TomFlannery.com

Up until 3am listening the The Drams and reading Sebastian Barry’s “A Long Long Way”. Perhaps an odd combination. Actually, I’d bet my life there was nobody else in the entire world doing these 2 things at that same time. When you start thinking this way it makes the world seem charmingly smaller. Or it has you reaching for the pills.

I don’t sleep much so I spend most of my wee wee hours with music and books. I’ve left all my vices behind and replaced them with an unquenchable thirst for diet coke, and the need to order at least 5 used books from Amazon.com every week. Without my books, I have very few possessions. I could carry them all in the backseat of my car. With my books, however, the walls of my house bulge. I am addicted to the written word. “Word Hungry” is the phrase one once used to describe the Irish in general. I subscribe to that theory.

This carries over, of course, to music. But for this project I’m trying to focus less on words and more on hooks and guitar riffs and possible harmony vocals and how loud we can make the drums. I’m thinking less like a songwriter and more like the member of a band…..trying to find something that might get the asses out of the seats. It’s an odd position to be in, especially for someone who once wrote a 16 verse dirge about a mining disaster.

But it takes all kinds eh? So what if I’m old. I still love loud guitars and snarled vocals and the lift a great rock song can give you….like springing off a trampoline. And is there a better feeling in the world than coming home, fighting exhaustion and tractor trailers and the dark of night, and hearing something like “You Really Got Me” or “Surrender” or “Born to Run” on the radio? Who needs speed when you’ve got volume?

I want that feeling.

That’s why I’m doing this. And if I die (figuratively of course), at least I’ll die with my Doc Martens on and distorted guitars ringing in my ears.

In a bit…

–tf