TomFlannery.com

Santa bought me a flip video for Xmas, and this is my first clumsy attempt at using it. A brand new song called “Wallflowers” recorded in the bunker. I am of course wearing my lucky hat.

Well, all sorts of things. Regrets mostly. Pretty much a wasted year musically. Wrote about a dozen songs, but didn’t take a serious stab at recording any of them. Gave some away. Threw some away. Some are keepers, but to let them go felt wrong. Bad timing….perhaps because they drew on some bad times. Guitar sat in the corner much of the year, dusted off for one-off gigs here and there and then put right back. Absolutely no momentum was generated. My father’s passing early in the year really knocked the stuffing out of me. Writing didn’t make me feel good. It made me feel sad.

Watching Alzheimer’s disease crawl all over someone is a dreadful sight. There’s nothing spiritual or uplifting about “the fight”. The ending is pre-ordained. There are no survivors. There’s no redemption. It’s cruel and unusual punishment doled out to folks who don’t deserve it. The randomness of misplaced brain wires.

Ironically, all we have left is memories, the very things the disease stole from my father. This can surely turn one cynical, especially one prone to cynicism under blue skies. And so yes, I allowed anger to get the best of me and turned it inward, intentionally not doing what I love to do best to spite something or someone that I don’t even believe in.

But enough is enough. It’s Christmas time. My girls are bouncing around the house like they’re on invisible pogo-sticks, happy and healthy and counting down the minutes until they get to dive into the pile on Saturday morning. Advance word from Santa is that they’ve been pretty good. He’s been mum on me.

I’m currently writing new lyrics like crazy. Keeping up on my blog with Mike Stevens, and have sketched out a new play. I’m hoping 2011 brings no more regrets, a tunnel-full of words, and maybe a few good songs that’ll earn me a billion dollars. I promise I’ll give away half.

In a bit..

–tf

Was going to record a really personal new batch of songs I have….but something is holding me back. I’ve decided to go back to the notebook and write more. Wrote one last night I like a lot (at least for now) called “Wallflowers”.

Who would have guessed who would have known / Friday nights on the telephone

I want to create something accessible. I want to explore things that might mean as much to you as they do to me.

In a bit..

–tf

Woke up this morning with an itch that I couldn’t reach. So I wrote and recorded this song…

We Deserve Better Than This  Wanna see if I can still make you smile
see if maybe we can rest awhile
head down to the lawer’s to deface our wills
share a 6-pack and a sleeping pill
cause we deserve better
we deserve better than this

Nine to five on an assembly line
if it weren’t for nickels we wouldn’t have a dime
love ain’t enough to keep you warm
when the furnace blows in a winter storm
cause we deserve better
we deserve better than this

How many years we count the days
how many friends lost along the way
how many lies underneath the bed
how many slaps upside the head
cause we deserve better
we deserve better than this

They say you get dealt a hand
and it you play it the best you can
well that SOB’s dealing from the bottom of the deck
I’m gonna find his ass I’m gonna break his neck
cause we deserve better
we deserve better than this

My clothes don’t fit me anymore
so I’m wearing what my old man wore
tax refund gone missing my hair gone gray
one of us should leave but we’ll both stay
cause we deserve better
we deserve better than this

Wanna see if I can still make you smile
see if maybe we can rest awhile
head down to the lawer’s to deface our wills
share a 6-pack and a sleeping pill
cause we deserve better
we deserve better than this

We just kicked it off this week. Always wanted to write with Mike Stevens. One of my favorites.

We’ve pledged 2000 words a week. On whatever catches our fancy. Come for a visit.

In a bit…

–tf

What I’ve been listening to most this year. In no particular order. It’s a fairly eclectic list methinks…which is a good thing. Any reaction but boredom is a positive reaction. These records are not boring…

The Bodeans – their entire ouvre
Buddy and Julie Miller – “Written in Chalk”
Adrian Whitehead – “One Small Stepping Man”
Bob Mould – “Life and Times”
The Bottle Rockets – “The Brooklyn Side”
Brendan Benson – “My Old, Familiar Friend”
Chris Richards and the Subtractions – “Sad Sounds of the Summer”
Cracker – “Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey”
Deadstring Brothers – “Sao Paulo”
The Dexateens – “Hardwire Healing”
The Drams – “Jubilee Drive”
The Gamits – “Antidote” and “Parts”
The Gourds – “Haymaker”
Graham Day and the Gaolers – “Triple Distilled”
AC/DC – “Let There Be Rock” and “If You Want Blood You Got It”
Len Price 3 – “Pictures”
The Gripweeds – “Strange Change Machine”
The Hold Steady – “Heaven is Whenever” and “Boys and Girls in America” and “Stay Positive”
The Hotlines – “The Hotlines”
James McMurtry – “Live in Aught-Three”
Jason and the Scorchers – “Halcyon Times”
The Jellybricks – “Goodnight to Everyone”
Paddy Keenan – “The Long Grazing Acre”
Los Lobon – “Tin Can Trust”
Lucero – “1372 Overton Park”
Mark Olson and Gary Louris – “Ready for the Flood”
Martin Sexton – “Live Wide Open”
The Methadones – “The Methadones”
Muck and the Mires – “Hypnotic”
Noel Gallagher – “The Dreams We Have as Children”
NOFX – “Coaster”
Old 97’s – “The Grand Theatre Vol I”
Over the Rhine – “Ohio”
Paul Thorn – “A Long Way From Tupelo”
The Pines – “Tremolo”
Punchline – “Delightfully Pleased”
The Red Button – “She’s About to Cross My Mind”
The Riverdales – “Tarantula”
Rufio – “Anybody Out There”
Sam Roberts – “Love at the End of the World”
The Shazam – “Meteor”
Slobberbone – “Barrel Chested” and “Slippage”
Son Volt – “American Central Dust”
Sugarcult – “Start Static”
The Vines – “Melodia”
The Waxwings – “Low to the Ground”
The Weepies – “Say I Am You”
Will Hoge – “The Wreckage” and “Blackbird on a Lonely Wire”
The Wonder Years – “The Upsides”
You Me at Six – “Hold Me Down”
16 Frames – “Where it Ends”

Had a great time at Old Lynn Saturday night. Great crowd. My friend Eddie Appnel did a sizzling opening set. Left some serious chips on the table.

Best venue in the state. Bar none. I’m honored to be allowed on that stage.  Many thanks to Lorne and Esther and Rich and Lisa. And to Erin and John and Jeff for coming out and helping me along.

Anyway, here’s my setlist. Time just flies by…

Suzie
Rescue Me
Miner Boy
Pleased to Meet Me
That Ring It Don’t Fit Your Finger Anymore
The Anthracite Shuffle
A Fighter
Suburban Love
Drunk Driving
I’m Still Me
The Show
Song About a Train/Racing in the Street
Not Fade Away

In a bit…

–tf

I changed my strings last night so you know I’m serious. I never change my strings. I once played the same set until they started to rust and flake like paint.

I saw a band one time and watched the guitar player put new strings on between each set. I figured he either OCD or completely insane. Not a bad picker though, but for the rest of the night I felt more working class and looked at him like he was a bourgeois twit.

I’ve considered my willingness to play the same strings until they start to change the color of my guitar a badge of honor. Hell, Woody Guthrie wasn’t changing his strings riding the rails….right? Not sure about Dylan. But I know he never cut the ends off his. Top of his guitar looked like a porcupine with a hard-on. Get too close you’d lose an eye. Obviously Bob had other things on his mind back then. Being a generational spokesman and all that leaves precious time for such mundaneness.

I forgot what got me into all this. Oh yea, strings. New strings feel good. Makes you sound better. Makes you feel like you play better. Make you wonder why you don’t change ’em more often.

In a bit…

–tf

We dream goofy things growing up. We stand in front of the mirror pretending. Mostly to be someone else. To be somewhere else. To experience something else.

But it gradually dawns that we’re pretty much stuck with ourselves. So the dreams go hide and are replaced by things like jobs and bill collectors and empty beer cans in the backseat of yet another brand new used car. But it runs. Looking good getting there doesn’t matter so much anymore when you were born during the LBJ administration.

We grow up. We grow out. Hair either turns grey or slips away. For some poor wretches, both. We find our life partner. We have children that delight and inspire and infuriate and terrify. Sometimes all in the same day. We lay our heads down at night, too weary mostly to be anything other than content that we have a warm bed to lie in. And then, if we’re lucky, we have 8 hours to dream all over again.

And the cycle starts again. And that’s life. And somewhere in the middle, there’s guitars. And that makes it ok.

In a bit…

–tf

My brother was in for the weekend. From the great state of Texas. We talk music mostly. What it means and how powerful it is and how much it’s helped us up over the years, and brought us crashing down. We talk books too. Which means we usually make our way to Borders and drop serious credit on the counter. This weekend I was gracious and gave him the Keith Richards memoir to take home with him. The thought of each brother spending $30 on a book about an unprepentent junkie who refuses to die like a normal person was too much for me. So I just threw my copy at him. He was relieved I could tell, because in no way did he want to buy it, but he knew he’d have to read it in the same way a person who has a dead dog in front of their house has to go out with a shovel and scrape it up. He performed the same service for me when Neil Young’s bio came out. He bought it, being a little more brain damaged than I due to age, but then let me read it, which of course I did….every word on something like 600 ridiculous pages. It was an excruciating read, mostly because I think Neil Young is insane, but did contain some interesting tidbits on 60s acid casualties and how one deals with insufferable egoists like Steven Stills and David Crosby without purchasing a firearm and putting a hole in each of their foreheads. Neil walked the landmine admirably, mostly ignoring them unless they were completely broke or were in desperate need of body parts. Then he’d step in out of loyalty and lend his name to boost ticket sales and hasten organ donations. All in all quite a dreary read, but since it was given to me, I felt obligated, which is exactly why I’m sure my brother spent his day on the plane reading a book about a man once perfectly described by a music writer as resembling a “crippled spider”. I’m sure my brother is now safely tucked back into the bosom of his family, and if he remembers anything at all about the Keef bio I’m positive he’s got enough bottles of Stout waiting in his fridge to reverse his memory and thus remain a productive husband and father without the influence of a man who stays up 9 nights running sitting on his shoulder saying “there’s 30 pills, why not take 30 now and save time?”

Peer pressure. Keef style.

Great music lasts forever. Bad books about music last about as long as certain plane rides, which works out perfectly unless you’re the type who sits on the plane and plays “spot the muslim”, convinced that boarding an airplane in today’s climate is like trying to start a chapter of MoveOn.org in Louisville, Kentucky. But thankfully they’ve got drugs for such fixations now, and I’ve popped the requisite pills and thus read more bad rock writing on airplanes than anyplace else. Airplanes are the perfect place to read about spectacularly ego-driven excess because they give you plenty of time to think and get jealous that it’s not you tossing TVs out window and having fivesomes with groupies ……because the flights are always running behind and you’ve got nothing else to do but some deep thinking.

Well, it’s late and I’ve stopped making much sense. But I think I’ve made enough. Car-pool bad rock books amongst family members. The family that shares Keef’s memoir stays together. Or prays together. Or does drugs together. Something like that. The exact wording escapes me.

In a bit…

–tf