Lots of people told me that they actually tried to put my DVD into their car stereos so they could listen to it on their way to work. Many of you might snicker at such blatant non-technical behavior - but it sounded like something I would probably try!
Alas, DVD players and CD players are not Equal Opportunity Devices.
So, seeing as how I’ve learnt (you can use this word in Australia) all about customer service, I went back into the studio to create a CD version of the performance. (Actually, Van Atkins did all the work. I just watched him and bought lunch a lot.)
Here’s the deal:
It’s a double-CD of a live performance. It’s the same performance that’s on my DVD — but there are a few more stage stories and banter moments on the CD. (And each one gets its own track - so you don’t have to listen to them every time!)
This CD was also re-mixed and re-mastered for better stereo listening.
p.s. I’m performing in Raleigh-Durham this weekend on Friday night. And Hampton, VA on Saturday night. If you live nearby - or if you know anyone that lives nearby - show the mainstream media that blogs have power! Come join me!
As a Thursday Thirteen reader, however, I’m an old soul. (On the internet, an old soul is anything over six months.)
So, today I’m doing a special Thursday Thirteen that coincides with the release of my new CD, A Friday Night in One Lifetime.
I’m giving away thirteen CD’s. THAT’S my Thursday Thirteen.
So, here’s how it works:
Leave a comment below.
Any person who comments on this blog from midnight on Thursday until noon on Friday - that’s 36 hours - will be added to a hat for a drawing. Me and my dog will draw 13 names from the hat over the weekend, and I will announce the winners on Sunday on my blog! (My dog would announce the winners, but she has a hard time typing.) The CD’s will be mailed out on August 1.
The songs are all original tunes. There are stories and rants in between the songs. But we gave them their own separate tracks so that you didn’t have to listen to them over and over again!
And in honor of the occasion, here are 13 great links to Thursday Thirteeners who have written about songs:
In the sidebar to my left, there’s a big new icon. It says “The Real World.” Click on it to download a new previously unreleased song called - you guessed it! - “The Real World.” (Written and performed by me. Of course.)
Follow the instructions from there.
And if you feel like giving a gratitude donation for this song or for the last song or for this blog, then you can click here and do that so easily on PayPal.
This is a song I wrote. You can press the “Play” button.
I was going to post this on Ash Wednesday, but then the hackers hit the server and my site went down. But seeing as how Lent goes on and on and on and on, I’m going to post it now.
This is called “Mary Catherine’s Ash Wednesday Journal Entry.”
Here are some random things about this song:
- This is on my CD Right Outta Nowhere. (You can view the lyrics and CD information here.) The CD is a studio CD, but this song is a “Bonus Track,” and it’s a live recording. It’s not a great live recording because I didn’t know I was going to put it on any CD, and I just used a crappy old DAT recording of a random show at the Grey Eagle in Asheville, NC.
- I wanted to use a live recording (rather than singing it in the studio) because the audience makes the song. This is the first song I ever wrote where I had to “go in character” to perform the song. And it just works better to play that up in front of an audience. I’m not good at that kind of thing in a studio.
- There is a new song on my new DVD where I go into a character, so I’m getting a little more adventurous now that I’ve done it once. (That song is called “What the Hell am I Doing with My Life?”)
- I wasn’t going to put this song on the CD because it’s such an odd little song. But as often happens with odd little songs, people kept asking me to record it.
- Yes, I grew up Catholic. Very very very Catholic. My mom was Executive Director of a well-known Catholic organization. And my Dad was VP of a Jesuit higher education organization. We never missed mass. I have since recovered from most of it. I think this song pretty much healed any remaining stuff. Humor always helps!
- One of the first nights I performed this song, a woman was laughing so loud and hard in the audience that I started laughing on stage, and I couldn’t continue the song. She had one of those laughs that just makes you laugh. And clearly, she had grown up Catholic and was just letting off some steam. Anyway, I won’t forget that night ever. The whole audience was loving that one woman. (and they didn’t mind me laughing either)
- I actually wrote this song when I was invited to perform at a conference of Catholic bishops. This may sound completely insane, but I knew that it was a liberal group (it was a meeting on Social Justice issues), so I knew I could get away with a bit of irreverence. So, I was sitting in my writing room thinking about this conference and this song just started appearing in my head.
- The biggest thing I have in common with Mary Catherine is the first lines of the song. If you were to read my old diaries and journals, you would see that my list of New Years Resolutions and my list of “Stuff to give up for Lent,” were identical every year. Clearly, I had not even made it to February on my resolutions. (I had a major trash mouth, so cussing was always on both lists!)
- I do not have a little brother. I am the youngest. No one in my family ever re-enacted the stations of the cross. That line just came to me. More people than you can imagine have come up to me after shows to tell me that this was something they had done as kids in their yards. The line made me giggle in my writing room. Kids in Catholic families (especially big ones) can have a very skewed sense of the dramatic. (And your non-Catholic friends always seemed so normal.)
- Funny songs are sometimes more difficult to write than any other kind of song. This is because you just never know if you’re being funny. You don’t know until you perform it. The first time I performed it was at that conference of bishops and I got a standing ovation.
- Since you don’t get the visual from listening to the song, before I “become” Mary Catherine, I pull down my hair and mess it all up in my face so that you can’t see my eyes. And I hold the guitar like a teen-ager at an open-mic night. It’s a lot of fun to play that role. I think I might have been a little bit like Mary Catherine when I was in high school.
-As always, this song (and all of my songs) are on iTunes. You can download it for only 99 cents! (I get 59 cents a song. Which is more than I would get if you find it on a pirated music site!)
Here are some random things about this song. (These are the kinds of things you don’t ever really get to say on stage. Mostly they’re things I say at songwriting workshops or creativity classes. Or sometimes, people ask me questions at the CD sales table at the end of the night, and these are the kinds of answers I give…)
- This is the title track of my CD Rain & Mud & Wild & Green. The title and the whole idea was born out of a hike in the mountains in the rain. Me and my dog had this amazing hike one warm rainy day, and I returned home, grabbed my journal and did a free-write (complete stream of consciousness) all about the hike. At some point I wrote, “God, it was just all rain & mud & wild & green.” And even though I kept writing, a little part of my brain went “Bink! Song title!” (As I wrote the song, the title of the song became “Everything Green” cuz that was the hook.)
- This is why I always encourage people to write. Sometimes the best ideas are just surprising things you spurt out. Even though most people call this CD, “The Mud CD” (cuz they never remember the order of the words), it’s still my favorite CD title of all of mine. (And it’s really a terrible title if you’re a copyblogger or sales-type at all. Maybe my next CD will be called “49 Surefire Ways to Have More Success and More Money Than You Ever Imagined!”)
- At the time I started working on this song, I had just read Julia Butterfly Hill’s book The Legacy of Luna, which had a profound impact on me. Not only did I love her vision and strength, but I also loved how she approached this issue with as little drama and blame as possible. She focused on her vision and on action steps. It’s a great read. I wanted to write this song with that spirit in mind.
- Also, I started working on this song was when the mountains around Asheville were being stripped and burned for the expansion of I-26. It was one of the most painful things to witness. My friend Suzi and I (we hike together quite a bit) had reached so many places of utter despair about the earth that it was hard to motivate ourselves to even go out into the woods at all. I wrote this song for her, and I wrote it for me, and for every human being who has ever felt like that.
- The notes above make it sound like I approached this song with this logical train of thought in mind. That’s one of the misleading things about talking about songs or creativity. None of it is linear. The above ideas were all in the back of my head. All I knew when I sat down with my guitar was this: I liked the title “Rain & Mud & Wild & Green.” It made me happy. All that other stuff started coming up as the song got written. It sort of surprised me… like “Oh! I get it! Here’s the Julia Butterfly Hill stuff!” That’s the hardest thing about teaching creativity. So many people want it to be logical. And it never is!
- The electric guitar that opens the tune is played by Larry Campbell. Larry has toured with everyone from Bob Dylan to Phil Lesh. He’s one of my favorite musicians in the world. He plays on almost all the songs on this CD, and I’m still blown away by his work. (He’s also a really wonderful and kind human being.)
- Ben Wisch was the producer of this CD. And everytime we were working on this song, he’d sit in his producer’s chair and do this funny little shimmy dance. I still see it everytime I hear this song.
- Steve Seskin claims he got a speeding ticket because of this song. When we first met, I had just released this CD. I gave him a copy, and he put it in his rental car CD player on the way to South Carolina for another show. He said he was so happy listening to this song, that he was jut speeding along at 85mph. He got pulled over. The policeman had never heard of Christine Kane and didn’t care so much that her song made Steve happy.
- If you like this song, please don’t try to get it for free! You can download this song at iTunes for a mere 99 cents! You can get the whole CD too!
- As always, please let me know in the comments if you have problems listening to this. I think we have the bugs worked out though.
A Friday Night in One Lifetime
Right Outta Nowhere
Rain & Mud & Wild & Green
Live
A Thousand Girls
This Time Last Year
My new CD is called “A Friday Night in One Lifetime.” (Click here to get it.)
, which had a profound impact on me. Not only did I love her vision and strength, but I also loved how she approached this issue with as little drama and blame as possible. She focused on her vision and on action steps. It’s a great read. I wanted to write this song with that spirit in mind.