Ted Leo

No post yesterday, and only a short one today, as we’ve been practicing Tyranny for the show tomorrow (Sat. July 9, 2011). I unearthed some artifacts surrounding the making of the record, the process of which I’ll detail more next week. In the meantime, here are a few shiny baubles to delight the eye…
An early, dreamier demo of “Biomusicology”:

Recorded alone in a basement in Washington, DC on cassette 4-track, 1999.
This an attempt at a sequence that wasn’t used. As you can see, I initially wanted “Biomusicology” to be last on the record (with “You Could Die…” as a kind of denouement).

People sometimes refer to this era as my “early years,” which is always pretty funny to me. When I began playing solo and heading toward the making of this album, I was pushing 30 and had been at it since my teens. I went through the 90s wringer with Chisel, and (at the risk of being too emo) was moving into some sort of new level of self-realization, I guess. That is, after all the fun and the drama, and the feints and stabs of the previous decade of music making, I woke up alone one day, without a band, but with the unimpeachable knowledge that “this is who I am, and this is what I want to do, and this is what I DO” regardless of whether it was inside the system or outside, in fame or obscurity, on the back burner or right there in my hands – this is me, and this is us, and it is every bit as important as we think it is – it’s woven into our bones, an essential part of our complete breakfast, every day; and I guess that’s what “Biomusicology” was an attempt at expressing. And though it can be read as hopeful, there was more of a resignedness to it when I originally wrote it. In some ways, I felt like my life as a musician was already OVER, and it was a “the king is dead, long live the king” kind of thing. It wound up as a mission statement at the top of the record, but at first, I meant it to be a summing up of a life already lived. The whole album’s like an Irish wake to me, and what happened afterward surprised me more than anybody!
Here’s us in the Painted Desert during the first Tyranny tour, with Q and not U, back in the days when detours were easier to take (Dave Lerner on bass!):

Two set lists – one band, and one solo. The solo one (the one that starts with Secret Stars cover, “Release Form”) was from a show with Buffalo Tom, as I remember, at the Black Cat in DC. I had probably just written the Tyranny songs that show up, and I wonder what the hell I was thinking, doing “Stove by a Whale” solo:

And finally, for today, the original refrigerator note that became the cover of the 7″ that debuted “The Great Communicator”:

AAAAAAAAAND the photo of James and I in my old Chevy Nova that I somehow deemed appropriate for the back cover of said 7″…:

Off to practice!
Thanks for being here – I let you know how the show goes!