Two Pines

When I turned 12 in 1972 my brother John gave me a very important birthday present – Neil Young’s brand new album Harvest. From the opening notes of “Out on a Weekend” to the haunting atmosphere of the closing track “Words” I was caught by its spell. I had never heard anything so achingly beautiful before in my life.

In the years before ’72 it was all about the Beatles, the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, and even the Monkees. But behind the façade of all that glamorous rock and roll a quiet movement was building, a rootsy, acoustic, country rock feel with more debt to Dylan and the folk scene than to anything else. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young were its standard bearers, and when Young left the supergroup he fled to Nashville and began working on Harvest with a core group of seasoned country players. The album’s success took Young by surprise and maybe even frightened him. Harvest became the best selling album in America in 1972 and when “Heart of Gold” went to number one, his first and last number one single, he backed away from the fame fearing he was becoming middle of the road. “I headed for the ditch,” he later said, “a rougher ride but I saw more interesting people there.”

Harvest went on to influence an entire generation of country rock folkies like me. My own guitar playing, singing, and song writing began to turn in that direction. It just felt like home. It’s all there in the opening track, “Out on a Weekend” – that emptiness, that loneliness, that simplicity, that bare bones honesty. A kick drum, a snare, a bass guitar, an acoustic guitar, a harmonica, a pedal steel, and simple lyrics about the redemption of the road – what else could you possibly need?

Many years later when I began making my own records I kept looking for a way to emulate that feel. I didn’t want to imitate Neil. Where’s the joy in mimicry? I wanted to find my own sound, my own voice, my own truth. But an apple never falls far from the tree.

My first album, Live at a Better World, was recorded live in the 90s at a wonderful folk music venue we were all playing at called A Better World Café. My folk duo partner at the time Mark Jackson and I stripped it down to two acoustic guitars and two voices – a simple, spare approach that let the songs shine. For my second album Frame, produced and recorded by Michael Krewitsky, we took advantage of the emerging technology of Pro Tools and the freedom it gives you. We both learned a lot about making rootsy Americana music with computers and software.

When I formed the Coyote Problem we made two albums with producer Sven-Erik Seaholm – Wire in 2005 and California in 2007. I told Sven I wanted a simple, dry, straight forward sound with minimal production sheen. I wanted it to sound like, you know, a band in a room. We succeeded. Both of the albums won Best Americana Album at the San Diego Music Awards in their respective years, a humbling honor.

It’s been seven years since California. Life got in the way. The Coyote Problem had a great run, but it was hard for me to keep up with the demands of running a band and a challenging career as a philosophy professor. I fired myself from my own band and focused on writing and teaching. I kept doing solo acoustic shows. And of course the songwriting never slowed down. In seven years a lot of songs piled up. I had to do something.

There are a lot of great producers. But in the end I went back to Sven-Erik Seaholm. We work well together, and I feel at home in his studio having made two albums there already, as well as spending countless hours as a session player on other people’s projects. We had a meeting and talked about the vision for this album. We talked about Neil Young’s “Out on a Weekend.” We talked about Tom Petty’s “You Don’t Know How it Feels.” We talked about acoustic guitar sounds and kick drums and amplifiers. We came to an understanding about what the goals for this record were. Like Steven Covey says, “Begin with the end in mind.”

Sven worked really hard to get a rich, authentic acoustic guitar sound using a complicated array of three microphones and signal paths (I try not to pay attention to any of that stuff – it just makes me feel stupid).  In many ways, getting a good acoustic guitar sound is the most difficult thing to do in the studio – the sound comes off the guitar in so many places and so many ways. But Sven did it.

Listening back to the initial tracks I realized something was missing. I needed a title song to unify all the themes of the record. So I wrote one. I tuned my guitar to a double drop D (the tuning Neil uses on “Cinnamon Girl,” “Ohio,” and “Cortez the Killer”) and I wrote a song called “Two Pines.” It came out so good we decided to open the album with it.

There are a lot of great drummers and bass players. It was an agonizing decision. But I finally decided on Bob Sale and Jim Reeves. They both have this amazingly powerful, muscular, confident feel and they play with the most arresting of all qualities – simplicity. They never clutter things up with busy, fussy, unnecessary flourishes. They find the essence and bring songs to life. We tracked them together while Sven and I sat in the control room. Our jaws hit the floor after the first song. I had goose bumps. This was it. They showed up early, stayed late, came in prepared, and exceeded all expectations. They tracked all 14 songs in one day, many on the first take. It is such a joy to work with professionals.

That session was followed by weeks of overdubs. I played Dobro, lap steel, 12 string, electric guitar, percussion, harmonica, and of course sang the vocal parts. We brought in Melissa Barrison to play violin on one song, and Sven played a piano riff on another. But the album is mostly bass, drums, guitars, and vocals. Our arrangement philosophy was “When in doubt, leave it out.”

In many ways, Two Pines is the album I’ve been trying to make all along. I’m proud of all of my earlier work, but with each album you learn a little more. You get closer and closer to the truth. The songs get stronger. The playing gets better. The singing gets truer. You relax more and more. And when you relax, the real you finally shows up.

All any singer-songwriter wants is to hear their songs recorded well, and to share those songs with anyone who’s interested. Real musicians don’t chase fame or money – they do it because they’re drawn into the spell that music casts, and they simply want to add their voice to the chorus. We all love music. We love what it does to us, how it frees us, unlocks our heart, opens our eyes, and shines light on the beauty of our own lives. We all have our favorite genres, styles, and artists. But beneath all the surface variations, it’s all just one song – our song. Music is memories; music is a new friend you haven’t met yet. Music is a feather bed and a field of stones. Music is many things, and one thing – a way to know a truth beyond words, a truth our soul is asking for, a truth that sets us free. That’s what your favorite music does for you. Let it.  

Marijuana

In his new autobiography, Neil Young comes clean.  Because of his recent brain surgery, and under the advice of his physicians, he quit smoking marijuana.  He put down the pipe in January 2011 and hasn’t smoked since.  Not bad for a guy who’s been stoned since the sixties.  Inspired by his adult daughter’s journey into sobriety, he also gave up alcohol.  Any good child of the sixties is naturally drawn to experimenting with altered states of consciousness.  And when you’ve been stoned and drunk for forty years, sobriety is the new high.

            At first he worried, will I be able to write songs?  Will I still want to make music?  But the dam soon broke – he returned to his craft with renewed zeal and ferocity recording two albums in a row with his long time and distortion drenched rock band Crazy Horse.  The first was a collection of folk standards called Americana.  The second, released on October 30, is the first ever collection of originals by the clean and sober songwriter.  Psychedelic Pill put his worries to rest.  Neil Young’s star has never shined brighter.

            I quit drinking eleven years ago, and put down the pipe many years before that.  The pursuit of music was so deeply interwoven with those two activities, I too wondered if I would ever again write and perform music with the same conviction and abandon.  My fears were mislaid.  In fact, the opposite occurred.  When I came out of the fog, I began to write much better songs.  And I became clearer about how to record and perform those songs more effectively.  My entire recording career as a solo artist and the success I enjoyed with my band The Coyote Problem, including all the San Diego Music Awards, happened after I got clean.  It’s like I awakened from a dream, walked outside, and found the courage to take my place in the sun.  The stoned and drunk me was always too tentative, too wracked with self-doubt, too stuck in my own head to dare to live out loud.  I sometimes wonder how many opportunities I let slip by just so I could stay hidden.    

            Marijuana and alcohol are tricky.  One is legal and one is not.  Anyone can see the indefensible absurdity of drug and alcohol laws.  It makes no sense that alcohol is legal, widely available and socially sanctioned while marijuana is not.  It’s perfectly respectable to drink three glasses of wine as your eyes glaze over and your cheeks turn red.  Police officers, judges, governors, mothers and priests do it all the time.  But smoke one puff of a plant you grew in your own backyard and you’re a criminal.  None of it makes any sense.

            Yet marijuana use is not without its personal costs.  It may not be as benign as its advocates proclaim.

            Last year one of my students came to see me in my office.  She was a brilliant, articulate, well read and thoughtful young woman.  I wasn’t sure what she’d come to discuss.  After fidgeting and staring at the floor for a long, uncomfortable silence she said, “I have a drug problem.”

            Then it all spilled out.

            The drug was marijuana.  Not only was she a daily smoker, she stayed stoned from the moment she awoke in the morning till the moment she went to bed.  There was never one single moment of one single day when she wasn’t stoned.  As she told me her story, one word kept cycling around in my mind.  More than anything else she seemed brokenhearted.

            She wasn’t interested in counseling or therapy.  As a college professor I had all those resources at my fingertips, and was ready with phone numbers.  She shook her head.  She only had one question.  “What should I do?”

            “What do you want to do?” I asked.

            “I don’t know.  I don’t think I want to quit,” she said, “but I can’t keep going like this.”

            And that was the crux.  Her restlessness, her anger, her dissatisfaction, her discomfort were powerful messages in and of themselves.  Sometimes suffering is a gift.  It’s o.k. if you don’t know what to do next, I told her.  Sometimes it’s enough to know that you can’t stay here.

            A particularly poignant part of her story was the fact that her mother, who suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, has a medical marijuana card and smokes to dull the edge of her chronic pain.  It’s easy to see that marijuana is a remarkably effective medicine for certain chronic conditions and used judiciously it can be a highly beneficial component of palliative care.  But every medicine is also a poison.  Her family home was filled with clouds of marijuana smoke.  For everyone in the house, including her two younger siblings, marijuana consumption was as commonplace as breathing air.  How was she going to find the courage to put down the pipe under these conditions?  It’s easy to support medical marijuana in principle, but our passionate public discourse on the issue rarely considers the long shadow cast by these clouds of smoke.

            We talked for a while and looked at it from every angle.  I didn’t preach or tell her what to do.  It was enough to simply be present with her confusion and frustration.  The only suggestion I offered was experimenting with a temporary hiatus.  Why not stop for a week or two, just to see what happens – just to see who you are without it.  Marijuana powerfully and effectively shifts one’s emotional and conceptual frameworks.  It might be instructive to see what the options are.  It might be helpful to see what it feels like to not be stoned.

            When she left I felt frustrated and a little worried.  I wished I could have been more helpful.  But the best we can do for each other is bear witness.  I cannot choose for her.  Her authentic freedom is a Holy Grail only she can find.

            She said she would try to quit for a while just to see how it felt.

            The next time I saw her she was stoned.

            It’s funny.  When you first begin drinking and smoking, you do it because it lifts you over your adolescent awkwardness.  It helps you overcome fear and sets you free to connect with others.  It softens the pain and clears out the clutter so you can more immediately experience beauty and joy.  Then it turns around.  As the consumption becomes habitual, it begins to have the opposite effect.  The life of the addict and alcoholic is a life of increasing isolation and disconnection.  You get stuck in your own little world.  Things lose their luster and turn dull.  It just stops working.  You feel anything but free.  And a small voice inside of you starts asking for something more.

            Drugs and alcohol are neither good nor evil.  I seriously doubt the criminal justice system has any significant role to play, apart from the obviously sensible prohibitions against driving under the influence.  What we put in our bodies is by its very nature a very personal and private decision.  Each of us must bear the burden of our own choices, and take responsibility for crafting our own best lives.  That some are more competent in this task than others is clear.  But we must never dogmatize about how others are to live their lives.  It is hard enough to live our own.  Human beings have sought out consciousness altering substances since the beginning of time and no set of laws or social conventions is going to change that.  But the deeper and more pressing question remains.  What role do these substances have in a fully realized, vibrant and joyful life?  There’s only one person who knows the answer to that question.