lucasmaddy.com

New videos up

It’s a calm day in Manhattan. The deluge of the week is past, and Wildcat fans the world around are a-twitter as the spring game is going on right now. A special hello to my brother Christopher, who is on the sidelines right now as a temporary student manager. Atta boy.

“See Lonely” and “Fat Julie” are now up on YouTube. Check em out – they were recorded with a Flip video camera, and came out fair. I could have done with a shave prior to recording, but didn’t feel it was worth the time

After some encouraging phone calls recently, I’m giving thought to trying my hand in Nashville, let me know what you think. Go Royals.

Maddy

From the couch of Traffas…on a Thursdee.

If there is anything that can be appreciated in my life, it is that I will never lose the desire to watch a movie after everyone else has gone to bed. With “Clerks II” simultaneously assaulting my sensibilities and challenging my vocabulary at the same time, there is no doubt that I have reached a rarely found level of bliss. Nothing as monumental as love, but also nothing as simplistic as an ice cream cone on a windless summer day. Stimulating.

I feel lyrics coming on again, needing to get to some Dale Jessup (great cowboy name) has written, and also have an insatiable desire to simply hold a guitar. I can’t go on…there is an Ibanez within reach…I leave you with the beginnings of what I hope will be my next finished lyrical project.

It Is What It Is by Lucas Maddy

She cut me like a hotel razor, burned me like a bummed cigarette, hung my heart on a wire hanger, walked away with no regret. I still live…it is what it is. Don’t forget, just forgive…I still live.

lyrics copyright Lucas Maddy, 2010.

It’s FRIDAY!

There are precious few ways to pass the time in Norton, Kansas when harvest or planting or working cattle are not eminent. I chose to read or assault the farm cats and dogs with a pawn shop guitar and amp. Gossip is mostly the sport of choice, a drug with addictive properties that rival any amphetamine. Scandalous affairs are public knowledge, impending sale of farmland is always a hot topic – deep pockets can often be unaware of the deal until a coffee conversation points them in the direction of their next write-off. Dreams seem not to be at any forefront. Rarely, if ever, have I witnessed a sage old man, staring wistfully into the middle distance and wont to expel his youthful conquests with a twinkle in his eye. Just as seldom are those moments of self-realization where Farmer Old Tyme suddenly comes to grip with his rapidly approaching day of judgement and makes the wrongs right, brings the hurt and happiness to the surface to  mourn or celebrate.

No, mostly people stay the same as they were…they just eat less doing it, as the small town becomes an island of their claim, and they go about knowing everything they can about that island. These are the spies of their tiny domain, who do their best to recollect every fact. And either they do it with amazing accuracy, or else their audience is so afraid to challenge for fear of being challenged themselves, that seldom is any thought a wrong one. The conversation just rolls on. I guess this is what the world was like before texting.

Rain in NW KS…to be celebrated.

I sit at a purring laptop, yearning to spill more than what can be sopped up in just one sitting. So, I’ll contain, and limit to the recap of affecting events as of late.

First off, Rhett Miller. Honestly, I had rarely listened before when it was playing as Traffas and I rode to a show in a purring Cummins. Use of purring, now three times in so short of a span? Called for, I say. Undoubtedly.

It was Singular Girl that spun round my head for a nickel’s play yesterday as I drove back from Wichita. Beyond simple melodic pleasing, it has a certain tinge of dork to it that must be appreciated. “You’re like plate techtonics” is not what draws me…Rhett avoids an obvious “sonic” rhyme and burrows around the nerd alert, refusing to oblige the beg for resolution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saTT9xpYSFc

This is not new, nor resurfacing in response to an artist being convicted, murdered, or entering “Dancing With the Stars”. Rather, it’s just time to pay attention.

For those of you who traipse here for the music to be disappointed by a blog, here is an update – Tim Sprigg, Katelyn Autry and I are in Norton, practicing on a regular basis, and booking some shows acoustic and full band, to be joined by the rhythm section of Trent Boehner and Tommie Lebanon. New writing is an occupational hazard, a shiny bright lyric begging to be recorded when in fact Bad Little Man, Power of a Song, Last of Your Kind, and Every Man’s a Cowboy, just to name a few, continue to sit patiently in line. In an effort to stir up some reaction, I’d like to hear from you what songs you may like to have recorded and put up. In fact, the first three people that subscribe to this blog (I think you can subscribe to the blog, if not, just steal your neighbor’s copy off his front step. He’ll get another one…he’s rich) will be sent all future copies of fresh cuts for preview and response.

I like response, especially from non-writers. Why? Well, if you own a restaurant, shouldn’t you ask the customers what to do better rather than the chef and the waitstaff? Amen.

I’m heading back into the rain. Time to post a letter and dive back into Lonesome Dove. The book this time.

Can’t wait to be seeing you at some upcoming shows. Check the gig calendar for one in your hemisphere of influence.

Maddy

Beware the Ideas of March

…because they may include a hand grenade.

Hardy few readers that you are, I must apologize for my gross absence over the last…well, it’s been a long time. But thankfully, I am back in the saddle and shall be posting irregularly for the unforseeable future.

Just returned from a great show at Pat’s Blue Rib’n in Manhattan, KS this weekend. Tim Sprigg, Katelyn Autry, and myself have thrown our musical talents in a barrel lately and were finally able to come together and express them for a raucous and appreciative Friday evening crowd. Do yourself a favor and check out Katelyn and Tim anywhere you can – I’m not sure where to send you (youtube for starters…which is always an awful representation of an artist) but try all the same. Be a go-getter, self-starter, do-it-yourself’er…that’s what we need more of in this country.

We will be back to Pat’s on March 19th, then America’s Pub in Wichita on the 27th. Look to see more acoustic shows sprinkled in the mix. It’s been a few years since I did that regularly, and we’re going to get a good local crowd back…locally…wherever that may be.

Not into the novel tonight, but we’ll catch you on the flipside.

oh yeah – Texas shows are in the future. Why? Pretty girls down that way I hear.

later, Lucas

A Chance Encounter…Intended

Two hours later the bar is packed. Happy hour always is. Some intern who has had too many Manhattans keeps pumping dollars into the internet jukebox to play his favorite songs…Counting Crows “Hanginaround”. It’s a short song, so he plays it three times, to make sure everyone gets the point. They do. His friends pull him back to the pool table.

Hey, there she is again. That classy brunette, the one that went France on her drink last week and stormed out the door. The bartender checks her out more.

She’s only classy by nature, not by choice. Best kind. Jeans tonight, designer but not flaunting anything, and a short-sleeve monotone button-up with dangly earrings. Damn, some girls really make others look bad. Amy, the waitress who had to have been cute 3 years and 2 dyejobs ago, couldn’t hold a candle to this girl, but Lord knows she tried. Amy…ha. That kiss he got from her at the New Year’s Eve party. His lips came back smothered in makeup.

Oh the life of a bartender.

oh, step quickly. It’s the quiet GQ boy with the black-as-night overcoat, here for his fingers of scotch. Some people just belong on a higher plane

The Empty Gin Joint

The glasses were drying, and the bar had been wiped down twice. Sports television droned in the background, the merciful tail end of unscripted mid-afternoon talk shows, with sportswriters masquerading as experts.

….to be continued

Mahongany Melancholy

Look, there is no reason for this. Buck the #$%^#$ up.

Remember the girls you dated before? Toned, tanned, and tight enough to bounce quarters off their bellies. This girl was nothing, and she has not left your mind for over two days.

What was so special about her?

Try to remember…

Well, be shallow. You didn’t even get to talk to her, right? So, it’s ok to just judge her off looks. Go ahead and ASSUME her feelings from that tenth-of-a-second look in her eyes. I’m sure you saw the whole of her soul.

Arms. They weren’t frail, bubbly, nickel-bagged or cottage-cheese. Nothing bad about them…that blouse she had on, with the green that absolutely popped her eyes (if she was wearing colored contacts, screw it – don’t want her) had no sleeves, and those arms were ok. I could take that.

No problem.

Eyes were good, moving on.

Who knows about the legs, never even looked. Who looks at legs unless they’re attached to something special that’s walking away. She’d be wearing jeans, but had on some criss-cross strap-type heels…

damn. Ok, only models and girls with confidence and A+ bods pull that off. she passes.

shit. Where am I going to see her again?

Humble desires floated with the arrogance Cuban cigar smoke. The night was chilly, and his fleece did no good. His lips were cold. Bedtime.

At the office

She moved around in her chair for what must have been the 100th time to get comfortable. It was an alright chair – she’d been kinda proud when she found it at Target on a Saturday afternoon when she really wasn’t shopping for anything. It raised and lowerd, had a lumbar support thing too, but she never changed it. The knob was too hard to turn.

It had armrests covered in fake leather too. She didn’t used those much either.

But it tilted, and now she tilted back to close her eyes for just few…seemed like lately she was always rushing throw everything and didn’t even know if she could sit still for a minute. She’s going to try now, eyes closed…
1,2,3,4,5,6,7…….He didn’t have a wedding ring? Did he? No, she would have noticed that.

16,17,18,19,…maybe he took it off to hit on girls. Ok, if that was the case, she didn’t want anything to do with him anyway! Sleaze…

36.37…but if he’d taken it off to go after women, why not her? she had been looking pretty good that night, hadn’t she?

Now she got out her compact and opened it to look at herself in the foundation-dusted mirror…

Her eyes were too wide open. she looked like a 12 year old peeking out of a grown woman’s body…so she narrowed them…better.

Now she could barely see the color of her eyes. SHIT. Guys liked green eyes, didn’t they? Here’s were pretty enough, though she could see specks of brown in them…how does that happen?

she didn’t make it the full minute.

What he said…

I’ve been working all day and my office started to finally seem cold at about 8:45 pm when I was sitting there watching sportscenter on the tv in the corner and I thought man this is ridiculous I’m 28 years old and I’m not going home to a wife and kids or anything maybe it would be alright to go grab a beer quick and possibly meet somebody I can ask to dinner next Tuesday. i think it would be nice to have a dinner date after work sometime, you see it in the movies all the time and maybe it’ll work for me but i can’t do it next Monday because I just don’t think monday feels like it’s part of the week, it really seems like it’s just squeezing the beginning. so i put on my suit jacket and checked in the mirror quick. i’ve got a bathroom off to the side of my office and i keep all the vitals in there, I even put fresh gel in my hair and sprayed on some of that Lucky cologne that’s been sitting in the same spot for 2 years. I guess i’ll just walk across the street to that little bar even though I always try to avoid it because I don’t want to confine myself to one area, work and play ya know? Whatever, this green Landrover honks at me as I walk across the street. I push open the wooden door (it has a bell on it, sounds like a holiday) and walk up to the bar. I figure drinking 3 or so will get me good and ready to sleep. there is a gorgeous brunette standing beside me, classy too, with tressy hair and these earrings that have little curly-q’s to them. she might be the one, she’s cute, and she looks smarter than everybody else here wearing college sweatshirts or tube tops. I’m going to smile at her. She’s looking at me, I can tell as I turn to get the bartender’s attention to order. now she looks disgusted. she stares at her drink, what did I do, and shakes her head. she’s out the door now, and her drink is sitting there with 1/2 of it left…huh, she wasn’t wearing lipstick, I can tell by the rim. I like her even more. She walked away.