Last year, I started putting a little credits spiel at the end of every episode of Strong Songs. It always begins the same way: “Strong Songs is recorded at The Caldera, in Portland, Oregon.” I’ve stuck with that opening line because, yes, I like the name we came up with for my studio. And I like how it sounds like an old-fashioned radio show signoff. But I also like how it situates the show in the real world, making it subtly more tangible.

Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly cover, 1982. Photo by James Hamilton. Shot at Fagen’s Upper East Side apartment. They were apparently aware the mic was pointing the wrong way.

“An independent station, WJAZ. With jazz and conversation, from the foot of Mt. Belzoni.” I heard those lyrics in the title track of Donald Fagen’s The Nightfly just after recording the outro to the latest episode of Strong Songs, and it occurred to me that few other podcasts do that sort of thing. In fact, I can’t even tell you the city where most of my favorite podcasts or most-watched YouTube videos are made. Emily and I put our heads together and most of the podcasts we could easily locate from memory are old enough to have started out as radio shows, e.g., “From NPR and WBEZ Chicago, this is Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!”

If I listen to a podcast for long enough, I do tend to form a picture in my mind of the hosts, and of the space(s) in which they record. Hosts will casually allude to their location, and over time, it gets easier to nail things down. But I rarely know for sure. These hosts sound like they’re together in a studio, and I think it’s somewhere in New York? These folks sound like they’re on a video call, so maybe they’re each in different states? One guy sounds English… I wonder if he’s overseas?

The same thing goes for most of the videos I watch, on YouTube or elsewhere. I’ll see a person sitting in a studio, or a living room, or walking down the street somewhere, but I’ll have no real idea where that is. Part of my brain will try to place accents, or notice wall art, door frames, appliances, all in a subconscious attempt to work out which part of the world I’m peering into. Mostly, it all blurs together in that way the internet does. He’s in a room. She’s in a park. They’re in their living room. Another park. A bookcase. A beach. In the feed, all places become one place.

Fighting AI with the How and the Where

In terms of sheer numbers, generative AI is in the process of overwhelming human-made art online. We’re drowning in a sea of counterfeits, with no end in sight. To fend off the onslaught, human artists are making a point to clearly identify their work as human-made. The hope—and it’s a good one, I think—is that our audiences will care enough to seek us out, rather than thoughtlessly embrace the countless empty knockoffs that are or will soon be available. “Is this any good?” has been joined by another relevant question: “Was this made by an actual person?”

Many artists have begun establishing their organic bona-fides by emphasizing the how of their work: documenting and broadcasting the creative process, embracing mistakes, and sharing rough drafts, all to help people see the hours of messy effort that go into a shiny finished product. It occurs to me that, in addition to the how, it might also be good to emphasize the where of it all; to make it a practice to regularly share a sense of the surroundings that shape the things we make.

me in the actual place where I make my shows

I don’t mean to suggest people should start putting their home address at the end of every post, or anything like that. I understand why people avoid sharing too much information about their location online, and know firsthand how that information can be weaponized. And I detest how tech companies track and share location information without their users’ knowledge or consent.

What I’m picturing is more of a subtle but purposeful shift in how artists situate their own creative work. A change where, when possible, people emphasize the where of their process, even when the place isn’t directly relevant to the product. I’d love to know that your instructional guitar videos were recorded outside Copenhagen, or that your history podcast was edited in rural Saskatchewan, with one host calling in from Minneapolis. I’d love for more podcasts to end with a radio-style location callout, perhaps just listing a town name, or a notable landmark a few miles away.

Art is inextricably tied to the place in which it was created, because it was made by actual people who physically occupied that space. Monet painted water lilies because he lived in Northern France, and those flowers grew in his garden. The Cotton Club of 1920s Harlem shaped Duke Ellington just as surely as he shaped it. Dolly Parton learned to strum a homemade guitar while looking out on the hills of East Tennessee. Richard Linklater took a camera and set off down the streets of Austin, TX.

The internet’s placelessness is one of its defining attributes. It is everywhere, and so it is nowhere. That can be an amazing thing, because anyone, anywhere, can share their work with anyone else. But the creative culture of the web has perhaps overly embraced that placelessness, leaving blank an important chapter in many a creative story.

As human artists look for ways to differentiate ourselves from the ceaseless, placeless AI blob, we might remind our audience that in addition to being made by someone, our work was made somewhere. That we create—and exist—alongside them in the real world.

That’ll do it for now. I’ll leave you with this pic of my sister’s dog Phoebe, who likes to wedge herself in there whenever you’re making something at the kitchen counter. It’s not a bad strategy.

The new episode on Queen and Bowie’s “Under Pressure” is now available in the main feed, and I hope you’ll listen. I also hope you get your tickets for Strong Songs Live while you can! There really is a chance they’ll sell out.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
2/20/2026 - Portland, OR

February is always when the year starts to come into focus. I can see 2026 stretching out before me: Strong Songs Season Eight is now underway, I’ve got a live show booked, and there’s a bunch of other stuff I want to share. Read to the end for some good video recommendations.

Strong Songs, Live In Portland

Strong Songs Live is officially on the books! It’ll be on Saturday, July 11, 2026, at the Alberta Rose Theatre in Portland, Oregon. You can buy tickets here. And you should, since we’ve sold a lot already and it actually might sell out.

It will not shock you to hear that I am incredibly excited for this show. I’m having a good time figuring out what a Strong Songs live show will actually look like. The first act will be a sort of narrativized musical journey, featuring original music written for a large ensemble, with me narrating. (I’m planning to release a recorded version of that at some point; this show will be its maiden voyage.) For the second act, we’ll do a set of covers of various songs I’ve discussed on the show, featuring a number of guest soloists and singers. It’s all taking shape, and I still have to write and arrange it all. But the broad vision is pretty locked in, as are most of the core musical motifs and concepts. The fun part will be seeing how the version in my head changes as I begin to write it down.

I’ll share more about the show, and the process of assembling it, as we go. For now, go get tickets while they’re still available!

This Is Ourselves, Under Pressure

The newest episode of Strong Songs is about “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie. It’s out now in Patreon early access, and will hit the main feed in a week, on the 20th. I’m really happy with it.

I made most of the episode during the ICE surge in Minneapolis, watching in horror as thousands of masked men…. I mean is there any other way to describe it? As they waged a federally sanctioned terror campaign against the people of an American city.

I was carrying all that around as I began considering what I wanted to talk about on the season’s second episode. I knew I wanted to do a Queen song, but I couldn’t quite pick which one. I revisited “Under Pressure” at Emily’s urging, and immediately knew it was the one. “Why can’t we give love one more chance?” would be a pretty corny line coming from anyone other than Freddie Mercury, but Freddie pulls it off. And Bowie’s closing lyrics—“love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves”—locked it all in for me. The song took me where I’d been wanting to go.

I hope you enjoy the episode, whenever you’re able to listen to it. And if you’re on the Patreon, I also hope you liked the first Inside The Episode video I made about Toto’s “Rosanna.” It was a lot of fun, and I’m excited to keep making those. The Queen one later this month should be good.

Practicing In Public

Now that I have my video setup dialed in, I’ve been trying to use it as often as I can, without overthinking things. I started out by recording some practice diaries; just me, talking about what I’m shedding that week. The first one just went through some pentatonic and scale patterns I’ve been working on c/o my guitar teacher Scott Pemberton. In the second one, I talked about how I use my looper both to practice and to write.

I posted both videos to YouTube, then belatedly realized that I should just post them to Patreon, too. I think I’ll continue to post all my videos to Patreon as well as other platforms; people think of Patreon as a platform where you have to pay for stuff, but your posts don’t actually all have to be behind a paywall. I can set it so that anything I’ve posted to YouTube can be viewed by anyone. Patreon’s video player is still relatively new and is way less powerful than YouTube’s, but the platform is a vastly more artist-friendly.

All of which is to say, follow me on Patreon for more videos! Or follow me on YouTube, if that’s what you prefer. I’ll keep posting to both places. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes over the course of the year.

Some Recommendations Before I Go

Speaking of videos, here are a couple that some of you will probably enjoy. They actually have something to say to one another.

First up, YouTube Superstar Adam Neely has a new one about the philosophical and artistic implications of AI music:

It is, as usual for Neely, well structured and rigorously researched. And funny. You could watch it with someone who doesn’t follow music closely, or and hasn’t really thought much about AI art. His closing thoughts about the looming schism between live and recorded music resonate with my own and, I’m sure, many others’.

Secondly, I loved this video from jazz piano great (and recent Strong Songs guest) Peter Martin about the 2026 Grammy Awards. It’s a response to YouTube titan Rick Beato’s recent one about how the 2026 Grammys reveal the sorry state of pop music compared with the Grammys of 1984.

While Peter acknowledges that 1984 was a more interesting time for pop music, he counters Beato’s grumpiness by expanding his focus to include the jazz category. As he convincingly outlines, jazz has been steadily evolving over the past 40 years, and that growth has been facilitated by the mentorship that has always been an essential part of jazz culture. In the 80s and 90s, artists like Wynton Marsalis and Betty Carter invested in educational programs to build up the next generation of jazz musicians. (Not coincidentally, Marsalis and Carter each played important mentorship roles in Peter’s own story. And Peter is quite the jazz mentor himself.) I gotta say, he’s right on about all of this stuff. As easy as it is to see jazz as being defined by competition and macho cutting sessions, it’s defined just as much by community and mentorship. Jazz’s roots are consequently much stronger than a more purely commercial style of music like pop.

The 2026 Grammy winners in the jazz categories—Sulliven Fortner’s levitatingly good piano trio recordings, Nate Smith’s wide-ranging collaborative Live Action experiments, Samara Joy’s reimagining of a vocalist’s role in a mid-sized group—ably illustrate the health of the music both on its own terms and relative to the jazz winners from 1984.

There is a lot more to say about the thesis Peter is exploring, and how it intersects with the wider industry move toward automated commodification that Adam is talking about. I’ll be thinking on it.

Onward

That’ll do it for now. I’m posting to a bunch of different places these days, but I hope that you’ll consider following me on Patreon for free, even if you can’t join a paid tier. Patreon is the one platform I’m on that, at least for the time being, doesn’t seem to actively want to exploit me while making the world worse. But you can follow me on Instagram and YouTube too, lol.

I’ll leave you with this pic of Appa at the top of Mt. Tabor. She turned six on Sunday, and we kinda can’t believe it. She’ll always be a puppy to us. Partly because she still acts like a puppy most of the time.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
2/13/2026

First, some general recommendations based on what I’ve been listening to this month. Then, a starter pack for one of my favorite living jazz saxophonists.

Boz Scaggs - Down Two Then Left

A Strong Songs listener dropped this record into the Discord after my recent episode on Toto’s “Rosanna,” noting that Steve Lukather’s guitar solo at the end of “A Clue” was probably their favorite of his. It’s a great call, and it was nice to get back to this record, which features a who’s who of killing 70s session players, including most of the members of Toto.

Ben Folds - Rockin’ The Suburbs

I am well overdue for a Ben Folds episode of Strong Songs, as many people are happy to remind me. It won’t happen until next year, but I’m getting my start by listening to a lot of his music, starting with Rockin’ The Suburbs, which I never really spent that much time with. I love Folds so much, haha.

Dire Straits - Making Movies

I recently finished (and enjoyed) Joe Hill’s novel The Fireman, an entertaining apocalypse thriller that is in an interesting sort of conversation with one of Hill’s famous dad’s most well-known novels, The Stand. In addition to all the easter eggs (Noz-o-la, Watership Down, a character named Harold Cross), Hill shares his dad's penchant for writing characters who all seem to enjoy music a generation older than most people their age. Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet,” a great song from a great 1980 album, somehow improbably becomes a love anthem in the book.

Lucius in 2022, via Wikipedia

Lucius - Second Nature

I got hipped to this group by Apple TV’s Platonic, a very funny show that Emily and I recently started watching. Lucius co-founders Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig have provided supporting vocals for artists ranging from Joni Mitchell to Mavis Staples, and it’s very cool that they’ve also kept time for a project of their own. Their track “Next to Normal” accompanies the extended credits at the start of each season of Platonic, and it is a hell of a lot of fun.

SML - How You Been

The next few albums were all picks from the Strong Songs Discord listening club, and all three have made it into my regular rotation. SML is a fascinating LA music collective making surprising and enjoyable instrumental music that never relies on chops when texture will do.

Nothing But Thieves - Dead Club CIty

Nothing But Thieves is one of those bands like Marianas, where I’ve never heard of them and discovering one of their albums is a gateway to a decade-plus recording career. This album is a ton of fun, and I bet these guys put on a hell of a show.

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky

(Pluribus voice) Fun fact: I once opened for Nels Cline’s band Banyan at the Red Devil Lounge in San Francisco. I was headlining with my dance-rock band and the club added Banyan to the bill, since they were much more famous than we were. It was an incredibly bad fit vibes-wise, but it was very fun to get to watch Nels do his thing after our set. Banyan had a painter on stage with them, painting these huge murals to go along with the improvised music. It was incredibly cool.

Sky Blue Sky is Cline’s first studio record as a member of Wilco, and while I haven’t seen them live (I KNOW) it seems clear that he helped them transform and elevate their music to a new place. The guitar digressions on Sky Blue Sky are all so much fun - so inventive and enjoyable, filled with impressive playing without straying too far from Wilco’s grounded sound.

And now, to try something different…

Photo: Wikipedia

A Chris Potter Starter Pack

Chris Potter is the kind of player you could describe as being “your favorite saxophonist’s favorite saxophonist.” He is also, incidentally, one of my favorite saxophonists, though I understand that I am probably not your favorite saxophonist. Everyone my age or younger has learned something or other by transcribing him, and probably stolen a lick or two.

If you aren’t hip to Chris, here are a handful of recordings of his, featuring solos that I find particularly iconic or emblematic of his approach to the horn. They betray a bias toward the era when I listened to him most (the early 2000s), but he has made plenty of great records since these, too.

“Prime Directive” (Live at Birdland) w/ Dave Holland Quintet, 2003

This is classic early 2000s Potter, as he and trombonist Robin Eubanks tore it up in Holland’s groundbreaking small group. Simultaneous improvisation was the order of the day for this group, and “Prime Directive” is less a song and more of just a (killing) lick around which the band can build. This track gradually accumulates until it crashes apart, as Eubanks and Potter head off on an extended blowing duet. What rhythm section?

“Lost and Found” w/ Dave Holland Quintet, 2001

This studio record from 2001, a couple years before the above Birdland date, was one of the first Potter solos that I fell in love with. At 6:30 he rips into this repeated two-note riff—built around a simple fifth—that worked its way into my playing and never left. (I have even carried it with me to my guitar playing!) This recording was also an awakening for me about the potential of odd meters like 7/4 when it comes to improvising.

“Janie Runaway” w/ Steely Dan, 2000

I have already dedicated a whole segment of a “Strong Solos” episode of Strong Songs to this solo, so I’ll just say it continues to be one of my favorite tightly contained pop sax solos. Immaculate.

“Sun King (for Sonny Rollins)” - from Gratitude, 2001

I played this song on my senior recital at UMiami, is how much I loved it. And still do. Another 7/4 tune that’s surprisingly approachable to blow over, as long as you don’t worry too much about sounding as good as Chris. I also like how it goes 4+3+3+4, a neat way of shaking up the groove while fundamentally staying in 7.

“Just As I Am” - from Traveling Mercies, 2002

Potter is famous for his tenor playing, but I’ve always felt warmly toward his Potter’s bass clarinet playing, too. It is (perhaps) an underrated part of his bag. There are a lot of burners on Traveling Mercies, but it’s the softer, more textured stuff that I really love - his soaring take on “Just As I Am” chief among them. (“Azaela” is another standout, if you’re jumping around.) Whenever Potter goes into the B.Clar’s upper register, the clouds part.

And to get SOMEthing more recent in here…

“305” - w/ Cory Wong, Electric Kif, and Metropole Orkest, 2024

I went to school in the 305, and I actually do remember there being a lot of pretty amazing sax solos. So this song is kind of an accurate representation. It’s a collaboration between Miami-based jazz group Electric Kif, guitar superstar Cory Wong, and Metropole Orkest, with Potter in the solo chair. Pretty stacked lineup. The song is plenty of fun for the first few minutes, but then Chris starts working into the second half of his solo, and the roof blows off.

Onward

That’ll do it for now. If you, like me, are horrified by the violence our federal government continues to inflict on the people of Minnesota, and inspired by the courage of the ordinary Minnesotans who have stood together against it, I hope you’ll check out Stand With Minnesota, where you’ll find a comprehensive directory of organizations who are helping people stay safe. All of them are accepting donations.

I have a lot of friends and family in the Twin Cities, and I can’t believe they and so many others have had to endure this. The shame of it is sickening.

Photo Credit: Emily Williams

I’ll leave you with this pic of Appa, who climbed up on the couch to sit next to me while I practiced guitar down in the studio. Her tail was a pretty good metronome.

Take care, and keep listening -
~KH
1/29/2026

I have to admit, I’m a sucker for a song that does all that it can. Toto’s “Rosanna,” written by David Paich as a sort of Hail Mary to score another radio hit after two records’ worth of misses, is just such a song. It has pretty much everything!

“Rosanna” is also the focus of today’s Season Eight premiere of Strong Songs, and it was a hell of a way to kick off a new year. I try to avoid having too much of a show formula, but I can’t deny that there are certain types of songs—technical, harmonically interesting, highly arranged studio recordings—that lend themselves to the type of analysis I like to do. “Rosanna” very much fits that bill.

Early in the episode, I referenced a 2025 interview David Paich did with the YouTube channel “Guess That Record,” in which he talked about his mindset as he wrote it:

A good bandleader knows how to feature the strengths of each player in their band; it was true for Duke Ellington, and it’s true for Toto. Anytime I’ve found myself leading a band, I’ve tried to hew to that mindset, particularly when directing student ensembles. “Rosanna” demonstrates how fully Paich and the rest of Toto understood their individual strengths; how they could apply their “arranger ears,” to use guitarist Steve Lukather’s term, to make a record that would continually delight and surprise the listener. Not content to highlight one or two band members’ strengths, they decided to highlight everyone.

Steve Lukather, Mike Porcaro, Fred White, and Jenny Douglas at Montreaux in 1991

That kitchen sink approach is key to what makes me love the song. “Rosanna” features, among other things:

• The horns and shuffle swagger of Boz Skaggs’ “Lido Shuffle,” another hit co-written by Paich just a few years earlier

• A drum groove from Jeff Porcaro that was itself a kitchen-sink combination of several other great grooves

• Steve Lukather’s mix of clucking Strat rhythm parts and screaming Les Paul leads

• Lead vocals split between Lukather’s croon and Bobby Kimball’s soaring tenor

• A group-sung, finger-snapping Motown pre-chorus 

• A chorus vocal ensemble that towers above the arrangement

• A mid-song synth explosion worthy of Tommy Mars

• A partridge in a pear tree

I don’t mean to suggest that every song needs to take a similarly maximalist approach. In fact, most Toto songs aren’t as dynamic and complex as “Rosanna,” and many of them are still great. But I do love how this song turned out, and think it’s interesting that it was at least somewhat the result of financial pressure from the band’s record label. Art and commerce, baby.

You can learn all about those musicians, their varied parts, and many other aspects of this song, in the season eight premiere. And If you want to hear more about how I made the episode, along with some additional thoughts on the song, I’ll be recording a Patreon-exclusive “Inside The Episode” video for the Strong Songs Patreon later in the month. It’s just $1 for your first month through the end of January, so go sign up!

Like, Subscribe, and Hit That Bell

Speaking of videos, 2026 marks the year that many of my projects are making a concerted push onto YouTube. Triple Click is now posting audio episodes there, along with new video shorts each week. I’m also going to be resurrecting my personal YouTube music channel and posting there more regularly. I’m excited!

I realize this move is in tension with my longstanding skepticism of closed platform monopolies, my wishes for a RSS-like open video distribution model, and the fact that I spend most of my time making capital-A audio that doesn’t need or want to have a video component. It is also true that video is fun and engaging, that visuals can greatly help with online music education, and that YouTube is the most-watched video platform in the world. I want as many people as possible to see my work, so here we go.

I’m looking forward to my 2026 video journey, on YouTube, Instagram, and Patreon. I hope you’ll subscribe and follow along.

Onward

That’ll do it for now. I’ll leave you with two Appa pics, since I neglected to include one last time. The first, an exploration of light and shadow, as the angled winter sunlight cascades across her golden fur:

The second, a more frank portrait:

I hope you’re all looking after one another, and not letting the man keep you down. Whatever they want you to believe, there’s a lot more of us than there are of them.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
1/16/2026

If you listen to (or make) podcasts, you are almost certainly aware of the recent industry-wide shift toward video. Or perhaps more accurately, the shift away from audio. The whole podcasting world is doing a pivot to video, and it’s apparent every place you look, and many places that you listen, that those two places are becoming the same place.

The mid-2010s “pivot to video” was one of the greatest media follies of the internet age. Extremely abridged version: In the midst of a relatively stable and profitable time for digital media, the biggest outlets on the web shifted their publishing focus away from written articles and toward videos. They were lured by social media companies’ promises of massive audience growth, but the promises were lies, and the pivot led straight off a cliff. Now, almost exactly a decade later, a similar shift is happening in the world of audio. More and more podcast companies, lured again by promises of massive audience growth, are pivoting to video.

Last week, The Guardian published an article by Fiona Sturges about the downsides of video-first podcasts. Sturges detailed how shows that lean too heavily on visuals can leave their audio listeners behind, with poor audio quality and visual references going un- or under-explained. Podcaster and audio critic Miranda Sawyer gave the quote of the article:

That sentiment echoes Defector’s Alex Sujong Laughlin, who back in August published a terrific essay titled “The Future of Podcasting Is Here, And It Sucks.” Sujong Laughlin, who among other things is one of the minds behind Defector’s podcast sensation Normal Gossip, focused less on video podcasts’ degraded audio experience and more on the industry and its audience’s move away from high-touch, scripted storytelling (e.g. Radiolab, This American Life) and toward lower-difficulty, celebrity-infused chat shows (e.g. Armchair Expert, Good Hang).

After enumerating the economic trends pushing things in that direction, and the many jobs lost and midsize publishers acquired and destroyed along the way, Sujong Laughlin added her own take:

As harsh as that self-analysis may feel, I have to admit to having had similar thoughts. They’re not categorical or absolute for me, as I sense they aren’t for Sujong Laughlin; I don’t feel incapable of coping with silence, and well-made chat podcasts are often much more to me than agreeable noise. Furthermore, I can easily list a few chat shows that have recently made me feel more curious and less alone—for a good time, listen to McMansion Hell’s Kate Wagner expounding on the complex intersections between architecture and politics on a recent episode of Know Your Enemy. But for me, even the best chat show can’t hold a candle to the kind of stuff painstakingly made by veterans working at places like Serial, Higher Ground, Search Engine, Twenty Thousand Hertz, or 99% Invisible.

Of course, the media world doesn’t really care what I think, or what others in my little niche of audio aficionados may want. Spotify and YouTube are relentlessly pushing video onto podcast creators, Netflix is securing Ringer video podcasts for their own walled garden, and some of my favorite newer podcasts are incorporating more and more visuals into each episode they make. Modern production studios—including the one I just helped design and build!—are all “video ready,” with their rounded wood desks, tasteful backdrops, and low-profile microphone boom arms. It’s a video world, whether we wanted it or not.

A single episode of Strong Songs contains dozens of tracks and hundreds of edits, with nary a video file in sight.

The move toward video isn’t all-encompassing. Strong Songs, a high-effort, audio-only product if ever there was one, has found a big enough audience for me to make a living, and I don’t have any shareholders pushing me to embrace video in order to make the numbers go up. But I can’t entirely ignore the siren call of video, partly just because it offers new expressive possibilities for my creative work. I can’t feel too superior to the rest of the podcasting world, given that I’m planning to make more videos than ever in 2026, both for the Strong Songs Patreon and for YouTube. I think video is a vital part of online music education, and it’s also a fun new production challenge. But with each camera I install, each light I set up, each YouTube Short or Instagram Reel I record, I can feel it gently pulling at me. Come on, buddy, make more videos. Think of how many more people you could reach. It’s not an unpleasant feeling, which of course is the issue.

The pull is even more noticeable when it comes to my other podcast, Triple Click. That makes sense; Triple Click is a chat show, and so already a more natural fit for video than a scripted show like Strong Songs. And seemingly everywhere I look, I see snappy and engaging clips of my peers’ podcasts on social media, three or four people laughing into webcams as the edits ping-pong between them. Has Triple Click been leaving an untapped audience on the table by stubbornly remaining audio-only? Almost certainly.

After talking it through with my cohosts, I spent much of December investigating our options. Could I produce a video version of Triple Click without compromising the quality of the audio version? I tried out a few of the most popular podcast-specific web recording apps—Descript and Riverside chief among them—and spent far too long exploring harder-core video editing options in DaVinci Resolve. (Ask me about syncing Fusion animations to MIDI pitch data extracted from voiceover audio. Just kidding, don’t ask me about that!)

After many hours of experimentation, here’s what I found:

• No, it is not possible for me to make a video version of Triple Click that meets the standards I’ve set for the audio version of the show.

• Descript and Riverside are interesting apps. Riverside in particular seems like a much more effective option for remote podcast recording than more general-purpose chat apps like Zoom, which I’ve been using for the past couple of years.

• Editing in both is (imo) notably slow and frustrating, particularly compared with pro audio applications like Logic or Pro Tools. It’s not even close.

• Riverside and Descript are both larded to the gills with AI bloat—”producer” chatbots that routinely make mistakes, video and thumbnail image generators that puke out horrors, and so on.

• The two apps offer decent transcription tools, and each episode is given a passable transcript as soon as it’s done processing. I would never publish the transcript, as it spells basically every name wrong and makes a lot of other mistakes. But it’s helpful for navigation while editing.

• More usefully, Riverside generates a collection of pre-cut social clips like the ones you see in your social feeds. These are actually usable with very little additional editing, and they’re pretty slick.

After dispensing with the notion of producing full-length videos of Triple Click, I realized that we could have our cake and eat it too: make the audio version of the show as usual, and have Riverside clip out video excerpts to share on social media. And so we found a way to add some of the benefits (and fun) of video to Triple Click without compromising the audio product we’ve spent the past decade making.

I would imagine most of my podcasting contemporaries feel similarly to me these days; like we have one foot in each world. I sit in the studio, making my audio-only music podcast while setting up cameras to record the process, conjuring my little soundscapes while adjusting the key light above my desk. I’m trying to be as thoughtful about the balance as possible, and not to let video’s undeniable charms tempt me into losing sight of what makes audio so powerful on its own.

Jad Abumrad, a man who gets it

In November, Radiolab founder Jad Abumrad guested on Strong Songs to talk about his new podcast series Fela Kuti: Fear No Man. In the course of our conversation, I asked what he, as one of podcasting’s great audio storytellers, thought of the industry’s recent swing toward video. His answer, lightly edited here for clarity, was a story unto itself:

Video is multifaceted and exciting, and a good video is a wonderful thing. But music, voices, stories; those things exist on their own terms. They’ll bloom if we let them, alive in the spaces we make in our minds.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m going to start publishing music recommendations more regularly as their own posts. Here’s the first one, which is pretty long, since it’s been months since I wrote one of these and I have a lot of music I want to recommend.

Links direct to album.link, which should give you a link through to most streaming services. At least until that site gets acquired and they redirect all the links to crypto websites or whatever. Use ‘em while they work!

THE PICKS

MARO & NASAYA - LIFELINE

I heard these two performing a still-as-yet-unreleased cover of “Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In” at the end of an episode of Pluribus. It is beautiful, and searching for it led me down a rabbit hole that never did lead to the cover itself, but did lead to this 2025 album from the duo. She, a Portuguese singer/songwriter, he an LA-based producer. I love this album; it sounds like a stiff wind blowing through palm trees.

Donald Fagen - Morph the Cat

Fagen’s 2006 solo record kinda passed me by when it came out. I was still pining for the highs of Steely Dan’s Two Against Nature, and wasn’t quite finding it in this, or in their 2003 follow-up Everything Must Go. A listener in the Strong Songs Discord picked this for our listening club and I’m glad I came back to it. It’s a Dan record in all but name, and a relaxing and fun listen. Also it’s got Wayne Krantz.

Stephen Sondheim - Merrily We Roll Along (New Broadway Cast Recording)

I’ve recently been on a Sondheim kick, thanks to an upcoming interview episode of Strong Songs that focuses on his music. I was never quite the right kind of theatre nerd to get into him before now, but that has changed. You probably don’t need me to tell you that he is very good, but anyway, this musical is great. I’m excited to see the version with this cast currently in theaters, and even more excited for the Boyhood-esque real-time version currently being made by Richard Linklater. (!!!)

New Cool Collective - On Tour (Live)

I discovered the Dutch New Cool Collective thanks to the video game News Tower, which features their music. These guys can really play. They have a lot more albums than this one, but I appreciate how good they sound live.

Couch - Big Talk

Strong Songs listener and Discord mod Tony recommended Couch to me along with the next pick; this is just a fun band, with good songs, and immaculate production. I’m starting to wonder if this sort of ultra-tight pop-funk production will fall out of fashion, and if its purveyors will change tack for a more live, or degraded, or atmospheric approach. In the meantime, this album is a good time.

St. Paul & The Broken Bones - Self-Titled

A cool band that sounds like old bands, but that’s nothing to hold against them! Nice to see people really capturing that Back to Black sound (itself an echo of so many classics) on more current records.

Tame Impala - Deadbeat

Tame Impala is huge, and this album is being listened to by everyone, but I’m still going to recommend it because it’s great. “Dracula” into “Loser” is the one-two punch that knocked me out. “Now I’m Mr. Charisma, fuckin’ Pablo Escobar.”

Miles Davis - My Funny Valentine: In Concert

Jazz piano great Peter Martin mentioned Miles’ 1965 live ballads record as a formative one for him during our recent Strong Songs interview. I was always a Four & More guy myself; that’s the uptempo sister recording from the same concert. After talking with Peter, I went back to Valentine, and I’m glad I did.

Joshua Redman - Wish

Another album that came up while talking with Peter Martin. Of all of Redman’s 90s records, 1993’s Wish kinda fell through the cracks for me. Just after his debut, and a few years ahead of Freedom in the Groove, the funkier record that was brand new the year I first discovered him. I went back to it after talking with Peter, and man, it is great, and especially fun to hear Redman joined by Pat Metheny on guitar. Not the first or last time he’d have a guitarist in his band, but still, it’s Metheny, man.

Susanna Hoffs - The Deep End

This was a Shazaam pick, aka a song I heard during a TV show and managed to press the button fast enough to find out what it was. It’s great, though, and got me listening to Hoffs more broadly.

Jon Hopkins - RITUAL

Jad Abumrad recommended Hopkins’ music to me when he guested on Strong Songs, and RITUAL, from 2024, is the one that’s stuck with me. I don’t listen to much electronic music, but I find there to be something very centering about this one.

The Tallest Man On Earth - Henry St.

I may have shared this guy’s music before, I can’t remember. My friend Woody wrote me after my big Dylan episode to tell me about TTMOE, aka Kristian Matsson, who is extremely Boblike (complimentary). Perhaps the most Boblike thing about him is that I resisted at first, but he won me over.

Fela Kuti - Afrodesiac

Fela Kuti: Fear No Man taught me more than any other single piece of media in 2025. I learned a lot about history, about Nigeria, and about Fela as a person, but I also started listening to Fela’s music. This record is the one I come back to most often.

Frank Zappa - Sheik Yerbouti

My upcoming Toto episode—and the influence Zappa’s keyboardist Tommy Mars had on Toto’s David Paitch and Steve Porcaro—is actually the thing that got me onto this record. I knew some of the songs on Sheik Yerbouti, but had never just listened to it top to bottom. That’s a fun thing to do, and I recommend it.

Kenny Kirkland - Self-Titled

This and the next album are both additional outgrowths of that Peter Martin episode. Kenny’s swung like no one else. There was this round bounciness to it, that is hard to put into words. He’s a sideman on some of my favorite jazz records, but I’m glad to have his solo record in the rotation.

Roy Hargrove & RH Factor - Distractions

Hard Groove has always been my go-to RH Factor album, but I’m coming around on Distractions. Both are albums you should listen to if you haven’t. Lotta new groups are borrowing sounds from this era, the whole Elevado/Electric Ladyland/neo-soul horn thing. I love it and want more of it.

Little Dragon - Slugs of Love

Trumpet friend Benjamin hipped me to these guys, defined by Yukimi Nagato’s distinct vocal style. Dangerously chill.

JD McPherson - Nite Owls

This must have been another Shazaam addition, though I can’t remember which show it’s from. Regardless, I’m glad it’s in my library. Straight ahead rock ‘n roll done right.

Ken Pomeroy - Cruel Joke

I’m thankful to Sterlin Harjo for a lot of things; for Reservation Dogs, and this year for The Lowdown, but also for introducing me to a lot of great music, including Ken Pomeroy. She even played a role in The Lowdown; an extra bonus.

Joni Mitchell - Mingus

Joni is 100% getting a second episode in Strong Songs Season Eight; the question has been which song should I cover. I think I prooobably won’t do something off of this record, but it is both beautiful and fascinating. Joni’s jazz records aren’t quite as sought out as her folk and prog/folk stuff, but they’re an important part of understanding her as an artist.

Brad Mehldau - Ride Into The Sun

Mehldau and company’s extended opus of Elliot Smith covers is probably my favorite album of 2025. Where do I begin? His duo with Chris Thile on “Colorbars”? The extended Daniel Rossen feature on “Tomorrow Tomorrow”? “Everything Means Nothing To Me” enhanced by Adrian Morejon‘s bassoon? Matt Chamberlain’s drumming, in general? I am a huge fan of both Smith and Mehldau, and in particular of Mehldau’s more elaborate studio work (i.e. Largo), so I’m probably an easy mark for this record. Doesn’t make me love it any less.

I’ll leave you with this pic of Appa, who for some reason took her bone and set up shop on the landing between floors. A dignified photo of a dignified dog.

Take care, and keep listening-

12/26/2025

I’m always changing how I do things; tweaking, nudging, and sometimes overhauling my process. It’s nice to be reminded that I can learn to do new things, and part of me always believes that this time, I’ve found the perfect method and will never have to change again.

There is no best method, and no end to the search. Balance isn’t an endpoint; it’s a process. Try standing on one leg for a while, you know?

Here are some changes I’ve made to this newsletter, and some that are coming with the new year.

So Long, Substack

I’ve spent the last couple of months finding a new home away from Substack, and we’ve finally made it happen. Thanks to Editor Emily for all her help setting up the new digs here at Beehiiv, and thanks to everyone at Beehiiv who responded to the many support tickets I filed as I tried to get everything working.

I’m excited about the move; Beehiiv will be a better home for Kirk’s Notes for a number of reasons. Firstly, I find Substack’s willingness to allow hate speech on their platform, including from literal Nazis, to be spineless and pathetic. I’ve heard from readers and listeners over the past year who feel similarly, and who have urged me to move my writing elsewhere. In addition, Beehiiv’s publishing tools are more robust than Substack’s, at least in my experience, which will allow for some nice behind the scenes improvements to how I make this newsletter.

Those improvements come with a (literal) cost, which gets at another reason Beehiiv is a better fit for me. Substack is free to use, but they get a cut of any paid subscriptions. Fundamentally, they’re running a subscription platform, not a publishing platform. In contrast, Beehiiv charges a monthly fee for using their service.

That means another change: I’m counting on reader support not to lose money on this whole thing. Here on Beehiiv, I’ve enabled the ability for readers to contribute if they’d like to. Not a subscription or anything recurring or that comes with extra content, just a one-time deal. So, please consider making a donation!

I actually find paying for Beehive reassuring. In keeping with my general aversion to platform dependence, some part of me just can’t relax while I’m publishing content on a “free” platform. There’s always a cost—as the saying goes, if you aren’t paying for the product, you probably are the product. With Beehiiv, it’s nice and simple. I’m giving them money, and they’re providing tools to publish my newsletter. And there’s no Nazis. Great.

More Posts That Are Only One Thing

In 2026, I’ll still publish a mix of short essays, updates on my work, and lists of music recommendations. I’ll still share pictures of my dog. The main change will be how I’m going to organize and distribute everything. Instead of publishing a big bi-weekly catch-all newsletter, I’m going to break things up and publish a bit more often. (Just a bit! Like, maybe once a week-ish.) Essays will get their own posts, as will news and updates.

Furthermore, since I know a lot of you like my lists of music recommendations, I’m going to break those out into their own thing. (In fact, I’ve already done it; you can read every list of recommendations I’ve published right here.)

So: going forward, each newsletter you get will be either an essay, a grab-bag, or a list of music picks. Or some other category I haven’t thought of yet. Should make things easier to organize, and allow me to publish a bit more often.

Some 2025 Statistics

Here are some year-end statistics from Kirk’s Notes in 2025, via the Substack dashboard. Relevant caveats: working at Gawker during Peak Web Media made me pretty allergic to data-driven editorial in general, so I don’t actually make decisions based on traffic metrics. Also, it’s fair to assume that, as with most web traffic statistics, these have been inflated by bots.

1. Turns out publishing more leads to growth??

The above graph shows the increase in subscribers over the course of 2025 as I finally began publishing regularly. Both my growth and my overall subscriber count are barely a blip compared to the heavy hitters of Substack, but I still love to see a line going up.

2. Kirk’s Notes is first and foremost an email publication

Unsurprisingly, the vast majority people read via email - 31,650 views came from email opens. Next was 1,891 views from direct readers on the web. Just 363 total views came from the Substack app. Google provided 270, after which the sources become small enough not to matter.

3. Readers like lists, video games, and complaints

My four most popular posts of 2025, in order:

1. Everything Is Too Loud!! - 11k views for an article about hearing damage and the scourge of bad dining room acoustics

2. Theme and Theme and Variations - 10.8k views for an article about Blue Prince and music, likely due to the fact that I mentioned the post on Triple Click and linked it in the show notes

3. Not All Listening Is Equal - 9.75k views for an article about different types of music listening. Not sure why but this was a fun post so, sure

4. Against Platforms - 9.27k views for an article about why I don’t like platform dependence, and why I was planning to leave Substack. And now here we are!

I was happy with all four of those posts and think they do represent what I’m trying to do with this newsletter, so it’s nice to see they got the most eyeballs.

4. Not my cabbages hearts!

On Substack, some of you would “like” a post, which made the little heart number by the headline go up. Given that most people read via email, my posts did not get that many likes, but all the same I am embarrassed by how nice it was to see that a post had more likes than usual. In one of the great tragedies of our age, moving to Beehiiv has stripped my posts of all of their hearts. Some small, sad part of me wonders how anyone will ever know that my writing was liked by anyone.

Anyway, my most-hearted post was Against Platforms, an essay about how I didn’t like Substack and wanted to leave. lol

Onward

If you read all that, hey, thanks for caring about my work. And thanks for being here! I’ve got a bunch of other changes in the works, with some big (positive) ones coming for Strong Songs in 2026. But I’ll talk about all that stuff later.

I’ll leave you with these four pics of Appa, taken from a fixed position at approximately 5:02 PM on a Wednesday. She gets dinner at 5PM, and her internal clock is never wrong. May we all adhere to our schedules with such rigor.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
12/19/2025

I spend a lot of time noticing how I’m listening to music throughout the day. I listen actively and passively; I listen with friends and on my own. I listen to music that I don’t want to distract me too much, and music I hope will distract me. And however I’m listening, I try to notice the effect a given listening method has on what I hear.

I thought I’d break down a few of the common ways that I listen to music, in an attempt to better understand the effect each one has. (Triple Click listeners will know that I like a good taxonomy. What can I say.)

I’ll list these in order of how much they require the listener to focus on the music, give or take. It’s not an exact science.

• Transcription - or, listening with the intent of learning and documenting the music on the recording. This is how I listen to songs that I’m planning to analyze on Strong Songs. I’m listening actively, but I’m also sitting at the piano and working out what I’m hearing, taking notes and making an outline of the song form, chord progression, interesting melodic and lyrical ideas, etc.

• Assisted Active Listening - or, active listening enhanced by someone else helping you direct your attention to new elements of the recording. This is what I’m trying to convey with Strong Songs, and the mental space that I hope listeners can get into during a given episode. But it’s also just how you listen when a friend shows you a new piece of music and points out their favorite parts as you go. (Presumably they say, “Ears On!” right before they press play.)

• Active Listening - or, solo listening with the goal of hearing and experiencing as much of the music as possible. A great way to listen to music, and one that I at least never seem to find enough time for. It feels like an indulgence to simply sit and stare at the ceiling/out the window/wherever and devote my full attention to listening, even though spending the same amount of time watching TV feels routine.

• Listening In Motion - or, active listening while moving through the world. I do a lot of listening this way, particularly on my morning run or an afternoon walk. Depending on the circumstances, it can also mean listening in the car, or on transit (plane, train, bus, etc.). It’s not quite as focused as stationary active listening, but in some ways I find it more pleasurable. I’m sure you’ve been out walking on a sunny day, earbuds in, and the perfect song comes on… and all at once you’re starring in your own private movie.

• Foreground Listening, Social - or, putting on music at a party or other social event where the music is important, but not central. We’re not quite to background music yet, though we’re receding a little. I love a party where the playlist has been assembled with care, and where I can ask the host “damn who is this?” and go home with some new stuff on my to-listen list.

• Background Listening, Social - or, music that plays in the background of a social event and isn’t meant to command attention. More of a dinner party, cocktail party kind of thing, and presumably where a lot of those purposefully anonymous Spotify playlists (e.g. “Bossa Nova Dinner”) get most of their juice.

• Passive Listening for Study/Work/Meditation/Etc. - or, listening to help you focus (or unfocus) on something else. This is where we put the whole “Lo-Fi Beats to Study/Relax To” set; it generates a ton of streaming hours each day. (I think this is kind of where we start to fade into “hearing” instead of “listening?” -Ed.) For all the distorting effects this type of listening’s outsized popularity has had on the music industry, it’s popular for a reason, and can be an enriching way to experience music.

• Background Listening, Professional - or, music played in a workplace or retail setting. Like its cousin lo-fi beats above, this stuff is also intended to increase productivity, but it’s chosen by managers and imposed on employees and customers. See: The history of Muzak, effectively told in this episode of Decoder Ring, with a special guest appearance by yours truly.

There’s a lot that I’m sure I’m leaving out; format, for example, can make a big difference in the effect of a given recording. I also didn’t really get into music as it manifests within other types of media; for example, music in a video game, or music during a film montage. And there’s almost never a clean distinction between categories - sometimes you’re in the car with a group of friends and you’re half-listening but also in motion? But this list feels like a solid starting place. And whatever, it’s my newsletter, I can write about those things later.

I hope that, as you read through those, you found yourself doing an inventory of the types of music listening you do in a given day. What types of listening would you like to have more or less of?

Strong Songs, Now Cooking

Strong Songs is now in the kitchen, cooking up new season seven episodes every two weeks. (Hands!) The season premiere, a U2 double-header on “Where The Streets Have No Name” and “With Or Without You” from The Joshua Tree, is live in the feed now, and episode two will hit next Friday. (If you want to hear that second episode now, and to get the rest of the season two weeks early, go over to the Patreon and join up.)

While I’ve been in the studio making new episodes, my producer/editor/webdev spouse Emily has been at her laptop overhauling the show’s online presence. You can behold her work at the newly redesigned strongsongspodcast.com, which is SUCH a huge improvement over the old janky website I had up that I don’t even know where to begin. Even better is the new Strong Songs Store, with a bunch of new products we came up with in between seasons.

We ordered samples and I’m pretty obsessed with a few of them. The Strong Dog notebook is incredible, as are the holographic stickers and the pins Emily designed. I’ve never owned this much merch from one of my shows before.

Some Music Recs Before We Go

Laurence - Family Business - I’ve known these kids were very good for a while now, but had a good time lately sitting down with this record and letting it go. They’re doing so much, all the time, in a way that is sometimes overwhelming but always fun. “Hip Replacement” is a standout - I see what y’all did there.

HAIM - Women In Music, Pt. III - I shouted this one out on the show, but I’ve been loving this record after a Strong Songs listener picked it in the Discord listening club. Big Sheryl Crow energy, in the best way.

US Army Blues Jazz Ensemble - Things Ain’t What They Used To Be - A few weeks back I played a bit of the new narrative game Expelled! for Triple Click, and was shocked to hear “Festival Time” off of this record as the first piece of background music. For reasons I can scarcely remember, I owned this CD and listened to that tune in paticular a bunch of times back in the aughts. What a strange and specific blast from the past.

Improvement Movement - Slump - A recommendation from my longtime music guide Russ. This Georgia-based band sounds familiar but constantly interesting. This is a hell of a cool rock record.

The Weather Station - Ignorance - The title of this album is accurate, because I was ignorant of this killer Canadian band until someone picked it for the Discord listening club this week. I really dig Tamara Lindeman’s voice, and her songs are great, too. Plus there’s sax solos.

Andrew Gurruwiwi Band - Sing Your Own Song - Another Discord listening club pick, this one from down under. Gurruwiwi is a Yolŋu elder from Australia, and his band mixes a huge variety of styles into something super fun and groovy. Ghanian Highlife guitars, Afro-Carribean rhythms, straight ahead pop rock progressions.. it’s all in there.

Onward

As always, you can find me on Instagram and now on Bluesky, as much of a mess as those two platforms usually are. Less of mess with you all there, I’m sure.

I’ll leave you with this pic of Appa pondering the fact that she has become merch. She says she’s entitled to some percentage of every mug sold, but is willing to settle for dinner.

Take care, and keep listening-

~KH
3/14/2025

Like many of you, I have a complicated relationship with my phone. I’ve been actively trying to limit my interactions with the stupid thing for years now. Any of you who listen to Triple Click will have heard me talk about this from time to time.

A few of the things I’ve tried over the years have stuck, and these days, I use my phone less obsessively than I once did. Two big ones:

• No phone in bed. At night, I read a book. In the morning, I get up and get the day started before I look at it.

• No social media apps on the phone. I post to Instagram from my iPad, and to Bluesky from a web browser, which I don’t leave logged in.

I put those two changes into practice several years ago, and they’ve been relatively easy to stick with. They’ve also noticeably improved my day-to-day life. Not a life-changing amount or anything, just enough to make me feel more relaxed and focused on average.

Unfortunately, I’ve been noticing lately that they aren’t enough. Scrolling before bed may mess up my sleep, but scrolling during the day is still an enervating time-suck. Even with no social media apps, the phone itself is a fundamentally distracting device.

I’ll look over at it during a commercial break, or while a podcast episode is exporting, or during a video game loading screen, and I’ll find myself pulled into a five- or ten-minute loop. I check email, refresh the New York Times, check email, check a reddit thread, refresh Polygon, read half of a newsletter, check another couple video game sites, read half of a NYT opinion article, check email, click a link in a newsletter leading to an article that I won’t read, send a couple texts, reply to a group thread I’m on, refresh the New York Times, notice I got a reply to one of my texts, check email…. does this sound familiar to any of you?

In a recent edition of this newsletter, I linked to a Business Insider interview with Yondr founder Graham Dugoni. (Yondr makes the pouches schools use to lock away kids’ phones during the day.) Dugoni says he only uses a flip phone, and elaborated on why (most important bit bolded by me):

That feels true to me. The moment I pick up my phone, I’m already on its turf. Whatever my intention—I’m just going to reply to this text really quick!—I’m still going to interact with it in the way it wants me to, which is to say, in the way the people who designed it want me to. I’d really been noticing this over the past six months or so, as my phone habits steadily deteriorated without any conscious thought on my part. (A process no doubt hastened by the shortening fall days, a busy period of work, and the firehose of horrifying news we’re all drowning in every day.)

I needed to shake things up. I considered buying an actual Yondr pouch, or keeping my phone in a special box by the front door, but then I realized I was overthinking it. Why not just leave the phone on its charger all day? My phone charges on my bedside table overnight, so what if I just… left it there, rather than carrying it around in my pocket? Could it be that simple?

So far, the answer appears to be yes. Every morning, I get out of bed and leave my phone behind. I don’t even look at it. I check email and Discord around lunchtime, from a tablet or from my computer. I use an Apple Watch to listen to music when I run, and to set timers. (I’m starting to think modern devices are mostly just timers.) I don’t get many calls, but when I do get one, my phone routes it to my other devices, so I don’t miss them. I don’t actually lose much of my phone’s functionality, I just don’t have the thing in my pocket all day. As a result, I don’t have the urge to pick it up and fall into the scroll-hole.

I know everyone’s life is different and everyone needs to use their phone in different ways. Some people don’t work from home. Some people need instant access to their phone for their job, or for safety, or don’t have other devices to pick up the slack. But I still figured I’d share, since it’s been a very positive change for me. If you’re reading this and you carry your phone around in your pocket all day, it’s worth at least asking the question: do you actually need to do that? What if you didn’t?

Some Good YouTube Videos

Eddy Burback - “ChatGPT Made Me Delusional” - I can’t remember how I first learned about Burback; probably the algorithm saw me enjoying a Drew Gooden video and was like, “this guy talks kind of similarly and is also funny.” Anyway, I don’t want to spoil too much about this video, but it is incredible and terrifying in equal measure. Absolutely worth a watch.

Lee Sklar - “‘Doc’ Kupka Vlog” - I discovered bass legend Lee Sklar’s YouTube channel as I was researching who made that one sound on Gene Clark’s “Lady of the North” for Strong Songs. Lee’s videos are like what YouTube used to be, when it was better - just a guy with a billion stories and a webcam sharing assorted wisdom in his free time. This one, about Tower of Power bari player “Doc” Kupka, is great, particularly since I just saw Doc and the band with the Portland Symphony earlier in the year.

Justin Ostrander - “What Have I Done? 1959 Gibson ES-335” - I like Ostrander’s channel more than most guitar channels I follow. He’s a working Nashville guy and has a down-to-earth openness that I dig. He also focuses on music and guitar, rather than cranking out gear reviews, so he doesn’t come across like a part of Sweetwater’s marketing division. This video actually is technically a gear video, in that it’s a guy talking about an incredible instrument he bought. But it’s more interesting than that to me, because it’s not like you can click an affiliate link and buy your own ‘59 335. (Though I guess you could go to Reverb and drop $82k on this one!) As Ostrander talks, you can see him processing the excitement and anxiety of finally purchasing a once-in-a-lifetime dream instrument, and realizing what he wants to do with it.

Stevie Knight - “Should Musicians be Worried?” - Someone sent me this video of YouTuber Stevie Knight reacting to an AI-generated gospel rendition of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.” They asked me to explain how the AI sounded so good. Okay, here’s my take: it sucks, and the original is a billion times better. So many of these AI songs are formless riffing, with no real structure. The AI models just do four chords over and over and insert a bunch of “cool riffs” stolen from pop Gospel and Motown recordings. I know AI can make pretty convincing recordings in other contexts, but this ain’t it imo.

Challenger Andy - “Defeating the Taurus Demon with a Trumpet” - I’m kinda sick of the videos of people beating Dark Souls with Aerophones and other MIDI instruments; those are basically just buttons on a plastic casing, same as a game controller. This video, however, has the inputs of the game mapped to different notes played by an actual trumpet. Much dumber and way better.

Any Austin - “Are The Witcher 3’s Rivers Realistic?” - This guy has deservedly been blowing up lately. His videos attempt to nail down the believability of the smaller things in hyper-detailed video games. (This one on the power system of Red Dead Redemption 2 is another highlight.) His Witcher 3 video is a hell of a ride, particularly given where it starts. I laughed, I learned, I walked away satisfied.

Onward

That’ll do it for now. I hope you’re all taking care out there, and if you try one of those phone experiments, feel free to reach out and let me know how it’s going.

I’ll leave you with this pic of Appa, sitting next to her ghostly Halloween doppelgänger. Appa is the one on the left, in case you couldn’t tell them apart.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
11/07/2025

I’ve been enjoying Long Story Short, a new animated show from creators of BoJack Horseman. It tells the non-linear story of a Jewish family living in California from the 1980s through the 2020s, with each episode focusing on a different family member and how their life has changed over time. It’s funny, touching, brilliantly structured, and deeply human.

At the end of the credits for the first episode, I noticed an interesting proclamation:

Each subsequent episode has concluded with the same statement: “This program was made by humans.” Ten years ago, that would have seemed like a strange thing to put in a TV show’s credits. Today, even though it doesn’t mention generative AI, its meaning is clear.

More and more current-day creative endeavors are including similar, if more explicit, AI disclaimers. It’s a sign of the times, as it grows harder by the day to tell the difference between human- and machine-made art. I’ve seen new video games, movies, and albums include statements to the effect of, “No generative AI was used to make this.” Or, in some cases, “Generative AI was used to make this, but we swear we didn’t use it that much.”

The Long Story Short disclaimer is the first I’ve seen to come at it from the opposite direction. It’s an avowal of humanity, as opposed to a disavowal of AI; affirmative where other AI statements are preemptive. That means it’s also imprecise. After all, it’s possible for humans to make something while also using generative AI. But while a future AI disclosure standard will likely require more precise language, I find something appealing about “this was made by humans.”

Speaking to Indiewire back in August for a nice feature about the show, creator Raphael Bob-Waksburg explained what he was going for:

He went on to explain how the collaborative nature of the project helped make it great, and why he wouldn’t want a machine that spits out a polished version of whatever scene he’s imagining. He concluded: “I do feel like we need to draw some lines in the sand. We all do, every single day. I don’t know what that line is, but I think it is worth talking about, as audiences [are] saying ‘we don’t want AI art.’”

Long Story Short’s “made by humans” proclamation is a valuable addition to the conversation Bob-Waksburg references, in part because of its directness. Many AI disclosures are precise to the point of obfuscation. They read like legalese, designed to disguise the things they aren’t saying. “AI tools were used in the idea generation phase of this project, and to assist with some background art and incidental writing,” that kind of thing.

By contrast, “This program was made by humans” cuts to the heart of the matter. For all that it leaves unsaid, it conveys a welcome emotional clarity at a time when the lines between real and artificial art are blurrier than ever.

An Australian icon on Strong Songs

On the latest episode of Strong Songs, Aussie TV legend Leigh Sales joined me to talk about our favorite TV theme songs. We covered a lot of ground, from The Office to Green Acres to The Sopranos to Peacemaker, and we only had time for a fraction of the shows we’d intended to talk about. (We did make time to talk about the character she plays on Bluey.)

Leigh has been an integral part of the Strong Songs Extended Universe for years, ever since she gave the show its biggest ever single-day spike in listeners by recommending it on her own podcast, Chat 10 Looks 3. Leigh and her co-host Annabel Crabb are the reason Emily and I flew out to Australia a couple years back, and are also the reason we’ll likely return within the next few years for a Strong Songs live show. She is, basically, the best, and we had so much fun. I hope you enjoy the episode.

Oh and also….

Strong Songs wins an international journalism award!

A jury at the Reeperbahn Music Festival in Hamburg, Germany awarded Strong Songs the 2025 International Music Journalism Award in the audio category. Here’s a pic from the awards ceremony, for which I recorded a video acceptance speech.

That’s the first time Strong Songs has ever won an award! I’m super proud, and wish I could’ve flown out to accept in person. Thank u Germany <3

Onward

That’ll do it for now. As I recently mentioned, I’m preparing to move Kirk’s Notes to a new home away from Substack, at which point I’ll likely turn on the option for paid subscriptions for those who want to support the newsletter. I’m still working out exactly what that will look like, but it won’t be super different from how things work now. Paid subscriptions will be totally optional, and you shouldn’t need to do anything to stay subscribed. I just wanted to let you all know that the move is still in the works.

I’ll leave you with this pic of a double rainbow that appeared in the sky above our house after a rainstorm last week. I know these closing pics usually feature Appa, but she was pooping in the yard when I took this one. You can imagine that along with the rainbows, if you want.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
10/28/2025

Practicing music and practicing a video game are similar, at least on a basic level. Both involve training your mind to quickly follow unfamiliar patterns, and both involve mastering a series of complex, timed finger motions. When I’m learning a difficult video game boss fight, I can feel it using the same part of my brain I use to learn difficult music. There are significant differences between the two things as well, of course.

I find practicing music to be satisfying and restorative, while I often find practicing difficult video games to be exciting, stressful, and even disregulating. As I worked through one of the challenges in Hollow Knight: Silksong’s diabolical third act, my heart would start racing as I got closer to victory. If I fell short, my entire body would clench, anger and frustration pulling my muscles tight. When I finally triumphed, I felt a mad rush of joy, followed by a jittery adrenaline hangover, a cored-out sort of relief. I had to stop playing the game after dinner because it was messing up my sleep.

That couldn’t be further from how I feel when I practice music. Performing music is often exciting and stressful, but practicing? Nah. I turn on the metronome and begin to work, progressing slowly day after day. I connect with my body and my breathing, descending into a steady flow state. A week after I begin working on something, I look back on my growth and feel deeply satisfied.

Given that, in one sense, the two outcomes are so similar—my fingers can do a thing they couldn’t do before—why is the emotional experience so different? Surely part of it relates to the differences between my comfort level with music (high) and with 2D platforming games (mid). But it’s also because of the particular way that video games teach, and the restrictions they impose on the learner.

Games, especially challenging ones like Silksong, expect the student (aka the player) to learn while providing relatively few assists. You can’t slow the tempo; you can’t break things up into smaller bits. You can’t work on the third phase of a boss fight without getting through the first two; you can’t practice the final jumps of a platforming gauntlet without working your way up to it. Fighting a boss in Silksong is like picking up a brand new, challenging piece of music, and then immediately sight-reading it, on stage, at full tempo. If you make too many mistakes, you have to stop and try again from the beginning. It’s full speed, all or nothing. Of course it’s stressful!

By contrast, when practicing a difficult piece of music, I almost always break up and slow down whatever I’m working on. I’ll use a metronome to dramatically drop the tempo, and will only increase the speed when I can play it without making any mistakes. I’ll break longer sections into smaller pieces, mastering individual bars or phrases before slowly knitting them back together. I’ll progress slowly and methodically, and if I ever feel flustered or frustrated, it’s usually a sign that I need to take a break or slow down.

Those differences are noteworthy because games are, in many other ways, structured to facilitate learning. They scaffold their challenges like an étude book or a teacher’s curriculum, starting off relatively easy and increasing in difficulty and complexity over time. Plenty of action games include a training mode where you can practice moves in a safe environment. And some rare games go further, like the wonderful (and challenging) 2018 platformer Celeste, which among other unusually granular options allows players to adjust the game speed, letting them truly practice the inputs required to overcome a challenge.

Celeste is the exception to the rule. Video games are designed primarily for entertainment, and in the eyes of many game designers, an action game’s entertainment value derives primarily from its challenge. It’s in the daunting size and deafening roars of the monster who has beaten you a dozen times, in the tightness in your chest as you draw near to victory, and in the thrill of the moment as you finally land the decisive blow. I understand why a game designer might worry that slowing things down and breaking them up would encourage learning at the cost that dramatic gameplay narrative. (I’m not sure I agree, but then, I don’t make video games.) As Dark Souls director Hidetaka Miyazaki told Wired in 2016, he wants to make games “that give players a sense of accomplishment by overcoming tremendous odds.” Difficult games like Silksong and Dark Souls do teach you to play them, albeit mercilessly. The difficulty of each lesson is the heart of the experience.

In contrast, practicing music isn’t meant to be a thrilling or dramatic challenge on its own. It’s a path toward increasing one’s technical and conceptual ability. Even mastery isn’t an end unto itself; it merely allows a person to enrich their artistic voice and better express themselves. In fact, the most beautiful music is often the most effortless.

And that’s the relevant distinction: A musician is an artist, and practicing is a means to better create art. A person playing a video game is an audience member, and practicing is a means to better experience art. It’s not quite so cut and dried in reality, of course; one of the beguiling things about games is how they can blur the lines between passive audience members and active artistic participants. But generally speaking, an action game’s challenge is a primary focus of the experience, while a musical challenge is something you pass through en route to where you’re really going.

Those differences being what they are, I still wish more games included more varied practice tools, and that more game designers allowed players to learn in a less frustrating way. I’ve seen Celeste described as the rare video game that will help you get better at other games, and that strikes me as something to emulate. Practicing is the process through which we make the impossible possible; it’s one of the coolest things humans can do. Video games, far more than other modern art forms, have an inherent ability to teach their audience to more fully experience them. Why not seize the opportunity?

Music Recommendations

Ray Brown Trio - Summer Wind (Live at the Loa) - This album came on the radio last night, and it absolutely destroys. Gene Harris on piano, 🔥 - I almost had to pull the car over.

Little Dragon - Slugs of Love - My buddy Benjamin turned me onto this Swedish group, with Yukimi Nagano providing lead vocals. Great stuff.

JD McPherson - Nite Owls - As I’ve been watching Sterlin Harjo’s new Tulsa-set show “The Lowdown,” I’ve had my phone in permanent Shazam mode. This is one of many great records I’ve added to the rotation.

Ken Pomeroy - Cruel Joke - This, which to be clear is from a lady singer/songwriter and not the basketball guy, is another one. Great record, lovely songs.

Gotye - Like Drawing Blood - A musician I don’t always get around to, and then when I do, I’m always glad. A songwriter who thinks like the percussionist he is, with a remarkable ability to knit together disparate styles.

Paul Cornish - You’re Exaggerating! - A killer new record from pianist Cornish along with Joshua Crumbly and Jonathan Pinson on bass and drums. If Blue Note wants to harken back to its heyday by putting out records like this, I’m here for it.

Joni Mitchell - Mingus - Joni might not have won the final round of the Strong Songs bracket vote, but it’s likely she’ll be in the upcoming season nonetheless. I’ve been listening to her jazz recordings, and in particular like Mingus, and her take on “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.”

The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle - This was a pick from the Strong Songs discord listening club. I knew of the Zombies, of course, and knew several of the most famous songs on this album. But it’s a whole other thing listening to the record start to finish. Great band.

The Beths - Straight Line Was a Lie - I’m not even sure how I got into The Beths, which means some algorithm was probably responsible. They’re a lot of fun, though, a sort of straight ahead, 90s-inflected rock that’s easy to put on in just about any scenario.

Bob Dylan - Slow Train Coming - Of all the Dylan records I carried out of my recent Bob Dylan-focused bonus episode, Slow Train Coming is the one I’ve come back to the most.

J.J. Cale - Naturally - One last Discord listening club pick, and the album that introduced me to Cale and the Tulsa sound. “The Lowdown” naturally featured one of Cale’s songs in its first episode.

Onward

That’ll do it for now. As ever, I’m over on Instagram and Bluesky, posting when I think of it, which isn’t that often.

I’ll leave you with this pic Emily took of Appa, mid-shake at the river yesterday. May we all take such joy in drying off.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
10/15/2025

No essay today, just a bunch of smaller stuff I wanted to share with you all. First up: democracy!

A Bracket of Legends

Over on the Strong Songs Patreon, we’re in the midst of the bracket vote to pick an artist for the upcoming eighth season. The theme of Season Eight is “second helpings,” which means that each episode will return to an artist I covered in my first few seasons for a second episode on a different song. The winner of the bracket will be guaranteed an episode.

All Patreon supporters are eligible to vote and, let me tell you, the votes so far have been CLOSE. That shouldn’t be a surprise, given that all of these artists are iconic, but it’s still been remarkable.

The vote for the Elite Eight is ongoing, and three of the four matchups have been within a single percentage point. The final two rounds will happen this week, so if you’ve been thinking about joining the Patreon, why not join now and get in a vote?

Strong Interviews

I’ve run a couple of interview episodes in the past few weeks. First, the wonderful Wailin’ Jennys—Ruth Moody, Heather Masse, and Nicky Mehta—came by The Caldera to talk about singing, songwriting, and creativity.

You can listen to the episode here. Our conversation covered a lot of ground and was an absolute blast. The Jennys were on their way to a show that night at the Schnitz, during which Nicky shouted out Strong Songs from the stage! I have to think there were at least one or two listeners in the audience other than me who enjoyed that. Also, the audience spontaneously broke into a rendition of “O Canada.”

More recently, I ran an interview with Matt Sitman and Sam Adler-Bell of the Know Your Enemy podcast. In addition to being well-read political historians, Sam and Matt are lifelong Bob Dylan sickos (their words). I thought it would be fun to have them take me on a tour of Dylan’s various eras.

The episode, titled “A Beginner’s Guide to Bob Dylan,” achieves that goal pretty well, I’d say. While Matt and Sam certainly have their own complex relationship with Bob and his music, that’s likely true of any longtime Dylan fan, and understanding that is a good first step toward understanding his appeal.

Shakra’s Song

For the past month, I have been consumed by Hollow Knight: Silksong, the long-awaited follow up to one of my very favorite video games, 2017’s Hollow Knight. (Here’s my review from 2018.) We’ve already talked about Silksong on two separate episodes of Triple Click, and are recording a full spoilercast (“beadscast”) for Maximum Fun members this coming week. I completed the game over the weekend and, while I am exhausted, I am also satisfied.

Several years and a couple home studios ago, I recorded an elaborate musical arrangement of “Greenpath,” one of my favorites of composer Chris Larkin’s pieces from the first game. I figured I might as well do something musical for the sequel, too.

Larkin has unsurprisingly given Silksong a beautiful musical score, building on themes he introduced in the first game, and incorporating no small amount of Dies irae. The in-game characters are all quite musical, as well. The game’s mysterious fallen kingdom based its religion on music and music nomenclature, and the second act is a quest to uncover hidden melodies. Our heroine Hornet converts her deadly blade into a harp (a “needolin” in the game’s parlance) and accompanies many of the friendly characters she meets, some of whom have unexpectedly lovely singing voices.

One standout is Shakra, a recurring character who sells you maps. You’ll hear Shakra before you see her, always calling out a beautiful traditional song. I isolated that melody and wrote my own accompaniment, which was a rewarding process. You can listen on Instagram or Bluesky.

Next up: Sherma’s Song.

Onward

That’ll do it for now. Thanks as always for reading along, and to everyone participating in the Patreon vote! I’m very much looking forward to seeing who wins.

I’ll leave you with this pic of our friends’ dog Coleslaw, who was staying with us for a few days and decided to help out in the studio. She has great ears.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
9/28/2025

I love metronomes. I’ve relied on them my entire life. If I could choose only one accessory to go with my musical instrument, I’d go with a metronome every time. Sorry, tuner! So long, music stand!

I’ve been practicing guitar a lot lately, so I thought I’d dedicate the next couple of newsletters to that: how I approach practicing, what I’m working on, and any advice I can think of that might prove useful. Given how much I love metronomes, I figured I’d start with some tips on how to get the most out of yours.

1. Use a metronome

The first tip is simple: use a metronome. It is so, so easy to start practicing without a metronome. Or to think, “I’ll get out the metronome when it’s time to work on [X], but for now I’m just warming up.” Nope! You should warm up with a metronome. You should practice repertoire with a metronome. You should play through transcriptions, riffs, vocabulary, sight-reading, song ideas… you will get so much better if you do all of that with a metronome!

2. Use an actual metronome, not your phone

I mean, use your phone if that’s what you’ve got. I like Pulse, if I have to use a metronome app. But I’m very much in favor of leaving my phone across the room from where I’m practicing, and I think it’s way better to use a dedicated metronome. I use my phone to record myself (see tip five), and anytime I have to slide my thumb around on that stupid thing it invites so much distraction. Oh hey, I got a text. Lemme respond real quick.

Anyway, I have a handful of physical metronomes that I like. My three favorites are in the picture above. The mechanical metronome is neat but I generally recommend a digital one, with a loud, low click. Just don’t use your phone unless you have to.

3. Go slower

When I practice without a metronome, I tend to rush. I get sloppy as a result. Using a metronome forces me to slow down and play more consistently. But I try to always be open to slowing down further, and to avoid the impulse to just keep trying at my current tempo. If I make a mistake, I’ll drop the tempo a couple clicks and see how that goes. If I still mess up, I’ll slow it down further. At some point, slowing down stops being helpful, which means it’s time to break whatever I’m practicing into smaller chunks. Even if you’re routinely using a metronome, it’s a safe bet you’re taking at least one thing you’re working on too fast. It’s important to remember that “too fast” doesn’t mean you aren’t good enough! It just means you’d learn it faster if you played it slower.

4. Keep a daily record of practice tempos

I recommend keeping a practice diary for a lot of reasons. It doesn’t have to be super elaborate, or purpose-built. I’ve used big “musician’s practice book”-type deals, with all the tabs and the staves and whatever else. I’ve tried using my iPad, with mixed results. I actually have the most luck just using a little basic notebook where I can easily write down everything I worked on in a given day. I find it’s particularly good for keeping track of tempos. If I’m working on something difficult, it can be helpful to practice it a couple clicks faster every day. Two clicks is rarely noticeable on its own, but after a week, I’ll have increased 14 clicks. I need a written record to do that, otherwise I’ll forget where I’m at or get sloppy about ratcheting up. Keeping records allows for a degree of tempo discipline that I can’t achieve on my own.

5. Record yourself playing (with the metronome)

“Record yourself” is good advice in general, but I find it’s particularly helpful to record myself playing with a metronome. I have a little tripod set up where I practice, so I can easily throw my phone up and record myself. When I listen back to the recording, the metronome is there in the background doing its merciless thing, and I can really tell whenever I’m pulling ahead or falling behind. (It’s always pulling ahead.)

There you have it, five tips for using a metronome. The first one is the most important, though. If you don’t already practice with a metronome, and you really want to get better at your instrument, I am telling you: start using one. You will be amazed how much it helps.

Loose Links

• The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino on Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest memoir, All The Way to the River

• Daniel Currell’s NYT article about how Disney World reflects our age of wealth inequality 

• Also in the Times, a helpful recent article by Alexandra Alter lays out how Harry Potter and Twilight fanfic led to the romantasy genre’s current domination of the literary world

• Last week’s Triple Click was about what made Hollow Knight such a phenomenon, and this week’s ep is about the fantastic new sequel Silksong

• Writing for Business Insider, Katie Notopoulos profiled the creator of the increasingly ubiquitous Yondr pouch, who (imo) really has some stuff figured out re: phones and social media

• Ryan Broderick had YouTube mega-music-reviewer Anthony Fantano on his podcast, Panic World, to talk about AI Music

Onward

That’ll do it for now. Keep your metronomes handy, and as always, you can find me on Instagram and Bluesky. At least occasionally.

I’ll leave you with Appa, who kept making this same stupid face for like five minutes after I took this pic. Sometimes the world blesses us, and ours is not to reason why.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
9/12/2025

Twenty years online have left me wary of platforms. From Facebook to Twitter, Tumblr to Kinja, nearly every platform I’ve been a part of has either actively betrayed me or decayed beneath my feet.

• I spent eight years writing thousands of articles for Gawker Media, whose parent company eventually went bankrupt and was sold to a series of new owners. Subsequent platform changes have left most of my work mangled and without images.

• I had a front row seat to the infamous 2015 Pivot To Video, as my bosses, along with most other online publishers of the era, overcommitted to the Facebook Video platform and paid a steep price when it all came crashing down.

• I built up a pretty healthy Twitter following during the 2010s, and we all know how that turned out.

• I’ve watched friends and colleagues go independent, only to find that, because they were exclusively publishing to platforms like YouTube or Spotify, they weren’t independent at all.

I’ve benefited from platforms too, of course. Early Twitter helped me establish myself as a writer, and played a role in getting me my first few big breaks. Ditto Blogger and Wordpress. For a few years, Facebook fueled the success of Gawker, helping my writing reach millions of new readers. Despite some recent red flags, Discord has remained a lovely place for both Strong Songs and Triple Click listeners to gather and chat. And both Patreon and Maximum Fun have made it possible for me to generate income from my podcasts without needing to sell ads.

That being said, the overall pattern of failure and decline has been impossible to ignore. It’s hard not to view the internet as one those video game levels where the ground below your character is continually crumbling, propelling you forward. No sooner have I landed on one platform than I’m preparing to jump to the next.

In 2023, “enshittification” was named the American Dialect Society’s word of the year. Coined by Cory Doctorow as part of his perfect encapsulation of the process of platform degradation, the word caught on because it identified a widespread phenomenon and gave it a much-needed name. Facebook, Amazon, and Instagram are three of the highest profile examples, but enshittification is everywhere. Doctorow writes:

Since going independent in 2018, I’ve taken every opportunity I can to avoid platform over-reliance. I publish Strong Songs to an open RSS feed that anyone can access. I back up the email subscriber-list for this newsletter regularly, ready to depart at a moment’s notice. I don’t sell ads or endorsements, and am not under contract to anyone. I keep each aspect of my businesses—store, newsletter, bookkeeping, community, music sales, subscriptions—separate from the others, however inconvenient that may be.

At the same time, the platforms I do use and rely on—Patreon and Substack chief among them—try ever harder to entice me to commit. Patreon adds a new feature seemingly every week—podcast hosting, video hosting, merch sales, annual subscriptions, automated retention tools, live-streaming—and each one I use further enmeshes me into their ecosystem. I get reminders about Substack’s closed social media platform Notes seemingly every day, along with plenty of other platform-specific features (recommendations, comments and community features, support pledges) that would tie me more closely to them. Many of the highest profile Substack writers I follow embrace these same features.

In July, Substack raised $100 million and received a $1.1 billion valuation, doubtless increasing the pressure on them to become profitable in ways that will soon be felt even by casual, non-monetized users like me. Platformer’s Casey Newton has a dire yet wholly believable list of predictions for some ways the enshittification of Substack might play out. The seeming imminence of some of those changes, coupled with Substack’s ongoing Nazi problem, makes it easy for me to keep them at arm’s length. When I do start offering paid subscriptions, I’m planning to move this whole operation elsewhere.

As for Patreon, it’s a genuinely great product and is still controlled by a CEO/founder who seems like a cool guy. It’s also been around a lot longer than Substack, and has a more established track record. But I can still picture the end, clear as day: the headlines announcing a sale to some conglomerate or other; the email introducing the new owners; their assurances that nothing will change. Patreon has always been powered by Creators, and we look forward to supporting your passion in new ways, or some such. It’ll be fine for six months, maybe a year. And then the changes will begin.

But. But! Those platforms are not the internet. Even the good ones, like Patreon. The open internet is right there; email and RSS exist right alongside closed platforms’ proprietary formats, app-exclusive features, and platform-controlled communication. They have their issues—email will always have problems with spam, and both podcast and email delivery are dominated by middlemen like Google (Gmail) and Apple (Apple Podcasts). But I can still reach out and communicate directly with my audience by sending emails, publishing blog posts, and sending my podcasts directly from a server—any server—to their devices. The lines are still up, and functioning.

In fact, podcasts make for a solid example of how good things could be. Platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify have a lot of power—too much—but their power is not absolute. That’s because podcasters like me don’t publish to Apple Podcasts or Spotify. We publish to RSS, an open protocol.

Last year, Anil Dash rightly observed that “wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement.

He’s absolutely right. And while podcasts and writing are already distributed openly via RSS, I’m not the only one imagining a world where videos are distributed in a similar way. Open platforms like Peertube, built on an open protocol with some novel (if not yet wholly successful) ideas for solving video’s bandwidth issues, have been around for a while now. And while YouTube’s audience monopoly is still quite strong, cracks have been showing for years. I watch my favorite music YouTubers churning out disposable Shorts to please the algorithm, lamenting as their videos are run through AI upscalers without their permission, grinding out product reviews and paid endorsements to generate income as ad revenue declines, and watching the platform’s genuinely awful ContentID program endanger the very existence of their hard-built channels, and I can’t help but think how great it would be if all of these people were publishing their videos the way I publish podcasts. I can’t be the only one.

Doctorow’s enshittification diagnosis gets the most attention, but the full essay is helpful in part because his conclusions are not as hopeless as you might think. He writes:

None of those things is impossible; it just feels that way sometimes. An increasing amount of new legislation, much of it in Europe, focuses on enforcing interoperability, data portability, and broader antitrust. Platforms like Substack and Patreon have it in their power to make it simple for users to leave, easily transferring all their data, contact lists, and Stripe payment information to a new platform. (Substack already does this to some extent, given the relative ease with which high-profile newsletters have migrated to competitors like Beehiiv or Ghost.) The RSS protocol could support video, or video makers could adopt one of the other open platforms now available. Worker-owned platforms like Maximum Fun could continue to grow, harnessing a network’s promotional power while letting artists own and control their work. A dozen more apps like OpenVibe or Tapestry could let people pull together the articles, videos, newsletters, and podcasts that they like from any number of places. The era of closed platform dominance could slowly wane, and an era of open publication could rise in its place.

Your first instinct may be to come up with a bunch of reasons why that hasn’t happened, or why it won’t. But it could happen! To some extent, it already has. And isn’t that nice to think about, too?

Onward

That became a more involved essay than I’d planned, so that’ll suffice for this edition, I think. This week in Strong Songs, I cross-posted an episode of the You’ll Hear It podcast  that I guested on earlier this year, talking about the mighty Tower of Power. The next episode in the feed will be a new interview that I think a lot of you will like. Until then, I’ll be over here, working on Season Eight and planning my next platform escape.

As always, I’m over on on Instagram and Bluesky, though lately I’ve mostly been reading books and trying to stay off my phone. It’s great, I recommend it.

I’ll leave you with this pic of Appa from earlier in the summer, when Emily had mostly drained the little pond in our side yard. Appa was pretty convinced that rock was in fact a diving board. It did not end well.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
8/31/2025

I’ve always known that I would make an episode of Strong Songs about my dad. For years that was mostly an abstraction, similar to the eulogies we all know we’ll one day have to give, or the funerals we’ll have to plan. Then “one day” became “today,” and it was time to actually do it.

The episode, titled “A Song For My Father,” is now out in the world. I’m very glad to have made it. It’s about The Apocalypse, the Baltimore band my dad played in back in the 60s, but it’s also just about him, and the ways he taught me to love music. I think I’ve gotten pretty good at making episodes of Strong Songs, and it felt good to use those skills to pay tribute to him. It’s the best way I know how.

My therapist observed that in making the episode, I was doing what I could to temporarily bring him back to life. That this is part of what it is to memorialize someone. I assembled what remnants I could find—memories and voicemails, recordings of his band, stories from his friends—and used them to perform a sort of summoning spell. I like that idea a lot. Each time someone listens to it, some part of him lives again.

I particularly enjoyed learning more about the Baltimore/D.C. music scene of the 1960s; the bands, the sounds, the radio shows. It’s striking how little distance there was between the band members I spoke with—John Shorb and Tony Capuano, as well as my dad—and other guys from the region who went on to have careers playing music. Greg Novik, The Apocalypse’s bassist and bandleader, could have crossed that distance easily; that he chose instead to become a bagel impresario strikes me as more a matter of personal preference than of musical ability.

Novik’s subsequent band, the aptly named New Apocalypse, really is worth checking out. I feel fortunate to own a copy of their 1969 LP Stainless Soul, and grateful to Demir Kelebek for uploading a transfer to YouTube. Those guys could play.

I ended the episode with an abridged version of the eulogy I gave at my dad’s memorial, almost exactly one year ago. It’s about how music reflects and reverberates, and how each life creates a cascade that reflects into the future. When I say that’s more than a metaphor, I mean it; it’s an observable and demonstrable phenomenon. I find that comforting, like I can pass the meaning of his life through my hands, touching some small part and knowing it was real.

Thanks to everyone who has listened to the episode, or written in about it, or shared stories of your own parents. It has been deeply meaningful to watch it reflect off of each of you, creating new ripples in the process. His cascade continues.

Loose Links

Billy Joel, Thirty-Three Hit Wonder - I haven’t seen HBO’s new Billy Joel documentary, but reading about it brought me back to Nick Paumgarten’s terrific 2014 New Yorker article about the man.

The Ballad of Geeshie and Elvie - Also from 2014, check out John Jeremiah Sullivan’s deep dive into the story of the blues singers known as Elvie Thomas and Geeshie Wiley, and the ultra-rare and influential recordings they made.

“Let’s Talk About The Irish Music In Sinners” - I linked to this in my last newsletter, but it deserves its own separate mention here. Reactor Mag’s Leah Schnelbach broke out her substantial knowledge of Irish folk music to explain and contextualize the Irish traditional music performed by the oh-so-hungry vampires in Ryan Coogler’s Sinners. Follow up reading: Coogler’s thoughts on same, and a nice interview with the great Buddy Guy about his cameo in the film.

A Love Letter to Music Listings - In The Atlantic, Oregon’s own Gabriel Kahane waxes nostalgic about a better way to learn about local music.

The Conspicuous Emptiness of the Marvel Cinematic Universe - IGN’s Max Evry shares an insightful take about the MCU’s shift away from depicting superhero support staff and toward a world where the heroes work alone.

ChatGPT’s Boethius meltdown - still one of the funniest things to come out of the age of generative AI. “Boethius never wrote a note of music. He’s just haunting this answer. I’m sorry.”

Onward

That’ll do it for now. As usual, you can find me on Instagram and Bluesky, though I genuinely hope you aren’t spending too much time on either of them.

I’ll leave you with this pic of Cooper, Emily’s folks’ new dog. He is seven months old and is already better behaved than Appa. He only weighs 35 pounds, which is a very good weight for a dog.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
8/18/2025

Ty Seagall - Possession - The latest from Seagall, an artist I only recently got around to checking out. I’m a fan, surprising no one. This is a cool record, with ambitions that often stretch further. He’s wildly prolific, so I’ve got a hell of a back catalog to catch up on.

Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend - I can’t remember where I heard about these guys, but they’re good! That’s all I got.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Phantom Island - These guys do not quit. A wildly entertaining orchestral effort, both unlike and in line with their most recent work. What even is this band lol.

Yuck - Glow and Behold - Straightforward 2010s alt-rock, but man I like this record. It was a pick from someone in the Strong Songs Discord listening club, which is currently in the midst of a new rotation.

Bognar Szilvia - Semmicske Énekek - Another Discord listening pick, and just a wonderful record. Szilvia is a Hungarian musicologist and musician, and I love the ensemble she’s assembled, how she’s arranged them, and how they’re mixed. Nothing not to like here.

The Sinners Original Soundtrack - I’ve read a few great pieces about the music of Sinners lately, and really want to rewatch that movie. My first viewing was pretty overwhelming. I think that, now that I know what to expect, I’ll be able to keep track of everything better.

Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend - I’ve known of Matthew Sweet for a long time, but had never really sat down and listened to him. Or gone for a run and listened to him, as the case may be. This is a great album! “Thought I Knew You” is a standout for me; one of those songs that does everything exactly right and nothing else.

Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks - I’ve been on a Dylan kick lately, for reasons that will soon become clear to Strong Songs listeners. Of all of Dylan’s eras, his mid-70s heartbreak era was pretty peak. Though I’m also growing partial to his polished 80s stuff. There’s a lot of Dylan eras, man.

Will Epstein & High Water - Crush - I learned about Epstein’s music by hearing it on the Know Your Enemy podcast - a rare instance of a podcast having intro music so good that I went and checked out the artist’s other stuff. It’s all pretty great!

Gene Clark - No Other - I non-answered a listener question about an instrument on this album, then got a bunch of emails about it and went back and actually answered the question. (The answer: Richard Greene on electric violin!) But man what an album! One of those cult favorites that’s as good as anything better-known from the same era.

Bonny Light Horseman - Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free - This was a pick from an upcoming guest on the show, and I’ve been listening non-stop. Methodically assembled, beautifully performed, and so patient.

Whenever I practice, I start with my “Hello Guitar.” I don’t actually say hi to the instrument, though there would be nothing wrong with that. Hello Guitar is a term coined by my teacher, Scott Pemberton, to describe the quick, initial series of scales or pentatonic exercises he plays through “greet” his guitar each day.

Emphasis on quick. You run a pentatonic shape up the neck, combined with some corresponding chord shapes and maybe a scale. It should take no more than five minutes. Don’t overthink it. At Scott’s suggestion, I keep a timer on my music stand to help me keep it short.

The reason for that extra safeguard is that the Hello Guitar can be hungry. If you let it, it’ll eat an entire practice session. I’ll start by running some pentatonics, but I’ll get stuck on one of them. I’ll slow down and repeat the exercise. I’ll keep focusing on it, gradually speeding it up. I’ll wander over into a related scale and begin working on that. Then I’ll realize I’m getting sidetracked and start the whole Hello Guitar over.

Before I know it, I’ll have been playing fundamentals—scales, chords, etc.—for the entire practice session. No songs, no transcriptions. No improvisation exercises, no expanding my riff repertoire. Just patterns, scales, arpeggios. If that happens once, no big deal. But I’ve fallen into patterns where for weeks, the only thing I practiced every day was my Hello Guitar.

Of course, learning fundamentals like scales and arpeggios is an important part of mastering an instrument. That’s especially true on an instrument like guitar, where even knowing the names of every note on the fretboard requires an additional layer of literacy.

But in part because of that added complexity, it’s easy for a guitarist to fall into practicing fundamentals to the exclusion of everything else. And while that sounds productive, I find that if I just run shapes and patterns and scales day after day… it’s not very sticky. My conception of the instrument isn’t expanding. At some point it kinda just becomes a series of interlocking shapes. You know what really makes you grow as a musician? Using all those fundamentals to make actual music!

This is not a fresh observation. Indeed, if you spend much time on Guitar YouTube, you will likely see videos with titles like “STOP Practicing Like THIS,” or “CAGED is a TRAP.” Those videos are common because they’re about a real thing.

Guitar YouTube is filled with excellent players explaining their own particular way of breaking the fretboard into digestible chunks. Presumably that’s because people tend to click videos with titles like “MASTER the FRETBOARD in 5 MINUTES.” But GuitarTube is equally filled with those same guitarists realizing that the algorithm has overweighted that type of video and reminding beginners that they shouldn’t forget to also just… play the guitar.

This past month, as I got ready to actually go perform for the first time in a while, I noticed how different my practice regimen became. I had to keep my Hello Guitar short, because I needed to nail down a bunch of specific guitar parts in time for a specific show. Out of necessity, I was spending the bulk of my practice time on actual music. Now, with that show behind me, I’ve tried to keep the same mentality. I’m still starting with my Hello Guitar, but I quickly transition to working on new songs, approaching them as though I’m actually going to perform them. (I am, fwiw!) As a result, I’ve been making huge strides on the instrument.

A “Hello Guitar” is a wonderful thing to incorporate into your practice routine, but Scott calls it that for a reason. It’s just a greeting. The real conversation is what comes after.

A Strong Post-Season

As I begin work on Strong Songs Season Eight, I’ll be running a series of interviews and other specials to pass the time. The first of those is live today in Patreon early access, and will hit the main feed next Friday. After that, I’ll be back to my regular every-other-week cadence.

That new episode is a pretty special one. It’s all about my dad, and the band he played in back in the 60s. It’s an episode I’ve wanted to make for a long time—since before he died, really—and I’m glad to have finally finished it and put it out into the world. I’ll write more about it in a couple weeks when everyone can listen, but for now, if you want to hear it (and support Strong Songs), join the Patreon.

It’s Bandcamp Friday!

Today is Bandcamp Friday, which means the music store doesn’t take a cut from any sales I make. Just as a reminder, I have a couple new things for sale over there, so if you were thinking about buying em, today’s a good day.

Music Recommendations

Ty Seagall - Possession - The latest from Seagall, an artist I only recently got around to checking out. I’m a fan, surprising no one. This is a cool record, with ambitions that often stretch further. He’s wildly prolific, so I’ve got a hell of a back catalog to catch up on.

Wolf Alice - Blue Weekend - I can’t remember where I heard about these guys, but they’re good! That’s all I got.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - Phantom Island - These guys do not quit. A wildly entertaining orchestral effort, both unlike and in line with their most recent work. What even is this band lol.

Yuck - Glow and Behold - Straightforward 2010s alt-rock, but man I like this record. It was a pick from someone in the Strong Songs Discord listening club, which is currently in the midst of a new rotation.

Bognar Szilvia - Semmicske Énekek - Another Discord listening pick, and just a wonderful record. Szilvia is a Hungarian musicologist and musician, and I love the ensemble she’s assembled, how she’s arranged them, and how they’re mixed. Nothing not to like here.

The Sinners Original Soundtrack - I’ve read a few great pieces about the music of Sinners lately, and really want to rewatch that movie. My first viewing was pretty overwhelming. I think that, now that I know what to expect, I’ll be able to keep track of everything better.

Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend - I’ve known of Matthew Sweet for a long time, but had never really sat down and listened to him. Or gone for a run and listened to him, as the case may be. This is a great album! “Thought I Knew You” is a standout for me; one of those songs that does everything exactly right and nothing else.

Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks - I’ve been on a Dylan kick lately, for reasons that will soon become clear to Strong Songs listeners. Of all of Dylan’s eras, his mid-70s heartbreak era was pretty peak. Though I’m also growing partial to his polished 80s stuff. There’s a lot of Dylan eras, man.

Will Epstein & High Water - Crush - I learned about Epstein’s music by hearing it on the Know Your Enemy podcast - a rare instance of a podcast having intro music so good that I went and checked out the artist’s other stuff. It’s all pretty great!

Gene Clark - No Other - I non-answered a listener question about an instrument on this album, then got a bunch of emails about it and went back and actually answered the question. (The answer: Richard Greene on electric violin!) But man what an album! One of those cult favorites that’s as good as anything better-known from the same era.

Bonny Light Horseman - Keep Me On Your Mind/See You Free - This was a pick from an upcoming guest on the show, and I’ve been listening non-stop. Methodically assembled, beautifully performed, and so patient.

Onward

That’ll do it for this week. Hope you’re all taking care out there. As usual, you can find me on Instagram and Bluesky, at least in the sense that I have accounts there.

I’ll leave you with this pic of Appa, whose fur really pops up against the turquoise couch, despite the fact that, going by her expression here, we have never fed her.

Take care, and keep listening-
~KH
8/1/2025

Last Friday, after months of planning and writing and rehearsing, we put on our big Triple Click live show at the Alberta Rose Theatre. It was so great.

Not only did we pack the place, we packed the place with friendly, supportive people who were absolutely and entirely there to have a good time. I have never played music for a crowd quite like that before, and it was a hell of an experience.

You can listen to the first half of the show in the Triple Click main feed. The two-hour uncut version—complete with songs, audience games, sax solos, and more—is in the MaxFun Bonus Feed for members. So basically, you can sample for free, and for $5, you can get a “ticket” to hear the whole thing. Not a bad deal if you ask me!

This was my first big show in Portland after living here more than 10 years. Even more than that, it was my first time planning and producing a big show of my own material since… I don’t know, man. A long time. It was a big deal for me in ways that I’m still processing. I’m glad we hired Miri to take photos of the night, just so I can have some evidence that it all really happened.

Some stray thoughts on the show:

• My comfort with my musical instruments and equipment is on a different level compared with the last time I put on a show like this. I know how all my gear works, and I was able to assemble a purpose-built setup that made the show and rehearsals a lot easier to pull off. Specifically…

  • My Helix floor unit acquitted itself well, as did my stinky amp. My guitar tone felt more under my control than it ever has, and the Helix’s built-in looper, despite its limited functionality, was good enough that I was able to undo a weird pass on the fly without having to restart the loop. (Why do I keep deciding to open shows with elaborate solo loops? A good question.) I’m very interested in Line 6’s upcoming Stadium refresh of the Helix line, and have some specific performance needs that I’m hoping it will meet.

  • Maddy used my recently acquired Nord Stage 3 keyboard, and that is one hell of an instrument. The overall UX is exactly right—wholly separate zones for organ, piano, and synth, with intuitive switching and blending. Effects are also a cinch to implement. And it sounds fantastic. I can see why so many working keyboard players use these.

  • The night’s gear MVP was actually… my guitar stand? It’s a Hercules tri-guitar stand, and we used it for both my electric and my acoustic, which Jason was playing. I also attached an iPad holder to the middle bar, AND a little clip-on table to hold the iPad audio interface, my capos, tuner, and extra picks. It was basically a little on-stage control tower. I may never again perform without it.

  • I used the “Soundboard Studio” app for all of the iPad sounds I triggered, and was impressed by how versatile it was. I was able to trigger synths and drum loops, the Triple Click theme song, and even a silly game show sound effect. It’s one of those apps that does exactly what it needs to and nothing extra. Which I’m sure means they’re about to discontinue it.

• Maddy sang and played beautifully, and I had a great time working out a guitar part and vocal harmonies for her song, “Solitary Job.” I hope a bunch of new people will check out her music.

• For the audience participation games, Emily made us a four-segment game show wheel out of junk we had laying around the house. We spun it to pick categories. It was very homemade, and that was so much better than if we’d bought a pre-fab one.

• Moose, the venue manager, helped me procure the wooden table you can see in front of us during the seated chat segments of the show. It was upstairs in the second green room, and I just really felt like we needed a table or something there? I think it looks great. Also, Moose is the best.

• I kinda wish we could have had some plants over there in the chat area. Next time.

• Instead of having people line up at the mic to ask questions, we collected written questions ahead of time and read them out on stage. This is a much better way of doing audience participation IMO!

• One person asked about the podcast production process, which let me sit on a stage in front of hundreds of people and talk about podcast editing. Truly, the dream. Related to that, it’s always striking how completely different recording a live podcast from recording one over Zoom. Our show isn’t normally such a comedy routine.

• Editing a live podcast, meanwhile, is actually pretty easy. Because of all the cross-talk and mic bleed, you can’t actually do too much once you sit down with it in the studio. It’s more about trimming out silences and speeding up transitions.

• After the show, the venue gave us a multi-track Logic session with every individual instrument already separated out. That gave me a ton of flexibility when it came to mixing the music, and I’m happy with how the songs sound in the final mix. We’ve come a long way from the days of plugging a minidisc recorder into the board and hoping for the best.

• The crowd sang along with my sax rendition of the Halo theme, and a surprising number of them also knew the words to our closing song, “Still Alive.” I did not realize so many people had that one memorized. That song has a lot of words!

• The on-stage monitor mix was very good, but I was reminded of how easy it is to lose track of your own voice amid the hyped acoustic environment of a stage. As I begin to conceptualize a Strong Songs live show, I do think I want to put together a complete in-ear setup with personalized mixes.

• I was glad we did a longer show with an intermission. Our past live shows have been an hour with no break, and they went by so fast it was difficult to even register that they were happening. This longer show took more work, but it was at least possible to slow down for a few moments, look around, and say, “hey, this is happening.”

I couldn’t have asked for a better night. Thanks to Maddy and Jason for letting me talk them into doing all this extra stuff when we could have just sat on stage and chatted, and thanks to everyone at the Alberta Rose Theatre for making it all so easy for us. Biggest thanks of all to everyone who bought a ticket and came out.

Next up: Strong Songs Live. Next year, same venue? Sounds like a plan to me.

Strong Songs Season Finale: Just Call On Me, Brother

Friday also marked the end of Strong Songs Season Seven (it was a big day!). I closed the season out with an episode about “Lean On Me” by Bill Withers.

I've been looking forward to talking about Bill on the show for a long time, and realized early in planning the season out that he'd make for a great finale. This season has had its share of elaborate, technical breakdowns of elaborate, technical music, but I didn't want to lose sight of the fact that many of the best songs are also the simplest. So who better to end with than Withers, a songwriter who embodied that ethos in both his music and his life.

I'm so proud of this season, and I hope you've all enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed making it. Season Seven represents ten new hours of Strong Songs, and while ten hours of podcasting may not seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, it represents months of work on my part.

I’ve got a handful of interviews planned to run over the summer as I begin work on Season Eight. As always, people who support the show on Patreon will get everything two weeks early. I’m taking a short break before I start all that up, so in the meantime, go catch up on any episodes you may have missed!

Onward

That’ll do it for now. I have been going hard for the past few months and am going to try to relax for a while. I hope you’re all able to do the same. As always, you can find me on Instagram and Bluesky, posting whenever I don’t think better of it.

I’ll leave you with this pic of Appa, who likes to stand both in and out of the screen door, just so she can be ready for anything.

Take care and keep listening -
~KH
7/18/2025

Today’s musicians have easy access to home studios filled with fun and fascinating tools, as well as the on-demand dopamine hit of social media performance. It’s understandable that one might get wrapped up in all that cool stuff and stop going on stage in front of actual people.

Call it gigging, playing out, doing shows — whatever you call it, I haven’t been doing much of it lately. I haven’t performed my own music in ages, and when I have played out, it’s been on saxophone, in other people’s bands. Meanwhile I’ve been over here learning, practicing, writing… and thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I’ve been connecting and sharing music with more people than ever! But I haven’t been working up a set, packing up my gear and getting in front of actual people. As a result, some important musical muscles have gotten woefully out of shape.

Fortunately, Triple Click’s upcoming show has given me a reason to get myself in gear. (It’s this coming Friday at the Alberta Rose and there are still tickets!) Triple Click is a video game podcast, but all three hosts are musicians, and we like to add music to our live shows when possible. I’ll be able to bring over a bunch of instruments from my studio down the road, so in addition to talking about Donkey Kong and Outer Wilds, I’ll be looping guitar stuff, playing saxophone… we’ll have a keyboard for Maddy… I even wrote a new song to kick the night off.

When July was still a few months away, the show took on a pleasantly abstract quality whenever I thought about it. Cool, I thought, we’re gonna do a show. I had the broad strokes outlined in my mind, and the particulars would come. We had so much time.

Then I closed my eyes for five minutes and the show was less than a month away. Whoops! It was time to get down to it, to figure out what was actually going to have to happen in this show I’d been daydreaming about.

For example: the songs. In addition to the new intro song, we’ll be performing one of my co-host Maddy Myers’ originals, as well as a cover. The process of taking any of those songs from “mostly done” to “ready for performance” is awfully ruthless, at least for me. I sit down and try to play through it and find myself immediately frustrated. This part doesn’t work right; this part is too difficult to sing. This key doesn’t work on guitar. I don’t know how to make this transition work. I’m supposed to play a solo here but it sounds weird. So I start cutting, then grabbing what’s left and wresting it into shape. The idea of the song meets the sledgehammer of practical implementation. It’s violent stuff, at least creatively speaking, but in the end I’m left with an actual song. One I can sing and play from start to finish!

I’ve undergone the same process with my instruments and equipment. I’ve been using a Line 6 Helix in the studio for a couple of years but this will be my first time using it on stage. (My stinky amp will be there too, of course.) It’s easy enough to use a Helix like a regular guitar pedalboard, pressing each “stompbox” button to turn a given effect on or off. But as I got down to brass tacks, I realized I had way too many things plugged in, and way too many options available. I didn’t need every effect and sound known to man; I needed three or four tones, and I needed to be able to quickly switch between them. I didn’t need a huge multi-channel looper; I needed a simple looper I could fade out with a volume pedal.

I knew I could get the Helix to do those things, but I hadn’t taken the time to learn how, because I hadn’t needed to. Its software is kind of a kludgy mess, and you can get perfectly good sounds out of it without getting into command center customization or snapshot management. Now, with a clear goal in mind, I sat down and spent a few hours learning how to actually get the thing to do the specific tasks I needed it to do. It was surprisingly rewarding.

I’ve undergone a similar process of editing and trimming with every other element of the show:

• My voice has gotten pretty out of shape over the past year, and even the relatively simple songs I’m singing at this show have required a vocal wake-up regimen

• Maddy will be playing my keyboard, which has a whole series of live performance features I’d never investigated. I sure know how they work now!

• My guitar strings are ancient and the neck pickup volume pot has been cutting out; the latter thing is not a big deal in the studio but definitely a big deal on stage

• An iPad is a powerful musical tool, but it can do basically anything. It’s been helpful to have just a few simple things I needed it to do, and to figure out how to make it do them

• Do I have any cool shirts? I do not. Still working on that one (Update: Emily found me a couple good options)

These past couple weeks have been defined by an increasingly keen focus, and a sense of narrowing. Narrowing in on what I actually need; narrowing the scope of the show and my role in it. Narrowing down what I needed to focus on any given day. It’s been stressful, but not unpleasant. All that narrowing has been refreshing, similar to the feeling I get when I delete an unnecessary paragraph from a piece of writing. Good riddance. Look how much less there is now!

I’ve long loved the idea of the “Musician’s Tripod”, first articulated to me decades ago by my friend Daniel Fabricant. The Musician’s Tripod has three legs: learning, teaching, and performing. You should always be challenging yourself to learn something new; always be refining your own expertise by teaching; and always be taking what you know and actually doing the thing. Neglect any one of the three legs, and you’ll get out of balance.

I tend to neglect the performance leg more than the other two, and it feels good to right the balance even just a small amount. And while performance itself is great, just getting ready for this show has been stressful, bracing, and energizing. I feel more musically focused than I’ve been in a long time. Man, I need to perform more.

Every Lyric Matters

The newest episode of Strong Songs is the second mailbag of Season Seven. We’ve got questions on topics ranging from bluegrass to Blue Prince to the blues. Also, we get a very special guest answer for a question about lyrics. Make that guests, actually.

About those guests: I've been recording interviews to run during the time in between seasons, and realized it would be smart to ask folks to help answer a listener question while I've got them. Then I can include their answer on a mailbag episode, as a fun way to tease a future interview. So, consider this episode a proof of concept, and look forward to a much longer episode with The Wailin’ Jennys over the summer.

Season Seven Finale will be out next Friday, and it’s a good one imo. If you want to listen to it right now, go join the Patreon! I’ll have a bunch of good new stuff in the feed in between seasons, and as always, patrons get episodes two weeks early. Thanks for listening, everyone.

Onward

That’ll do it for now; I’ve got a show to prepare for, and these lyrics aren’t going to memorize themselves. As usual, you can find me on Instagram and Bluesky, posting infrequently but posting nonetheless. It’s a mess out there. I hope you’re all taking care.

I’ll leave you with this pic of Appa, who sometimes gets sad and goes to sleep under the shoe rack. There’s a lesson in there somewhere, I’m sure of it.

Take care and keep listening -
~KH
7/5/2025