Leftovers (Gravity): Gravity’s Gone

Drive-By Truckers: Gravity’s Gone
[purchase]

After Thanksgiving, we at Star Maker Machine have typically run a “Leftovers” theme, letting the writers go back and revisit the themes we wrote about in the past year, and either posting something that wasn’t finished in time, or an idea that never even got started.

When I looked at the 42 different posts I wrote in 2014, I realized that I had essentially written twice for each of the year’s themes, except for one—Gravity. I actually suggested this theme, and thought that it would be pretty popular, but it only prompted five posts. We’ve had problems for the past few years getting people to post. I don’t know if it is just the inevitable burnout effect, or that mp3 based blogs are fading out, or we haven’t recruited enough (or the right) writers, recently, the number of posts, and regular writers, has been dropping.

It’s a bit disheartening, because the decrease in new posts has translated into a decrease in the number of page views. Not only that, but I’ve personally written almost a third of all of the posts this year, so far. Four writers have accounted for nearly 85% of the posts on the site. I think that the writing remains strong, and we have at least one new writer who seems to be interested. However, there have been times, many times, in fact, that I’ve thought about quitting entirely, or starting my own blog to write about whatever I want. But I haven’t, and I think that as long as there are other people who want to keep the SMM flame alive, I’ll keep writing. Not just for the tradition, or out of laziness or out of some sort of duty, because SMM was the first place that I broke through my fears and put my writing out to the public.

No—I’m going to keep writing here because I like doing it. I enjoy the idea of having a prompt force me to make a musical connection. Now, when I first started writing here way back in December of 2011, the themes were surprises, and I would wake up on Sunday morning, eager to see what Darius had come up with. Now that I’m a co-moderator, though, I am involved, along with Kkafa, in picking the theme, which has changed the way I react to them, but even when I suggest one, I don’t always know what I’m going to write about. I enjoy contributing to this blog. I enjoy the creative outlet, I enjoy sharing my opinions and telling my stories, and I enjoy the feedback that I sometimes get (mostly on Facebook—and if you aren’t a member of our page, you should be).

The Gravity theme was, as I wrote at the time, inspired by seeing the band Barnaby Bright at a small concert at a local church. I was impressed by them, and their song “Gravity,” and realized that this force of nature was a common subject for songwriters. There is no question in my mind that I considered trying to get a second post in, about the Drive-By Truckers’ song “Gravity’s Gone,” but it never happened.

“Gravity’s Gone” is a Mike Cooley song. Until this year’s English Oceans, Cooley usually only had a few songs on each album, and most of them are gems. This one is no different. Written during a long, exhausting tour, Cooley felt that things were getting a little out of control, and although he has been quoted as saying that the song, “doesn’t really make a lot of sense, and it wasn’t supposed to,” you can hear his contempt for what was going on in the clever wordplay:

Between the champagne hand jobs and the kissing ass by everyone involved
Cocaine rich comes quick and that's why the small dicks have it all.

But, ultimately, the heart of the song, where you can hear Cooley’s frustration, is in the chorus—

So I'll meet you at the bottom if there really is one
They always told me when you hit it you'll know it
But I've been falling so long it's like gravity's gone and I'm just floating

And that’s sort of how I’m feeling about our little blog here. Are we heading down to the bottom? I guess if we get there, I’ll know it. As long as we are still alive, though, I’m going to keep floating along, putting my thoughts out into the interwebs.

Here’s a bonus video of the band, still including Jason Isbell (who left the Truckers after this album), playing a mostly acoustic version of the song at a record store in Nashville (I am compelled to note that my son met Mr. Isbell, his fellow Nashville resident, last week).

Gravity: Gravity by Barnaby Bright

Barnaby Bright: Gravity
[purchase the Gravity EP]
[purchase The Longest Day (which also has the song)]

Last weekend, I was sitting in a church meeting room listening to two musicians make truly wonderful music. This experience was shared by 25-30 people, and between sets, we were able to chat with them, and ate pot luck snacks. Tomorrow night, the Grammys will honor, for the most part, music that isn’t nearly as good as what I heard from Barnaby Bright last weekend, much of it made by acts that play before tens of thousands of fans at each performance. I know that music isn’t really a competition, and I know that the vagaries of fame has been a common theme of my writing here, but I guess it just galls me that bands such as Barnaby Bright are traveling around, playing churches and small venues, sleeping in fans’ houses to save money, while lesser talents have their own jets and probably complain about the thread count in their hotel’s sheets.

What does this have to do with gravity? I could try to argue that there is gravity in this situation, but that would be a stretch. In fact, I thought of this theme at the show last weekend, when Becky Bliss, one of the married couple that make up Barnaby Bright, introduced this song, and joked that every band has a song called “Gravity.” And while that may be hyperbole, I have 13 distinct songs with the word in the title in my iTunes library, which is a pretty fair amount.

The members of Barnaby Bright are originally from Kansas, who came together for good, personally and professionally, in New York, which is why you sometimes see them referred to as being from Brooklyn (I guess that also gives them some hipster cred. Maybe they would be more famous if Nathan Bliss grew a big shaggy beard, and they wore vintage clothing). Becky has a simply beautiful voice, and when I saw them, she also played keyboards, harmonium and baritone ukulele. Nathan sang harmony, played the guitar and percussion and managed all of their many effects. I understand that he also plays many other instruments. They write separately and together, and their songs have won many prestigious songwriting contests. At the show, they mentioned that they were moving to Nashville, and maybe that will help them get more notice.

“Gravity” is a wonderful song, written by Nathan. It was a finalist in the 2012 Mountain Stage NewSong Contest, which led to a performance on that venerable and respected syndicated radio show. It uses gravity, and related concepts such as falling and weight, as a metaphor for the experience of breaking up.

I’m sure that most people who read this blog—you know, the kind of people who are interested enough in music to read unknown writers opine about the subject—have played the game where you think of a favorite, lesser known band that sounds kind of like a more famous band, and wonder why their levels of popularity are so different. Playing here, I thought of The Civil Wars, a fine act, which like Barnaby Bright, features a man and a woman who write beautiful songs, and perform them beautifully. And I suspect that if I randomly played Civil Wars songs and Barnaby Bright songs for you, you might be able to tell them apart by sound, but not by quality. (It turns out that I’m not the only one—Google the bands’ names together and you will find a number of other people making the comparison).

In fact, The Civil Wars’ excellent breakthrough, Barton Hollow and the Barnaby Bright EP Gravity both appeared on Amazon’s Best Albums of 2011, a great achievement for any artist, when you consider all of the albums released each year. But Barton Hollow was number 5 (and won 2 Grammys) and Gravity was number 91. Interestingly, Barton Hollow has a song called “Falling,” which has a similar theme to “Gravity.” To these ears, both of these songs are of a similar, high quality. What do you think?