Voyager

Photo by Chip Tilden

Phil McCarthy - Voyager

My first album is finally out! Voyager is now available in all digital formats, follow the link above, hopefully with CDs to follow soon! Of course I've been planning this a long time, but with more home alone time during Covid, I was able to negotiate my way through Pro Tools enough to get this one out to y'all. All of the songs are my own. Some of them have been rattling around my head for years, some were recently written, as recently as a few weeks ago. But they each have a story, so here are the stories.

First, a few notes about the album itself. The title is a homage to my favorite album of all time - Long Distance Voyager by The Moody Blues, which obviously also gives this blog its title. It also references my own long-distance running (ultrarunning) adventures, and the places around the world they have led me to. The photograph is by my good friend, Chip Tilden, who took it a few years ago, but I figured I still look enough like this to justify using a pic a few years old.

1. Mexican Mary. Many years ago, I was back in Nebraska for Christmas, and I attended Midnight Mass. This was always a big thing, lots of ceremony, incense, the Knights of Columbus in full dress uniform, complete with swords, dramatic lighting, and a packed church. The choir sang for an hour before Mass to give the people beautiful music to listen to, and to encourage people to arrive early. During part of this hour, a group of Mexican musicians got up with guitar and sang a few Christmas songs in Spanish. It was very nice, especially for the growing Mexican immigrant community in town. A day or two later, I was talking with someone who I have a great deal of love and respect for, who complained about the Mexican singers. "If they want to sing, they can sing with the 'regular' choir." Me, "It's nice that they show their own heritage and culture." "They sounded terrible. And they weren't dressed well, they were wearing jeans." Me, "Maybe those were the nicest clothes they have." "And why do they always have to put up pictures of Mexican Mary?" [referring to the sacred image of Our Lady of Guadalupe]. How do you respond to that? I respond by writing this song, in my mind all this time, but only recently fully written out. So the song isn't about a prostitute or a drug dealer, it's about the Virgin Mary.

2. Gimme Just a Little Bit of Time. I recently came up with the chorus of this song in a dream, but in my dream it was sung by Culture Club. When I woke up, I remembered the song, shockingly, and I looked to see if it really was a Culture Club song, and it wasn't. So I wrote it out in totally 80s style.

3. Come Rest with Me. Originally written as a duet as part of an unfinished (actually barely started) stage musical, along with "Krakatoa" and "Smile Again," but reimagined as a solo, due to me just having to do everything myself. It reminds us that despite whatever troubles there are going on, sometimes we just need to stop and rest and appreciate each other.

4. Charlene. There was a real "Charlene" (I changed the name to one that fit the music better) years ago, and I wrote this song about her. The song is a little obsessive, a bit exaggerated from real life. We actually did go out for a while, and it didn't work out, with quite a lack of drama.

5. Krakatoa. This was inspired by a documentary on Krakatoa I saw years ago. I decided to add a mythological, anthropomorphic aspect, as if the volcano were alive and had finally achieved independence. Metaphorically, it could be about just about anything - how one person's tragedy is another person's revolution, or it could be about a volcano. I wrote it as being simply about life-changing cataclysm, how the things you expect to always be there and unchanging, the very earth beneath your feet, betray you.

6. Summer Passed Quickly. This could also be about just about anything you want. For me, it's simply about the passing of time, getting older.

7. Nebraska Sky. This was written as I ran across the USA in 2018, as I was passing through Wyoming, getting closer to my home state of Nebraska. After crossing the Continental Divide and seeing the landscape slowly turn from high desert plateau to plains and grasslands, and the sky turn from a dry uninterrupted blue to one with a few wispy clouds, I thought, it's starting to look like a Nebraska sky. I wrote the chorus on the road, and I knew it was cheesy and sentimental, but it was genuine, and it brought tears to my eyes when I sang it out loud. I wrote the verses recently to be a little more like a melancholy road song. I do love a good melancholy road song.

8. The Ghosts of Tennessee. This is the newest addition, only a few weeks old. The ghosts are those who live in the past and refuse to move forward, not only those who perpetuate racism in this country, but also those who deny its pervasiveness. It's not just about one man or one state, it's an ideology that eats at humanity, and it's everywhere.

9. Smile Again. This is a reminder that despite whatever troubles befall us, and despite events not turning out as we would hope, we will smile again, and shine again, and laugh again.

10. En El Camino Negro. Free coaching advice - this song will help you run up any hill. I wrote it on the blacktop-covered roads over the hills of northeast Nebraska (yes, there are hills in Nebraska) as a way to remind myself of my hill-running strategy of 32 steps running, 16 steps walking. And it helped me entertain myself as well. It's built on the two pitches I heard from my own exhalations, and I came up with a very simple melody, and eventually more complex countermelodies for the background. The verses are about things that I saw or felt or thought while running across the country. It was meant to be somewhat nonsensical, and I wrote it in my terrible broken Spanish to emphasize the nonsensical and whimsical attitude.