From September of 2001 to August of 2005 I lived in Chicago (I arrived on the 11th) and for almost all of that time worked at the justifiably beloved Old Town School of Folk Music. In 2002 or so I moved from Uptown to what I suppose was west Ravenswood, though I was never sure of the neighborhood boundaries. Anyway, it was west of Western on Leland near the Rockwell stop of the Brown Line. The train rumbled through our backyard. My buddy from college Will moved out at some point, and we decided to record some songs together under the name "Wholesome." I had a digital 8-track that I bought used from Fred Lonberg-Holm. I remember being starstruck and trying to keep it cool because he played cello on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, and I'd recently seen him in the "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" documentary. Anyway, I remember hovering over the little board in my bedroom laughing and cutting this song. The chord progression is Will's, and the Casio was his too. We may have taken turns messing with the keyboard to put funny sounds over this. I also played a "lead-ish" guitar, and twiddled the tuner on my radio and fed the results into the mic. We were astonished that the jazz and classical pieces seemed to be in the same key as Will's guitar part, and lined up perfectly and dramatically. Most of the radio at the beginning and end was of a talk radio interview with someone talking about "rapid deployment kits" (they repeated it a ridiculous amount of times, it seemed) to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, which featured, ominously, a "camouflage bible." When I realized what they were talking about I started clicking away pretty quickly, and you can hear the clicking. But I returned to it at some point, and it ended up giving the song its title. We were horrified by the war and the US's response to 9/11, and 20+ years later this song is kind of a snapshot of my young 20-something life in that fearful and disreputable era of the country. Big thanks to Will (whose music you should check out on his Bandcamp) for immediately saying yes to me uploading this oddity, which is probably one of my favorite songs I've ever had a part in.
lyrics
"Six minutes of hell." - Will Stenberg
"My dog and my blanket."
"New 2003 Jaguars."
"Right, it's a camouflage bible that all fits into a plastic Ziploc sandwich..."
"Loneliness and fear..."
credits
released November 20, 2022
Written and performed by Will Stenberg & Michael Metivier in 2002 or 2003
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