Welcome to blog #1 of 7 in my track by track guide to my new DIY album, Millennials Are Going Gray! The first track is “We Were Pioneers,” a song that is musically on the acoustic punk side, and conceptually about a literal dream about being a 19th century American pioneer while actually being an underachieving 20-something in the 21st century.
For your convenience, you can stream the track on Spotify and YouTube and read the lyrics at the bottom of this post.
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Like most singer-songwriters who wear their hearts on their sleeves, everything I write in a song is pretty much true. I do indeed dream of what I think about before bed (probably pretty normal, I guess) and I did once have a dream about braving the Old West with an old friend. I also did spend an entire day watching Ken Burns: The West (it’s still on Netflix! Come back in a couple of days when you’re finished, I’ll wait) and a different day staying up way too late playing classic Oregon Trail on Archive.org (sigh, okay, fine, I’ll wait for you to do this too). Those are all individually true. But I’ll confess that I don’t remember if the dream actually occurred on either of those days, so technically, the implication that one or both of those activities directly caused the dream may or may not be accurate.
You might notice a pattern in how I come up with ideas for songs. It’s not that I go out of my way to find poignant metaphors in every little thing that happens in my life; they just randomly pop into my head because to be honest, I’m a little bit emo. (I remember once in high school, a classmate asked if he could scroll through my iPod, and I let him, and he said, “I’ve never seen so much emo music on one iPod in my life!” I was obviously deeply wounded by this comment!)
In this case, the dream was about a friend I hadn’t seen since high school, not even on Facebook. Just remembering her got me thinking about my life and imagining hers potentially being similar in certain ways. I never imagined my life would be so unsettled in my late 20s. To be fair, I’m happier than I’ve ever been because the one thing I’ve gotten better at year after year is being true to myself and doing exactly what feels right to me every single day. That’s a good path to contentment, though, evidently, not really any kind of path to financial stability for most of us. I think I just imagined myself to be successful at something by this age, and to have at least some idea of what the rest of my life would look like. As it is, I have no idea. I know how I’d like it to look (and I’m pretty outspoken about it), and I like to be as optimistic as possible. But I’m still aware that a lot of my dreams are probably not that realistic, and I honestly just don’t know how things will turn out in the end.
Another part of it is, yes, I’m trying, hard (to the point where a lot of people tell me I inspire them, and I so appreciate that sentiment!), but deep down, I know I could be doing so much more. I have plenty of lazy, unmotivated days (usually caused by something small and frivolous causing me to lose confidence in myself). As the song alludes to, some days I waste hours playing games, some days I eat enough junk food to grow a “food baby,” and some (okay, many) days I stay in my pajamas all day. It bothers me especially because reliable people (read: people who work in music and aren’t that nice) are constantly telling me I’ve got potential, and typically when I set a goal I always achieve it. As I say, I’m someone who’s not supposed to lose. (Incidentally, because they sound pretty much the same, I can never decide if it should be “we’re people who are not supposed to lose” or “we’re people who were not supposed to lose.” The latter alludes nicely to being a teenager with big dreams, but the present tense tends to hit harder. So I still haven’t settled the matter yet and opinions are welcome.)
As these thoughts were inspired by a dream about being a pioneer, I felt a metaphor coming on. Faced with the image of my old friend and I minimizing our possessions, packing them up, and heading out on a dangerous adventure where pretty much anything could happen, I felt lazy and cowardly in my own life. Just like a pioneer, I have things I want to change about my life. But all too often, I take careful, safe baby steps, when sometimes a big leap is warranted. I have plenty of excuses like anyone else, but the more I actually examine them, the more I can see how obviously illusory they are.
My own songs are therapy for me (which is also common among songwriters), both as I write them and as I perform them and mull them over. In the case of this song, it helped inspire me to begin planning two DIY tours in the next year (one on the East Coast and one in Europe — and if you can help with a sofa or a performing opportunity of any kind, please fill out this form!). I have no idea if anything good will come of it, and while I probably won’t die (I hope), there’s a good chance I will be very uncomfortable and exhausted during most of my time on those tours. But of course, those are the nights when I sleep better than ever.
As far as the music goes, generally speaking, all of the songs on this album remain simple and, some might say, uninspired in terms of chord and melodic choices (and of course I didn’t use any fancy instrumentation or production to hide that fact). Occasionally I get feedback, from people who aren’t particularly invested in my music, that I need to go back to the drawing board and develop my musicianship rather than focusing on performing and releasing music. But by and large, a lot of the people who hear my music (and are the right audience for it) already enjoy it. This is who I am musically right now, and I’ve got an endless stream of things I want to say in song, so I’m going to keep doing it. Hopefully, I will always have some time and energy left over to develop that musicianship, learn new techniques, listen analytically to other music and see what I can glean from it. But if I run out of time and energy, so be it. Saying what I want to say as best I can while I still have it in me is more important to me than saying it in an impressive way. And that pretty much sums up my entire music career through the present moment.
SPOTIFY
YOUTUBE
LYRICS
I dream of what I think about before bed
And I had a lazy Sunday marathon of Ken Burns on the West
So I had a dream we escaped all oppression
And we went somewhere, somewhere where no one could touch us
And there we were
Modest possessions packed up in our wagon
All to leave this behind for a better, freer life
And it’s a dangerous world out there
We could fail and we could die
But we’re itching for adventure, for a change and it’s our time
Why do we spend our days lazing around?
Talking a big talk and playing games
We don’t do what we want because we’re too afraid
And I know, I know, I know we could do better
There’s nothing we can’t do if we stick together
Because once, we were pioneers
Yeah, we were pioneers
I dream of what I think about before bed
And I played Oregon Trail last night until my eyes were red
Do you remember when we played it in school as kids?
Do you remember the dreams that we dreamed when we played it?
Back in our new home
More than a century and two thousand miles away
We plotted over drinks with the exciting friends we made
We’ve got a blank canvas here, this town is the edge of the earth
And we can make it anything we want it to be, it’s our turn
I had a dream that you and I were pioneers
I woke up wondering what had happened that we wound up here
We were the kids with the big dreams and the bright minds
And now we’re overgrown kids cramping our parents’ styles
And it doesn’t seem it’s going to work out how we wanted
You’ve got a food baby, I’m still in my pajamas
But the way I see it, life’s a game
Where you maximize its length, maximize the pleasure and minimize the pain
And you and I, we’re people who were not supposed to lose
And every day is a potential new beginning
We’ll leave everything behind, build a new life in a new place
If only in our minds
Because once, we were pioneers
Yeah, we were pioneers