I've only been playing guitar for a few years. These days I have to be more diligent and serious about my practice sessions because it seems like I'm always preparing for one show or another. The amount of time I have to just sit around and jam seems to get shorter all the time. But at one point I would just sit in my living room for a couple of hours every night, running endlessly through random verses of one song after another. Whatever came to mind is what I played. I didn't make it all the way through individual songs most of the time. Instead I let my emotions take the wheel and the music would determine the course all on its own.
This seemed similar to what I'd seen many of the bands I like doing in concert. Right in the middle of one of their own songs they might insert a portion of another song before returning back to the original song being played. I've always been so impressed with how something like that can just work and feel completely natural. But then I see people doing the same thing in other situations that just fall flat for me. In my opinion, one of the biggest perpetrators of this is the television show Glee. While some of their "mash-ups" make sense, I find that the vast majority just tend to irritate me. I've never been a fan of medleys of songs that don't go together. I feel like if you combine multiple songs then the product should be greater than the sum of its parts. I figure it was fine for me to do back when I was just playing around in my living room, but when I do it on stage I prefer to use these combinations to tell stories and try and create something greater.
In the fall of 2010 we had just begun going to Open Mic Night every week. One of our preferred songs to play when we took the stage was one that I mentioned in a previous post - "Just Like Me" by Will Hoge. It's such a mean and sarcastic country/blues anthem, and it was always a good chance for us to get loud. One night we started playing the intro and I moved up to start singing into the mic, but it wasn't the first line of "Just Like Me" that came out. It was the chorus of "She Doesn't Get It" by the Format, sung in a slow, sneering drawl...
Please watch the video, I guarantee it'll make you smile:
Now, anyone familiar with both Will Hoge and the Format should know that you'd be hard-pressed to find two artists with a bigger difference in sound and style. But as I finished the with the chorus to "She Doesn't Get It" I moved smoothly into the bridge of the song and it served as just that, a bridge right into the beginning of "Just Like Me". Putting them together made the final outcome into something that felt natural and more specific to who I was as an artist than either of the individual songs could have been standing alone.
I've seen my favorite band, Counting Crows, about eight times (if memory serves correctly). They seem to do a better job than anyone else I've seen at seamlessly combining their own songs with those of others to enhance the meaning of both. They tend to do it more often with their "bigger" songs, those popular anthems from their debut album, August and Everything After. We've performed several of those at our shows in the past, sometimes doing the same mash-ups that they've become known for. But at a show in the early part of 2011 we made something entirely new using one of those songs.
"Round Here", the first track off of August, had slowly worked its way into our sets, but only every once in a while. When we'd started performing it I was still on the tail end of working through the dark period that would later define my first round of songwriting. "Round Here" perfectly resonated with me and why I'd decided to start performing in the first place. That's the beautiful thing about a great song - different people can relate to it on different levels and find their own personal meaning in the words. Sometimes when we'd play this particular song it wouldn't have any effect on me at all, but sometimes we'd play it and I'd be so overcome with emotion that it would be hard to finish.
We were playing on a Saturday night and had included "Round Here" towards the end of the set. We've always had to do it that way because it puts so much strain on me vocally that I can't do very many songs after it. Something really cool happened when we got to the breakdown part of the song. Even though the chord progressions didn't match, I immediately went into the opening lines of "Use Somebody" by Kings of Leon. While, in the past, this song had had a special and positive significance for me, I changed up just a few of the words, combining all of the verses into something angrier that weaved in and out of the last part of "Round Here" until I felt like I wasn't even singing a mash-up of cover songs anymore. It somehow expressed all of the feelings I had about feeling used and wanting to lash out through my voice and music, about feeling marginalized and wanting to fight to prove my worth.
Yes, I know that "Use Somebody" isn't really about that, but if you change two or three words in that song, it pretty much gives it a new and darker meaning.
One of our most popular covers is "Kill" by Jimmy Eat World. The first of the "two" in These Two Shall Pass made me play "Kill" for her every night back when we were together. And, ironically, the imagery in that song became somewhat prophetic for that relationship. That's another story for another day, but I include it here to mention that I've always found a wealth of material for extending the personal side of the story I use this Jimmy Eat World song to tell. We've included lyrics to songs by Counting Crows, Ron Pope, the Gaslight Anthem, and several others. But the song that randomly pops up in "Kill" the most often is "Disloyal Order of the Water Buffaloes" by Fall Out Boy.
The chorus to this one just fit perfectly the way "Kill" evolved into something autobiographical to me over the course of time. Take the first line of the chorus - "Boycott love, detox just to retox." That's so true; you can try and swear off opening yourself up to someone after being hurt, but it just doesn't work. Love is like a drug. And the final line of the chorus resonated with me even more. "Nobody wants to hear you sing about tragedy." I'll be the first to admit that our shows used to be extremely dark. My mom would often say the same thing to me, suggesting over and over that I needed to add more positive vibes to our sets. She was right, but I think singing about tragedy may have helped us to connect with more people. So all's well that ends well.
Overall, I think the mash-up can be a very powerful way of connecting yourself to an audience, but only if done tastefully and in a way that enhances both songs rather than taking away. I try my very best to always abide by that philosophy when combining songs but sometimes it doesn't work. It's okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them, and I can honestly say that there are some mash-ups that we will NEVER do again. It sure is fun, though!
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