You know how this goes so let’s get to it …. Opening crawl ….
On November 13th, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence. That request came from his wife…..
Wait ….. no…. that’s not it. Sounds familiar though, huh?
Jason P Krug set out to write the perfect song to soothe his monster movie brain and locked himself away with copy paper covered in words, a cheap nylon string guitar and a recorder. He was never seen again. Years later, during the excavation of his residence a record was found. This is that record…..’
The fact is … this is practically a true story.
In a time (and I can not get accurate with dates as I used those parts of my brain to store the smoke) where I was struggling with and without bands, I needed something to do …
OK, now here’s the real, REAL truth: I think this record disappeared because I recorded it on someone equipment who did not want me using their shit. Sorry, Fucker.
So I sat down and got down to some pickin’ and a’ croonin’. All of these stories are true. I could put the names on them … if I could only remember the names.
Anyway …. A new band came along and I was off to the races. This record was left behind and stored on a drive. And I went on to do The Citizen Spy, The Grimm Generation and Cursive is Code and record my solo ‘The Zen Of Losing’ record.
Years later (so…now) I was gifted the drive that contained a lot of my earlier material, songs that I had also forgotten. I have a habit.. and it’s a bad habit… of writing a whole new set of material for every band I ever get involved with, so a lot of good songs got pushed back for the new songs.
Which explains what happens next (foreshadowing) …
So when I came across this lost record, called then and still ‘Nylon’, I really liked it. It was almost shocking how it affected me after all this time.
It’s a f****d up record, really.
It is imperfect. It is spare and bare. There are mistakes on it. I am cool with all of that. The Only Music I Listen To Is The Mountain Goats.
And there is a type of kismet in finding this. As mentioned above, I have a bunch of material that people have liked but I abandoned for new sounds. And now Julie and I are working to bring those back.
So …join us as we plumb the depths of the JpK. In the meantime….. I hope you like this.
A gracious and salutary ….ummm.. salutation to you, Cursive Cabal.
I hope this note finds you fat with money, free with love and a good meal awaiting you. With the Gods. Or your Dogs.
So today, as we slide from post apocalypse plagues to a newer (and yet far older) apocalypse, we are here to discuss voids.
Let’s call it March. 3 Months and change and everything went upside down. A world most of us never expected…and the ones who did expect are SUCH a drag to hang out with.
90 days. 2100 Hours.
Boom.
So what did you do with your void? Empty space fills the bowl that one held hilarity, kicks, communion … and we are on our own.
Did you gain weight? Knowledge? Has familiarity bred contempt? Catch any new shows?
I was getting busy when the quarantine hit. I lost Hogan and knew that if I did not get my head together quick…well, I had no idea what that result would be. After the ceremonies, Julie and I got down to it, building the beats, laying down tracks upon tracks, gittin’ all fancy. Guitars added, guitars subtracted, Julie building big brassy counterpoints and high infections of melody.
Because we can dream and we can build, it gives us control. We can spit frustration into a vocal, over-distort the guitar and then do it again, learn bass.
And when you’re done…. there is still the void.
My concept of how to make money making music was probably outdated before I picked up a guitar. The main thrust of it was ‘get out there!’ But that was never my …. desire. It all came back to the lifelong argument Dave and I would have.
He said that if you play everywhere, and are good, people will know you and you can build a following.
I said that you will burn out in the bars before you ever get heard and there has to be a better way. A better mousetrap.
The debate rages still, now more piquant as the venues are gone. As is D.H.
And everyone is experimenting with building better mousetraps game now.
Look beyond this day, this year, and know someday this will be regarded as a truly creative period for art.
A State Enforced Renaissance.
We reach out how we can. Social networking is just too convenient and too easy, which is why it is absolutely over-saturated with everyone everywhere.
It is also a true gut check for the times that you pour your heart into something and it gets overshadowed by a particularly cool cat pic
But Fuck. Life is hard all over. Especially these days. Let us not carry things without weight.
.
And if the Gods are kind and the cats are ugly, maybe you can be heard.
A bit.
So…what have Cursive is Code done with their Void?:
Songs: Follow the link to check out the available Cursive is Code songs on Soundcloud. This is 4 songs…and I think a few more will be added and this will be available for purchase. Like the songs if you like, love us if you like love (?):
Dance: Cursive is Code is getting into the video biz. Wanna see a dancing cat marionette? Wanna see a number of innocuous girls revealing more than the author expected? See them here:
youtube.com/channel/UCy0lHa-Y95c88tHU7UO3jPQ
Seltzer In Pants: Wanna read about it? Go here:
jasonpkrug.com
Wanna send us dirty pictures of you celebrating the new Cursive is Code sexy sounds?:
Hey You! Yes YOU! You in the glasses! (that was just for me)
Yes I have a great opportunity, big payouts, we finally take down ‘The Man’. Just you and Me and a couple hundred thousand friends. We’re gonna cabal the night away.
That’s why you don’t see this blog anywhere else. This is just for Us. Shhhhhh….. You may note from my usual method of screaming ‘PAY ATTENTION TO ME!’, this ain’t that. Sure, I will post on walls (even a bathroom walls but the number always gets wiped away…) feeds, pages… if I wasn’t so lazy I would post bills and hang flyers….but going out side is so 2019.
Nope, its just us now. So chilllll…relax…let me drop some knowledge. This is the birth of the Cursive Cabal.
So…if your reading this….you’re interested in what I have to say. And if you read any of my previous blogs, you will note I’m not exactly a deep thinker. This will continue that grand tradition. But…more honest. Cause I am among friends here.
So….Cursive is Code. This is the new band, this is my new Magnetic North, this could be the last band. Who knows, right? Cause not all the members of this band will make the record. If you read this before, you know exactly what I mean.
Here is the tale: So when Grimm kicked the bucket, I decided to follow my expected route of Singer Songwriter sensitive heartbreak route. And I brought in Grimm Cello player Julie Kay to help me. I never discussed this before, but she helped me beyond any expectation I had. It wasn’t simply the beautiful playing or the Astral Weeks style bass thing she brought (which ticked off one of my musical fantasies). She was playing hurt. She was scheduled for a surgery…and she came down to the basement and sat uncomfortably, in genuine pain…and would grin and bare it.
If I had…if I was better at being human….would I suggest she not come, not put herself through excess pain? I can say we don’t know…I can also say it made no difference at all cause she was going to come anyway. She believed in what we were doing. She believed in Me. She would work her way down the stairs to sit in my bachelor pad (which looked a lot like a 13 year old’s basement except more cheesy keyboards…I think that was captured in a video somewhere….) or take a trip out to Collinsville to work on some songs with old music mate Adam Hagymasi, who did about half of everything on that record. If it wasn’t an E Bow (That’s Hogan) or fumbly acoustic (Moi), everything else was Adam. But Julie would take these trips with us while we worked out the basic tracks.
The record turned out good. I still have some free downloads if you want one.
This was….or wasn’t…I cant be sure…when I fell in love with Julie Kay. We did not connect till about a year later. And…Wow. We grew much closer. And live happily.
Anyway….yes, this is more honest…more deep .. than I expected to go…
So, a Misery Monkey like myself, now all flush on new love… time for my next record. I mean…I live with my band! (Julie) It was a test of my theory that writers write best when mostly miserable. And I was right! Unfortunately…
I was blocked. New happiness made no songs. And I somehow wised up to the fact that forced unhappiness is just dumb, dumb, dumb. Look around now. You just never know.
So I lived happily…and even the anguish of not creating abated a bit. We formed a band based on the acoustic sound, played some shows, had some fun. I was writing new songs but I just could not get motivated to do something with them.
Meanwhile….a bit of history. Dave Hogan and I started together in our first band….and played together from project to project the entre time I knew him. Our musical tastes were different…and always had been since age 20….but we came together on a mutual love of vintage guitar rock and British Glam. So Humble Pie….Mott The Hoople…Black Sabbath….BOC…..despite the time and tides of projects and bands, the friendship was based on these fundamentals. I don’t mean that to sound tribute or light…sure we came together on a few bands and differed in so many ways…but the way we loved these bands was zealous. Religious.
And we had an often discussed plan, a goal. One more BIG rock band with me and him. He always wanted to just be a musical director in some project…and I wanted to re-use the voice I cam up singing with, less croon, more rock.
So I took this to heart and started writing again. It was not easy. It was Karma. I was always fortunate that I could write on a dime. It was my Super Power. Sure not every song was ‘It’s Alright Ma I’m Only Bleeding’ but I could attach a half formed thought with a half formed melody and shake some shit up. Not this time.
I had my concept. I wanted to write a series of songs reflecting Dave’s and my coming up through the local music ranks. Targeting specific gigs, specific experiences. The significance of this to me was that all these tales turn quaint when balanced against the entire industries apple cart getting upset by the Internet. All the old plans, the old expected results, the long time argument tween Dave and I if excessive gigging helps or hurts…. I had my concept. And dug into it.
It was rough. I will say that I had to return to rhyming dictionaries. I had to try every trick suggested on every writing site. In time…it came. It did not break out like a dam; it trickled like a stream but still filled the record.
It was not just the band concept I was working with…I also had the excitement of being happy and in love…so those songs were written right along.
So I bought an electric guitar and Julie played keyboards. Did I know Julie could play Keyboards? Not at all. Can she play? Like a MotherFucker.
Then a year in the desert looking for musicians. I had not done this…actually my only experience doing this was Grimm…. And CC and I muse that we still don’t know how we got so many people involved, taking trips out to Windsor and making something beautiful. This time was less successful, more anguish and wholly disappointing. EXCEPT….We found Dan. Dan plays bass, as well as banjo, classical guitar….and most important, was good fun to play with.
But the record was not getting made. No drummer. I worked on it with my vintage Korg Dr Rhythm Drum Machine (favored on RUN DMC’S biggest hits) and made a few tracks’, but others were beyond my rhythmic imagination.
Enter Julie, with yet another unknown talent on display: beat maker. After we upgraded the keyboard, out of frustration more than a plan, she started coming up with beats and we started recording properly. And it worked.
With unexpected results. The songs were danceable. I never created anything danceable unless you count bouncing uncontrollably as dance. Also….after working exclusively with acoustic for years…I was really digging the Electro Sound. It sounded vintage to a scene I never listened too. This was Julie influence. She opened me up to sound and brought those sounds right home to Deep River.
So now….Hogan. Weapon X (he would appreciate the comparison). And I sent him the tracks with a note on the envelope that exclaimed ‘Our Mott The Hoople Dreams contained within’.
And I was too late. And I will never forgive myself.
But Hogan was more than a friend and a stunt guitar player. He was a Saint. I never would have conceived of that when we were kids. But going to his funeral…the pure Love of all of his friends, the real heartbreak of losing a cat before his time. This record became important. Cause these songs were written with him in mind, his style, his background vocals. Based on experiences he and I both lived through…and lived with.
We often had discussion of we were just both legitimately crazy still chasing this same dream when every conceivable outlet turned against us. We always reached the same conclusion: We were.
I miss him every day.
Anyway….so back to Julie and Me and the record. We dug in….I played more guitar, more than I ever thought I was capable of….Julie brought out the strings and horns from the Juno….and we started crafting what would be and currently is Cursive is Code. The name came from a late night conversation tween Julie and Me of how generation of kids no longer recognize, much less can write, Cursive. That made it feel like a secret language, something shared among those who know.
If you want to get ion on the secret action, follow this blog.
If you want to join the Cabal Mailing list, send me your email at jpkrug@gmail.com
We will be sharing a new song every few weeks. When such a thing is conceivable, we will be taking this show on the road and playing your town. Or the next town over.
Be One With The Cursive Cabal. And together we can…… (add impossible dream here)
How To Diagram A Human Heart 