premiere: Lady the Beard - Am I Regine

Michael Beswetherick wrote to me about a year ago sharing a version of this story. Somehow it got lost in my crazy over-filled email inbox and he thankfully followed up with some new tracks like this one. You’ll enjoy it while you read his memories on how it came to life: 

Hey Mark,

When I was three, I stepped on a beehive. My weak childlike body felt the stingy wrath of the swarm and needless to say, it hurt quite a bit. My family and I were on vacation with my neighbor’s dog at the time and the bees attacked the dog as well. I don’t think I could feel guilt at that stage in my life, but for whatever reason I feel guilty about it now. The dog is dead and he died of old age, but maybe on some level I feel like the bee stings caused him to die.

Another time as a five-year-old, I ran outside completely naked in order to catch the ice cream man. As a kid, you learn to feel shame, you’re not born with the capacity to feel it. So as a fat super stoked naked five year old in the presence of an ice cream, I did not feel shame. All I wanted was a choco taco. Those things were amazing. I still think they’re amazing.

I have memories that seem as vivid as the keyboard I’m typing this on. Hell, they’re as vivid as the words you’re reading. They exist, you can see them. They are things.

I recently moved from the west coast to the east coast (SEA -> NYC) to pursue a job, but maybe on some level, I moved physical places to move on from metaphorical ones.

I grew up in the shadows of Microsoft in the Seattle suburbs and I went to college in the actual city at the University of Washington. As certain friends moved away for college or work or whatever, their memories stayed with me. It was like I was racing my ghost in Mario Kart 64 – I could see memories of people who actually weren’t there mixed in with the present moment.

I love Seattle and I always will. I just felt like it was time to shake things up. I just felt like it was time to move on. I just felt like it was time to live without the ghosts.

Little did I understand, moving physically did not mean moving mentally. I still call and keep in touch with my friends back home. I still think about my family’s health. My mom still calls me. My brother still texts me. My dad talks to me about his life. I still know how to walk home from my elementary school.

Just because we live across the country doesn’t mean I’m actually away. For fuck’s sake, I can Skype with my family when they’re in my childhood bedroom. I can FaceTime with my friends from college when they’re just hanging out.

Yes, I’ve been making new experiences and friends in New York, but I am still very much rooted in where I am from.

With these songs, I think you are able to experience that.

Lady the Beard is a band. It started out as a kind of solo project, but it quickly grew into this beautiful collaborative effort. One of the songs on the Soundcloud is called Politics of Little League Baseball. We recorded that as a band at K Records’ Dub Narcotic studio. Mikey Farrow played bass and he destroyed it. His bass parts are melodic and rhythmic, both fun and serious. Justin Brown played guitar and he has a true ear for melody and harmony. He added parts I would have never thought of. John O’Connor laid down amazing keyboard parts and he was very careful about the tones he chose. Kessiah Gordon helped arrange the song and she came up with a lot of the drum parts – she did not record with us but her presence was felt.

So while “Politics of LLBB” was recorded in the standard vanilla band relationship sort of way, the other Lady the Beard stuff is more of the fluid open relationshipy kind of thing. I live in a pretty small apartment off the Lorimer street L train stop in Brooklyn and I record most everything there. I use a lot of sampled drums but I did actually record real drums on Corporate Portraiture in my room (I don’t think my landlord knows I have a drumset in there). Two of my very good friends Jesse Miller and Josh Serrano lent their vocal talents to that one. They live in Seattle, WA and Denton, TX respectively. Josh also wrote the lyrics to the second verse!

I recorded “Am I Regine” mostly in New York, but I had Jesse lay down some harmonies while I was home for the holidays in Seattle.

I love the collaborative process no matter what – even if it’s happening through a computer. I feel like the people who play with me on these songs give it the life that I could never give it alone.

The way I see it is like I’m just hanging out with my friends like I always did. Except instead of imagining that we are superheroes or whatever, we are imagining real music together.

As Isaac Brock once said “I’m the same as I was when I was six years old.”

Now, I don’t think I would run after the ice cream man without any clothes on, but I don’t think I would feel ashamed if I did do that.

Take care,

-Michael

PS: Big shout outs to Ephriam Nagler who engineered Politics and to Trevor Spencer who mixed it up in Bellingham. Equally large shout out to Josh Flanigan for going with us to record at Dub Narcotic and for overseeing mixing in Bellingham.

Big boy shout outs to Tom Merrill and Blake Manfre for not bitching about the excessive noises. I love you two dearly.

Also, thank you to the roommates of 5206 for putting up with all the rehearsals and I’m sorry for the time I invited nearly 100 people to that one party we had. My bad.

Read more Letters to YVYNYL.