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Obtaining
Website: Castle Builder DesignThursday, December 31, 2009 Awfully gratified by the kind responses I've gotten from you about this record. Here's the deal with obtaining one. We're going to revamp this website to coincide with the March "official" release of the record and that will include online purchasing stuff. Until then, if you'd like a pre-release copy you've got a couple options. Find me. A good place to do this would be one of my gigs at Banjo Jim's on Jan. 8, Jan. 15, Jan. 22 and Jan. 29 from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Or via PayPal. CDs are $15 (includes shipping). PayPal e-mail is info@newheathens.com. Will let you know when it's up on iTunes, etc. Again, many thanks. And Happy New Year. Holiday Miracle Wednesday, December 30, 2009
 Out March, 2010. Pre-release copies available now. Keef Friday, December 18, 2009 Happy 66th. Honesty Wednesday, December 16, 2009 Appreciation to my blog readers for keeping me honest. Also, a reader left this comment: If you would like to make a donation to help his mother pay for funeral expenses, please send a paypal donation to feinstein.memorial@gmail.com. The memorial service will be held in Nashville, TN. For more details, please send an email. Chris Feinstein Tuesday, December 15, 2009
 When I finally had my first "record" in my hand, "Heathens Like Me," way back in '06, I took hard copies with me to the 11th Street Bar. I wanted to show some of my heroes who hung out there what I'd done. I gave a copy to Chris Feinstein. He was playing bass with Ryan Adams and the Cardinals by then. I'd see him watching himself on TV (it was the habit of the Cardinals [though not usually Ryan] to come to the 11th Street Bar to watch the latenight broadcast of their performances on shows like Letterman, which taped in the afternoon). I gave Chris a copy of the record I'd made, which I'd put so much of my heart, soul, time, hopes, dreams and money into. "It's a special feeling, right?" he said. "You'll never forget it. Your first record. I remember mine. Congratulations, I'm really happy for you." What a shot of confidence that was. Mercy, the esteem I held Chris in after that. A guy who'd made it, a guy who would sit and talk to lowly me after all he'd done. Stuff I only wished I could. Chris and I were acquaintances before that, but after that moment I considered him beatific. My friend. He was talented as all hell. An amazing musician. And to think he was also one of the guys I loved most to be around. Sweet. Generous. Gregarious. Wonderful to be near. We talked about his cat. His acoustic guitar. His music. The music we both loved. Oh those many nights I was lucky enough to share with him, as the Guinness pints poured. One of my favorite stories he ever told me was about doing a recording session down south in the same studio as Wayne Perkins, who played guitar on the Stones 1976 record "Black and Blue." Chris, you see, was as big a Rolling Stones fan as you would ever meet. Listen to this story he told me. "I heard that Wayne Perkins was in the next room," he said. "And Black and Blue is one of my favorite Stones albums. So I said, 'I have to meet this guy.' He came out into the kitchen area to pour himself a cup of coffee and I started talking to him about the Black and Blue sessions. He said he went to Munich, Germany to find an empty studio, with mountains of drugs piled around, and only instrumental tracks. As he walked in the studio Mick Jagger walked out. Wayne asked, 'Mick, how will I know where to play on the tracks?' Mick said, 'Just listen to them, and imagine where I won't be singing, and play there.' The results were, 'Hot Stuff,' 'Hand of Fate' and 'Memory Motel.'" I spent many a long hour with Chris at the 11th Street Bar. I also watched him play many times on stages from the Beacon Theater to Town Hall to the Bowery Ballroom to weird, tiny coffee shops in Soho. He was a dear friend of my dear friend, Kori Burkholder. You can see us all in that picture at the top, taken outside the 11th Street Bar a couple years ago. Clockwise from the top left it's Mo Goldner, from Spanking Charlene, Chip Robinson, Kori Burkholder, Butch Phelps (New Heathens, Buck Ups), Chris Feinstein, with his head in Kori's lap, and me. I just heard the news at the 11th Street Bar. Fuck Chris. Fuck. Why? Heather's Friends Monday, December 14, 2009 "(John Holl is) working on his book project with Nate Schwerber, a freelance journalist (New York Times, Rolling Stone) and vocalist whose NYC-based band is Heathers Friends. Holl and Schwerber will hit the road together, Heathers Friends will be on the lookout for some solo gigs to play in Indy or Bloomington to supply gas money." www.ruthholladay.com Dec. 14, 2009 Why I Love The Music I Do Thursday, December 10, 2009 Doing the moving thing so I made three big piles of CDs I didn't want anymore and traded them in over at Permanent Records in Greenpoint. One of the new CDs I picked up was a record by Will Hoge called "The Wreckage." I put it on in my car and, zango! He had The Sound. The only thing I could think is, "I love this guy!" That got me thinking about the kind of music I love. For much of my life I've taken plenty of well-deserved criticism from friends, girlfriends, would-be-girlfriends and wouldn't-be-girlfriends for what, to many, seems a pretty myopic taste in music. Here's what I like: rock 'n' roll, the recipe for which I would argue was perfected by 1972. The ingredients are American-made electric guitars fed through tube amps, big, resonant solid-body acoustic guitars, locked up bass & drums, cool vocals and raggedy-but-right harmonies. The instructions were rock, blues, country, gospel & soul. Mix up the ingredients, follow the instructions and you've got The Sound. Think the Stones' "Exile on Main Street," released, appropriately, in 1972. Here's the catch, though. While I dig I dig the sound of '72, I don't want a singer bleating cliched lyrics straight outta' '72. I want somebody singing to me about what's happening now, preferably something I hadn't thought of in quite that way before. For my money there's nothing better than a clever, unique, interesting, non-cliched lyric that tells a story, gives great descriptions, has a focused point of view or is above all FUNNY. (God I love it when a song makes me laugh.) I wear my favorite bands & musicians on my sleeve (probably too much) but all of 'em kinda' have the 1972 music thing going on coupled with fresh, compelling lyrics. Lyrics that make you want to hear what the next verse is going to be. Funny, but smart, self-aware funny; not self-parody or worse, un-self aware funny. But I can go down the list of my favorites and rattle off the criteria they meet. A few examples, off the top of my head: Bottle Rockets? Descriptive, clever, funny. "A $1,000 car ain't even gonna' roll/Until you put at least another $1,000 in the hole/Sink your money in it and there you are/The owner of a $2,000, $1,000 car." From "$1,000 Car". Drive By Truckers? Great stories, great descriptions. "Church blows up in Birmingham/Four little black girls killed/For no goddamn good reason." From "Ronnie and Neil." The Yayhoos? Funny. "Gettin' drunk! Gettin' nekkid! Gettin' laaaaaaiiiiid and gettin' out!" from "Gettin' Drunk." (Terry Anderson, who wrote that particular song, is a master at this.) Spanking Charlene? (kinda' punkier music, but I dig it) clever & funny. "I hate girls and folk guitars/I hate girls in martini bars/I hate girls!" from "I Hate Girls." Todd Snider? Funny. "You can fuck getting any kind of job you want/Unless you really want to work in a fast food restaurant/And who wants to do that?/Do you want to do that?" From "The Devil You Know." Lucinda Williams? Interesting, great descriptions. "Mama lives in Mandeville/I can hardly wait until I can hear my Zydeco/And Laissez Les Bon Temps Roulez/And take rides in open cars/ My brother knows where the best bars are/Let's see how these blues'll do in the town where the good times stay." From "Crescent City." Chip Robinson? Descriptive, interesting, non-cliched. "It must be more than the wind and the rain that's got me shaking harder than a Memphis train." From "Fence." (Disclaimer: OK, astute readers will note that I'm friends with Chip, Charlene and a couple Yayhoos. Well I was fans of 'em first. And I'm friends with Mark McKay.) My man Warren Zevon? All of the above. "Well I went to the doctor/I said, "I'm feelin' kinda' rough,"/"Let me break it to you son, your shit's fucked up,"/I said, "My shit's fucked up? Well I don't see how."/He said, "The shit that used to work, don't work now." From "My Shit's Fucked Up." Anybody I like who actually made music in 1972 is kinda' grandfathered in for me (Stones, Aerosmith, Bob Marley, Howlin' Wolf, Neil Young, Dylan, Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Rod Stewart, Zep, etc.) They set the standards and though I'll dig a band that emulates them musically, I tend to be turned off by bands that try to emulate them lyrically. Rolling Stones vs. Black Crowes is a perfect example. Mick Jagger barks lyrics in some of the coolest Stones songs that, when looked at objectively, don't make much sense. Take Rocks Off, track one off Exile, for example. Jagger sings, "The sunshine bores the daylights out of me/Chasin' shadows moonlight mystery." Does it make sense? Not really! Is it awesome? Hell yeah! (A rock 'n' roll chick I met long ago told me it was actually Keith who penned those lines, a legend I love to believe.) Then take Crowes singer Chris Robinson in the barn-burner Go Faster, as straight up a 1972 sounding song as was ever written. He sings, "Somethin' I came to see, I don't wanna' see no more/I don't think it's diseased, but it sure is sore." Does it make sense? Not really! Is it awesome? It's gross! (Lest I be pegged a Black Crowes hater, I'd stand before Warren Zevon and tell him that the Crowes "Kickin' My Heart Around" is as concise, kick-ass and perfect a rock 'n' roll song as has ever been written.) That's why I'm real choosy when it comes to the music I dig. I ask it to hit that split shot of having classic sounds and fresh lyrics. Not a lot of people can do it. (God knows I struggle with it every time I sit down with a guitar and a blank piece of paper.) Even Will Hoge. Not all his words were zingers. Precious few, in fact. But I still loved the hell outta' that CD. So maybe there is hope for someone like me. 
"Well Shit, that's COUNTRY music!"
Friday, December 4, 2009
 "I had nine songs finished and I needed one more, then I could take 'em and go make a record because as you know records have 10 songs. So I sat down at the piano to make up one more song and then it occurred to me. I was doing something I'd never done before. I always made up a song because I had something to say or something to get off my chest. Making up a song just to have another song? I thought, 'Well shit, that's COUNTRY music!'" -- Todd Snider, introduction to "Money, Compliments, Publicity (Song Number 10)" live in Reno, NV, Sept. 13, 2009 Dear Aerosmith Wednesday, December 2, 2009
 Dear Aerosmith, It is with great regret that I must rescind my long-standing application to sing lead for your band. It is unfortunate that only now are four of you looking to replace your iconoclastic lead singer, Steven Tyler. Had you come to this impasse a decade ago, I would have gladly offered up my services, and, with all due modesty, would have done a sweet job aping Mr. Tyler's antics. Much about my life and the perspective through which I see rock 'n' roll has changed in the past decade. As you know, in 1999 I lived in Missoula, MT (where I nearly killed myself and two best friends in a wintery van rollover while attempting an ill-advised, 1,000-mile, all-night road trip to Fargo, ND to see you.) During that time, while a sousaphone player in the University of Montana marching band, I took Mr. Tyler's dress as inspiration and routinely, in front of packed sports arenas, wore such things as vividly-colored skintight vinyl pants, mardi-gras masks, and feather boas. I also, while blowing on a tuba, aped Mr. Tyler's lascivious dance moves such as crotch-grabbing and pelvic bump-and-grinds. (It bears noting that during this phase in my life I also copied Mr.Tyler's sobriety which, in retrospect, was a real tactical mistake.) A few years later, upon moving to New York, I continued to dress and dance like Mr. Tyler and, while singing lead in a series of ill-fated rock bands, attempted to sing like he did too. This is where cracks began to appear in my facade of "being" Steven Tyler. I quickly learned that my vocal range is but a fraction of Mr. Tyler's. This limitation eventually led me to write songs in a style that is far more suited to my own voice. I have grown quite comfortable with these songs. Comfortable to the extent that, though my audience is exponentially smaller than Aerosmith's, I enjoy singing my songs in public more than I do yet another crappy version of "Sweet Emotion." In addition, over the past several years I have learned that my writing style also differs from Mr. Tyler's. While an industry-proclaimed "Rock God" of his stature may sing such overtly sexually charged lyrics as, "I'm gonna' shove my tongue right between your cheeks/I haven't made love now for 25 weeks/I hear that you're so tight your lovin' squeaks," (from 1989's F.I.N.E., [which Chuck Klosterman calls the greatest Aerosmith song of the past generation]), I cannot write and sing that kind of a lyric with anything approaching credibility. In fact my feeble attempts at such "faux-Tyler" lyricisms (for example: "A pair of platinum-blonds say, 'Let's go have some fun/Get some/Get some/Get some action!'" from my sophomorically-named 2003-2005 band, "Automatic Bad Machine,") turned out far more embarrassing than they did awesome. I also learned, through the years, that dancing like Mr. Tyler in the small, sparsely-attended clubs that I have played strikes the few audience members as inauthentic, hyperactive and obnoxious. Because economics have forced me to play more guitar at my shows, my Tyler-esque dancing has been further minimized (interesting fact: it's harder to dance like Steven Tyler while playing a guitar than it is while playing a tuba.) It is a shame that the opportunity to sing lead for Aerosmith had not cropped up ten years ago, because if I had done it then I would have thought it the absolute raddest thing on god's green earth. In summation, I would not be a good choice as a replacement singer for Aerosmith because I no longer aspire to dress, dance, sing, not-drink or write like Steven Tyler, having learned over many years the folly of trying to do so. I am also, for the first time, quite happy with the status of my own original music, what with a new record soon to drop and a series of new songs I have written. In fact, I am so more satisfied with performing my own music that I might be tempted to sing songs by one of my former glam-rocking heroes only if Queen wised up and tossed aside that dead weight Paul Rogers (because if you think my Steven Tyler is good, you should see my Freddie Mercury). Finally, as both a musician and a longtime, dues-paid Aerosmith fan, I must pose to you four non-lead-singing members this question: Who the fuck would want to see Aerosmith without Steven Tyler anyway? Yours truly, Nate Schweber |
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