Vagabond

there's always another girl

I can’t believe it has been 15 years since my album There’s Always Another Girl was released. Freaky. I have it—TAAG— on my mind now because we are working on an upcoming reissue of the vinyl.

There is a song on the album called “Vagabond”. It was based on a haunting film by Agnes Varda called “Vagabond”. I think I saw it first at the Nickelodeon cinema in Boston around the time the film came out in the 1980’s and I was just starting college. Like my song “Mabel” which was inspired by the film “A Woman Under The Influence”, my “Vagabond” sketches a troubled, defiant, and largely unknowable woman whose story and portrayal moved me.

I was having a really difficult time singing on the day I sang this song in the studio. I am usually pretty insecure when I first sing any new song that I have never sung in front of anyone before but I can usually shake off those nerves after a few takes. It probably doesn’t help that I often write melodies that are ambitious in the sense that they go outside of the strongest area of my limited range (my ears are bigger than my mouth) but I figure out ways to make it work.

On this day, though, I was really struggling to get the melody out. I couldn’t get comfortable and settle in to make my voice do what I wanted it to; I tried and tried but couldn’t find solid ground, couldn’t find my stength, couldn’t get into a groove.

The first verse was wan and unsteady and I had no good guidance for the guys in the band (Pete Caldes on drums and Ed Valauskas on bass). It was only two chords, which can be more challenging sometimes than when there is more going on; more with which to disguise any underlying weakness in a foundation, and I wasn’t providing much for anyone to grab onto and dig in. I was hamstrung.

There were times I almost abandoned the whole thing. My voice was so thin. Like a butterfly’s wing, and not in a good way; like it could be torn apart by a sudden heavy downpour. Like a car with a messed-up clutch or a runner with a sprained ankle. Low notes, high notes—all of them were so hard to maneuver, impossible to master. I added piles of background harmonies in the choruses to try to fill them out and beef up my pitiful lead vocal.

At some point I leaned in, or succumbed, to my failure and frustration and just went with what was (not) happening. After the guitar solo, after that lone “where will you go”, I hit a wall and just let out a weak and wordless moan of futility. I listen now and I like it.

I don’t fully understand what happened in the studio that day. Maybe I was unconsciously identifying with the ultimate frailty of the woman in the movie? My voice and body were embodying the bleak story? I’d started out the song calling the subject “her” but already by the first chorus I was referring to her as “you”, as if I knew her and felt closer to her.

The song kicks into a sort of groove, finally, thank god, when the the guitar solo comes in.

My guitars were tuned with the high string on “D” rather than “E”. Drop-D tuning on the low string is a common rawk trope-y thing but to do it on the top was something new for me and it added something cool to the overall sound and feeling of the whole song, made it a little more interesting.

I always loved the way the harmonica(s) sounded on Elliott Smith’s song “Alphabet Town” and I think I was trying to find that sound when I did my harmonicas in the second verse of “Vagabond”. Smith’s simple, long-held notes, dry and close to the microphone, strategically panned, were so evocative. I wasn’t trying to copy him; it was more of a similar instinct that I had, partly because I don’t really know how to play the harmonica—blowing notes in and out and holding them so they are sweet and resonant is all I can really do, and it’s all I want to do. It suffices. In this case especially, I didn’t want to be honking and noodling and shredding all over a mournful song, even if I could.

I have to commend Ed Valauskas— who played the bass— for that one bit in the second verse, under the words “…your jacket is feeling thin…” I can’t remember if I told him to do something momentarily prog or melodic or fast-moving or what but when he played this part I broke down laughing with joy. I love it! I made him leave it in; he was skeptical and thought maybe it was too much, too wacky. But I LOVED it and still do.

Here is the song: