Carl Newman made the demo for “Your Dick” on the voice note recorder on my recently deceased Blackberry. Keep your iPhones and your apps. I don’t care if there’s a guitar tuner and chord finder on your iPhone. I am unimpressed by the fact you can turn your iPhone sideways and the picture elongates and enlarges. Keep your touchscreen and your mobile music library. Ever since I saw a blackberry in Sarah Jessica Parker’s hot and fast texting fingers on the set of Sex and the City – the TV show not the movies – in the year of our lord 2000 (!) – I have been all about the Blackberry.

My Blackberry died an undignified death in January (even after Tegan and Sara both tried to give it artificial resuscitation by plucking the trackball out like a fish’s eye with their beautiful rock star fingernails and cleaning out the unmentionable filth that collects deep underneath – what we don’t want to know is within our most sacred and personal electronics) but because that demo is on there, along with many treasured text conversations with people who no longer speak to me, I have kept it on life support, still plugged into the charger, sitting on my desk. I can go to it when I need to, pull up Carl’s sweet pop and pitch perfect voice, singing couplets written to a long lost lover’s member at sixty second intervals as well as unanswered late night texts to said lover whose member was likely in use in or on someone else at the time, explaining the lack of text back.

I love The New Pornographers, as I am particularly fond of Canadian supergroups – such as Broken Social Scene and Stars and of course Tegan and Sara. These guys make modern music great. One day, I hope to win a Juno, for all my Canadian canoodling and collaboration. Carl brought his beat up guitar to my New York office -“like Willie Nelson’s!” – a tiny room at the Maritime Hotel where I set up shop for a few weeks. He brought the lyrics printed out from my email, explained that he had nothing for a long time, and then one day, he had something. Then he proceeded to sing me the prettiest song I have ever heard written about dick, literal and figurative. When the smoke had cleared and the chords were written out and finger positions drawn on my ever present chord paper, Carl made the Blackberry demo and I took him to eat pad thai in deep and resounding gratitude. 

I was so excited to have Carl’s demo on my Blackberry I would play it over and over, listening to it like I was 12 years old and a boy I liked called me and left a message. It also helped me to learn chords I was not yet familiar with, some barre chords at that. I learned the song and premiered it at SXSW, and the cute boys setting up their drums and keyboards performing after me sang it ‘ironically’ to the other cute boys they were in a band with, and I knew I had a hit on my hands.

I recorded most of “Your Dick” in Los Angeles at the fabulous laurel canyon home studio of Ben Lee, who is in many ways the main creative force behind this album. He produced and wrote the most tracks, gave me the best advice, served as my backing band countless times and was the perfect guide into the mysterious and magical business of making music. With Ben, the song was made like food. It was kind of like making a very tall ice cream sundae, with layers of layers of sweet, different kinds of sweet. First, the vanilla plainness of drums set down lovingly at Elliott Smith’s studio in Van Nuys, pot candies stretching from my hand to musician’s and then engineer’s to enhance the experience and enlighten the moment. Then lush keyboards like hot fudge layered on top of the beat at Ben’s by Alexander Burke, the brilliant piano player from Magnolia Memoir, who I made my indentured piano servant, after making a video for his band with a super 8 camera for free. Alex played on almost every track on my album, so clearly I got the better deal. His tenure is not even over. He is still ‘contracted’ to play for me for free for the rest of the year, so I am sure his services will still be needed. The saxophone on the song is the nuts for sure – the testicles which of course a song called “Your Dick” needs. My voice is the whipped cream, as I sound as airy as if I were made of clouds of bubbles and softness, thanks to Ben and lots and lots of olive oil mixed into herbal tea. The cherry on top are Ben and Sam Shelton’s angelic and then very manly backing vocals, which hilariously top the whole kitchen sink. It’s a fucking grand dessert of a pop song. You just want to consume the whole thing in one sitting. It’s a song that makes me feel like it’s my birthday and Christmas at the same time. I hope that the Gay Men’s Chorus covers this song. It’s got to be a big dick singalong number for sure. It’s the most glorious anthem to dick ever.

Thanks to Portland Gay Men’s Chorus for performing this song with me on the first stop of my tour! You made me cry!!!!

Photo by Bill Barry.
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Sometimes you are just so heartbroken you just don’t know what to do. This is a dangerous moment in what seems like everyone’s life. It doesn’t have to be a romantic heartbreak, but this is usually what it is. It could be some other catastrophic disappointment, caused by the carelessness and selfishness of another. People are awful. I hate them and yet I cannot stop loving them. My primary addiction is probably people. I turned to drugs and alcohol and food and shopping and this and that and whatever in order to endure the pain of people. Fucking people. When will I learn? Others will break your heart. Disappoint you to no end. Steal your future and wreck your past. And they can eat shit and die. Hey – that would make a good song.

When I write songs, usually, I am at my wit’s end. I can do nothing else. Nothing is going to make me feel better. There are no drugs that will numb this ache, this burning sorrow. You cannot have an epidural on your heart. There’s nothing else you can do, but write a song. I was so angry I just put on the page “EAT SHIT AND DIE” because that was what I would have liked. That would have satisfied me. Not the literal – but what the statement means. I just want to stop caring about you. I want to stop caring about you right now. This is how I am going to do it. I am going to write this song and magically I will start caring about the song and stop caring about you. And it works. The song is like a spell, cast over the heartbreak – banishing it forever. It worked for me so well, and continues to work, and it will work for you too. I promise.

I have known Grant Lee Phillips for as long as I have been going to Largo, so since the very early 90s. He’s an incredible songwriter and possibly the best singer I have ever heard. His voice is rich, deep soulful pure Americana. I hear the great plains, the frontier, hyperion, witchcraft, GOD, tumbleweeds, the life and death of glam rock, buffalo, the desert, the mountains, everything everything – every time he opens his mouth. I was starstruck by him for about the first 7 years I had known him, but then I got to know him better, and he’s a terrific and funny guy, full of smiles and jokes and smarts and niceness all around. One time I went to his house for a Halloween party that was me and only five other guests, myself (dressed as Bridgitte Lin from “Chunking Express” – that is blonde wig and trenchcoat),Aimee Mann and Michael Penn (not in costume – they are magnificent enough), the amazing E from The Eels dressed in a very elaborate pink bunny costume complete with big bunny/hare haunch legs and ears all self contained and probably very hot inside, and the hosts of the party, Grant and his wife. Grant answered the door and I didn’t recognize him at all as he was attired in a very dramatic witch outfit with hat and nose and as I recall he was also green, but then my memory may be exaggerating this. He seemed green at the time.

I returned to the same house now many years later to write the song “Eat Shit and Die.” I had sent Grant the lyrics ahead of time and he played me what he thought the song should sound like. We had discussed earlier a song of his that I am obsessed with, “The Whole Shebang,” which is from the soundtrack to “Velvet Goldmine,” which is probably my favorite rock and roll film, and how I wanted our song to have the same type of rhythm and cadence. Something rollicking – something that could take the pain of the situation, the sadness of the words – and make it overcome. We shall overcome. We shall get through this. We had lost and now we shall win. I was asking for some witchcraft, and Grant was to be my perfect warlock. Writing with Grant is tremendously organized, as he prints everything out very meticulously and records demos that are so good that they could go to radio play right from his computer – but it’s also a lot of fun. His terrific family – with new baby Violet always ready to be held and fawned over during breaks – made our sessions an absolute joy.

I practiced the song on guitar until my fingers bled. I think that “Eat Shit and Die” did more for my guitar playing than any song I have every played before or since. It forced me to use all my fingers, even my deformed pinkies which are 2 inches shorter than most peoples. I feel like Django (one of the greatest guitar players of all time who only had 2 fingers) when I play this song. It’s a lesson and a triumph upon every completion. When I get to the final chords when I am onstage, I think silently, “Oh thank god. Thank Grant. I did it.”

We recorded it at Ryan Freeland’s studio – the amazing engineer responsible for Aimee Mann’s terrific sound as well as Crowded House, Brett Dennen, and of course Grant Lee Phillips – with the incomparable Alexander Burke and many of Aimee Mann’s band – Paul Bryan and Jeben Bruni included! This was the perfect situation where I could pretend I was Aimee Mann all day, which is what I did. Ryan Freeland’s studio is awesome because it is many small rooms – one for vocals, a little upstairs cubby for Grant’s guitar and banjo, a larger one for bass and drums and yet another for keyboards and piano. We all got to play and sing at the same time which I know now is a rare luxury of modern recording. The song sounds grand and full and sweeping. It’s epic – just like the feeling of conquering your own sadness is epic. This is a testament to Grant’s incredible skill as a producer as well as a songwriter. The song makes my heart soar. On these chords and verses and choruses I am Rising above. That’s all I want to do. That’s what I want this song to be. You can rise above it all. You can leave behind your sadness. You can chuck your heartache and write and record with Grant Lee Phillips and he will be the wizard of rock and make a song like a spell that will make others happy too. Many many many thanks to grant and to the alchemy that is music. It will save us all.

Cho Dependent hits stores 8/24. Pre-Order Cho Dependent from Margaret’s site for an instant download of the album!

I have this weird problem of leaving food in my car. The worst was when an already finely ripened piece of bleu cheese fell out of my Trader Joe’s shopping bag and lodged itself underneath the passenger seat of my blue Mini Cooper. I didn’t smell it at first, and didn’t for many months. I often go on the road and leave my car at home, undriven and undisturbed for months at a time. During those empty days, that cheese blossomed and rotted inside its plastic packaging. The thing blobbed, swelled, got bigger, got smaller, got its own life, got a fucking job, got married, had kids, got divorced, lost custody then regained it – all within the safe, quietly parked ecosystem of my vehicle. By the time I got back, I was like – “who shit in this thing?” because dear reader, it smelled like straight up shit. Not farts. Not stepped in dog shit and then got in the driver’s seat – I am talking about straight up shit in the car. Took a shit in it. I mean shit in it. Can I be any clearer? “Had to take a shit, so got into the car and then did it.” I mean seriously.

I had no idea at this point what was causing the shitness. I didn’t know it was an escaped Trader Joe’s blue cheese. I thought there was something wrong with the car. Possibly an animal had crawled into the manifold and just died. Perhaps it was haunted by a shit ghost. I don’t know what. I took it to the dealership and they couldn’t find anything. Then one day, I pulled the seat back and a very shrunken plastic package came flying out from underneath. It was unrecognizable at first, but then slowly, I came to realize that was where the smell was coming from. As soon as I removed the remains of the cheese, the shit smell was gone. This did not change me. No lessons were learned – I still leave food in my car.

In April of this year, when I drove to Nashville for my recording session with the fantastic Brendan Benson, I bought some jalapeno cheese potato chips, a small but substantially salty and delicious bag. They were special chips to me, mostly because I had enjoyed my recording session so tremendously, because I was recording with someone I absolutely idolize, because we were recording in Ben Folds’ lavish and impressive studio – the chips became sort of souvenirs and like a subject in A&E’s “Obsessed” – I just couldn’t part with them. I kept those chips in my car until late July when I had to actually return the car to the dealership.

Still, four months later– I had a moment where I had to make an actual decision whether or not I should throw them away. I didn’t want to eat them at that point, because not only were they months old by now, but also because the bag had not been properly closed. I didn’t have a chip clip or anything in my car, so I had just kind of folded the top, and tried to weigh the fold down with the car’s manual in the overstuffed glove compartment – which, as any chip lover knows, is not an adequate way of storing chips; the deliciousness of them will fade in just minutes. I had left them this way for MONTHS. Anyway, the chips had sentimental value. They had accompanied me on this tremendous rock and roll journey – from Atlanta to Nashville and back. I thought that one day they would be in the rock and roll hall of fame. I thought these chips could be special legendary rock chips that would be as recognizable as Elvis’ pink pants or Robert Johnson’s guitar. I was having delusions of potato chip grandeur. They were jalapeno, after all! And they were from a Brendan Benson recording session!!!

I wrote the song with Brendan without actually meeting him. I had been a longtime fan of his solo work as well as The Raconteurs, and so I was thrilled when he said yes to this collaboration. I wanted to write a kind of a Pamela Des Barres groupie jam – and I had just read Pattie Boyd Harrison’s book ‘Wonderful Tonight’ which is all about her life in the rock and roll 60s and 70s and her marriages to George Harrison and Eric Clapton. I have spent my own time on a tour bus, and I have a pretty good understanding of what it feels like to be a rock wife. Did you know you can’t shit on a tour bus? Interesting fact! You have to hold it till you get to a gas station. It’s from a Ben Lee Noise Addict song – “The Rigours of Rock” – I’ll say! Anyway, I know what it’s like to be holding with your sweetie in his bunk trying to be sexy with a bullet in the chamber.

So this is the song, “Baby I’m with the Band.” I wrote the chorus and emailed it to Brendan and he loved it. In days I had a demo and we were ready to record. This song fell together easily as we both somehow knew how it was supposed to sound before we even met. I absolutely love singing it. Brendan pushed me to take my voice further than I have ever gone, and it sounds amazing. It’s a hot, GTO-styled rock and roll confection and when I sing it live I need to put a long scarf on the mike stand to emphasize the 70′sness of it all.

Chips and bleu cheese notwithstanding, this song is the shit. Thanks much to Brendan Benson and his genius!!!

Cho Dependent hits stores 8/24. Pre-Order Cho Dependent here for an instant download of the album!