Two years ago Felsen was on tour and I bought a T shirt at a gas station in Iowa called Kum & Go. I loved that shirt. I loved it so much, I wore it pretty much to every Felsen show for about 2 years. Loved it so much, I pretty much wore it out and then basically stole the design and had similar Felsen shirts printed up in the same style.
Kum & Go. Ha Ha. But people liked the shirt. Midwesterners, particularly Iowans, got the inside joke. I was photographed a lot in it on stage. Kum & Go. Come and Go. The words were in my head. The words made me think. That was fall and winter of 2013. Things were good. Some big gigs for Felsen. Feeling optimistic. ahhh but wait...by spring of 2014, I'd hit yet another rough patch in my life due to ongoing health issues. I needed more surgery. I got really bummed out and kinda dropped off the face of the earth for a few months. radio silence. Now i was wearing the shirt in the hospital, wandering around the halls of UCSF, trying to rehab myself enough so I could get out of there. Come and Go. Come and Go. After I was out of the hospital, doing the Vicodin shuffle around the house in the summer of 2014, I started playing the guitar again mainly just to stave off boredom; there's only so much Netflix a person can watch . Daily I would go out for long walks trying to rehab myself and get off pain meds so I could start driving again and get back to work, playing music, teaching lessons, playing with my band. I wore the shirt. Come and go. Come and go. I started to amass new little song embryos on my computer, musical seeds and pages of lyrical nonsense...write a page of crap, get one good line; write 20 terrible song fragments and get maybe 20 good seconds of music. it takes time--fortunately I had plenty. Play guitar, stare at screen. Eventually the words and the music will meet up. Come and go. Come and go. I was listening to Serge Gainsbourg’s tune, “Bonnie & Clyde”. I love the chord progression. For you music nerds that song is a lot of II- IV I. I read once that we are all each predisposed to certain chord progressions. I completely agree. I could play those chords all day long--and i did. I kept playing it, finding new ways to make it sound less like Serge while singing the same few words over and over and over again “People everywhere come and go, come and go”. The little seed was starting to grow. “Come and go”. The music and the words made me both sad and happy at the same time. I like that. The best of Felsen music does that. Now other words were starting to flow about the idea of missing someone terribly, wondering if i get to see them again in this lifetime. "I don't know how or when, but I will live to see your face again." That’s a good opening line, I thought. That lead me to thinking about the transient nature of being here, in this time and place in history. People everywhere come and go, come and go. Everyone is in such a hurry. I miss you all. Slow down. I got up and out and got back to work teaching and making music and writing more songs staring at the screen, playing the guitar. Ruminating on recent life events, music was slowly starting to join with words and songs were slowly coming to life. Felsen was back in biz and i was enjoying myself again. It was like it all didn’t happen (sort of). Fall, Winter, Spring...come and go. I started work on a new album. The songs were quieter, longer, darker perhaps. My 8 year old son said they were more meaningful than previous Felsen albums. My friend Tom Luce asked me to contribute a song to a CD that he was helping organize benefiting breast cancer prevention, CD4Hope. I could get behind that (I lost my dear, sweet, smart, funny sister Gabrielle Rose Griffin to BC in 2002). One song that i was recording for the new album seemed to feel right. Come and Go had morphed into “You and I will Meet Again”. It seemed like a good song for people going through the shit, so-to-speak. It could be cancer, divorce, grief, loss of some kind, I'm not sure, but I think it’s about missing someone and we ALL have people we miss--that’s a universal, self-evident truth. I had to earn the right the write that song. I think we got it right though---listen for yourself.
Upcoming Felsen Shows:
Sat Oct 10. House Concert/Fundraiser for album 5.
27 Powers Court, Alameda
7pm doors
Tom Heyman 7.30pm
Felsen 8.15pm
Sat Oct 17
CD 4 Hope CD Release Concert
Cal Shakes Bruns Amphitheater
Orinda, CA
