LIVE FROM MY…AIR BNB
There was a period of ten years where I was not regularly employed in a full time job. So I had a lot of free time, which I’ve since learned is rare in American society and that most people do not get more than 2 weeks off in a year — if they take that. During my free time, I did a lot of shit and a lot of times I did nothing at all. A few of the things I did was travel and teach myself how to sing and play guitar. I recommend consciously cultivating a life with more free time to anyone who is reading this. It’s good for the soul.
For What It’s Worth by Buffalo Springfield (Cover)
Crazy by Gnarls Barkley (Cover)
Counting Stars by One Republic (Cover)
The lost Sessions with hamu - 2017
There’s so many reasons why these songs mean so much to me. I was told I couldn’t sing by a family when I was a child but when I went to college in 1998, I somehow got up enough courage to try out for the college choir. But when I went to the try outs, I was told I was an alto and wouldn’t be singing melody. I didn’t know how to sing anything else but the melody and I couldn’t hear myself when everyone around me was singing, so I left when nobody was looking and gave up on singing. Fast forward to 2017 when I met Hamu through a meditation group and found out he was a musician. I told him that I was mostly a shower singer and that I had never sang with a musician before but I wanted to try. Luckily Hamu was super talented (and super patient).
Most of the songs were not rehearsed before recording, other than me singing the song once, Hamu finding the chords and then figuring out how to put his spin on it. When I listen to them now, it’s all pretty rough and ready and there’s so many notes I got wrong, but there are genuine pockets of magic in each song. Enough magic to start to tape over the tape recording I had been play in my head since I was a child that I couldn’t sing. This was also the first time I had got a chance to create something with someone else. To feel the deliciousness of learning to ebb and flow with somebody’s else’s energy. And this was the first time I created something original from scratch by writing a song. I was accountant until 2014 and so I was always very precise and wanted things to be perfect, and this was the first time I allowed myself to be messy, make mistakes, keep going, and improvise. I loved how that felt.
Hamu, I know we are no longer in contact, but if you ever happen across this page, I wanted to say thank you, you are amazing, I hope you’re still playing every instrument under the sun and I hope you find as much joy in listening to these as I did.
My favorite song is Om Namo Bhagavate Vāsudevāya. It doesn’t have regular lyrics and it just repeats the same chant over and over but its simplicity and repetitiveness allowed me to learn in real time how to improvise when singing a song — by leaning into how the song felt. Plus the beat that Hamu created with the guitar bumps. :~)