the name of it. It's a little tiny white guy with dark ears and tail, so friendly, and blue eyes, and he's the pet, the the big black girl. I got her and her teammates um at the beginning of the pandemic and said, I will not eat you, but I might eat your children.

SPEAKER_01 10:38

How did it take? Fair warning.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

They woke up.

SPEAKER_04 10:40

They didn't have any kids.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

Maybe they understand English.

SPEAKER_04 10:46

French Lop, no. Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

As far as woman of the year, I don't know how the public will take this, but uh a person. It's personal, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's bad enough. Anyway, I've got a little story here. Oh I was over uh at their uh place where they're at now, uh long time ago, and uh we were looking at rabbits, and you also had uh a uh rooster and some hence. And you had little Devin was probably about that tall, maybe. And uh anyway, this can I tell you? No, I would like to tell you. From my recollect this is my recollection, and wake up screaming in the night sometimes about it. But uh anyway, that this rooster, as I recall, uh Devin got a little close to it and went out and did a peck at her. Marilyn was on her in a nanosecond, grabbed the neck, wringed the frickin' neck, and it was history that quick. And not a bit of remorse in your eyes. Okay, that's my standard.

SPEAKER_04 12:02

And dinner was almost ready.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Oh, yeah. The trick is too You just had to google it, that was it. It was free.

SPEAKER_04 12:07

You have to freeze it first. I go freeze it. It really makes it more tender, trust me.

SPEAKER_02 12:10

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 12:11

Well, you know, I've got one of those too. We had a rooster down below and a rooster up above, and the rooster down below got loose and was heading off with the rooster up above, and I was in the room, uh-huh, and the bad rooster that had come up actually spurred me. Oh, and it was right underneath my shin. Within 24 hours, I was on my way back from Cortez and realizing I was in a great deal of pain. Yes, and I looked when I pulled into make his clinic back in the day when you could actually, you know, see a doctor on the same day. Shape of a playing card infected. Yeah, I mean, in the old days I would have died from a rooster.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Isn't that something? And those things are like a horse kick and they're accurate. I mean, you could have been moving or whatever, and that son of a gun spurred you, man.

SPEAKER_04 13:05

I boy, I even had a stick in the whole bit, but he was just so yeah, I knew.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Wow. So I I wonder if that's typical that they have enough uh bacteria and crap on them that when they do spur something, that it's some of them probably do. I'd say sure. I I'm thinking so.

SPEAKER_04 13:22

Well, and it's a puncture wound too. I I tried to clean it, but there was no way really to get that cleaned out of there.

SPEAKER_01 13:28

And they put you on antibiotics.

SPEAKER_04 13:30

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And some kind of drawing agent.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

Marilyn, uh, you didn't know you're coming here to talk about chickens and I know. You know, let's get to music.

SPEAKER_04 13:40

Wait till you see what song I actually picked out.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

Does it have to be a big thing? Something to do with a bird? Is it fit fit the theme?

SPEAKER_02 13:48

All right.

SPEAKER_04 13:49

Yeah, I'm not kidding.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

Oh, I believe you.

SPEAKER_04 13:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

You wouldn't say it otherwise. Because we're gonna hear it, so you're gonna have to do it.

SPEAKER_04 13:57

That's very true.

unknown 13:58

That's very true.

SPEAKER_04 13:59

Eleven cats, you say, right on.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Well, the and the reason I say that is because my ex-wife had 11 cats at one.

SPEAKER_04 14:06

Oh.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:06

So that's your to me.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

That's like, okay, I know somebody who had that many. If you add more than that, then that's that's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 14:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 14:15

That's my gauge.

SPEAKER_04 14:16

I'm in.

SPEAKER_02 14:17

You can function with eleven cats. Anything under a dozen, then you're cool. You're okay. Yeah, be okay. Well, so can we go back to you as a songwriter? And and actually I do love the fact that we can talk about both sides of your uh artistry because you do uh make pottery as well as write songs. So those are two different things, which I I both love. So uh I'm glad we talked about that, but uh I want to go back to songwriting. Yeah, yeah, and actually talking about actual songwriting. So you said you you get that guitar when you uh um you know for Christmas, fifth grade.

SPEAKER_04 14:59

Ran away.

SPEAKER_02 15:00

What happened after that? Because that okay.

SPEAKER_04 15:02

In high school I did write a lot. I mean, I think it was my form of um expression, maybe certainly, certainly expression. I was thinking something a little more psychological, but yeah, uh it was therapy. Yeah, um, and it is interesting to go back and look at those lyrics and how innocent I was and you know what love actually meant without sex and all that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 15:26

Yeah, when you're young, it's it's amazing. And also how how important and devastating it can be at that age.

SPEAKER_04 15:35

Heartbreak.

SPEAKER_02 15:36

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:37

And my sisters just love the songs that I wrote back in those days. I was the eldest girl of uh three, and yeah, when I asked both of them what song would you like to hear on this, they both shot me something from 1979.

SPEAKER_03 15:50

I thought, oh dear.

SPEAKER_04 15:51

Yeah, they're not gonna get their wish today. But those songs are recorded. Uh-huh. You you you can I have a the notebook.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 16:00

Um I flipped through lately and and did happen to go, uh what happened there? So maybe not perfectly, but most lines at least a little. Yeah. So I got to Colorado and uh, you know, kind of grew up accidentally, um, and met a man, of course. And that there's a whole nother batch of songwriting, naturally, especially when he left.

unknown 16:30

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

You and Taylor Swift, baby.

SPEAKER_04 16:33

Yeah, call me. Yeah. Yeah, it's never happened to anybody else that I know.

SPEAKER_02 16:40

Well, what was your first uh let me let me just ask you this. What was your first uh your f your first project here, here in this area? Like w was it in Durango? Did you stop playing music, being in bands, and doing stuff in Durango?

SPEAKER_04 16:57

First band was Texas Toast. And who was in that one? Oh, I afraid you're gonna ask me that. Uh anybody who might know? Chuck Glass. Oh, Chuck Glass, yeah. He's great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Yeah. Well that was a good start. Some drummer. Uh and anyway.

SPEAKER_04 17:12

We went through several drummers, that's the way I remember it.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:16

Um, I wound up, yeah, all those all those great country bars were available in Durango.

SPEAKER_01 17:22

You know, and I if it's a funny thing playing with Marilyn for the years I played with her is sh I could never put a she never wanted me us to play a country song. And I didn't realize that was your back thing. She loathed country. This is my recollection, and she's a rock and roller. You know, anything that I gave her that was less than rock and roll that we collaborated on was no good. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_04 17:52

But remember when we played up um uh the town that's to the left after you hit the intersection toward out of town, um tell your eye to be on your right and you go to the left instead.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Which one did we do there?

SPEAKER_04 18:06

There we were in the Sea of Cowboy hats.

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Oh, uh Norwood.

SPEAKER_04 18:11

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

We were up on the yeah, up on Norwood, and oh we walked into a place that was your blood-like commercial uh cowboys, and I think they were two stepping with spurs on. Were you supposed to play that?

SPEAKER_04 18:25

Oh yeah, we were there, and here we were with our this guy was brilliant. He called the sets.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

You realized okay, we can't this is always, and you were brilliant.

SPEAKER_04 18:35

We did have a little handful of clumpers. We did, got a few. And so he would just toss it, you know. Just enough. Just enough. Got them up and dancing, they did not care what we played by halfway.

SPEAKER_02 18:47

Once we did, yeah, we had to you were brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

Well, thank you.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

That is a hard thing to do, dude.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

Yeah, we we had to establish to these people that hey, we're cool. You know, we can play that. You can take it down the chicken. You're playing Z Z Top, and then you're playing, you know, you just like that. Move and move, and and they love to rock, they just don't know it, you know.

SPEAKER_04 19:08

And remember at the end of that gig, there was a woman that came up and said, if you play the themes of Hawaii 5-0 or something like that, I will take off all my clothes. And you and Bud looked at each other, the drummer, and he just starts going, na na na na na na na na na and she got down there ventilate management said, Okay, that's enough.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

It's amazing what you can do when you're inspired, huh? Y50.

SPEAKER_04 19:41

I don't know, but I do.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

What you yeah, what you're what you're playing with. Pipeline and then a wipeout, yeah. Oh, wipeout, okay. Anyway, why anyway? I was I was weaned on all that surf music out in California. So I was I was ready. Yeah, sure.

SPEAKER_04 19:59

Did you well? Yeah. And I did wind up in a couple co couple country bands. The one in Florida was country.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

Yeah, and uh did you ever uh get into it and enjoy it?

SPEAKER_04 20:15

What do you think about harmonica?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

I got to where I really enjoyed playing country, uh you know, uh harmonies and uh not getting blasted off the stage.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

They might be also a matter of the the right songs.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

And well, and the other thing too many different Well, the other thing too, you play country music and people boom are dancing. Oh, I know. And so the attention gets off in me, and that's cool. So now I can wander to it now. Exactly. So I I love the fact that so many people want to dance to it. Yes, you know, and then you can morph into the eagles and into southern rock and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_04 20:55

You said two words that I wanted to address twang. That's one that I really I can't I don't like twang. You don't like that twang. I don't like twang. However, flip side, I love harmony. I live on harmony with Sweetwater Station and songwriting and um singing with Chris Rasmussen. A quarter of um the stuff on Sweetwater Station's album is my work. And Chris Rasmussen is absolutely brilliant at harmony, and I'm pretty okay too, especially with her voice. Our voices are just Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Oh wow Yeah, I've only I only got a glimpse of hearing you because I remember you were so happy singing with her. Yeah. And I I got to catch it one time and it it was.

SPEAKER_04 21:40

Chris is an hour away, but we are making it work. We're um flashbacks still exists, make no mistake. Um but Quarter Moon is that's the name of the new band. Got the earring.

SPEAKER_03 21:53

Oh boy.

SPEAKER_04 21:54

Um we're working on on things and I would very much love to do another album. I've been talking with Flashback too uh about originals versus just straight up rock and roll. Um and I'm feeling very driven to go to back to the songwriting.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

You haven't interjected any of your originals in Fast Flashback? It doesn't it's to me it's it's not a good fit.

SPEAKER_04 22:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:21

But you could. And that's it.

SPEAKER_04 22:24

My bandmates are brilliant. Well and and you uh certainly can write uh your original for rock you know I'll I'll take a lesson in that I took a I took a songwriting class from this guy um which was an extremely um important weird uh experience okay oh that's minus 40 bucks anyway um no it was it was important and um really maybe only one song which you never wanted to hear again came out of it the one that's sad that made your wife cry about my nursing oh yeah you did anyway um it that song needed to be written uh I really like that I'm not writing a ton of stuff right now it kind of means that I'm a piece and everything's pretty okay in my life that's kind of yeah and uh otherwise uh uh the uh you get stimulated by uh craziness alive huh sure that's where those songs came from and I wanted to broach the subject of um how the how you go about writing the song do you have an idea and that's my question to you oh yeah okay I'm serious actually okay yeah well and I've had it happen in a lot of ways I've had songs that I've had to work on for three days in a row oh this doesn't rhyme oh this is so trite oh that's a you know oxymoron or whatever and I've also had them where I wake up first thing in the morning it's 5 a.m I've forgotten and the whole thing comes out the whole thing it works and I don't I don't have to touch it yeah yeah it's really interesting the several of those or a bunch uh ready to uh get put into uh finished job uh yeah for another CD or yes is the short answer I kind of did that I've I've um time tested which is on Marilyncrokermusic.com um that's uh that's the compilation of my favorites to date okay but there is still a good handful that should be revisited.

SPEAKER_01 24:45

Now do you play those songs with Quarter Moon?

SPEAKER_04 24:49

Um not yet. But you're gonna hey Marilyn why don't we do it now uh I would love for you to uh do one of your songs the chicken song the chicken song is on the table I heard the chicken song I think wins the day all right I love it yeah um so we're gonna take a little cut bring it in and uh we convene thank you we were convening apparently um I have a little sticking point uh did you get to see the Northern Lights a couple weeks ago I guess I didn't okay we really really did and we occasionally do come up with northern lights in southwest Colorado and I have some gripes about people who have gigantic lights that they should shut off in the night and my neighbor actually has a full-time big light so this is the chicken song and you'll understand shortly why I'm griping about lights sort of I don't worry about my chickens in the middle of night don't worry about my chickens in the pale moonlight I don't worry about my chickens cause I got 'em in my sun I just cut down all my trees put up a big ass light don't do that when I first got here I remember there were stars it was like another universe in my own backyard now when those aliens go riding in the night I just got 'em all right down with a big ass light mountain lions would see owl a cat raccoon's beast most foul buggy men and hairy werewolves vampire bats I hope to scare off well I got a little pot so it got me some ducks I knew that loose and them would really suck now they gather on the light post with great bravery and pluck but when those northern lights come down well I'm really out of luck city market sears and walk lighter than a popcorn fire creatures from the muddy water boyfriend to my lovely daughter now and my chickens go and make a scary sound you know that noise they make when something's really going down I don't have to leave my pillow in the night or in the dawn I just leave my big ass light on on the line Don't worry about my chickens in the light don't worry about my chickens in my big light don't worry about my chickens I got a bit myself cut down all my trees put up a big ass light you too could cut down all your trees put up a big ass light I recommend cut down all your trees put up a big ass light silliness evolves are silly that's awesome I like that's a good one let me uh let me ask you this quickly do you do you have an idea generally speaking it doesn't have to be specific but a a general idea of how many uh songs you've written uh over the course of your life oh I was yeah I'm going way back in all the way up till now you can include some real simple ones so if I did five albums with twelve right there plus the rejects right eighty songs are are you difficult on yourself with that like you don't grab songs easily and say okay this is good it takes a while sure I'm I'm a good judge okay no well you know some people oh everything I do is great others they're so critical that they are never satisfied so that's what I mean like how are you where are you on that? At the peak of my songwriting I would write two a month. I really would and one was oh my goodness and one was huh I know what you're going through there I didn't ever tear them up would you say that uh songwriting for you has been a lot of uh um uh pulling from emotional moment absolutely okay okay yeah no exceptions at all um okay well I'm trying to think if I ever oh there was one um I did it at the Durango poetry gathering um it's called Adam on the train and it is a song but I did it as a poetry reading and it talks about um being just outside of New York City on the Chicago side and a a guy walking into the boarding the train smelling a little bit like pot um tie eyes and blue jeans there was music in his head sat right down beside me said I've just seen the dead I've just seen the grateful dead that was actually true that's something that happened that part happened the second half of the song you made it up right well that's freaking that's what it's all about yeah yeah why not that's especially what you tell your mom are we allowed to know what what the rest of the song was about or is it like woke up next morning I knew that he'd be gone it looked like Kansas City when he stepped into the dawn my heart was far from broken I had glimpsed some higher plane light years later I still smile at Adam on the train. That is great. So I think you can surmise what yeah and the funny thing is yeah so you wrote this before you got here um that I used to travel back and forth to New York to visit by train.

SPEAKER_02 31:41

From here? But I mean is that when you wrote it then why from here I mean all the I lived here and uh Albuquerque and can you go all the way to New York and you know I'm not up to date with it but I think I always changed in Chicago but that was it and it takes two and a half days or maybe three hours I I took uh from Gallup probably the same line that the train lined out to California uh with my nephew Matt and uh it was a long ride and that's a lot if you're not in a hurry.

SPEAKER_04 32:17

Uh probably where do you south from uh Gallup uh which is just a little bit west of uh Albuquerque where you could ride down there and go and I think Adam on the train is on time tested yeah it made the comment I don't I don't know it it flows very well especially with the title it's so interesting Adam on the train it's it's it's I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 32:43

You could almost do a play on words with I something Adam Adam on the train.

SPEAKER_04 32:49

I Adam on the train was long before