Hello, Folks!
It’s been a minute. Since returning from tour, Butch Bastard has functioned almost exclusively as a mail room (shoutout to everyone overseas that ate a gnarly shipping charge. Your devotion to the arts is appreciated). Now that orders have mellowed out for a second (but keep your eyes peeled for a legendary merch drop soon) I can get back to being a musician who writes Substack posts.
"I'm still promoting my album that came out in June. It's a year out and I'm still out here." - Tyler, the Creator
When you release an album, it’s months to years of buildup to get everything where it needs to be, to build excitement, roll out singles, etc. Once it is released, the norm is to let it go live its life while you move on to the next thing. But that’s absurd. I put everything I have into this album, and I will not let industry conventions dictate how I dole out TLC. So… EVERY SONG GETS A SUBSTACK POST.
Death Valley is not exactly a concept album, but there are strong themes that run through every song. I feel that my songs are about everything all at once. Typically, they are not so literal as to be “about” one specific thing, but the songs on Death Valley in some way are from the perspective of or about someone who has lost their grip or is in the throes of some kind of mania. Whether it’s the tragic sociopath in “Acrylic & Bleach”, the conspiratorial sentimentalist in “If It Wasn’t For The UFOs…”, or the self-destructive romantic in “The Thin Red Line”, these characters have exceeded their threshold for “dealing with it”.
The characters on Side B of the album hold most true to this theme of mania. During the pandemic I felt that the real disease spreading through the world was a collective madness. One that was so skeptical of everything in front of us that it blindly embraced any alternative reality available. Our leaders became so indefensible that people had to create science fiction to support their politics. QAnon, the big tent conspiracies that it encompassed and the way people I knew personally were so gullible to the fantasy, blew my mind and disturbed me about as deeply as anything I’d seen since my aunt let me watch the original Pet Sematary at too young an age.
Valhalla was written as a way to cope with that disturbance.
Get out your gun and hold the line
Press the roses
The staff of Moses has divided up the sides of the sea
It took you out at the knee
So no more running
from the home that you know is haunted
Red of the blood of everyone I ever wanted to be
Some other version of me
I know you're lying every time you speak
You know I'm tired but you think I'm sleeping
In the museum where the overgrown child and depressed madonna
drink from the cranium of the fauna in a foreign terrain
Tying up a ribbon of pain
But for all my latent regrets that beset nirvana
British Columbian marijuana takes a lot of the blame
for never knowing my strain
I know you're lying every time you speak
You know I'm tired but you think I'm sleeping
Valhalla called you to the table and weekend warriors was all you found
Coming off the corner like pigs to the slaughter
Selling off the flesh by the pound
So won't you come back down?
Dyed in the wool, dried in the pavement
Where penny pinchers die by the impressions on the souls of their shoes
Hatred and avarice it's all entertainment
All this deceiving got you believing the demagogues are talking to you
I know you're lying every time you speak
You know I'm tired but you think I'm sleeping
Valhalla called you to the table and weekend warriors was all you found
See the reflection of your face in the water
Forever on the wrong side of town
Oh, Baby, please don't drown
There is a certain type of person who likes to point out when your song sounds like another song, and a few people have been kind enough to point out that the first couple lines of the hook sound like Bonny by Prefab Sprout. Seeing as though that is one of my favorite songs, surely that line is deeply embedded in my melodic sensibility. I changed the notes to deviate from Bonny when this was first pointed out, but I still get the occasional sweetheart that lets me know I may have failed to have an expression that was entirely free of influence. I come equipped with a long list of songs that sound like other songs in the event that I ever face the grand inquisition. Anyway, shout out to Bonny, one of the greatest songs ever produced.
Valhalla features drums from Richard Gowen and was mixed by Dave Cerminara. Everything else is my fault.
Love y’all. Here’s an early “live demo” I did immediately after writing it. Some of the tracks in this demo made it to the final mix: