This guitar’s been dreaming

After recording Mayfeeder, Earwig‘s first album, I listened back to the songs and had a revelation. Every song was about Sleeping, Dreaming or Dying. Since then, I’ve noticed that each Earwig album seems to organically develop a theme that ties the songs together. It may not always be so obvious but, at least for me, it’s there. I mentioned in an earlier post about how all of the songs on the new record have come to me in some shape or form through dreams. The album title came in a dream too. In the dream, I’m sitting in the center of a huge movie theater all alone. It’s an older, well kept theater with a balcony, very much like Cinema East. The screen is monstrously tall and wide with velvet curtains hanging on either side. The silence is broken by the familiar sounds of the film starting it’s roll through the projector as the house lights go dark. The film is running, but the screen is blank, no images. As I sit patiently, a white light glows through the movie screen, filling it with large block letters. They read “Name your album GIBSON UNDER MOUNTAIN.” Simple and direct, with no sound or other images, the letters hang on the screen. After a time they dissolve and I can hear the sounds of the film rattling into the take up real as the screen goes blank. Not long after this dream, I started writing most of the songs that would become the new Earwig album. I can’t say exactly what the title refers to, but it seems to make sense as a title for this album if only because these songs are collected from dreams as well.

An interesting note. I had this same dream once before, almost exactly, as a teenager. The difference is that that time the message on the screen told me “Name your dog PINK LEADER”. Strange, huh? I thought it was pretty odd, but I wrote down the message and carried it around with me for some time. I never did name my dog Pink Leader. But I’ve always remembered that dream and wondered what would have happened if I had taken the advice to heart and followed through. This time around, I’m going to find out.

http://www.lizardfamily.com/mp3s/Sleepyhead_MCHacoustic
To download the MP3 go to File -> Save as and store the file on yr desktop

This week’s song is Sleepyhead. I actually wrote this song as a teenager and the opening melody and basic story were in a dream I had around the same time as the first movie screen message dream. In this acoustic version I play the opening guitar lick in a sort of choppy, old fashioned way. For the full band version, that lick is much more aggressive and fluid. And louder, of course. And the middle bridge is filled with glorious 12 string guitars that would make Johnny Marr turn green with envy.