Welcome to the seventh and final edition of #MattyMonday, the streaming debuts of songs from my new album “Meta Dada”. Get caught up on previous releases:

Episode 1: Tracks 1 & 2: “Satan Gave Me Sunglasses” and “Media Casualty” 

Episode 2: Tracks 3 & 4: “In Our Coldest Time and “Mild” 

Episode 3: Tracks 5 & 6: “I Need Another Vice” and “Sunburn” 

Episode 4: Tracks 7 & 8: “Ode to Jove” and “Untrue & Not Enough” 

Episode 5: Tracks 9 & 10: “Lust” and “Lady Circadia” 

Episode 6: Track 11: “Midnight Diesel”

As always, the best way to experience the album is consecutively and on vinyl; records are available at Rock N’ Roll Land and Green Bay UFO Museum in GB, at Eroding Winds in Appleton, and online via my Bandcamp page. But hey, in this cultural economy? I’m glad you’re checking out the songs in any method. 

If you haven’t heard the songs before, I recommend listening to them first before reading all the context and lyrics. For those who have heard the music, I hope these posts add mad magnificence to your “Meta Dada” experience. 

Man, if you’ve read all of these, I have to tip my cap. Hopefully it’s out of enjoyment rather than sunk cost fulfillment, like when I wasted untold youthful hours watching that awful show “LOST”. Perma-salty about that, even if it did teach me to better value my time. For example, I have no plans to watch the ninth “Star Wars” movie after the seventh and eighth ones were so wack. ….Okay, tough start to this one. I genuinely do want to complete this series. Let’s do it!

Track 12: “Beauty Sleep”

Listen to “Beauty Sleep” on Bandcamp

Listen to “Beauty Sleep” on Spotify

The players

Drums: Andy Klaus

Percussion: Sam Farrell

Keys: Alex Drossart

Fetal Heartbeats: Zuzanna Day, Edith Day

Bedtime Singin’: Zuzanna Day, age 3

Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Ravantha, Cigar Box Guitar: Matty Day

The session

The rest of the album would be recorded at Amano Print House; Ryley Crowe had set up a studio in the back of the shop where his fiancée works, and Sam and Alex were able to work things out to where they could move in and combine recording resources. I mega miss The Refuge. Let me add a bit as to why:

The Refuge

I got to experience such good times there and meet so many people who’ve become so dear to me: Cory Chisel, Sam, Adriel Denae, Oliver Anderson, Ryan Seefeldt, Kurt Kempen, Steve Wheelock, Chad Brady and more—that’s the single location where I met all of them for the first time. J-Council recorded hours’ worth of songs there. The Priggs album was recorded there. I got to do some wild recording sessions with Cory. The first J-Council gig was there. I had friends who lived there. I crashed there a couple of times. We got to hang out with people there of varying degrees of fame (and coolness!). Hang Ten came to exist there. It was the jump-off point for countless car pools to gigs out of town. Fires in the back at night, right on the river. Fresh air by the side entrance before or during sessions. Never-dull run-ins with Scar, the latter-day groundskeeper.

I want to say the last time I was there was when I was heading to Oshkosh to check out a guitar, and I stopped by to see Sam and Alex who were doing a session for… I’d known her as Anna Sacks during the heyday of the Steel Bridge Songfest, but now she has a different last name I don’t presently recall. I want to say the dudes had me drop off a bass for the session. Glad that happened, if that was the last time I was there.

So grateful it all happened! I really liked that place.

The session (continued)

Though I’ve now come to adore Amano, I was initially concerned about the move. “Beauty Sleep” would be the only song to be recorded entirely at Amano, and I was concerned about messing with the formula. Maybe it was superstition; after all, all the gear was the same, if not better, as it was combined with what Ryley had there as well.

Yes, gear heads—didn’t mean to leave you hanging—I did buy the guitar I checked out in Oshkosh.

And that’s the electric guitar on this song. No, I didn’t buy it just for this song, the way I bought the baritone just for “Midnight Diesel”; I bought this one more for using with Country Holla. Still, why not add another new sonic subtlety. More over, its hollow body made for some righteous feedback on the outro, for what Alex referred to as “Pinkerton” guitar. I’d never messed with feedback before—really quite invigorating! I resisted the urge to rerecord the whole album doused in it and changing the name to “Meta Machine Music”.

The one instrument I did buy exclusively for this track was an autoharp. Neat instrument; I just happened to see one in a pawnshop. For the track I did some playing on it while it was out of tune for the sound collage bits, and then tuned it up for the big strums at the end of the song.

I again used CJ’s cigar box guitar, and again in an unorthodox manner; while I did use a slide on it this time, I just did atonal slides doused in reverb and echo.

The other atypical instrument here—and the most exotic on the album—is the ravantha. Bit of a story behind this one. My grandma and her aunt (my great aunt), both widowed, decided to do some international traveling together; my great aunt was quite well cultured. Their first trip was to Vietnam, and they enjoyed the experience well enough that they decided they’d do more. For their second trip, these two elderly-yet-adventurous ladies went to India. That’s where my grandma bought me the ravantha. Incredibly tragically, though showing no signs of duress, my great aunt died in her sleep while they were in India. It was a horrendous affair for my grandma. The best you can say is my great aunt died doing something she loved.

I forgot to mention it in the song credits, but the song also features a large rain stick I was gifted when my great aunt passed.

My grandma was still alive when I recorded this song. She was my only blood-related grandparent I ever knew, and we were incredibly tight. I again used nylon-string guitar she gave me that I played on “Sunburn”, trying to approximate moody, Leonard Cohen fingerpicking.

Sam was an absolute gem on this one. He had the idea for the guitar feedback and helped set it up. He totally accommodated my endless requests for more delay here, reverb there, and the work he did with the wild sound collage in the middle is just great. The percussion he added was totally crucial, too.

Alex found just the right keyboard tone to embellish the vibes. His coolest move was to add the swooping, Theremin-sounding parts toward the end. Both Sam and Alex, as usual, just had no shortage of inspired suggestions, and also helped arrange the vocals on the big ending.

I’ve got to give extra love to Andy on this one, and not just because I gave him a loving hard time on the write-up for “I Need Another Vice”. Andy just nailed this one. Super understated to build up the odd tension of it, before the tastefully big finish. Again, we didn’t give him more than a couple takes on this. I think I feel compelled to try and trick super professional players like Andy into doing something that feels right, and is more instinctive or impulsive, by sort of rushing them in the studio. They’re used to playing perfectly, but this isn’t that kind of record. Relevant and sweet: I read this article Frank Anderson shared right around this time, about how the Romans would purposely mix imperfect concrete.

I added recordings of two of my kids fetal heartbeats to the sound collage. First was my daughter Zuzu, and the second was my then-unborn daughter Edith.

Lastly, we added another recording of Zuzu. Four years ago I brought my memo recorder in to say goodnight to her one night and to record her singing; at the time she loved “The Buffalo Song” (a.k.a. “Home on the Range”). Coincidentally, she happened to sing it in the key of D, which “Beauty Sleep” shares, as it does the 3/4 time signature.

Uh, Matty, what’s the deal here

When we did this song we didn’t know Edith was going to be a girl, but there’s something sweet about featuring these sounds connected to my two oldest and two youngest female relatives on this song. My grandma passed away one month after Edie was born.

I started coming up with this song when Zuzu was a baby, in 2016. I’d sing/rock her to sleep every night, with me often nearly, if not fully falling asleep in the process. Somewhere from that neither-region between wakefulness and sleep I snatched the “Sleep is enjoyable…” line and held on to it for years.

This was another song I imagined would be a Priggs song if I ever finished it, but only wound up finishing it for this album. I let this one come to me slowly. I kept a notepad by my bed to purposely record any odd phrases that came to me as I was beginning to doze. In general I actively maintained this open mindset to words for weeks, and would just jot down whatever mystical words I came across, or misheard at random. In compiling and arranging this random mass I tried to think of it in terms of Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus, who always had a way with indirect lyrics.

I just sort of accepted it as it came. It felt okay to try this out, especially after the tour de force of “Midnight Diesel”. Even fiendish, media-addicted sun worshippers need a chance to recharge.

Granted I did consciously, if gently edit the verbiage I’d collected from in my dreamy state. The shape it took is this surreal sort of love letter to my kids and ancestors.

Lyrics

It never ends

Won’t lose this war again

I’m complete—I can beat that

It’s you, it’s me—new history

Sui generis, true fallacy…

Each other at the back window

Sleep is enjoyable, if there are no toys around

Find soothing in every sound

Issue and source, more northern norths,

Future and once, be here – become – beyond

Bell to cannon

At odds, at ease, hazard a leap

Stars at your feet: there’s your world—verily

Internecine, interregna

All gallons spilt for you

In lieu in light of you

Inkling, intricate

Had it hidden even from myself, after the fact

Before the truth’s smooth mirror

Lidless eyes in dark apartments

Shameful indifference, honorable despair

Clear your head and listen,

Face of pure porcelain

Don’t lose sleep on side effects

Like beauty and happiness

Speak your father’s heart—

No not that one, that one—yes!

Sleep is enjoyable, if there are no toys around

Find soothing in every sound

Through endless hysteria,

Soul-spins and doldrums go ‘round

Still solitude, loftily surmount

Ancestral, celestial,

Eyes to sky, ears to the ground

The highly improbable noontide

Is hereby pronounced!

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Thus concludes the #MattyMonday series. Thank you to all who’ve gone through it! I hope you’ve enjoyed these notes and anecdotes, but it’s really all about the music.

All kindsa love,

-Matty