Flyers!!

FOR BAY AREA PEOPLE:

FOR EVERYONE: My Full Album, "Everything Changes and Nothing Changes," will be on iTunes (and everywhere else music is sold and streamed online) on December 1st - My album will also be available on CD with a 12 page booklet that day as well.

(please post these around if you'd like)

New Print For Sale

This print from "I Think It's Getting Better" is now for sale in my online store.

Everything Changes and Nothing Changes

Today I released my newest single, "Everything Changes and Nothing Changes" - this is one of my favorites from this series of songs which I'll release as a full album on December 1st (It will also be called "Everything Changes and Nothing Changes).

Also for people in or around San Francisco, I'll be having my Album Release Party/Show at Bottom Of The Hill on Nov 27th. Soft White Sixties will be opening.

You Can View the Facebook Event for the show Here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=155637079471&ref=nf

And purchase Advance Tickets Here: http://www.stubmatic.com/bottomofthehill/event/1885

Just posted a Facebook Invite for my Album Release Party on November 27th at Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco.

Single For October 1st

I'm leaving town tomorrow and will be gone for a few weeks, so I'm releasing my single for October 1st this afternoon. It's called Carolann. I hope you enjoy it!

(If you crave updates from me, I have my tumblr queued to post a new photo each day - It's not much, but I hope it'll do for now.)

Advance Tickets

For My Album Release Party at Bottom Of The Hill (ON NOVEMBER 27th!) are available here:

http://www.stubmatic.com/bottomofthehill/event/1885

Two Birds On A Wire Print

I recently added the "Two Birds On A Wire" print (from Charmingly Awkward) to my online store.

I hand-print each one from the original hand-carved woodblock, signed or initialed.

Live Photos Sent To Me Recently

above photos by Samantha Rodriguez

Last month Elliot Glass and Allen Kelley met me at Chris Burden's "Urban Light" installation at the LACMA in Los Angeles where they filmed me playing a couple of my songs:

Underneath The Flood:

If you prefer youtube go here.

Everything Changes and Nothing Changes:

If you prefer youtube go here.

Here's what Elliot had to say about this:

"Dave was the first out-of-towner I've done that didn't have a suitable place in LA to shoot at, so there was a bit of a giant question mark as to where we'd film this. We thought it'd be cool to do it on the streets somewhere, but that meant finding a place without too much street noise, where the cops wouldn't shut us down, and where there'd be enough available light. And of course, somehow have it be distinctly Los Angeles. Literally the day of, we still hadn't decided on a place.

Dave and my paths have crossed a number of times by one of those strangely coincidental mutual friend things. I first saw him play years ago when I was still in school, as the front-man of Street To Nowhere, which has since disbanded (somewhat along with the Capitol Records / Virgin merge). The Oakland native is now playing under his own name, releasing his latest album one song at a time (as digital downloads with his own artwork attached), and in the process, bouncing around from San Francisco, to New York, and back again. His songs have always had an authenticity to them that's rare in popular music today. It's not just the earnest lyricism, loaded with emblematic autobiographical spells, but it's the way in which they're so delicately woven through the melodies, coercing you into actually listening to the words. Like all the greatest songwriters, Smallen is a storyteller at heart.

Unfortunately, there isn't a better story to how we came about the location. It was just one of those, "of course!" moments when a mental-note in the back of my brain chimed in. I'd driven by the location many times and thought, "hey, that'd be a cool place to do a photo-shoot." And where better than mid-Wilshire in the middle of the night? But seriously, the Chris Burden installation (outside of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) couldn't have been a more beautiful and perfect location. And thankfully, the security guards were chill with letting us shoot there."

Chris Burden's "Urban Light" sculpture is a permanent installation at LACMA. 5905 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles CA 90036 - visit LACMA.org -

To see more of video work from these guys Click Here.

"American Character."

Thank You.

One of my favorite speeches to date.

I may be self-employed and may have been denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition (depression) - but this is a no-brainer regardless: Everyone has the right to see a doctor and be treated. This is as simple as the golden rule.

I loved it when the right side of the room was forced to stand and clap for holding people accountable, though I was only fleetingly satisfied seeing them fume like little kids on time-out when they were shamed toward the end. I wish they would take the offered olive branch. What a country we'd live in if our leaders had genuine discourse.

"The Time for Bickering is Over." -President Barack Obama

Remember The Bright Side

A little something about the attitude of the music business right now.

Many folks around the music industry are full of negativity these days. While the failing of the major label model may be immediately related to the economy and the internet, the reality of this situation is just proof to me that few companies actually knew how to run a business in the first place - they just inherited an old system, didn't change with the times, and these things forced that issue. There are some major growing pains and I've been in there, through the gauntlet - and it hurts. But it's time to move on.

I hope people can step back and see what a huge opportunity this moment is. Right now we are redefining how people receive music and support the artists that inspire them, that provide the ever-expanding score to their daily lives. This may not involve big infrastructures of marketers and sales reps and vice presidents - and I would guess that it will remain a difficult living (though I think it provides much more room for working class musicians). But what an amazing time to be making music: You can have control over what you create and the process through which you present it. We no longer are subject to the physical constraints of CDs or contracts with big companies for distribution. We can experiment. We should experiment. We can do anything. It's all a collaboration and every blind forward step that someone takes is important progress for everyone. There's room now for every hard working person with patience, good music, and something to say - It doesn't matter if you appear for a day on the front page of myspace - good stuff gets out there in time.

Look at our lives and the fascinating time we're in. It's indian summer, you have 10,000 songs on your iPod and it's finally okay to express yourself however you please.

Fuck yeah.

NYC

This is one take in the studio (Vocals, Acoustic, Drums, Upright Bass) on a long day in March 2008 with Electric Guitar and Keys overdubbed later.

Morning came to consciousness as the streetcar slowly creaked

And it froze the beer-glass ashtrays on the balcony railing

And the refuse of the evening was lifted on the breeze

And new day spills into the street

And the duchess is still sleeping when I slip out of bed

And I stand before her a moment, from her apartment I decend

She’s filthy like she’s wealthy, I’m guilty as my debts

I’m a squeezed accordion

If I get back to New York City

If I get back to New York City

Oh Tanya wont you help me

Dissolve all of my longings

If I get back to New York City

If I get back to New York

It better be like it was before

Tanya I’ll be leaving when the sunlight hits the street

I want to sound your name in verses, echo off of the buildings

I want to disappear with you now Tanya in the rising subway steam, I know you don’t know me but trust me please

Oh I tried so hard to kiss you, tell me, did you burn like I burned

In that blue haze of morning when it was just starting to hurt

And me and Joey were still wasted watching the city walk to work, I’ve been screaming all night, someone tell me that you heard.

If I get back to New York City

If I get back to New York City

Oh Tanya wont you let me wrap your limbs around me

If I get back to New York City

If I get back to New York

It better be like it was before

I’ll think of you in California when the gutters start to flood

And I’ll wear you woven in my winter coat, spiked in my blood

I hope you’re as lovely as you were that night when I was drunk

I just wish you’d call me, you know I wont ask for much

If I get back to New York City

If I get back to New York City

Oh Tanya I hope you’re sorry as you watch my star rising

And If I get back to New York City

If I get back to New York

It better be like it was before

Album Release Show Moved

To November 27th.

That's the day after thanksgiving.

Thanks IAFYAF!

Heather from I AM FUEL YOU ARE FRIENDS, one my favorite, and one of the most original and thoughtful music blogs out there - posted something very nice about "I Think It's Getting better" this morning.

CLICK HERE to see the article and learn about a bunch of music you'll really dig, if you dig mine.

You no longer need paypal to purchase music

You no longer need paypal to purchase music from my website.

After entering what you would like to pay and clicking "checkout" - you'll see a screen that asks for your paypal login. If you don't have a paypal account look for this:

Don't have a PayPal account?
No problem, continue checkout.

And you can pay with any major credit card.

Album Release Show

As we're getting deep into the second half of my song-per-month experiment, I went ahead and booked November 27th at Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco for my Album Release Party.

All of the songs released this year will be compiled into an album called, Everything Changes & Nothing Changes. As there seems to be demand for a physical copy, there will be some sort of limited edition CD available.

I plan to play some of the set that night with a full band. Supporting acts TBA.

-------

PLEASE support bay area nightclubs (Bottom Of The Hill included) that have been under attack by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The ABC has been citing clubs with ridiculous charges.

Go to: www.stopthewaronfun.com for more info.

This is exceedingly important to keep shows All Ages!

oakland sunset

Old Friends (a post for some bay area people)

My old friends, Oakland rock band: The Matches, are having their final show this Sunday at The Fillmore and I'll be playing acoustic in the upstairs room before the show and between bands. My longest set will be before the show, so make sure to time your arrival accordingly.

These guys have constantly had my back throughout the years and their decision to end this segment of their lives should be an exciting one when you hear/see what each of them are working on for their next step(s).

last week in l.a.

(photos by Elliot Glass)

These are shot in Chris Burden's Urban Light at the LACMA in Los Angeles. I've had recurring moments of inspiration from Burden's art and the physical and emotional scale in which he works. At 18, I wrote his crazy-famous performance piece, Shoot, into my song Dead Cliche.

Video from this location to follow sometime soon.

Party At a Friend of a Friend’s

I killed the engine but neither of us went for the door

There was no talk to fill the empty footprint of the stereo

No mention of going inside,

No commentary on the clusters of people approaching

And passing and climbing the stairs and knocking

Headlights of passing cars filled the rearview mirror

They projected our silhouettes onto stucco walls

Flickered down window panes where

The confidence of interactions unrestrained,

Of gestures unashamed by strange or sober eyes

Splashed through the cracks,

The missing blades of Venetian blinds

Or the river of light— Widening and contracting,

Widening and contracting—

Cascading down the front porch steps

So we sat there a while

And my head fell to your shoulder

And your head fell to mine

And the calls of our friends

Rang out far into oblivion

Until Next Year

We're putting everything off until next year. This one is just too fucked, it came out of the gates with a broken leg and if we try to make it a contender, to put some faith in a horse this lame, we'll have losses that we will never be able to accept.

This is all full of good lessons, full of practical and productive reassessments, full of happiness in spite of, regardless of, unrelated to.

And most important, this isn't the end.

So let's not worry about all those things that just wont take flight right now. Let's let them sit on the runway and get trashed at the airport bar, watch the faces go by, and ask some strangers about themselves. And when this all passes, and people come out from their shelters and come to their goddamn senses, we'll be that much more ready to go.

recent

New Prints in D.Smallen Store

Just put some new prints up for sale in my online store.

I hand print each of these from wood and linoleum blocks (which I've carved).

EVERY TIME I LEAVE (I LEAVE FOR GOOD):

CHARMINGLY AWKWARD:

by samantha vaughan

Greater Bay Area [This Week]

With The Sky All Blue

WITH THE SKY ALL BLUE

I wrote this song for a crayola commercial and it was rejected for being "too dark"

recent misc

Photo by Charlotte Zoller at Nickel City 7.8.09

Sacramento

Los Angeles Show Added

Added a new show at The Viper Room in Hollywood just now:

August 4th. I play 7:59pm sharp. 21+

W/ Streetkind, Last Exit, Hopkinson, The Happy Endings

Today's tweet

Everyone is entitled to what brings the most happiness. Playing for 2000 people tops the happiness scale - just like really good ice cream.

updated 'photo' page today

Last Minute Show This Saturday

July 25th @ Old Ironsides in Sacramento CA w/ Lite Brite

Solo/Acoustic 9pm - $7 - 21+

foreshadowing

Choice Self Portraits, 2006 on...

The good moments are really really good.

Serve.gov

I want to help get the word out about this:

Serve.gov is a website that you can use to find volunteer and community service opportunities in your area, or to help recruit volunteers for your projects.

This is part of President Obama's United We Serve initiative:

I'm feeling this.

In the online store

Street to Nowhere shirts are beginning to run out in certain sizes. These wont be restocked so now is the time to get them. Most can be ordered w/ shipping for less than $10.

CLICK HERE TO ORDER

Also, keep posted for new woodblock prints later this month. I'll have new ones as well as some from Charmingly Awkward available (for way cheaper than my friends say I should sell them for).

ALL MY LIFE

All my life, I never felt right til I saw you there

(and they were spinning Sweet Caroline)

You kissed my face and forgot my name, but it's alright

You can call me what you like

I know I know I know it's all a game

The pushing, the pulling, I feel so strange, but

I know I know I know your lovely face

Ain't nobody ever gonna push you away, but

What you got to say?

Hey Hey Hey Hey

All My Life I've waited for tonight

Just to feel your fingers slipping between mine

You don't know the hands my heart's been through

And I don't know the hearts that you've held too

But the less I know About you,

The more perfect you seem to me

I know I know I know it's all a game

The pushing, the pulling, I feel so strange, well

I know I know I know it's getting late

Ain't never gonna ever let you slip away

So I gotta think of something to say

Hey Hey Hey Hey

All My Life I've waited for tonight

Just to feel you falling by 1:45AM

I wanna call it love, it's close enough

And I can't tell you why

But All My Life I've waited for tonight

You don't know the hands my heart's been through

And I don't know the hearts that you've held too

but the less I know about you,

The more perfect you seem to me

All My Life I've waited for tonight

So if you want me ya gotta tell me it's alright

I wanna call it love, it's close enough

And I can't tell you why

All My Life I've waited for tonight

Waited for tonight!

LAST MONTH I RELEASED AN EP

OF THE FIRST FIVE SONGS RELEASED

UNDER MY OWN NAME YOU CAN

DOWNLOAD THAT ON iTUNES

Familiar Strangers

At first it seems that every person you see is a person you know.

Though on a second look, the rhinoceros-nosed girl bubbling through a stream of slick Manhattanites isn’t the freshman year roommate of a once best friend, so you stand with lips parted and watch her trickle unobstructed into the rapids on Ludlow Street.

And in the porch light of an East Village apartment, the woman in fat-rimmed glasses with her head on a man’s shoulder has got to be the drunken publicist you were introduced to the night before, but within earshot, her lamenting words coagulate into German and you shuffle off from their curious gaze, still searching for her name.

Or alone in someone else’s crowded backstage, somehow in everyone’s way, whether picking at the catering or leaning upon the folding table full of liquor, you nearly wrap your arms around an old friend, whose context you can’t place, but presence rescues you from that nobody discomfort until you realize he’s just a supporting actor from a TV show you sometimes watch, looking somewhat uncertain himself.

So everyone is a stranger - and you let it hurt, contemplating all the cities in all the countries, and then you walk right by that couple you once talked to on a long flight to California, and hear your own name as if uttered behind the shut door of another room, and you turn and laugh and ask, “What are the odds?”

MORE WRITING HERE

Contemporary Warfare

"Drone aircraft, which are only deployed by US forces in the region, hit Taliban positions on Tuesday then pummelled hundreds of militants who had gathered for a funeral"

-- AFP

Connecting

I've received the kindest notes in the last few months. Among the words of encouragement to keep going to work each day to write and record and play songs with some meaning to them, I've been sort of astonished to read depictions of people connecting to my music in difficult times, and maybe more surprised to hear about people enjoying it in the happiest times. Thank you for covering my songs in your bedroom, for putting my sappiest tracks on repeat when you're driving at night, and for telling me - because that's how music gets me, and otherwise I wouldn't have known.

People always say that you have to create just for yourself. I write because a feeling is itching to be expressed, but I can't help but think of you while I'm at it. The moment I first sing a cool melody, or write a line that finally gets to the point I've been trying to make, I think of you. I get so excited to share it. Songs are there to connect with and I'm happy to hear you're making use of them.

You can't ever please everyone and you probably shouldn't be concerned with making a million bucks, but in my experience, genuine words breed genuine response. I'm going to do all I can to keep it that way.

Writing & Photos

In the last month or so I've added a Photos section and a Writing section to my website. Some of it is stuff that you've seen on this blog, some of it isn't.

I will try my best to update it regularly. Photos are mostly from touring/traveling, Writing is mostly stories/poems.

There are no rules though.

If you chase it to the ends of the earth, you'll eventually discover that the earth is round.

Thanks to everyone who came out to Rickshaw last night and sang along. It's been a while and was so nice to be back, so nice to see so many friends. I hope you had as much fun as I did

First Warm Day Of The Year

Skeletal tails twisting toward marble ceilings

Bear claws strung on straps of deer leather

Human skulls crystallized with eternal grins

Landscape altering meteorites, resting cold

Joy and panic in children’s voices

Wandering aimless into stranger’s legs

Hoards of them, parents explaining

Totem imagery and Natural Selection

The blood scent of subway handrails

Cackling teenagers through thundering hollows

An old woman, standing as doors spread

To squint for the name of each station

And outside, removing my sweatshirt

Vacant trenches of construction fenced in plywood

College kids in shorts with shakes and fries

Bare branches reaching awkward in all directions

Unpurchasable stacks of books on folding tables

Jay-walking corner mobs, homicidal taxi-cabs

Craning necks and idling police cruisers

Ornate golden doorknobs in window cases

Distracted texters and missed signals

Numeral streets, descending by the dozens

Shirtless shoulders, bathroom lines, cameras,

Jazz trios, hats filled with dollar bills

Gatherings on blankets, wiffle ball, baby strollers

Mothers with tattoo sleeves, couples making out

Universes away from yesterday’s winter

And the sting of bare hands on frozen steel

MORE WRITING HERE

so much noise, so little to really care about

What a world we'd live in if everyone took a risk to do what they love.

Passion cuts no corners.

Some thoughts while I take a break from playing piano

It's interesting how your perspective on the future and past is so dependent on the present, how projections of future feelings have to cross through the filter of your current emotional state. And it's funny how often times you're happier in the place you hadn't intended to wind up, after a miserable stint somewhere you'd been fighting to be.

new.photos

My buddy Josh Victor Rothstein, an amazing photographer & filmmaker, took these shots of me off the cuff at last years Outside Lands festival in San Francisco.

still love in this country

We were making out on the street, my back against a stucco liquor store wall, when that homeless man came by saying, “Someone take a picture."

And startled, you turned your head to see that ragged old man passing behind you, hunched over.

"Someone take a picture!" he insisted, smiling.

You looked back at me with those wide what the fuck?! eyes, and in that corner of the sidewalk, where the streetlights couldn't reach, he said it again: "Take a picture! Someone take a picture! There's still LOVE in this country!"

I remember your arms tightening around my back, laughter corralled, just cracking the ice on your face. You couldn't see that old homeless man staring at us with all that weathered grace, all that dusty humility, as he said, "Thank you," and dragged himself along down the sidewalk.

MORE WRITING HERE

USA in the last few days

excerpt from my latest newsletter

[written this morning]

I arrived last night in my overflowing little Honda Accord, which having braved the cracked streets of Brooklyn and the ice and snow of Philadelphia, Boston & New York for the last six months, was a champ through thunderstorm after thunderstorm along Interstate 80 from New York to Oakland.

Shook up after rain and hail forced me to pull to the shoulder as lightening clung to the highway all around, I released a new song. I put it out from a hotel room in Nebraska. It’s called “I Think It’s Getting Better."

I recorded this thing five times, with three different producers and bands, in two different cities, in order to get it just where I wanted.

I learned a lot on the east coast in the last few months. I’m grateful for the experience, for all the people that I was able to play my songs for and connect with – I’ll be back again soon enough. I also feel very fortunate to be back in the place I’m from.

Never been so moved

crossing the California border

I Think It's Getting Better

My newest song (you may have noticed I've been releasing them at the first of every month) is called

I Think It's Getting Better.

It is also available now on iTunes

I have much more to say about this, but it is late and I've been driving all day and need to climb into that hotel bed... So until then, please enjoy the song.

Songs on iTunes etc...

The first five songs I've released under my own name are now available on iTunes, Amazon, Rhapsody, and pretty much any other digital music store on the web. They are packaged together all nice-like as the Waiting For The Pills EP.

Of course the songs are all still available directly from me with their own unique artwork at http://davesmallen.bandcamp.com

qwertyuiop[asdfghjklzxcvbnm

packing up again

Tomorrow my car will be packed and pointed west until we hit Oakland. I'm not sure what I'll miss most:

Nah, I'm just fucking with you:

flea market on saturday

Have to Cancel the SLC Show

I had planned to play Salt Lake City as I drive from New York to Oakland next month...

Unfortunately I need to return to California sooner than expected so I'll have postpone my Utah visit. Sorry.

I love S.L.C. You're so good to me. I'll make sure to get back to you soon.

At The Turnpike Service Station On A Rainy Sunday Afternoon

Luggage presses against the windows of the cars, lined up at the pumps by the dozens and families of pedestrians play chicken as I turn off from the stop and go. The wipers stick across the windshield and pulling my sweatshirt hood over my head I make fast steps across the puddled pavement.

Holding open the door for a lady with short curls supporting an elderly woman on a cane, hundreds of voices pour from the station, and I hand it back to a man with a trimmed white beard and exhausted little red eyes in thin framed glasses.

The place surges like the inner corridors of a busy hive. I don’t know anybody but they look like everyone - everyone I’ve ever seen. Generations sit at tables, picking at packaged food in plastic trays with plastic forks. They wear the graphic design of professional sports and corporations, the names of events and cities in embroidery on jackets and hats. They swarm me in old polo shirts and shorts from outlet stores, with clean white socks riding up calves from clean white high tops, necks bent over cell phones and arms filled with bags and babies.

Heroic fast food clerks move mechanically beneath molded plastic signs, filling plastic trays and the oblivion of needs widening from perpetual lines, overwhelmed and tense and tired, spilling in from the turnpike, from the weddings and graduations, the ballgames and the funerals, the weekend trips, the hospital visits, tracking rain water and gasoline and concern in from the parking lot.

An expressionless custodian wheels uncontrollable trashcans through the crowd. An old man coughs and coughs from his chest. I nearly trip right over a little boy stepping rigidly in his parent’s tow, bewildered by a jungle of legs and bags, and I maneuver around a teenage daughter in a college sweatshirt, holding an ice cream cone, reflective eyes fixed to her mom, long given up on fashion, composing the structure of a frustrated lunch with a frustrated dad between stranger’s heads as he drifts into the bathroom.

I need to get the fuck out of here.

To the spacious highways of night, where ancient pines rise in the shadows at the hem of the road and packs of semis rumble through sleepy towns, unobstructed by the tide of humanity.

To the quiet rural exits and soft crunch of gravel. The dormant cars, splashed with moonlight in lonely hotel parking lots and that big frightened woman behind the desk, who will look me over cautiously as the automatic doors spread and I walk in, draped like a porter in backpacks and bags and cases.

She’ll ask for ID and smile to herself. “You’re a long way from home,” she’ll say, in a little voice - just like all the others just like her.

And I’ll stare through the TV, saturating the dark lobby with grays and blues until a sitcom joke knocks a laugh out of her and she’ll direct me to a smoke stained room with light from the hotel sign glowing through coarse curtains and the anonymity of a white tile bathroom, paper-wrapped soap and institutional towels, where I can wash the tension from my neck, the grease from my hair, and fall asleep in hard sheets that can’t remember anything.

MORE WRITING HERE

West Coast Shows This Summer

I'll be back on the west coast all this summer & I'll be playing lots of shows...

So if you're anywhere in California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Baja, Boise, British Columbia etc, and putting on shows at a venue or house or coffee shop or school or bar or street corner etc, we can probably work something out to get me there with an acoustic guitar or a full band if you're interested in having me play.

Shoot me an email at: davesmallen@gmail.com and let me know what you got.

Twitter

Can't promise that I'll use it for anything other than updating you about new songs and shows and art and writing, but it should be a decent way to be in touch until the next thing comes along:

www.twitter.com/davesmallen

A Couple Wonderful Sayings From The Marquees Of Fundamentalist Churches On The Outskirts Of Small Towns Through Which I Have Recently Passed

“Give The Devil An Inch And You’ll Make Him A Ruler”

“Don’t Be So Open Minded Your Brain Falls Out”

Rainer Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet

Publish at Scribd or explore others: School Work Poetry Humanities Fiction Literature-Poetry

"America" Chords

Lots of people have asked me in the last six months or so how to play America, so I figured I'd just post the chords here. I tend to play songs differently with time, but this should get you through it:

I've seen this whole country...

A F#m A E F#m

And from the Ghettos...

A F#m A E

You forgot to lock the door America...

F#m D A E

I was walking through a casino...

F#m D F#m E

Oh Goddammit America...

F#m D A E

Please don't fuck this up...

F#m D A E

whoa oh...

D A E F#m

D A E F#m

Woke up in Manhattan...

XXXXXXX D

And in those deep and desperate...

F#m E

Oh we're hungover America...

F#m D A E

F#m D A E

F#m D A E

Whoa....

D A E F#m

D A E F#m

Some Perspective

Standing on the back stoop of a house, caught in the flames of a small party, he told me about his life, how he scraped over here from South Dakota and lived homeless for a few years. I drank from a plastic keg cup and listened.

“You should try it.” He said.

“Being homeless?”

“Yeah man, it would give you some perspective.”

“Well, how would I eat?” I said. And he shook his head.

“Would you let yourself starve?”

“No, I guess I wouldn’t”

“There’s always a way.” He said.

As if a director and camera crew were on the breaking point of an overwhelming hush somewhere in the shadows of the backyard patio, he took a long drag from his cigarette and fixed his eyes on me while I processed his statement.

What Profundity! I thought. There’s always a way, always a way -- a man can get used to anything. I pictured it: noble philosophers in rags, ascetics perched on cornices in the fringes of understanding, and he nodded slow as if he knew just what was pumping through my head. He let it boil for a moment and said to me:

“Yeah dude. You just steal shit.”

“Oh—“ I said, and took sip of watery beer.

MORE WRITING HERE

I Know You Meant No Harm, But...

There was glue still drying between words in my head

Pictures of tonight's possibilities developing patiently

I was enjoying how the room hovered in the margins of silence

The ticking of idle appliances, the rise and fall of my own breath

When you walked in and turned on the TV

Like a chainsaw through the kitchen table

MORE WRITING HERE

If I Can See You Tonight

My newest song is called

If I Can See You Tonight.

Now that there's nothing left, what do you say?

The morning's been coming hard, It's starting to rain

And all across the horizon, the sky is a solid slate white

And I can get through today if I can see you tonight

Some would say, hey that's life, it's one thing then the next

And if you never get so low, you wouldn't know happiness

If you were here I could block it

The pace of life I can't stop it

No matter how good you got it, baby

You know people just get sat sometimes

And I can get through today if I can see you tonight

When darkness comes for you, I will run to you

I'll keep you in my arms, I'll shelter you from harm

I'll be there wherever you go, wherever you go

I'll be there you should know

You work hard all damn day and I'm slacking off

You say you're up for this, but I know that you're not

So when I come to pick you up tonight,

I hope you say, baby, just come inside

And I can get through today if I can see you tonight

Israel

Thank You

Thanks to everyone who came to the shows last weekend in San Francisco and San Jose. I can't tell you how much fun I had playing and I can't wait to be back. Hopefully I'll have some California shows again in June or July.

I saw Leonard Cohen on Tuesday at The Paramount in Oakland. He sang for three and a half hours, and somewhere in the third or fourth encore, he thanked the audience from what seemed to be the deepest and most genuine wells of his heart. It was a performance filled with gratitude, and for a man that is four days shy from having fifty years on me, I can only hope to have his attitude at that age - if I am fortunate enough to see it - and to still have a crowd gather around me when I pick up a guitar.

I remember having meetings with labels when I was figuring out who would release Charmingly Awkward. We'd be in some executive's office with a window looking down at the rooftops in Hollywood or along an avenue in midtown Manhattan, and they would ask me what my goals were with music. My genuine answer, which eventually became my stock answer, was "I want to be doing this when I'm sixty." Though the reasons behind Cohen's world tour are dark, involving stolen millions by his longtime manager and what must have been a horrifyingly anxious and stressful lawsuit, the genuine and clear enjoyment of each moment and connection with the audience was a glorious "Thank You."

This isn't the forum for really expressing all I felt that night. It had been a difficult day for me. I parted ways with my managers of three years.

It was incredible timing, the meeting that afternoon and the show that night. I was able to see a man that had struggled for years within the restraints of the business and despite poor initial commercial success, someone who persevered, consistently making something pure and gracious. Ultimately that allowed him to build an incredible bond with his listeners, the few and far between that felt what he was singing.

I'm fortunate to live in a time where the internet is still a bit of a frontier and I can connect with people without sacrificing and committing myself to the gauntlet of the mainstream music industry, and as managers and labels come and go, I can always be in touch with the people that connect with things I create, and present those things however I'd like - with few limitations.

I left the show excited to move on, and to remind the people that enjoy and relate to what I say and create, how much I appreciate them.

A friend of mine posted a review of "Waiting For The Pills" the previous night. In the brief plug he managed to sum me up in a way I would hope to be perceived most days of the year.

He said, "Dave's a real person that just wants to make music forever. "

That's it. Thanks again.

Waiting For The Pills

Somewhere in Western Texas, I clenched my eyes closed on the front bench of the tour-van as it pulled out from under an oasis of truck stop lights, bounced up the onramp, and back on the highway. We were hundreds of miles from any city and daybreak was coming while the stereo blasted and my mind churned. As I finally felt the flood of sleep washing over me, these words entered my head.

Lyrics

Waiting for the pills to kick in

I'm rolling around in my skin

I can't sleep

If I could sleep this all would end

Waiting for the pills to kick in

I got a whole mess of new friends

I can count them up

But I can't count on them

If you just look at me

Oh you'd like what you see

And if you're listening

Oh you'd like what I said

Waiting for the pills to kick in

I wonder if I'll see her again

She wasn't smart or nice

But she was soft and thin

Waiting for the pills to kick in

You know I got no faith in heaven

I'd be out of here pretty darn quick now

if I did

Somehow life got scored

With screeching horns and diminished chords

If only it was something sweet

A simple melody

Art & Commerce

I designed a four color silkscreen from my "backhoe" print that accompanied Every Time I Leave (I Leave For Good).   The design is screened on baby blue American Apparel shirts (girls and guys sizes) for sale in my online store and at shows for $15.

Also, I'll be releasing a new song on April 1st around midnight.

And playing these shows in NY and CA:

April 11th - Nickel City - San Jose CA (ALL AGES)

April 12th - Cafe Du Nord - San Francisco CA

April 20th - The Delancey - New York NY

April 28th - SUNY Cortland - Cortland NY w/ Matt Nathanson 

April 29th - Rockwood Music Hall - New York NY

cleveland

Every Time I Leave (I Leave For Good)

In July 2007, after more than a year on the road, through clubs and theaters across the United States, I returned home to Oakland. The final tour was a bust. I found myself playing to one person at a bar beside a prison in Bakersfield, and my deal with Capitol Records had gone to shit as the company withered and merged and laid off. I was trying to get my record back and settle up the terms in which I'd be let go. I wasn't paying rent anywhere, I didn't have a girlfriend or any shows booked - The future was all blank space and I felt like a failure. I had left my friends and family with such expectation, only to return home with little to show for all I had been through, and torn up in ways I could hardly explain. My car was broken into my first night home, and I took it as a sign to get the hell out.



My brother was living out in Moab Utah, guiding rafting trips on The Colorado River. I got my car window fixed and replaced the stereo, packed all my stuff and headed out to see him. I was in control again, with the comfort of the of the highway in front of me, always moving toward something, and always pulling me further away.



I stayed in Moab for a couple weeks, taking long hikes and helping my brother out on the river. I tried as best I could to express what I had been doing since I last saw him, and hearing my own words, I was proud of all the work I'd done, all the people I'd met and connected to, all the things I'd seen and experienced, but everything felt strange and distant. I was on the threshold of something new, though it wasn't yet clear, and it was time to focus on what was directly in front of me, not far behind.



Early one evening, my brother went off with a couple friends to climb some cliffs as the sun set. I drove out along The Colorado and found a quiet spot to watch the darkness come, but as soon as I had settled, a storm began to roll in - their first storm in more than a month. The clouds were thick, opening up into a heavy rain as I took it back to my brother's. When I arrived, I found the house filled with his friends and roommates, kids who squatted on his property or slept by the river under the stars - all of them taking refuge. I grabbed my guitar, and sitting alone on the back porch beneath a canopy, with flashes of lightening illuminating the surrounding walls of rain, I began to write this song.


[Once summer comes, I strongly suggest listening to this one loud, while driving on a two lane highway with the windows down]

I had to kick this nightclub scene

I drove out into the desert heat

To find my brother where he strays complete

I brought the rain with me

And if I really want to stay alive

There's a part of me that's gotta die

And my brother he's the kindest kind

Don't need to see the light

If I wanted to stay you know that I would

I don't like to be misunderstood

Every time I leave here I leave for good

I know oh I know you're not keeping track

but I keep on coming back

I keep coming back the way you said I would

Every time I leave here I leave for good

Somewhere

There's a girl I don't know her name

I get so lonely I can picture her face

I guess right now we got our separate ways

But I'm gonna marry her one day

And every age that you get in life

There's a sweet and there's an ugly side

I try to be patient for what comes in time

And thankful for what's mine

I keep on running

And I keep crawling home

But the trouble stays with me

Everywhere I go

I'm Not Releasing an Album.

After much consideration, I've decided to release the songs I spent half of 2008 recording as a series of digital singles, instead of an album. I love writing music, performing music, recording music, and I especially love releasing the new music I've recorded. I would like to have the freedom to be doing any or all of these things at any given time, instead of one thing then the next, and the satisfaction of sharing it with you, not in rare bursts, but on a consistent basis.

The first song is available right now. It's called "Every Time I Leave (I Leave For Good)." I'm very very proud of it and I can't wait for you to take a listen! You can hear and download the song by clicking below:

(It's available in high quality MP3, FLAC, and other audio formats...)

I'll be doing this without the help of a record company or a publicist or a marketing budget, so there are basically two ways that people can discover my music:

1. I tell them about it.
   
2. You tell them about it.
   

If you download a song of mine and feel inspired to share it with 5 or 50 or 500 friends, that is fine with me. In fact I encourage it.

Thanks for being patient with me. This endeavor has taken longer than anticipated in most every way, and I'm sure you'd like to hear everything I have recorded right away, but I have a feeling that this will be a fun experiment for all of us if we just give it a little time.

Yours,
Dave

...But My Car Is In Brooklyn

Back in Oakland now, and it's interesting how wherever you are, your mind shifts to that place. Suddenly New York feels far and unfamiliar, though when I return there next week, I'm sure The Bay Area will be just as hazy, just as distant. 

Opening for Josh Ritter tonight, and seeing all my friends -- should be a good one.

[By the way -- pay close attention this weekend, I'll be starting something new]

Before The Show, And After

Brooklyn doesn't want me to have a stereo so I drive the length of the New Jersey Turnpike with This American Life in one ear.  And It's cold in Philadelphia - not freezing, but the wind comes in detonations, shaking the car and then violently whipping the trees, so I sit for a long time in the driver's seat, just off of South Street, thinking about where to spend the next few hours.

I end up alone in the back room of a little Middle Eastern Place, where two men, the only other people in the place, talk about defense contracting in relation to the auto industry, and I keep picking up flakes of their conversation, but not enough to string it together.  And The waitress is polite, and it's early enough in the shift to have a pleasant conversation and get some advice on killing the following hours, but our exchanges are off, I can't hear right, and my words keep coming out sideways and upside-down. 

I eat slow, and have a text message conversation, read a page and a half of my book, and eavesdrop.  There's an old poster of images from Jerusalem on the brick wall above me and I look to see if I can recognize places from five weeks ago.  Eventually I'm full and leave and wander through the aisles of a three story arts & crafts store, florescent light flooding over the place, and a woman's voice on a loudspeaker, every five minutes, counting down to closing time. The place feels like a knot in the back, and I walk out with a roll of printing paper under my arm.

The show is fine, the bar is filled with people when I arrive, people a little older than me, that probably won't look up from their conversation as I play, but I trust that a few will, and the other bands, and my friends and fans will come and watch, and they do.

And after packing my guitar away, I have a long conversation with guy who approaches me and says he's from The Bay Area.  There is always a long conversation to be had with anyone else from the bay, and we talk about his industry - the newspaper industry - in relation to mine, and how they've been passed down for so long from creative folks who made the rules to left brainers who follow them into the dirt like the hand of God, folks that are rigid and stuck and can't change, and I tell him how I'm getting out, how I got this finished album that I recorded with a producer in Hollywood, and an engineer and top level session guys, in beautiful studios, and I'm gonna put it out myself, on my website, piece by piece, to prove that we can do it however we like, and he tells me how he is redefining his paper, was hired to do so, but with the economy how it is there isn't a place for him, even though he's the one that could trade their sails in for an engine, and we talk about the cold and how neither of us will spend another winter outside of California...

At some point I dismiss myself and walk into the street, past my car, parked on cobblestones, and up to Market. There's an old man on the sidewalk and I walk by him and turn back to see a couple behind him turning around as well.  He is hunched over so far, his nose is by his knees and he is trying to walk like that, saying "spare some change for the homeless."  I am struck and walk back to him and ask if he is okay. "I'm a veteran," he says, and I hand him the change in my pocket, and the couple approaches us and the woman asks in a serious but soothing tone, "Is it your back?" and he gives a slow nod, "Will it be better in the warm, inside?" and another nod. She is asking him all about where he can sleep that night while her husband or boyfriend is pulling out a wad of cash and she puts it in his hand, and we walk separate ways.

And back at the bar, between bands, waiting for it to be last call, so I can get paid my eighteen bucks and drive back to New York, I wander upstairs. Up through a thin light an into a dark room with chipping red and black walls adorned in paint-pen and sharpie, I find another bar lit with candles and a flashing TV and the conversation of a few locals, leaning over their drinks and moving a little to the wind of the music. There's a hip-hop beat, something from the early nineties, and it drags me up another short flight of stairs.  It's a song I've heard from year to year, from one incarnation of myself to the next, so I let it pull me around a corner, through a brick corridor, and before me, beyond the empty folding chairs and empty glasses on empty tables, high above the empty dance floor, there's a DJ, hunched over his turntables, presiding over a dark and empty room.

Famous Blue Raincoat

In December I spent a few hours in a friend's studio recording demos, and while I was at it I did a quick version of

  Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat

I can't express to you how oddly therapeutic it feels to play this song - so as you can imagine, it ends up on my set list at shows pretty often.

It is posted on my myspace, hope you dig.

used to be there

We walk up from the Lower East Side to catch the L train because my car is parked two stops into Brooklyn.  I'm not staying there, but when I found it with a broken window, and the buck-fifty from my ashtray missing, I just moved it up to Williamsburg- I didn't know what else to do and somehow that seemed sensible.

And all along it's funny, how we are trading off talking about ourselves, and we aren't talking about the same things on the surface, but underneath - all the "What the fuck?" and "How the hell?" - you couldn't tell it apart if you tried.

And my guitar is getting heavy, and the snow is starting to come, and I ask, "Are you sure you want to walk all this way in heels?," and she is looking for some boy that used to be there, and I'm looking for a feeling, or a crowd, or a thousand bucks or something - I can't quite figure it out - that used to be there, and "What are we doing?," and I'm thinking about the half a sandwich in my backpack that I'm going to eat when I get to the car, with the radio off, and my jacket and hat and scarf still on, and how I'm going to stare out through the windshield as little piles of snow collect and I realize that I've been staring for way too long and haven't really looked.

USA

new website / online store

I recently launched a simple new website and online store, currently selling some of my art and Street to Nowhere stuff.

You can check it out here: www.davesmallen.com

I know I haven't been posting much in the last couple months (not at all really in the last month) -- I've been really focused on beginning this year strong though.  There will be lots of other new developments coming along in the next few weeks and months. Keep posted...

recession

I went down today and traded in some books that I'd grown out of -- or never grown into, for some Christmas presents.

Recession is interesting to me, mostly for the fact that it is a shared emotional reaction of an entire society.  

I can feel it though, the strange passive aggression of the masses, the folks around me fighting for their piece of the highway, for their parking space, lingering just a little longer at the milk and sugar counter at the coffee shop, and returning your apology with sharp silence when your bag hits their arm on the street.

Still, when every dollar counts -- at least in the anxious collective mind.  It feels pretty damn good when, after adding up the stack of books beside the cash register, the bookstore clerk returns on a limp to his side of the counter, and adds an extra dollar and a half to your store credit, because he knows you are, at the very least, trying to dig Yeats.

one thing, then the next

When crafting a to-do list, it is important to list things you can actually cross off.

Constants like, "Write!" or "figure out living situation..." don't really swell the confidence as they linger un-crossed-out at the end of a hard-worked day.