Operation 365 2... Blog 225

Operation 365 2 - Jefferson Jay - Originals - 225 “This Is How Kings Live” by Jefferson Jay

I wrote “This Is How Kings Live” on that there keyboard during a moment of profound appreciation late at night after a gig our Jefferson Jay Band played. We played ‘til late then socialized some and then crashed. But before I fell fully asleep, this song popped into my head. When those moments arise, I have learned there are only two choices. Either you get up and right hew song right there and then or it is gone forever and there is pretty much nothing you can do about it. Inspiration comes for a moment. Either you seize it, or it is just another line of a mental list of chores. That is not inspiration.

I took it one step further. I record the process if it’s late at night and I can because even sometimes getting up and writing the tune is not enough when you are fatigued. “This Is How Kings Live” means we are all kings. We all live in a blessed and wonderful way. Simply living is a gift and regular life, love and happiness is regal. Humble regal. Instead of singing about that explicitly in the lyrics I decided to instead focus on other humble regal things, like those we find in nature, Trees, mountains, the ocean. All regal. All humble. All inspiring. So it took me a few months to get the melody straight and be able to bust through these chords. It is easy to be humble when you play the keys like I do, but I made it through. So here it is for you. A moment of reflective inspiration and how much better we have it then we often realize. Hail.

Operation 365 2 - Jefferson Jay - Covers - 225 “Ol’ 55” by Tom Waits

At my work doing music with the special needs folks, they request tunes. It makes them happy to hear those tunes ,so through the miracle of the Internet, I look up the tunes and play them for them if I can, whether I’ve heard them or not. Recently this has led to me butchering some classic Spanish anthems by Roberto Carlos and Paolo Sergio. I’m embarrassed by my Spanish ,but you can’t be too proud to spread joy, so I do it anyway. I honestly learn about tons of cool tunes and other thing from my special friends each week. I am deeply grateful to know them. Just yesterday, someone suggested I play this song. I think they knew it through an Eagles cover. I don’t know. I love Tom Waits, but I’ve never heard this tune I don’t think. If I did, I don’t remember it, for whatever reason.

I played it on guitar a couple of times yesterday. Today, I needed a tune and was hovering near my keys so I transposed it to C, the easiest of all keyboard keys. Then, I played it wrong a bunch of times and then I somehow made it through. Some of the versions were OK, but for some reason I kept going. It inspired that next rant, about doing just that. Thanks for listening.

As I did that, I sang in more and more of a Tom Waits way. I was asking for feedback from a friend on all this video stuff as I get lonely once in awhile feeling like this is not being received. He thought I meant I wanted constructive criticism, which is feedback technically, so he told me to sing the songs more the like the artists who sang them. So I did. I do appreciate the feedback. In music, like life, it feels better when you feel you’re not alone. I feel great today. I plead the 5^th,  August 5^{th, that is}.

Operation 365 2 - Jefferson Jay - Words - 225 "Cone of Joy"

I was fired up, powering through a few tunes on the old keys. Here, I rant and rave and scream and shout about picking one’s self up, not fearing failure,  and some of my favorite recent Netflix programs.