New Release

Burnt Offering EP Liner Notes

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Happy Friday and happy Release Day for the Burnt Offering EP! It’s available on all your favorite streaming platforms. What is it, you may ask? Let’s call them variations on a theme. The theme is a song off my first full-length album, Creature Comforts. Let’s explore each version included in the five-song set.

  1. Burnt Offering (Version 1): Originally intended for Creature Comforts, it got left off because…well, I’m not really sure. Maybe we weren’t totally happy with the mix? Maybe my vocals? It’s been a minute, so who can recall. But it’s the first song I ever recorded without an acoustic guitar. Yup, no Martin in this one! Just the G&L ASAT on this one, baby!
  2. Burnt Offering (Version 2): This one did show up on Creature Comforts! I think this song turned out as good as it did all because of Clyde’s mixing; the version I sent him just all the instruments playing all the time, but he took what was there and crafted it into a great piece of songcraft.
  3. Burnt Offering (Demo 1): The original demo for this song had all of the bits that ended up in the final version: all the words are written, all the chords are there, everything is in the correct order and all. But apparently I had not yet designated a chunk of it as a repeating chorus, and the chord changes happen much faster in this version than in any of the others. I must’ve also forgotten I ever did this version because I ended up doing a second demo just a few months later. I find the iterative process of songwriting to be a fascinating thing, so it’s kind of fun to go back and hear what could have been with this song.
  4. Burnt Offering (Demo 2): Speaking of, here’s that second demo. Everything is played in the correct order, correct chord structure and change rhythm, there’s even an actual chorus now! And some lunatic tried to record a very rough, improvised lead part over the whole thing that was ultimately left out of the final versions (though I think I did adopt a little tiny bit of it here and there in Version 1).
  5. Burnt Offering (Fancy Version): So late last year, as he was preparing songs for his own Gray Charlies EP, my brother happened to pick Burnt Offering as one of the songs he wanted to do a new version of. He didn’t tell me anything about it at first, just went about getting his hired musicians to perform their parts so he could assemble them all mad scientist style at the end. The Gray Charlies version does sound really good, even if the way the woman sings it on that one has kinda crept into how I sing it now. But somewhere along the way, the string quartet he hired to perform on the song used my Version 2 as their template, and I am not well-known for being a consistent rhythm keeper. Which means as a track he could use, it was useless – all the other musicians were following a set rhythm and tempo that this strings track did not. It did, however, mean we could come up with this fancy version of the song for me, which I’ve been sitting on for the past, like, five months now. It makes me feel very fancy.

Anyway, there you have it. Thanks as always to Brother Cylde for mixing and mastering all my stuff and managing to make me sound like I might actually know what I’m doing.

Album Release! Yesterday’s Bright Frontiers Is Live!

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Happy Friday, folks! My latest album, Yesterday’s Bright Frontiers, is available today from your favorite streaming service!

We tried some new things with this album, most notably hiring an outside individual to play an instrument (the saxophone on “The Ones Who Go Before”). I’m proud of these songs and I love the way my brother helped make them sound. Go check it out!

New Single Out Now!

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Happy Friday, everyone! It’s the end of the month, the end of the 3rd quarter, my birthday, and new single release day! I feel like we’ve put a lot of pressure on this March 27th to perform this year.

Anyway, I’ve released a new single, “When I Say Your Name, Only Silence Answers.” It’s a preview of the forthcoming full-length album, Yesterday’s Bright Frontiers, which will be out…um, later? Yeah, let’s go with that.

You can stream the single on your platform of choice, including the ever-popular Spotify and Apple Music. Go give it a listen and let me know what you think.

New (Old) Release! Cross-Eyed Yeti: The Yellowstone Tape

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Happy Friday, folks! I have a surprise for you, an artifact of a bygone era when all we needed was an acoustic guitar and a whole mess of words.

We’re throwing it back to the year 2002, when Brother Clyde and I spent a summer in beautiful Yellowstone National Park. In between waiting tables and going on twenty-mile hikes, we sat down with a tape recorder in our dorm room and shouted some songs onto tape. Presented here, for the first time ever, are the liner notes for Two Okies, One Guitar: The Yellowstone Tape, the original Cross-Eyed Yeti recordings!

  1. “Subterranean Dylan”: As the name suggests, we were aiming for a “Subterranean Homesick Blues” style of song, with way more words per verse than was recommended and way faster guitar than was advisable. I’ve never been particularly happy with the chorus, which will be a recurring theme for this collection.
  2. “Utopia Joe”: I still love this song. When our old drummer suggested the song needed a bridge, Clyde just played the verse chords, only with a slightly changed strum pattern. It worked.
  3. “Philosopher King”: When I was just the singer/lyricist, I never really worried about things like “verse length” and “resolution.” This song has since proven to me why such things are important, as each verse is about two lines too long for the chord progression and it always ends up feeling wonky.
  4. “The Twelve Lines That Didn’t Work”: Typically, I don’t write love songs. I feel silly when I do. This is the first of several that appear on this collection, and…it’s not bad. It’s love gone bad, though. There’s desperation in there, and longing, and a sense that this thing is going to fall apart very, very soon.
  5. “Weight And Consequence”: Probably the strongest song on here, lyrically-speaking. Like many of our early songs, the chord progression is kinda repetitive, and the verses go on far too long, but it features probably our best performances.
  6. “The Things That Brought Me Here”: Clyde has never been happy with this one, especially in regards to the way I sing that very first line (I screwed it up so many times, trying to come in before the guitar starts and making sure it’s at the right tempo). It’s another love song, I think. Hard to say, as with so many of the songs I write.
  7. “Ode To Cock Rock”: Clyde and I are known to be rather…goofy sometimes (see “Country Joe” further down). We also like to jump around to different genres. So, this is our ode to hair metal. It features the infamous “mouth riff,” courtesy of Clyde, a sort of demented guitar solo replacement that only become more elaborate in live performances. Also of note: I cannot sing like a hair metal vocalist. That becomes evident from the very first line of the song.
  8. “Dancing With A Chick”: The only song I have nothing to do with. This one is all the brainchild of Clyde and our youngest brother, Scott. The true version will feature an instrument called the fish. It will be our finest hour.
  9. “Clyde’s Blues”: Our finest hour. Or three and a half minutes. It all started with that little riff at the beginning, and me trying my damnedest to sound like a 60-year-old black man born in the Mississippi Delta in 1903. I…do not sound anything like that. But the song is good. We’ve fiddled with it several times over the years, and have enjoyed every single version of the song we’ve ever recorded.
  10. “I Don’t Need You”: Another highlight. In hindsight, placing these two songs back-to-back was maybe not our best idea, pacing-wise. But hey, it is what it is. We always bust it out whenever we get together, and he even recorded a version of it with his band Family Familiar back in 2022.
  11. “Never Knew Joy”: Another love song, this one more traditional than a lot of our others. Trying to hit that note at the end of the chorus – “Warmth like the breath of God” – damn near killed me.
  12. “I Dig Chicks”: Did you know that the chords to “La Bamba” can be used by just anyone? It’s just G, C, and D. You can’t copyright that!
  13. “The Folk Singer’s Blues”: Sometimes I get contemplative (I know, shocker). And sometimes, those contemplations come out in the form of lyrics. This is another song that’s got way too many words in way too many verses, but Clyde’s guitar riffs are awesome.
  14. “Desolate Country”: Sometimes, you gotta write songs about home. And this is my first song about home. Oklahoma always strikes me as a strange, almost barren place, Rather…desolate, if you will. It also features Clyde singing! That doesn’t happen very often, and maybe you can spot a couple of the reasons why in this one.
  15. “Country Joe (Hidden Track)”: If you couldn’t figure out why Clyde shouldn’t sing in the last song, this one should sinch it. A goof on our own song? Why the hell not! “Country Joe” is the dark sibling of “Utopia Joe,” whose heaven lies beside him. Her name is Greta. She likes corn.
  16. “Desolate Humming (Hidden Track)”: “Desolate Country,” but it’s all hummed instead of sung. Because why not?