Heading up to Portland, OR late march 2011 (or more accurately, Vancouver, WA) to start new album, as yet untitled. A few songs are finished, but I don’t want to corral this pony too early, I think I’ll let it tell me what it is when it’s ready. I’m using the services of producer Aram Arslanian for this stuff, in his beautiful Kingsley Garden Studio.

New show in Hollywood April 6

Heather Waters might sing us a murder ballad as well. I’ll be opening for my rad friend, Manda Mosher.

So, progressives got some lumps in this midterm, or, as I like to call it, “the sumpreme American overreactive dumb-a-thon.” Fortunately, so did the asshole corporatist bluedog dems. The more of these repugs in sheeps clothing we can weed out, the better. At least California spoke out in a proud progressive voice, and while I would have liked prop 19 to pass, I think we stayed truer to our lefty heritage for the most part.
Don’t get me wrong, I personally don’t like pot or it’s effects. I have 12 years clean and sober. I am just against locking people up for getting high unless they drive while doing so, laws already on our books. I’m just against feeding our already fat prison system with overwhelmingly poor and unproportionately racially ethnic fodder, while white rich drug abusers go free.
We should end this stupid war on drugs and put our money toward educating all. My two cents.

Playing some local live gigs into the foreseeable future at this location:
Bar Lubitsch • 7702 Santa Monica CA 90046
Next gig: Friday December 3, 8PM. Opening for my friend Manda Mosher. She rocks!
Updated gig info is here:

http://www.facebook.com/chuck.bramlet?v=app_2405167945

I was a week into Internet exile (a topic for a seperate post) and could not hear my favorite podcasts or read my any blogs or news RSS feeds, so I was forced to listen to a couple of old audiobooks. I revisited Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” and Al Gore’s “The Assault on Reason”. Both are examples of how short my political attention span has been. I have been so angry and disappointed in Obama’s corporatism and inertia that I forgot how just a couple of short years ago we were suffering I’m the grip of a regime so vile and slimy that it gave me a renewed passion and energy to fight. We must not let the morons vote in a new GOP tide over the next 2 election cycles. You think things are bad now? Don’t forget who the REAL playground bullies are!

Kevin Hunter made a songcircle assignment that was brilliant. Find an old newspaper or magazine, open blindly to a page, point a finger blindly to an item on that page. If your finger hits an article, the article title is the song title, if an ad, the ad headline is the song title. Then write the song.

The magazine was the New Yorker, the section was Talk of the town, and the heading was “Dogs Behaving Badly” about NYC poopscooping laws. Wrote the song without an editor (that voice in your head that says: “that sucks, that’s cool”). Later I gleaned that it was about a gunslinger that surrenders his weapons.

Dogs Behaving Badly
©2006 Chuck Lee Bramlet

Don’t want to be this anymore
Like a 68 Camaro
Or serape and sombrero
Don’t know about the dogs of war
Cause a 44 magnum
At the end of day is just a gun

Cause I took this fall
And I aint getting up today
Let the dogs behaving badly
Play

Don’t want to be this anymore
Chop wood carry water
For one more abandoned daughter
Once had a key that fit this door
Once you’ve busted it down
You don’t need it no more

Cause I took this fall
And I aint getting up today
Let the dogs behaving badly
Play

Don’t want to be this anymore
When the mockingbird mocks you
And the dumbest can outfox you
I don’t know who was keeping score
Once you forfeit the game
You don’t need it no more

Cause I took this fall
And I aint getting up today
Let the dogs behaving badly
Play

Next: Recording Dogs

Heading from south pass to Venice, 30 miles with lifelong friend and musical buddy. Quality life category. Single gear road bikes. Woot!

These guys did NOT play on the record

We did a “clean”  version in a different key, and without the riff early on, but it wasn’t sticking. Rich found me a nasty-ass guitar tone for the Les Paul Jr. and that changed everything. He again discouraged me from the overdub monster, keeping it basically power trio + backgrounds (the awesome Ms. Leslie King). After everything I orchestrated a full brass ensemble for the last verse, but Rich buried it deep in the mix. I don’t think he really believed in it, but you can hear the ghost of it if you really listen. Kudos to Rich for the great Bill Wymany swooping bass lines. This one should be fun to play live one day.

This was an anomale, I rarely write from a title, seems a little nashvillian, but I overheard someone use it in a sales pitch once. I loved the absurdity of someone taking someone else out for a “testdrive’. I first played it out at a chuck/ladytown/orphantrain gig, and Sarah and Aram spontaneously joined in on backgrounds.

I wanted the bridge to be a “sad happy ending”, a silver cloud with a dark lining, because I am just that kind of cynical bastard. let’s settle down with a white picket fence in the biggest distopia on the planet.

Put Me to the Test • 2008 Chuck Lee Bramlet

People talk shit
They don’t know where to go
Ain’t gonna quit
Just cause you tell me no

You know it just aint right
It aint right to put me down
I’m not like the rest
Baby put me to the test

Life is a bitch
If you lay down boy you’re dead
This aint a pitch
You best not let it go to your head

You know it just aint right
The way you make me beg for you
I’m not like the rest
Baby put me to the test

You’re a fine one to talk
with your bitter calloused ways
We’re gonna take that walk
Happy ever after
In the poison LA haze

Nobody knows
The way I feel for you
In or outta your clothes
It’s almost too good to be true

You know it just aint right
The way you put me on my knees
I’m not like the rest
Baby put me to the test