amateur hour / self-serenades / moon river – audrey hepburn / april, 2020 found more that i never posted way back when so just gettin em out of the camera roll and somewhere they can live forever. Moon River… was there ever a sadder, sweeter song to sing to yourself?
this song came out 6 hundred years ago, b.c. (corona) but i still love it and it keeps evolving. “SIMMER”. thanks for listening to me sing to myself all these months. i have really enjoyed sharing lil glimpses into my solitude like this. hope you’re stayin safe and allowing yourself some peace in your own solitude. 🖤 oh yeah, Alf says hello.
the sun is out, the laundry is drying so… one of my favorite songs of all time on one of my favorite albums of ever. go listen to the real thing— @failurebandig “The Nurse Who Loved Me” left my cringey ending in there bc thats showbiz baby
❤️compiling clips and voice-memos of me serenading my damn self at home! as i find old ones in my phone, or continue to collect new ones, they’ll live in my highlights. hope they’ll be useful for you for those who don’t know – this is a song called “Things She Said” by Kent from their album Isola (the english one, obvz).
this was weeks ago… April 11th, to be exact. have a few saved up. guess i’ve been holding out on yall. the only constant for me (besides limp ass, unwashed, unfixed hair) in the age of covid, is a guitar and free reign to mess up all my favorite songs. here’s “Drew Barrymore” by queen @sza. please ignore my face.
amateur hour / self-serenades / when i’m with you – best coast / july, 2020 “When I’m With You” by @best_coast 🙂 Recorded this for my friend @bethany_cosentino who was, at the time, collecting covers and tributes for her band Best Coasts’ first album. The sound couldn’t possibly be worse cause I recorded it straight through my computer speakers like an asshole. But I said I’d empty out the camera roll so I’m doing my best. Bethany’s music has been so influential to so many new alt and dreamy garage rock bands and I love to give her flowers any time I can. Also, peep the old @orlprojects signature guitar 🥹 Taylor gave it to me bc it was small and I am also small.
woke up today a lil heavy. didn’t know why, just some days are like that. but then realized i am inextricably connected to my friend @lindseybyrnes who’s sweet father just passed away. one of her favs is Phoebe Bridgers so this self-serenade is actually for her since i can’t hang with her or hug her tight. check on your friends and send them your love. just because we are all isolated right now doesn’t mean we aren’t as close. our connection to each other defies space and time. ps @_fake_nudes_ im sorry for butchering your beautiful guitar parts. and also, this is just a perfect song.
how yall doing out there tonight? …… 🦗🦗🦗 covering my own song this time – “ROSES/LOTUS/VIOLET/IRIS”. just strummin’ this one out by ear… @tayloryorkyall’s tuning is different and cooler on the recording. anyway, kick back with a glass of something sexy and enjoy the solitary fruits of my saturday evening.
amateur hour / self-serenades / good grief / august, 2020 2020 was sad for all sorts of reasons and I kinda just used it to mine all the deepest darkest personal feelings and expose them to light. “Good Grief” is just another song of mine, though I did sing it to myself quite a bit around the house. I love this song and I’m very proud that it helped me understand some important things about the toxic ways I can relate to romance when I’m not taking good care of myself first. TW: lyrics about eating disorder
this is nearly a year old 🤯 today can be a tough one for folks and so i just wanted to post this memory to say sometimes you gotta give yourself the love you need. i do that from time to time just by playin songs for myself. or putting a record on. or sitting under the sky and breathing. there’s a lot of ways you can do it so i encourage you to find your way. give yourself time and love. happy valentine’s from me. this is “Pain” by @thewarondrugs 🥴
it’s a chaotic time. how to keep the stamina— and more importantly the faith— necessary for real change? equality is not a fad diet, it is a lifestyle shift. it will take consistency and more personally, it will take each of our individual passions… i am interested in weaving my passion for advocating for mental wellness into the lifestyle of equality that i want to be a part of cultivating here. as i think about all of this, my mind keeps going back to music. on a deeply personal note, if i didn’t have songs i’d see no reason to exist. in my own time, recharging and resting, songs let me know im not alone and they prove peace to me. i hope that however you are, you are okay today. this song is “Lopin’ Along Through The Cosmos” by the late Judee Sill.
amateur hour / self-serenades / my limb / november, 2020 This shouldn’t count as a self-serenade but I have been looking through videos from recording my second solo album and I’m just really proud of it. Every instrument you hear on it, I played 🥲 This is the little guitar like for the bridge of “My Limb” which I was obsessed with bc it reminded me of something of a Kent or @failurebandig record. Thanks @xdanieljames for being a great friend and the perfect producer/collaborator for this album.
amateur hour / self-serenades / asystole / august, 2020 This was me writing “Asystole”. I’d been listening to @gorillaz’ “Désolé” and had only just picked up this cheap lil classical guitar… so when I landed on the word asystole I gotta little carried away. By the time I recorded it for the second solo album I calmed down a LITTLE bit on the pronunciation lol.
a few months back, @spotify invited me to perform at their World Mental Health Day conference for staffmembers. i performed an unfinished version of “Find Me Here”, which is about letting your loved ones find their own way through the dark. full performance is on youtube, link in my stories. (demo version of this song is on my Self-Serenades EP, stream that shit)
@apothekeco and i are bringing back our lovechild (collaboration). link is in my stories rn if you want to bring home your own Sanctuary 🕯
from this mornin, on the stoop. hope you’re doin well out there. a lot to keep up with and so much to feel! remember what people/places/things bring you hope or any sense of wonder. on any given day, for me, it’s the sky. also just messin’ around learning a mac song cause it sounded like a good morning stoop kinda song.
amateur hour / self-serenades / communication – the cardigans / july, 2020 nearly missed this one in my camera roll… meant to post it back when i recorded it. @thecardigansofficial’s Long Gone Before Daylight is a comfort album for me. on pandemic days when i had nothing to do but sing to myself and my dog, these songs held me tight. that’s all i’ve got. unless i accidentally find more.
might as well keep goin… an abridged version of “Vertigo” by @jumplittlechildren. guess i was feeling nostalgic (again)! hope you have a nice weekend. also, hope we will all continue to inform ourselves on matters of systemic racism. there are shows, podcasts, books, petitions, instagram accounts… many, many ways of learning to be anti-racist. most of which require little more than our own humility. i hope we keep up this fight forward. love to all of you.
my strings are old, i have no pants on, i felt like playing this sad song. “Call It Off” by the pals @teganandsara
someone asked me to do a @bjork song a while back. to be honest, i was hoping to cover a different song of hers live this year but i guess that will have to wait until some other time… anyway, this one has to be in my top 5 – “Unison”. many apologies for this crudely casual rendition but it sure felt good. gnite neverland!
messin with the new nylon string and working out alt version of “SIMMER” bc why the hell not?
for a while, anyway. the top requested song throughout my brief career in self-serenadism has been a @radiohead song. seemed sacrilegious at first until i realized that the band themselves have never once regarded what they do as precious or never-to-be-toyed with. they are never beholden to any one version of their expression and public affections don’t seem to sway them. so many times people thought they were at their best only for them to bloom more beautifully into something unexpected and unequivocally better. for a time i pretended to be over Radiohead (iiii knowwww) but good good things always find you and welcome you back. so, in admiration of one of the best bands of all time – and in humility to everyone who did *not* ask for this – here’s a self-serenade of “Fake Plastic Trees”. enjoy it if you can.
thought i was slick but lindsey caught me so a quick stop-by turned into an ig live. this is so dumb… but i do play an old @lovedrugmusic song and lazily work out one of the first songs i ever wrote. cheeky lil @failurebandig cover too. i’m all over the place… have a nice day.
