Songs and stories are born when the imagination drives the artist to expression. I think of a song or a story as being like a mini-universe of possibilities which heretofore did not exist for either the artist or the audience. I’m struck by the mystery of song and story, and how for me the mystery adds to the enjoyment. Here are some stories which tell about the creation of some of the songs in this website.
Trip To The Vet is an instrumental tune that is a sister to the song Execute/Trip To The Vet. That song is a collaboration between JS Bowers and myself. The instrumental version is the precurser to the Execute song. Back in 1992, or thereabouts, I’d been learning synthesizer and sequencing and roughly recorded the instrumental. Years later the song was transformed into Execute/Trip To The Vet circa 2006 when JS Bowers let his pen run wild. The fun of the process translates into pure joy and sense of accomplishment for me. Though it’s a profoundly disturbing and dark tale he tells, I consider it to be JS Bowers’ poetic pinnacle. I played guitar and synth, along with some drum machine, and sang a little. Terry Lee Storhaug played the drums and hand percussion, and Nicole Messier sang like the star she is. V Arouet played bass and slunk off after the sessions for a walk in the woods and sips of rum.
Gentle Messidor is an unusual and very old song of mine. It was written in 1976 in Iowa City. I was 19 or 20 years old and reading alot of French literature for courses at the university. Balzac, Sartre, Camus, etc… I’d invented a special guitar tuning and this song resulted. A line or two in the song were stolen from some forgotten short story I’d read recently. The performance here is with me on guitar and singing, and my musical partner Jo Flagg singing harmony. We recorded it in her living room in Montana in 1978. A rather dark and provocative tune. There’s an electrified version of this song somewhere on the website.
The Officeworker is a peppy little rock song which is dear to me. In 1987 I was living in Rockport, Mass and rode the train into Boston and back, and this song was born. The recording here was done a year later while living in South Minneapolis. The synthesizer you hear sounds computer sequenced, but wasn’t. This recording was done on tape with no computer involved. I worked and worked with my fingers on the keyboard to get the timing down for the flourishes you hear. V Arouet was a young bassist then and just learning the ropes, but did a bang-up job. About thirty years later Terry Lee Storhaug played drums on the song. Glum and defeated commuting officeworkers I saw on the train inspired the song.
These days, computers and mechanisation of so much music we hear seems the norm, as far as popular music goes. I have always appreciated the benefits of our digital world, but quickly discovered that all was not what it seemed. Digital music programs would make a melodious expression with precision. But something was lost. Digging deeper into the sequencing software one discovers the menu item/command, Humanize. Humanize! In Daddy Grooves I sing, ‘You pave the hamlets, I’ll fell the forests, We’ll microprocess far and wide…’ Let others use their Autotune and A.I. Celebrate the diversity and the infinite perfectability of the human spirit!
Daddy Grooves was born in a cockroach infested hotel room in downtown Saint Paul on Thanksgiving Eve of 1979. I was newly arrived with Jo Flagg, my musical partner, from Montana. At the front hotel desk a prostitute made her pitch to me as we were checking in. That kind of hotel. We were penniless and appalled by what we saw in the big city we’d left Montana for. The absurdity of it all resulted in the song St Paul Daddy Grooves. The song was begun in that hotel, and evolved over the next years to what you hear. Jo and I wrote the lyrics. It was our last collaboration. This recording might have been made on a boat moored in the Mississippi river years later. I honestly don’t recall when it was recorded, or where. I do remember fighting with the drum machine you hear, and V Arouet cursing the tempo as too slow. So this song was my first song written upon moving to Minnesota from Montana, in 1979. The hotel was a block or two from Mickey’s Diner, so that’s where we had Thanksgiving dinner.
Paper is another collaboration with JS Bowers. It’s origins are as a poem-lyric mailed to me some time in the last century, or the current one. I was sipping dark brew in front of a legendary coffeshop-roaster in Saint Paul on Grand Ave, and the line ‘Got my bluetooth headset…” sprang from my psyche to my pen. Once again, much toil was involved in the recording of this song. I would guess a hundred hours at least spent writing, recording, mixing, etc. For me, pure joy. Feelings not translatable to words so easily. More commentary on the human condition. My singing is gruff, my guitar angry. Nicole Messier lays down the law with her vocal chastisements. Terry Lee Storhaug pummels his drums and devices without a care. Brian Barnes delivers his wah wah guitar excellence, and V Arouet thumps the bass guitar reliably. This song was especially fun to work on and mix.
At some point I’ll write about other songs and the little stories behind them.
CP Butchvarov 2026