Here is my cover of Slint “Good Morning, Captain” off of their 1991 album Spiderland. I hope you like it. I love this song, and I know my version will never be as good as the original, but I really wanted to cover it. (What you see is what you hear, no lip-synching or instrument-synching).

Here are the lyrics:

“Let me in,” the voice cried softly
From outside the wooden door
Scattered remnants of the ship could be seen in the distance
Blood stained the icy wall of the shore

“I’m the only one left. The storm took them all,”
He managed as he tried to stand
The tears ran down his face
“Please, it’s cold.”

When he woke, there was no trace of the ship
Only the dawn was left behind by the storm
He felt the creaking of the stairs beneath him
That rose, from the sea, to the door

There was a sound at the window then
The captain started, his breath was still
Slowly, he turned

From behind the edge of the windowsill
There appeared the delicate hand of a child
His face was flush and timid
He stared at the captain through frightened eyes

The captain reached for something to hold on to
“Help me,” he whispered, as he rose slowly to his feet
The boy’s face went pale
He recognized the sound

Silently, he pulled down the shade against the shadow
Lost in the doorstep of the empty house

“I’m trying to find my way home.
I’m sorry . . .
And I miss you

I miss you
I’ve grown taller now
I want the police to be notified
I’ll make it up to you
I swear, I’ll make it up to you

I miss you.”

You send me audio. I remix and sing. Together we make an album.

After a little time off I’ve finally been able to spend some time in the studio with all of the amazing samples and audio tracks that everyone has sent to me. Here is a new track for my Creative Commons collaboration album Sounds Like You.

All of the audio (except vocals) has been provided by a group of great musicians and sound creators. I chopped up, remixed, and mangled their samples to create my new track, titled “Teardown”.

Teardown – STEAL

Here’s who you’re hearing along with their original unmodified audio sample(s):

David Patrikios – drums  
Brian Page – drums  
Chris Fudurich – drum loop  
James Santiago – guitar  
Tim Godwin – acoustic guitar  
Eric Pokorny – acoustic guitar  
Dan Friel – noises  
Jon Eric – noises  
Chris T. – bass  

Get more info about the collaboration album and how you can get involved.

Lyrics:

pieces are found, they’ll never go away
i need to know if you are going with him
i’ll take your grief, if you just calm down for a while.
you need to start all over in a small shit town!

we are all afraid of nothing real
it’s just a place for you to feel
all of the people you love go away until it starts again.

i’ll flip the car, the road will be the best part now.
crashing again, this time it’s much too broke to fix
i don’t know where i end and you begin.
you are a wall my soul just can’t get over!

look around, see the faces
keep eyes closed, don’t be erased.
look around, see your face

you can be somebody else. tear down the walls!

Just recorded a quick little live looping improvisation in my studio. No instruments, just voice and effects. All recorded live, nothing prerecorded or overdubbed after the fact.

If you’re looking for something to remix, feel free to grab the audio from this track (and other tracks of mine): http://stateshirt.com/remix

Hey. I just finished recording a cover of “Souvenir” by OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark). I’d consider this mix a “beta” mix, but it’s pretty close. Listen below:

Souvenir – DOWNLOAD

I haven’t created a music video for my cover version yet, but for the time being check out the original OMD video below. I’d like to do a similar video, except I’ll be driving my racecar wearing my full race gear and helmet. And instead of driving off into the distance at the end, I’ll do a bunch of donuts and smokey burnouts.

I started this song last week with hopes it would be the next SongFight winner! But I just can’t find the right way to finish this tune. I like that it’s mellow and relatively catchy but I just wasn’t really inspired to complete it.

Maybe there’s something about it that you like?

If so, please go ahead and grab the source files and finish it any way you’d like. Cut it up, mash it up, sing over it, rap over it, turn it into a funky house / disco trance medley.

Send me your track when you’re done and I’ll post it up here (and on my facebook and twitter pages).

Here’s my unfinished track:

Double Take (unfinished) – DOWNLOAD

And here are the raw source files (all of the individual tracks used in the song). They’re also up on ccMixter. Have at it!

SOURCE FILES: MP3 source (50MB) – WAV source (235MB)

All samples licensed as Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial.

…..:::…..:::….:::…….:::….::…..:::…:::……

UPDATE! – March 2: Glenn Case has warped the space time continuum and added his lyrics and vocals in record time. Check out his track:

Double Take (State Shirt and Glenn Case) – DOWNLOAD

I knew writing a song and creating a video every week in 2010 would be tough. The idea behind this was to get me back into writing and creating again. Which it has! Definitely! I haven’t slept much in the last two months. So after 8 songs and 8 videos, I’ve finally hit a wall where I’ve created a song that I’m not really that into. So it’s left me in a bit of a predicament. Do I go ahead and post my mediocre song just to say that I didn’t miss a week in my 2010 challenge? Or stab the song to death and never let it see the light of day?

Well this week I’m going with song death.

It’s not that the song is that terrible, I worked on it for the last 3 days, but it just didn’t seem to go anywhere. And I just kept adding more and more guitar parts to try to cover up the fact that it’s just not a very good song. Or at least I couldn’t figure out how to make it good.

So, while I’d really like to keep up with my song a week/video a week thing, I just can’t post a song that I’m not that into.

I’ll try not to miss many more weeks but I will miss this one. I’ll try again next week.

Time for another beer.

Just put together a music video for my new song “Please Stop”. Everything was shot in los angeles.

Please Stop – DOWNLOAD

lyrics

please stop believing
that nature will care for you
crawl up the river
and embrace your solitude.

heartbeat slows, your wounds won’t close?

please stop believing
that your friends can keep you safe
squeeze your little hands
they tingle, but you can still feel

don’t come around here anymore
it’s the only thing i ask of you

please stop your talking
who is that in my head?
please stop, i don’t want to go
i know you barely had a chance to know
please let me go quickly
will it hurt? i could be wrong.

Ok. So this week got a little bit busy and I wasn’t able to complete a new song for my song-a-week challenge.

But I’ll make up for it by posting TWO (count ‘em, two) songs from the archives that haven’t ever really been officially “released”. Both of these are collaborations that I did with other artists. hope you like ‘em.

First up is Hostess Mostess’ “Ease Up on the Drugs”. Last year, Brent Stansfield (Hostess Mostess) sent me guitar and vocal parts of his unfinished track for use on my Collaboration Album. But when I listened to what he sent, I realized his song elements had too much potential on their own, so I decided hey I’ll just pick up where he left off. So I wrote some parts around what he’d already finished, added drums, bass and some more guitars. So here’s Hostess Mostess featuring State Shirt:

Hostess Mostess & State Shirt – Ease Up on the Drugs – DOWNLOAD

Next is Ethrikios’ “Framed”. This was a SongFight entry that my friend Dave Patrikios and I put together last year. He did most everything, I just wrote a couple of the parts, played some guitar and did the backup vox on the chorus. Everything else is DJ Davey P. check it out.

Ethrikios – Framed – DOWNLOAD

So today I was both excited to learn that Glenn Case had done a cover of my song “Highway”. I was so flattered that I figured I’d return the favor and cover one of his songs. Glenn is likely the most prolific songwriter that I’m aware of. He has well over 400 songs for download on his site, and this one, “Pencil Me In” is one of my favorites. You can find the original here and plenty of other goodies at glenncase.com.

Below is his cover of “Highway” and my cover of “Pencil Me In“.

Song-a-week #4. Just finished a new song, “The Road to Hana”.

The Road to Hana – DOWNLOAD

you mustn’t be afraid of what’s to come
the road is dark and there’s no turning back
the whales will only guide you so far.
but then you’re on your own, you must swim all the way.

are we there yet?

it will feel like there’s no destination
it will feel like you’re all alone.
but we will be there right by your side!
but we will be there guiding you back home.

are we there yet?
are we here?

you can join us, on hana lane.

The third Collaboration Song is done! So many thanks for the amazing samples from Wyatt, Marc & Alec Nuckols, James Santiago, Dave Patrikios, Yumenomado, Chris Fudurich, Brielle Zbub, and Brian Page.

Beth’s On Fire – DOWNLOAD – Lyrics

I just finished recording a cover of Electronic’s “Disappointed”. I had never even heard the original song until about a month ago. Hell I had never even heard of the band. But there was something really good at the core of this song and I wanted to try a version of my own.

In case you also didn’t know, Electronic were an “alternative dance group formed by New Order singer and guitarist Bernard Sumner and ex-Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr.” Thanks Wikipedia. I’m a fan of both New Order and Johnny Marr. Not sure how I missed this band? The track “Disappointed” is from 1992 and made a dent on US charts, and even features Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys on vocals. Though I guess I can see how I missed this song–terrible early 90′s bands like UB40, Snow and Color Me Badd really soured me on pop music at the time. But this Electronic song was fun to dig into.

Here’s my version of Electronic’s “Disappointed”. Click below to play. Hope you like it:

Disappointed – Lyrics

If you could cover a song, what would it be? What other songs should I cover?

And just for fun, here’s the original (and strange) video from 1992. Primitive computer graphics, Neil Tennant looking bored, some dude holding a giant gold sphere. Enjoy

Wrote some new lyrics. Now I need a song.

—

I’ve created a replica of my life in my head.
A place where I can sleep with the lights off.
Kiss on the lips, follow me home

I like to fight, it runs in my family.
I like to drink, it ruins my family.

Throw away all the knives
Call the doctor, don’t step, broken glass
Cracked yellow linoleum, little red splash

I’ve created a replica of my life in my mind.
No longer angry all of the time,
Lie in the vermont snow, I know i can die.

I like to drink, it runs in my family.
I like to fight, it ruins my family.

Throw away the gasoline
Call the fireman, don’t step, broken glass
Faded cedar walls, little red splash

I’ve been playing around with a new live setup that includes a couple drums and keyboards, as well as guitar and my usual effects and looper pedals. I just wrote this song yesterday, still not 100% sure on the song title yet. I set up all of my crap in the kitchen and recorded a little live performance. Hope you like it.