Today and for the next few weeks we’ll be handing the reins over to poet-in-residence J.E. O’Leary, so he can tell the story of his band Trousers as he goes track-by-track through the band’s only release, 2004’s We Pitched a Hut and Called it Providence. Today: Track 7, September 10th

One of my favorite things about being in a band and starting out was those hour long jam sessions. No agenda, no “working on” anything, just the band, some beers, some weed, and saying GO. It’s an exercise in improvisation, in creativity, and in endurance, both mentally and physically. We had to physically be able to play for that long – wasn’t the goal headlining shows? We would have to be able to play without taking breaks. We wouldn’t be able to walk off stage in the middle of a set and take a smoke break. Long jamming sessions also tested my mental creativity, and listening skills. If we could keep things interesting for long stretches, just jamming, not working on material, that meant we were listening well and exploring, flexing those creative muscles. These sessions were also great for writing as a band. I loved writing a song and bringing it to the band, but I also loved coming up with something brand new as a foursome. September 10th was one of those songs.

There’s no big meaning behind us calling it September 10th. The jam session where we came up with the skeleton of what became the song was literally on September 10th. We probably passed the tape around and at subsequent rehearsals would label it “September 10th jam”. Also we thought the jam sounded foreboding and sinister, and naming it after the day before an awful day seemed to fit. I don’t remember specifically how it came about, but I remember collecting those basslines from a D minor jam and putting them together – the arrangement just kind of came together. I tried to write words for it once, but the vibe was really off putting. I think in the Tape Box somewhere there is a really early version of me singing over it, but we ditched the idea pretty quick. It didn’t need a vocal part.

I definitely sound like a broken record at this point, but Joey’s guitar parts on this are perfect as usual. He had such a great feel for the dynamics of a song and how to push it forward. And having a classically trained musician like Becca in the band was such a great asset. She was always careful to never overwork any part, and knew exactly how to find her place in a song, even loud of busy parts. I could probably count on one hand the number of times we got too loud/busy/crazy for her and she just threw up her hands and was lost. There’s such a great achy quality to her parts here, especially in the first movement.

There’s a little studio magic happening in the way the two sections were bridged, but listening to it all these years later, it sounds fine. George is really hustling and pushing on the second movement, and though there’s a bit of a hesitation as we come out of the first, you can hear the moment we click, and it really takes off. The overall performance is solid, and, like Nothing Is Wasted, a good representation of what we were doing when we were at our best, and indicative of the kind of collaborative, urgent vibe we would have pursued, given a little more time.

When we walked in to the studio for the first time, we saw they had a gong set up behind the drum kit. “I don’t know what song it’s going to be,” George said. “But I’m hitting that gong on something.” We were all in agreement. When we were listening to the first mix in the booth, we all kind of looked at each other at the same time at the part. George made a hitting-the-gong motion. We did the overdubs right there. It sounds righteous. We were all so thrilled to have a gong on the record, we specifically called it out in the album credits.

None of us were sure where that little curly tail of a note at the beginning came from. It’s definitely Joey, We assume it was a trailing note left on the tape from whatever song we did before, but we did not notice it until it came time to master the recording. We’d gathered at a little basement in Chinatown on a Sunday with a “budget” master guy we found off of Craigslist. The little note is another one of those happy accidents that you find during the process. But by this time we were already aware that the end was near for the band, and the mastering sessions had an air of melancholy to them, even though we were all finishing something we were really proud of.

The one thing I remember from the mastering sessions is that it ended up being more expensive than we thought. I came in to it thinking it was going to be $60 each, but I must have read the email wrong because it ended up being almost twice that, and I went out to one of those bodega ATMs to get more money. It charged me a fee and left me with less that $20 for the week, and that depressed me even more than any of the other stuff going on. I remember thinking, at the ATM, I’m flat broke and I’m losing my band. If this isn’t a sign I need to get my shit together, I don’t know what is.

It would take me a little longer, in fits and starts, two steps forward one step back, but more than anything that was the moment. By that time next year I would have a new job, and more money, but I was in a new band I wasn’t happy in. But that’s a story for another series.

Today and for the next few weeks we’ll be handing the reins over to poet-in-residence J.E. O’Leary, so he can tell the story of his band Trousers as he goes track-by-track through the band’s only release, 2004’s We Pitched a Hut and Called it Providence.

Nothing Is Wasted was one of the last songs Trousers came up with. I had the riff – just a basic 1-4-5 plucked with the pick, but really nothing else. We jammed on it for a while before lyrics came, and the bridge is just a minor 6th – pretty standard Songwriting 101 stuff. I don’t even have any drama associated with this song. The lyrics aren’t about anything or anyone in particular, the recording sounds really good, and aside from one vocal miss (there’s supposed to be a big scream on the last “see the worrrrrrrrrrld!”) I’m happy with how I sound personally.

The song starts off with George on the drums, and it’s probably his best performance on the record. The beat is strong and fun and driving. I think had Trousers continued, we probably would have done a lot more stuff in this vein, upbeat dance-y melodic songs. There was a lot of that going on in Brooklyn in 2003-2004, and it probably would have gone over really well. The cowbell is classic – we’d been waiting for a song to use it on, and this was perfect. Joey’s sliding notes really push the song forward, and are where most of the dynamics come from. He always had a great knack for that stuff.

As you can tell, there’s not a lot going on in this song, so we added another track with Becca on the Wurlitzer, split off to the right. There’s a really great off-note at around 1:16-1:18, it comes in flat, but it sounds so good. One of those happy accidents you hope and pray will arrive at recording time. Her call and response vocals are great too. That is another element I think would have wanted to move to the front had Trousers continued. Her voice was really perfect for a lot of our material. I think we had a real streak of optimism, playfulness, and humor in our music and her voice was really expressive in that lane.

I think there’s a relatively celebratory tone to the lyrics. “Nothing is wasted” stands as kind of the faster, complimentary song to “When I go” – there’s a lot of the same tone to the lyrics. Which is interesting to me because when I initially wrote When I Go it had a similar vibe to Nothing is Wasted (though a lot slower). They both had that root-5, root-5, root-5 picking on the bass and a minor 6th chorus.

I think there’s a little distortion on my voice in the low end (?) – probably the engineer trying to cover up the fact that my voice was a bit thin that day. The only thing I’m not happy with in this song is the second “nothing is shorter than June” – where I draw “June” out and it sounds flat (emotionally not musically, though maybe there too). But overall this song stands as a good representation of where we were as a band and where we potentially could move: tighter band, better dynamics, more involvement up front from the other members. Something I learned pretty early on (and shocked me when I did) was that not every emotional song needs to have high drama around every element of its execution. I knew this for fiction writing, but it took me quite a long time to put that particular two and two together. It was quite a relief when I did.

n.b. the song’s title (and main theme) is apparently stolen from Charles Bukowski, whose “Dark Night Poem” reads: “they say that / nothing is wasted / either that / or / it all is” … Now, I don’t remember specifically lifting this, but I was quite the Buk fan at the time, so I without a doubt had come across it. Sorry Chuck. But thanks!