You can read the lyrics in the description on the song’s YouTube page. 

Remember last time when I said I'd only done one edition of the #MudRoomSessions? Well here's another one that I'd already done long before I wrote that. 

That was a mistake. I forgot about this one because it was a little different. I'll explain in a second but the point I want to make here is that while this was just an error, I also might lie in this newsletter. I won't lie about anything important. I won't tell you to go somewhere that you really shouldn't go, won't say something's good when it's bad. Nothing like that. I don't even know what I might lie about. I'm just saying I'm not doing journalism here. My fealty is to entertainment, not truth. 
 

My good friend Joe Strummer disagreed with me about that and we used to argue about it over pancakes at Paisley Park. 

So the video above wasn't exactly a #MudRoomSession. I just called it that because it was made in the mud room. I appeared on a show called Open Mic America, a live national open mic that streams three times a month on Sunday nights on YouTube. I appeared in December and I'm scheduled again on March 17. Mark your calendars.

Or don't, because the show is archived. Here's my segment from December, which includes the video above plus Dead Mall, a previous Song of the Newsletter. The show is more than two hours long but that link is cued up to me. After my two songs, there's a brief interview, and I have to say, the interviewer was very good. I haven't been interviewed that many times, but I've been the interviewer thousands of times so I know what I'm talking about. This guy really listened to the songs — everyone's, not just mine — and asked good questions. 

I played Birthplace of the Blues because I was excited about it, having just finished it, and also because I got to use my new capo.

I finished the song in November. I started it in — I don't know, 1990. I have no idea what was going on in my life as I sat down on a curb on the corner of Sanchez and Hill in Noe Valley, San Francisco, but amazingly, given what I said in the last newsletter, I had a pen and paper on me to write down this chorus that had popped into my head. My inspiration might have been that I needed an excuse to sit down after huffing up Hill Street, which is maybe the best marriage of street and street name in the Lower 48. This photo doesn't do it justice. 

Here's the chorus:

My house is the birthplace of the blues

It's here that I discovered how to lose

You may say it's madness

But I invented sadness

At my house, birthplace of the blues

It was done. Melody and everything. I was aware of a subject-matter resemblance to the Johnny Cash song Home of the Blues, but it wasn't close enough to worry about. Building as personification of feels. Not a new idea. Heartbreak Hotel too. 

The problem was I couldn't come up with verses I liked. Not when I got home. Not that week. Not after I put it away and came back to it. Again and again over the next few months. And then the next few years. Then decades. I have a file called SONGS that's full of notes and ideas and it was one of the older residents, just hanging around. The file's rent controlled. 

For some reason, though, the move to Durham shook things up, and I've been able to finish several songs that had put down roots in the SONGS folder. I'll let you know whenever one is a Song of the Newsletter so you can say then, as you're probably saying now, "It took you 35 years to come up with THAT?!" 

You know how Dolly Parton said "It costs a lot of money to look this cheap!"? Please imagine I have a line as funny as that about how long it's taken to finish some of these songs. 

I think what finally allowed me to finish Birthplace of the Blues was that I stopped trying to come up with a story about why my house is the birthplace of the blues. The only plot is "she went away," which is as generic as "Woke up this morning." 

Instead, the verses describe how overwrought the feeling of sadness can be. It feels like you're the only one who's ever felt that way, or that nobody can ever understand this thing you're going through. And yeah, lampoon it a little. Because it is kind of a silly way to feel — when you're not in the middle of feeling that way. 

The foundation cracked the day she went away

The whole place is a monument to spiders and decay

The neighbors are complaining, I guess they never knew

They live on the same block as the birthplace of the blues

A little magic realism, a first for me. There's a dark cloud hanging overhead too, which, again: It really can feel that way. But it's also right out of a comic strip. 

But I like that magic realism idea that things like buildings and the weather can be affected by how you're feeling. 

I don't think this is a new direction for me, though. When I wrote a daily column for Salon I used to have little rules for myself. Like certain clichés or turns of phrase or jokes that I'd let myself use, but only once a year. Nope, can't use that, you've already used it this year. I don't remember what they were but I had a few I could only use every three years.

Magic realism might be like that in my song-makerupping. But if I come up with another one I can use the capo on, consider the previous paragraph a lie.

Very rough draft of cover art. Why wait to record a song before you design the artwork? A graphic designer buddy says the font for the title looks like it's from Blue's Clues, so I'll change that. 

Thanks for reading. 

Your friend,

The King Teen

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