In the summer of 2011, Chicago’s local alt-weekly published a story under the tagline “super unknown” about a visual artist and singer-songwriter named Willis Earl Beal. The story traced Beal’s enigmatic and melancholy history, from Chicago’s south side, where he grew up, to encounters in Albuquerque, where he lived briefly before returning to Chicago. The story drew interest in Beal’s strange home recordings and a few weeks ago, the influential London-based record label XL (who helped discover Adele and The xx), announced they would release Beal’s first record, Acousmatic Sorcery, in March. Beal’s music is a cross-section of styles and eras: his recent performances show he’s a natural at the current trend in lo-fi electro-R&B in the vein of Odd Future associate Frank Ocean or Canadian mixtape fascination The Weeknd. But Beal’s home recordings reveal something deeper, and less trending—something that doesn’t seem attached at all to modernity. On “Take Me Away,” he channels a 1930s Mississippi blues singer or small town preacher—both in the timbre of his voice and the crude recording quality. “I’ve been the teacher and a pupil in the school/I’ve followed and broken each and every rule/ Lord, I’m tired as a mule,” he sings, echoing Tom Waits in both the lyrics and the pots-and-pans percussion. Sometimes it’s sonically harsh and challenging stuff to listen to, but also fascinating and fresh. On “Evening’s Kiss,” one of Beal’s most haunting and beautiful tunes, he sings in a tender, honeyed soul singer’s voice and his lines have a natural poetry: “Watching rain fall from a dim café/ Can’t see the wind but I see the trees sway.” Later, he describes himself as “disillusioned and cool, catatonic/ Always in a daze without smoking that chronic.” This guy definitely doesn’t seem to need any drugs to reach an altered state; he’s already there.

Discovered by Brendan Benson when he heard a house painter playing a demo, Georgia native Young Hines is the first artist The Raconteur’s co-frontman signed to his new label, Readymade Records. Like Benson, Hines has a penchant for big, unabashed productions and a gift for pop songwriting. His debut album Give Me My Change will come out on April 10, while Benson’s fifth solo album, What Kind Of World, will be released on April 24. On Hines' record there's the permeating (and, at times, distracting) influence of John Lennon, nowhere more than first single "Rainy Day." It's mainly Hines' vocal inflection that will carry the brunt of the Beatles’ comparisons. He has that nasally blues tone and can easily achieve the sound Lennon once described to McCartney as "leaving the top of your head,” when the latter was trying to figure out how to sing “Kansas City.” But the best bits on Hines’ album are the little pop-soul nuggets, such as a tune called “You Keep Me Goin’,” which sounds like it might have introduced a very fetching scene in one of your favorite '60s films. Recorded at Nashville’s Welcome To 1979 studio (which also hosts quadraphonic Dark Side Of The Moon listening parties), Give Me My Change is brimming with vintage keyboard sounds and a wonderful, warm production. If sounding like John Lennon is a crime, I don't wanna be on the right side of the law.

(Mary McBride)

She rocked the house. With an amazing band featuring Blondie’s Paul Carbonara on guitar, singer-songwriter Mary McBride delivered an impassioned and inspirational show Tuesday night for the lucky residents and staff of L.A. Family Housing’s Valley Shelter.

And not only did this internationally-acclaimed artist provide a rousing two hours of great music to this lucky crowd right in the midst of their current homes, she gave even more: several of the residents were invited to sing with the band.

“We started doing that in shows a few years ago,” Mary said in an interview prior to the show. “There are a lot of really talented people out there with a lot of musical history, so we open the flow for them to tell their musical stories. Now we do it in every show.”

And they do it well. Part of the trick is to enlist top-notch musicians, who can easily handle any style. In addition to Paul Carbonara on guitar, she’s got rock vets Greg Beshers (Rhett Miller) on bass and vocals, and Mark Stepro (Butch Walker, Ben Kweller) on drums. “These guys can play anything,” she said, and it’s true. Carbonara lit the night on fire several times with incendiary rock guitar solos, while also shifting to pure country and then pulsating funk above the steady rock-solid groove of Beshers and Stepro.

“This is special,” said Lamar Holliday, a New Orleans native who was one of the chosen singers. “To hear live music of this caliber right here where we all live, it’s fantastic! She could be playing the Hollywood Bowl, and instead she brought her band here, to play for us. And she sings like an angel – a honky-tonk angel!”

Asked how it felt to sing with the band, he got a faraway look in his eyes, smiled, and said, “It felt like a dream. A dream I’ve been dreaming my whole life.”

It’s a dream Mary’s been bringing to homeless men, women and children throughout America since she started her own non-profit, TheHomeTour.org, in 2010.

Like other singer-songwriters, she was busy doing what musicians do: write songs, make records, do gigs, get songs placed in TV shows and movies (she performed her song “No One’s Gonna Love You Like Me” onscreen and on the soundtrack of Brokeback Mountain), and go after the breaks necessary to propel a career. And she got lots of them. She’s opened in concert for many luminaries, including Joe Cocker, Jerry Lee Lewis and Maria Muldaur, while Sir Elton John invited her to perform at the 35th Anniversary Concert of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

But her life changed when she went to the We Are Family organization in Washington D.C. “It was right after the Obama inauguration. Through them I visited a lot of home bound and elderly in Washington – When I told them I was a singer-songwriter they said to come back and sing. I wrote a song “Home” and called my album The Way Home. And I thought it would be a good idea not to do a regular tour, but go to the places where people live.”

She’s talking about the places where homeless people live, but as always her focus in not on the negative – that they have no homes – but on the positive, which is that they have a place to live. They are off the streets. It’s why she rarely uses the word ‘homeless.’ Instead the word she chooses to use the most is ‘home.’

And at LAHC, and other organizations around America, the aim is to provide service as well as shelter, to launch them on a trajectory towards a permanent home.

“I thought that I would do both,” she explained, “some club dates and some Home Tour shows. And we ended up doing almost all Home Tour shows. After doing these kinds of shows, which are so emotional each night, the club dates were so dull.” She discovered the connection that comes when an artist, as Woody Guthrie wrote, “injects himself directly into the bloodstream of the people.” When you get in people’s blood, you reach their heart.

(Lamar Holliday singing)

So after her first Home Tour in 2010, Mary formed a non-profit called TheHomeTour.Org to create ongoing tours of shelters and such. Her diligent and ingenious fundraising led to garnering the substantial support of the Starwood Hotel, which donates hotel rooms for the tour, the Gibson Foundation, the Enterprise Foundation and the Fischl-Gornik Foundation, established by the artist Eric Fischl.

“I was close to getting a bank to sponsor it,” she said. “I realized that they want to sponsor poor people. But not this poor. They want to sponsor people who they think they can help get their first mortgage. They are not a charitable enterprise.”

Acquiring the support of charitable foundations also proved to be initially challenging due to the intangible nature of this project.

“The foundations want to know what the impact is, and it’s hard to gage the impact when you’re not delivering meals, you’re delivering music. So it became a matter of finding people who understand the value of music, and who feel everyone has the right to live music. A lot of people love music but don't have the resources to hear it. It’s empowering for us to come to them, and it validates where they live.”

Mary feels it’s as rewarding for the musicians as for their audiences.

“It’s an incredible opportunity for us as musicians because musically we switch it up. We see the room and we change the music to fit. These guys are great, they can play everything, and it’s so much fun to do a big range of music, whether it’s a Ray Charles hit or hip-hop or a Christmas song.

“Also, it’s the only tour where you know you’re gonna be in a better mood when it’s over than when you began. That’s pretty rare. Every day is a new adventure – you never know where you will be, or who will be there, who will sing with us. There’s no pretension at all, it’s so bare-bones, we have like one amp. Paul, who has played with Blondie in huge arenas around the world, loves doing this just as much, and maybe more. There’s nothing else like it.

“And the people who run these places, they are angels. We get here and they’re so appreciative. We’ve been touring since 2002, and had a lot of great breaks. But nothing like this. So now we hardly ever play clubs, and that is great. If I don’t have to deal with a grumpy club owner all year,” she said with a smile, “I’d be happy.”

She strives to provide something for all ages. “Performers more often come and do shows for the kids. But there are a lot of adults who need music, too. So we perform for kids a lot. But also for adults and the elderly.”

Indeed, she has taken The Home Tour to an astounding range of recipients, from the seniors in Washington, DC to Navajo families in supported housing in New Mexico to the kids of the Treme’ district in New Orleans to farm workers in rural Washington State to recovering vets living indefinitely at a VA hospital in Long Beach, CA. And it goes on.

“It’s endless, really, all the places that want us to play. Just here in L.A., it’s a little like Sophie’s Choice having to decide which one to do. Because they are all incredible, these amazing organizations. We try to have diversity: women’s groups, kids, the elderly.”

On this night, Mary’s allowed some of the Valley Shelter’s secret stars to shine. Patricia Carter, who suffers from autism, was dressed in a pretty pink gown to join Mary onstage. But unlike the other singers who sang with the band, she sang “O Holy Night” a capella, with no accompaniment, and brought down the house. When she began, a hush fell over the crowd, and you could sense the nervousness of her friends in the audience unsure if she’d triumph. But that hush quickly turned to cheers as Patricia’s beautiful voice soared through the night, stunning the crowd.

Afterwards people lined up to hug and congratulate her. “I didn’t even know she could sing,” said her friend and fellow resident William Muse. “She knocked my socks off!”

The mother-daughter team of Veronica and Kayloni Long sang a sweetly gentle version of “Little Drummer Boy,” while Lamar Holliday got everyone dancing with a voice as sweet and soulful as Smokey Robinson’s.

Resident Gwen Bender came onstage and began to sing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” a little weakly and off-key, as if her nerves got the better of her. The crowd shifted uneasily, sensing her boat about to sink. But it was just a trick: she then turned to the band, said “Gimme some funk,” and as they laid down a solid R&B groove, she launched into a great soul rave-up with all the soulful swagger of Chaka Khan or Aretha Franklin. The audience loved it. “I tricked you,” she said later with a gleeful grin.

On their own, Mary and the band provided a great range of music, from her own originals like the poignant “Home” through contemporary standards like “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and a hauntingly beautiful rendition of Hank Williams’ “I’m So Lonely I Could Cry.”

When I asked her earlier if there is any kind of music that universally got people everywhere happy, she answered immediately. “Gospel. Everybody seems to love gospel. Even if they don’t think they do, we start ‘Swing Low Swing Chariot’ and everyone gets into it. You’ll see. And then there’s always straight-ahead rock and roll.”

It’s an experience that has transformed her own life as profoundly as it has the legions of people throughout America who have been touched by her music. And it’s changed her own definition of success.

“We played at City of Hope for two people who were about to have bone marrow transplants,” she said. “Because of their condition, only two people could come in at a time. So we did a whole set for two people. Through our regular prism of what is a successful show, you know, did we pack the place? Did we sell out? It’s different. You’re playing a show for two people. But as a musician you know you are touching someone with your music, and it doesn’t matter if it’s one person or if it’s 5000. We’re reminded of that each day. So your measure of success becomes very different, which is a blessing.”

(Paul Carbonara, Mary McBride and Greg Beshers)

Skip Matheny— currently a songwriter in the band Roman Candle and former bartender in a retirement community — recently talked with Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion of Cults. Their debut LP is out now, on Columbia / In the Name of and is currently making several best-of 2011 lists. This interview took place on their tour bus.

What’s your favorite drink?

Madeline: A shot of Jameson

Brian: You know, it’s weird. It was, for my entire life it’s been Budweiser...

Madeline: Since he was born.

Brian: Since I was 14 or something. But these guys (points to front of bus) have been wearing me down with this whole craft brew thing. So maybe like a Stone IPA or something, I don’t know. I feel like it hurts me to say that. I feel like Budweiser is somewhere crying, like, “we miss you” [laughs].

When you recorded the first few songs that you put online, you all weren't working with a producer or anyone, right?

Madeline: Yeah for the first part, when we put out those three songs we didn’t have anybody there, really.

How did you all's writing or arranging process change when you got into a proper studio and started working with other people? Did it stay pretty much the same?

Brian: Yeah, I mean we played all the instruments ourselves and we put all the songs together like, 90% of the way, and then bring them in and have them basically mixed by the guy who co-produced our record, Shane Stoneback. There was this one moment halfway through that we always remember, because we came in super cocky...

Madeline: Even before when we talked about [bringing in an engineer / producer] we were like, ‘Don’t let him touch anything...’

Brian: Yeah, when we talked to him on the phone I was like, “You’re rolling this as an engineer. You’re going to press buttons and record.”

Madeline: “Don’t even say a word about what needs to be…”

Brian: Yeah, we’d already achieved a decent amount of success off what we did in our bedrooms so we were like, “We’re just going to keep doing that but you can help us out. You know?” And he was like, “Yeah, totally, no problem.” And then we came in one day when we were mixing, I think it was, ‘You Know What I Mean’2 and we re-called the mix from the last night. And I remember saying, “Did you do anything to this?” And Shane said “No. I didn’t touch anything.” And I was like, “Yes you did, you did something to this.” And he said “No, no,” and looked all scared and I was like -- [pauses], “It sounds better than yesterday.” [laughs] And he had just stayed up all night remixing everything. From then on we started having more of a dialogue on working on things together.

If either of you all wake up in the morning and you think 'I’m going to try to write a song,' what do you typically do? Sit at a guitar, or a keyboard, go for a coffee? Turn on a computer?

Brian: I don’t know, I usually start the songs, and it’s weird, we were in school when we were writing all the songs that ended up making the record, so we had a lot of time just to sit and be bored in a classroom and just think about stuff. It's actually kind of bizarre because I got advice, before the record, from Rostam from Vampire Weekend, and it’s this, kind of cliché advice that you hear all the time, but I was like, ‘Dude, how do you keep making the hits?' And he said, ‘Work first thing when you get up in the morning and right before you go to sleep.’ ‘That’s when you get the best ideas.’ And it’s kind of true. Wake up in the morning and just kind of be laying in bed and just thinking about music and be like, that could be a cool chord and go over. But the main thing is having the drive to actually go pick up a guitar and get it down. Because if you walk home all day whistling a tune, if you go inside, drink a beer, play video games for a second [snaps fingers] – it’s gone. You know what I mean? So the process of making the record was really casual. We were kind of just living our lives.

Madeline: Until the end [laughs] Then we were like [looks panicked] “Aaah aaah,” sitting there trying to write lyrics.

Brian: Yeah in the end it was crazy. But we wrote the last song on the record when I was driving to pick her up Christmas Day. And I was just alone in the car and singing the melody into an iPhone, and I though “This could be cool.” [laughs]

What song was that?

Brian: ‘Bad Things.” That was the last one that we recorded.

Madeline: It’s sort of Christmas-y. [laughs]

Brian: But yeah, so it was mostly just doing the normal thing, you know, living life but having discipline to say ‘Alright, when songs come we’ve got to write them.’

Who are some lyricists that you admire?

Madeline: I’ve never been asked that question before [pauses]. Vampire Weekend? [laughs]

Brian: [laughs] No, no.

Madeline: [sings] “Dad was a shoemaker…”.

Brian: I think we’re both kind of saps in a way, I don’t know.

Madeline: Yeah, I mean in high school I was all about the Cure. I was like (imitates deep sigh) ... "that is so sad."

Brian: Or like, Roy Orbison, his nine songs about dreams and crying. Every song is basically the same, but some of them hit so hard. You know what I mean?

Madeline: Yeah, Roy Orbison’s great.

Brian: Some people just put it out there every time…

Madeline: [sings] “I was alright…”

Brian: … and there’s just magic every now and again, you know? I think that just because a song sounds cliché doesn’t mean it can’t be awesome.

Madeline: Yeah, any sappy, sappy - like Cure, Roy Orbison, Leslie Gore.

Brian: Yeah, and I like all the more intellectual songwriters like, Brian Eno or David Byrne - I like it, but it’s just...

Madeline: Yeah, half the time you have no idea what he’s talking about.

Brian: Well the thing for us is, we usually write the music first. We’ve never written lyrics before our music, so it’s a process of like…

Madeline: ...the feeling. I’m not a poet. I could not sit down and, without music, write this feeling. It’s more listening to the music and it evokes the emotion I guess.

Brian: Because that’s to me what makes a great pop song. When the lyrics meet the emotion of the music so perfectly, like in “Crying.” Like in that last “over you.” You know? If he was saying something different it would have the same impact.

Madeline: But also sometimes [Brian] will make music and I’ll come up with lyrics that he had a totally different idea about the vibe of the song but it works, you know?

That's interesting to hear the Roy Orbison and Cure references because your songs seem to carry so many great 'pop song' conventions, like the repeated line in “Most Wanted” that changes shape a little each time you hear it. I don't think an average songwriter just naturally comes up with these refined song-craft type conventions unless they've spent some time listening to them elsewhere.

Brian: We always joke in the band that people always ask, “Okay, let’s play the chorus.” And everyone’s like, “Which one’s the chorus? Which part?”

Madeline: Like in “Go Outside” the chorus only happens once.

Brian: And then it turns into an outro. And then, “Wait, I thought the verse was the chorus.’ And I’m like, no. Or like in “Most Wanted” the chorus is different every single time, or “Never Saw The Point,” it goes right into the chorus, but, yeah we didn’t really know what – it’s just a by-product of us not really knowing what we were doing. Which I think is a good thing, because we didn’t know how to write a bridge ever, so we don’t really have any bridges in any of our songs. I was like, "I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to skip that."

Madeline: [laughs] We’re going to start building bridges.

When you all are starting or finishing lyrics, do you all use the just music itself as a starting point? Or are either of you writing in a notebook all the time without music and then seeing how that might go along with a song once you've written it?

Madeline: I think for me it’s mostly just the feeling of the song - totally. Something, an image or something, might pop in your head when you hear it.

Brian: It’s always based on hooks, too. We always come up with a hook first. Whether it’s “I want to go outside,” a big cut like that first part and the rest of it just kind of follows. We’ll just kind of mess around with it and be like, this would be a good chorus and then, oh what’s the verse going to be? [laughs] And go write around it.

Did you guys ever hear any music or songs when you were younger that made you think, I think I’m a different person from my parents or my family? Maybe something clicked in your mind after hearing a particular bit of music and you thought 'I feel like a completely different person than half an hour ago when I put that record on.”

Brian: Yeah, I know what you mean exactly.

Madeline: I’m kind of screwed on that one because my parents were…

Brian: Cooler than us.

Madeline: ... Really cool.

[laughs] Yeah, I read about your parents.

Madeline: So I was always like, "I found this awesome new band!" and they were like, "Oh yeah I know, yeah."

Brian: Or “That guy’s an asshole!” (laughs). Because she grew up with the Ramones hanging out at her house, so it’s kind of hard to be cooler than that.

Madeline: When I was younger I thought I was an individual because I liked N’Sync or something, when I was 8 or 9 years old.

Brian: Destiny’s Child. That was her way of rebelling [laughs]. I remember for me it was 7th grade I was listening to Dr. Dre and just all the normal stuff on the radio and then I met this kid in my class who looked really weird, had glasses and tight pants and I thought, ‘What is going on with that kid?’ And I went over there and he said “Yeah I listen to hardcore.” And I was like, “What is that? What is hardcore?” And it wasn’t even hardcore. He burned me an At the Drive In CD. [laughs] I listened to that In/Casino/Out record and I thought “Shit. This record rules.” And then I just changed everything. The dominoes fell and I started getting into music. Before that I didn’t even play guitar really. I spent my yard [mowing] allowance on some crappy Ibanez that was something similar to what the guy in Limp Bizkit played. I remember thinking even a year later, “Why didn’t I buy the SG?”

It can be problematic if you go into a Guitar Center at that young age...

Brian: They always push you towards it! I had one friend who knew guitar and went with me and he had a Strat but he’s like, you don’t want this piece of crap man, you wanna get that Ibanez. And I was like, “I think I want an SG.” And he’s like no no, Ibanez RG-570 it’s got the EMG pickups.

And then it's all Ash-body and Maple-neck talk.

Brian: Yeah, and all these guitars are in a landfill somewhere. [laughs]

I wish more were in a landfill. If you all were going to cover a Randy Newman song tonight what do you think you would do?

Madeline: Oh Randy Newman. Short People, I’d do, for sure [laughs].

Brian: Sail Away. I love that song man. Randy Newman is one of the best. I think that song with the start of that album, Sail Away, with the dissonant orchestration and everything, makes you want to cry. It’s so good. He has so much stuff that just gets glossed over. He’s another guy, you can’t even keep up with everything that he’s done. Amazing. We missed him at ACL (Austin City Limits). Me and our old guitar player. We were just wigging out about it. About how we’re going to miss Stevie Wonder and Randy Newman playing in the same day. But that’s definitely a show we’ve got to see before we die.

The recordings on this first album seem to contrast these really pop-friendly conventions and melodies against slightly darker or more hazy atmospheres. Do either of you have any favorite non-musical artists that influence you? Authors, painters, filmmakers, anybody ?

Madeline: David Lynch.

Brian: Yeah I mean the obvious answer is David Lynch. Everybody’s influenced by him. Or I mean most people. I had to write this really long paper in college about avant garde and kitsch, what separates high art from low art. And I think he doesn’t see those boundaries. The same with Roy Orbison, that’s why he’s drawn to that music. Because at the same time something could be cliché and kitschy, it can be totally revolutionary and have a new feeling and be amazing. In all his movies like, Blue Velvet, there’s this 1950s cool guy thing going on but then there’s also so much more to it. I think all of our favorite art is kind of like that. Where there’s like – like Randy Newman, where there’s multiple levels of weirdness that you have to sort through.

I've been working on a new show recently that I thought some of the songwriting practitioners and aficionados might get a kick out of. I do a lot of “Fringe Festivals” that provide me an opportunity to combine music, dialogue, visual arts in ways that aren't as easily produced in more traditional venues. I had pretty good success with a one-man show I wrote and performed called The Terrorism of Everyday Life. This was about 50% music, 50% dialogue that addressed topical issues painstakingly woven into an autobiographical story.

It was a lot of work, initially doing a residency at The Knitting Factory here in New York over the course of a year with continual rewrites and editing, out on the road in a few major cities, most notably Austin, Texas, then over to The Edinburgh Fringe in Scotland where there are over 3000 acts from around the world. I did a month long run there where I was lucky enough to win the prestigious Herald Angel Award. From there we did two weeks in the London Soho Theater, and finishing up for a cross country tour here in the States culminating in the Capital Fringe Fest winning the Director's Award. Exhausting, creatively challenging, immensely rewarding and most of all a boatload of fun.

I then proceeded to write two shows, neither of which quite jelled. I would take them out on the road, perform them in segments and they seemed to fall on deaf ears. I did some rewrites and further drafts and instead of breathing new life into them it seemed to “wash them out.” Maybe some of you writers can identify with this. Sometimes the initial spark which needs that “fine tuning” doesn't seem to extend to further drafts. I was writing at that point a song a day anyway just for the fun of it so I wasn't particularly worried about writer's block. I was, however, concerned about getting an aesthetic boner. I'm talking about that exciting Viagra like muse called “inspiration.” Where you could taste it in the words. Something that I gave a shit about, was proud of, that challenged me and at the end of the day, knew that I had experienced that cool artistic thing called “growth.”

(Sidebar: A friend of mine, the excellent songwriter Wammo from the Asylum Street Spankers named his beautiful daughter Cecilia. I asked him if he was a big Paul Simon fan and he said yes but he told me that Cecila is the name of the Goddess Muse. That puts a whole other spin on the song right? She's upstairs “doing it” with some other guy. She's betraying Paul. He's not getting the song written downstairs. She' probably up there having an orgy with Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman and, shame upon shame ART GARFUNKEL! Some kind of cool lesbian thing with P.J. Harvey....“Inspiring” THEM but not HIM!! Sorry...I got off on a tangent...I could Google this Cecila/Muse thing to fact-check but fuck it, I'm on a roll.)

In order to continue doing the Fringe Festivals I had to come up with a new script. I came up with a title that I was happy with, The Evolution Revolution. (Don't give me any shit about this, Pete Townsend supposedly comes up with his titles first and he wrote some pretty good songs). I wondered if I could get the audience to help me write a song within the context and parameters of a 70 minute show. Here would be the plan: I'd come out, do a bit of one of my more unorthodox tunes, talk about what inspired that specific tune, get a bit more general: how I write them, what informs them etc. Do another. Ask the audience for help, we're going to write a song together, we're going to plant a seed and watch it “evolve,” share the creative experience. Give me 5 titles, we'll pick the best one, I'll do another tune, you guys think about it. My nine-year-old boy is on the stage with a computer ready to copy down titles, ideas, notes. They give me 5 titles, we pick one, write a song, sing the chorus together, my kid films it on my Flip camera, we post it to YouTube and Bingo!: Andy Warhol is spinning in his grave.

I committed to 5 shows with the Capital Fringe Fall Festival program. This last Saturday and Sunday, November 5th and 6th were opening nights. With nothing written, nothing prearranged except this vague concept I walked out on stage and asked for the audience's help. Did it work? Fuck yeah. Was it tough at first? You betcha! Was I scared half way through that I had bitten off more than I could chew? Yup. But little by little they got into it, and by the end we had a fully participatory audience, enjoying the art of creating songs, coming up with a little ditty that we were all kinda proud of. Is it going to race up the charts? Probably not. Is it going to make the ghost of Cole Porter envious? Nope. Was it pretty cool and did the audience and I leave the venue stoked? Bet on it.

To give you an example; One of the titles that was volunteered from the audience was “South American Peace Corps Blues”. I'm looking out at a dark house so I ask, “Have you been or are you going?” “No,” they respond, “Our daughter is there.” Aha, now we're on to something. “How old is she?” I ask. “23." What's her name, how long has she been? Yadda yadda....gotta keep the energy up, can't mess up the pace so I do a tune about old timers in love...my reasoning here is, they love their daughter, they're proud of her, she has chosen a righteous path...but they miss her and they're worried about her, right? By the time I'm done with the tune I'm singing, I've written a verse in another part of the brain, (You know the part that's panicking going, “GET IT FUCKING WRITTEN OR THIS SHOW IS GOING TO FALL ON IT'S ASS!!) Came up with a pretty cool line about how they're proud of her, she not like one of them Kardashians, but we're worried and get yer ass back from Peru! We project the lines my son has copied down on the computer onto giant screens in the house, the audience sings along... success! Cool, huh? I finish up with a spoken word piece I've written about song titles, a big closer, and everybody wins! Are you kidding me??!!

I was pretty pumped and proud and if it inspires any of you songwriters to do something similar, breathe a little life into stuff as they say, then awesome. Somebody just read this and told me that Jimmy Fallon is doing it on his show so it's not like I think I'm some genius originator: Steve Allen used to do it too 40 years ago. But did he have a lesbian love scene verse? Probably not. Did he mention the excellent cocaine in Peru as I did? Of course not. So there.

BTW: I'm back in Washington DC at The Capitol Fringe Fest this November 18th, 19th and 20th. If you're in the neighborhood drop by and join in the fun.

For more Hamell, visit hamelltv.com.

“Honey, wake up.”

I began to emerge from an allergy-induced Saturday slumber. Sunlight streamed through the bedroom blinds. Screams and music were chirping out of my wife’s laptop speakers.

“Honey.” She grabbed my elbow and gently shook it.

“Baby, respect,” I grunted. “I am ill.”

“Wake up! Taylor Swift is playing your song.”

Well, then. I opened my eyes and beheld a blonde siren sitting under a purple tree while playing “Nashville” over the din of 15,000 very enthusiastic people. It was one of those crappy videos shot with a phone, the image bobbing up and down in a sea of silhouetted arms and heads. I couldn’t hear the music that well over the whoops and hollers, but it sounded like she was laying into it pretty good. It sounded like she meant it.

I wrote “Nashville” in 2002. It was a farewell salute to one chapter of my life and an admission of complete ignorance regarding the next. I started it on a 20-hour, amphetamine-fueled drive in a U-Haul from Brooklyn to Nashville via Pittsburgh and finished it a few months later on a train between Rhinecliff, NY and Manhattan. I remember thinking that the phrase ‘Goin’ back to Nashville’ sounded impossibly goofy, like something only Ryan Adams could get away with singing. But nothing sounded better, so I kept it and tried to make the rest of the song especially sparse and haunting in order to contrast with its stupid chorus.

It was a little odd, nine years later, to hear this person with whom I most likely had very little in common making “Nashville” her own. My experience with the song had always been very intimate, very small. I had always thought of it as the kind of thing that might be spoken softly during a midnight phone call. It never occurred to me that it might serve as a rallying cry for an arena full of people.

A song is defined by its singer. Unlike paintings, buildings or sculptures, songs don’t fully exist in static form. The words and notes written on a page are only part of the work; the rest of it is the experience shared between the song’s interpreter and an audience. The identity of the song changes with each new performance, and this constant state of flux extends its lifespan. This is why music is a living, breathing art form: It requires engagement to achieve relevance.

I don’t know Taylor Swift, but she seems like a pretty extroverted person who happens to possess a gift for expressing very intimate emotions in a way to which a large number of people can relate. This is rare. As I watched her performance of “Nashville,” I felt, among other things, a sense of relief that she had taken it upon herself to perform it to so many people. I doubt I would have ever had the chutzpah to attempt such a thing.

The video ended, and the tiny screen was immediately flooded with multiple thumbnail images of other Taylor Swift performances, an infinite number of experiential options, a bottomless cauldron of digital possibilities. I was suddenly exhausted, happy to be watching from afar as one of my own finally made its way out into the nether-reaches of that dry and endless Universe. I farted, snuggled back into my wife’s armpit and sank into the sleep of the dead.

David Mead's new album DUDES is now available for pre-sale on iTunes and will be available everywhere November 15. You can also download his 25 song career retrospective '25 Days To Dudes' here and follow David's daily journal entries about each song on his Facebook page.