good morning ~

(click the link / liminal plaza to listen)

My Big Breakwith great effort, together

today’s track is a reconstituted recording of my piano, filtered and stretched in 1,000 ways

if you haven’t fallen down the well yet, here’s a link:

Ben Seretan & John Thayer "Watermelon Well"

Choose your preferred music service

Max and I are gonna be spinning some records at Hana Makgeolli in Greenpoint tomorrow - - lovely rice wines, some impressively fancy Korean food, me and Max being goofballs in the booth, it’s gonna rock. Grab a spot here.

The first time I ever visited the actual village of Catskill was six years ago when Cassandra and I played the HiLo. We drove up from the city together in her notorious Buick during her infamous period of learning how to drive in her 30s - I drove the car out of the city and coached her during a few burbling moments of panic. At the time I could feel that something Important was happening but of course I could have never foreseen how I was very much on the verge of things. I might have fantasized about it at the time but I would not have guessed that six years later that this tiny little village would have become the center of my daily life, that the owners of the coffee shop would soon become the owners of the world's greatest club, that I would spend countless happy nights on their dance floor and in their sound booth. Cassandra would go on to memorialize her novice time behind the wheel of that boat-ish car in a song that really elevated her reach as a songwriter - so many people have heard her over saxophones talk about being nervous to drive.

It was also right before Gracelee and I met for the first time, huddled around a misbehaving generator in Times Square and that just tipped everything over - whatever I was on the verge of in February 2019 came hurtling into existence. When the boulder stopped rolling we looked around and saw that we were married and living together in a beautiful place. It's weird, you know, when you play out-of-town shows it's always so easy to imagine yourself living there. Ah man, Baltimore is so cool, I should move here. Who of the road dogs among us has not earnestly considered this? But they're just little blips of fantasy, you never actually take yourself up on it. In this case it stuck - we've painted the walls, planted the garden, put our friend's neon portal sculpture up in the yard.

The prospect of Gmail's deep archive feels far more threatening to me now than when the prospect of "never deleting an email" was first offered to us in the early 2000s - now they're scraping our inboxes trying to make the most perfectly targeted weaponized ad for weight loss pills the world has ever seen. However in this moment I am glad to have it as confirmation of these various things.

All this is to say that there was a really surreal sheen to the proceedings on Friday. Cassandra and I back on a bill together on Main Street. She's still driving the same car, although now it features a bumper sticker that I designed for her merch table. "Yes! This is a Hard Drive" on iridescent silver backing. And then someone requested that song during her set that night. She invited me back up and we spun out an on-the-spot arrangement for electric guitar and the synthesizer designed by Tame Impala, my first time ever playing the song, took it in a kind of 80s stadium rock direction I wasn't expecting.

At the end of the gallery hang I was happily reunited with my band from last summer - Nico and Léna rolled in just as the show was wrapping up. And though it is my town we pretty instantly we achieved that liminal, no-rules space that is the defining thing of being on tour together - between the end of the show and the drive the next morning, there can be a real looseness at the edges. You behave differently knowing you only have one night in town and no one wants to be the least fun member of the band. Not that we did anything crazy, I just broke my natural habits by agreeing to go to a bar, something I rarely do. But unlike being on tour nearly every single person there was at least familiar to me and my one friend working that night was overjoyed to see me, very much unlike being in a new town. The bar's kind of a dimly lit cocktail place but that didn't prevent another cluster of people from doing the worm on the narrow floor gap between the booths and the bar - their ringleader lady actually grabbed ahold of me pretty aggressively and tried earnestly to drag me out there with them, we split pretty soon after that.

The next day we had to rehearse - hadn't played a show together in like, six months. But we realized that we were facing a number of drum set related challenges. The Half Moon does have a kit - in fact, it's a very beautiful set of drums - but no one save the owner is allowed to use them. So my band had to bring one up from the city. And in their shuffle various things got left behind, one thing was broken, we didn't have what we needed to really make the music good. So I sent a flurry of texts and emails to various buddies, venues, and bands trying to sort it out, then I drove around gathering our needed supplies. Léna felt really bad about this and kept apologizing but I don't think she realized how deep of a privilege I felt solving this problem to be. A series of tasks and correspondences in exchange for the most rewarding and joyful activities known to me? A very fair trade.

I told Nico right before we went on that I earnestly felt like I should have been included on a recent list of the 100 best 21st-century guitarists. Not sure if I was joking or not, he laughed regardless. Life did not unfold in such a way where I could singularly focus on shredding. Many things happened after that night at the HiLo, you see. But in that haunted old bar in enemy territory we ripped apart the horrible cold with great effort, together.

But what about you? What loops have you closed recently? Do you believe in fate? Are you on the verge of something?