Jumping The Gun: Urgency, Process, Etc.

The first song I ever wrote and brought to Surgeon General was “Torch”. I remember very specifically how nervous I was to show it to Harry (before Surgeon General had even popped into existence, the name of our unformed band currently unspecified); despite our birthdays being in the same month, he always seemed leaps and bounds older than me, had a great and critical taste in music, and was the kind of drummer I always wanted to be. So, when we first met up in a third-floor DIY-studio in the Jennings music building at Bennington (formerly professor Michael Wimberly’s office, being repurposed for the summer), I was sweating bullets from the combination of an intense heat that no box fan could mitigate and the impending doom of having Harry potentially dislike my song. I prepared myself for, at best, complete apathy. We ended up playing that song at every show we’ve put on so far.

I showed Harry three songs that day, including “Torch”; the others were “Handstand” (which is not on the record) and “Alec Baldwin”. Those were, at the time, the only three songs I had ever felt good about writing. I didn’t even feel that good about them, not even after the band got to rehearsing and tightening up, show after show. The truth is, with my own experience in writing music, nothing will ever feel right, or finished. Despite this, I’ve always felt a sense of persistence when it comes to writing songs, a feeling that if I don’t write them, don’t perform them, don’t release them into the wild, then I have somehow failed.

When I suggested to Surgeon General that we put on Urgency in Martha Hill Dance Theater, and record the whole thing as our debut release, it felt like I was seriously jumping the gun. All of my favorite bands released their live records after a few studio albums, some personnel changes, maybe a hit record (or two, or three, etc), personal infighting, all of that. We had none of those things. We just had a band, and our songs seemed to sound a little different with each show and each rehearsal. How does that amount to a record? Thankfully, everyone seemed on board. A live record seemed to be the best way to capture the essence of the band — raw, honest, a little bit improvised, always noisy, and completely live; not just live, but alive, listening and reacting and at all moments attempting to fire on all cylinders without the machine overheating and completely breaking down.

I wanted the lyrics to be at the forefront of Urgency, because those are often what I labor over the most (besides maybe “Velcro” or “Ashtray Garden”, because those songs were both written in about twenty minutes, late at night in my bedroom). This notion is ironic now, I think, because of my slurred and un-enunciated delivery, but the sentiment still stands. The subject matter is pressing, despite mostly being translations of nonsense (the unconscious brain has a funny way of producing mumble-tracks that, when translated into actual words, can describe the present moment, or the memory of what used to be a present moment, in vivid, abstract detail, even if it is a little esoteric). The lyrical themes on the record have a consistent nervous artery; Urgency deals with a desire to understand not just myself, but grief, trauma, loss, panic, and all of those other incredibly fun and therapizable emotions. It was also an attempt to use performance as a way to somehow transcend these things; if I were face-to-face with dozens of kids ready to dance at a noisy punk (?) show, what would it feel like to scream lines like, “I have to hide from all my friends,” or, from the perspective of a self long-past, “I’m growing out a coke nail and calling it my birthright”? Would it bring me back to that place, or catapult me from it completely? Would that feeling last? Would anyone listen? Is the desire to air out my grief and my problematic past just a selfish attempt at understanding myself with complete disregard for the audience? I still haven’t been able to answer these questions.

Urgency was always meant to be this sort of “transcend your past” thing for everyone involved in the production. It quickly became a highly collaborative project that went far past just music, which, I think, is the only way it could’ve happened. It was a team of maybe a dozen people collaborating fiercely and sometimes butting heads. It wasn’t just music, it was lighting design, set design, structure, interludes, acts beginning and ending, documentation, completely and problematically teleological. The ethos of the collaboration was to do what one felt was right, to take Urgency on as a completely individual project — musicians write their own parts, lighting design is all in the hands of the designer, save a few color suggestions, the documentation will become a movie (if one wants it to be) — and to see what happens. The result was exactly what it needed to be. Every piece of the puzzle fit together perfectly, and it couldn’t have ever been any other way than the way that it was.

I’m really excited that this show has been documented so thoroughly, that this moment of fierce collaboration will live on for probably longer than any of us will be alive. It’s not our thing anymore, or maybe it is, but it’s more so everyone else’s thing, something for people who weren’t around for the show to digest and love and hate on their own terms. If you were there, I hope that this recording is as faithful to the show as possible. I mixed it in my bedroom, with $70 monitors I got on sale at Guitar Center. I tried my best.

There’s a moment in “Eleven Hours Late” where I catch myself being selfish. Right before the last wall of noise, I say, “When this breaks, I want…” and then I stop and correct myself by saying, “If you so desire, I’d love it if you would scream as loud as you can, for as long as you possibly can.” This is the most important moment in the show, for me at least. At first I was almost demanding the scream, demanding to be joined in one last release of grief and tension and doubt, but then realized no one should believe that they have the power to demand wants onto others. Instead, it turned into an invitation. You can always yell really loud during that part, if you want. That’s what it’s there for.