Chit-Chat Check-In #93 Transcript

Hello, this is your Captain speaking. I have returned to the helm. And I just wanted to say thanks for being patient—I didn't put anything up last week, so this week, I've decided to share a couple of songs. One that I wrote about in my most recent book—I want to include the text here. 

And the second one is a song that some friends played this past weekend that reminded me of the song at Steve Albini's memorial. Which was ... oh man, quite an experience, hard to explain. It was basically three days in a kind of a concentrated conference-type setting. We basically had a whole hotel full of Albini's constellation of friends. Which includes many of my childhood heroes, and adulthood heroes. It also felt like a Lounge Ax reunion for Susie, because so many of these people were from bands that played Lounge Ax, went to Lounge Ax, became a part of that community. Overall, incredibly sad, incredibly beautiful.

But anyway, I really love this song by Jason Molina. He's another person who's no longer with us. Lives on through his art that he put out into the world. At the time, I probably didn't give it as much attention as it deserved. Same with Jason, I was in his orbit a little bit, occasionally. I think as a recovering addict, his energy frightened me a little bit. I don't really know what was going on with him, but there was a manic-ness to some of our interactions that made me shy away from being his friend in a way that, maybe, he would have benefited from. I don't mean to make myself sound too important, but I think that he wanted to be friends, and I don't think I was as kind to him as I could have been. But I think I understand the circumstances now more than I did then.

I'm sad for the loss of such a bright person. Such a ... anybody who can write the line "everybody's doing something wrong" is a friend of mine.

Carry on, and we'll see you next week.