For this is someone else's paradise and I am taking up valuable space.

Corbie is Afraid of the Bear - Lollipop Factory - Blood Red River - January 13th @ the Pinhook (Durm)

I don't have any confidence in my solo set yet and I really don't have much to say about this show. That said, I'm sure I'll end up on a dune buggy with no brakes of a ramble once I get started. Here's praying to Asimov, to Vonnegut, to Clarke... here's bribing Thompson, here's bribing Bangs that I don't. Something tells me I'm in the same corner as those last two, and as much as everyone and their cousin wants to be the next Hunter S. Thompson, the closer and closer I get to his muse the scarier it gets. Once that shit takes control, you have no idea what's happening, and though your everyday life is a series of facts stopped on the way home for gas and pumped gas while staring into the middle distance... let the dogs out when I got home... walked to the mailbox, which is a greater thrill than most things owing to its simplicity and the potential for surprise... came back inside and let the dogs in... got kind of mad when Ronin ate catshit out of the litterbox. What is up with dogs and catshit? these facts get muddled on the way to the page and I worry about my ability to get paid to write about the real world. I live in it, I buy groceries in it, I sleep in it and it's where my alarm clock and my snooze button are, but can I write about it? The temptation to borrow someone else's muse is so strong, is so popular, but that would be the easy way and Corbie can't do things the easy way, can he?

Maybe just once?

No?

Shit.

I was hoping I could cheat at it, just this once. That my vision of the future might come precisely true. That I may not have to realize after years of trying to force the miracle that salvation lies in the unknowable, in the forces of the absurd, and that the beauty that is my life is the beauty of a well-thrown curveball...

The little light that shines tells me not to talk about this show. It was a total bust, an absolute downer, a joke minus punchline.

Put simply, I started playing at shortly after 9:00. My solo set is me, my 11 pedals, my three amps, and whatever guitar has new strings on it at the time. I play these meditative guitar songs, theme and variation style. They are very, very loud and very, very introspective.

I started playing but I didn't look up. I get really nervous without a band (even if it's just me and another person) so I saw my amps and I saw the uneven hardwood of the floors. I started on "Manitutsu" and I played the riff a few times to get into the swing of it. There were maybe 15 people in the place, all of them in the bar and not by the stage, but I was ok with that. Then I kicked on my Micro POG and built the riff a little. Then I kicked on my orange Boss distortion and brought the song to a moderate intensity (only one distortion, usually when I play this song at home I build to three or all four distortions). I kept it there for a second, then brought it back down to totally clean and Soundcat Greg slid the note that said "Turn down. People are leaving." onto the floor directly in front of my pedals and it stopped me short.

This project is about as personal as I get. My lyrics with Where the Buffalo Roamed are honest and shameless, but so what. They're just words. Battle Rockets is a glimpse into my mindset, but it's pretty rational and it's based upon cooperation. It would be selfish for me to write stuff like my solo work for Battle  Rockets, it would stop being a collaboration and it would be all Corbie Hill and who the fuck wants that?

Ultimately, the question is, who the fuck does want that? I don't know when it started, probably sometime in high school (start the clock somewhere in the late '90s), but when I play guitar on my own I go to this weird and dangerous place where I shut off my rational mind entirely and speak my emotions through feedback, distortion, and (when necessary) broken strings. It's an uncontrolled art.

I got an opportunity to play solo at Treetown, so I took it. I developed this freeform into something I could reproduce live and it kind of worked. I agreed to play with Lollipop Factory because not only do I dig them, but we've tried to play two shows together over the past year and both have fallen through for different reasons. I volunteered the new solo project because neither of my bands could make the date and because, well, I wanted to see if the solo show worked.

The solo show did work. I sounded fucking good. I lost my confidence after "Manitutsu" and played an abortive version of "Theme for a Tundra Ghost" next. I didn't finish it and there was no applause. I didn't even talk to anyone but Bekah and David, of Lollipop Factory, because I felt like I was kind of there beside everyone else, but not among them.

Bekah and David played a phenomenal show. I really enjoy the overblown death cabaret of their act, they are gothic bards wandering an endless trailer park... Tim Burton's overactive imagination splits from him as a teenager, goes off to Ohio to grow up, and then sets itself loose across the American landscape, all garish colors and tophats and serpentine harmonies. Come see the beauty of junk, come see yourself in a warped mirror and laugh your ass off. This is the sideshow that ran the circus. This is the lion tamer that ran away to join Queen. What does any of that mean? I have no idea.

Nothing against Blood Red River, but I didn't see them play. I felt powerfully down and had to go after Lollipop Factory played. Honestly, I don't feel missed, but this is fine. I'd be a real egotist if I thought the quality of a room depended on my presence.

On the way home I listened to Pythagoras, the first record I've made with my new solo direction, just to make sure I liked it and, you know what? I do like it. I'm proud of it. It's a fucking good track.

It's a short album consisting of a single 19-minute song. Does that sound cool to you? Yeah? Well, download it and tell me what you think.

I guess what really frustrates me here is how the legend of Durham meets with the reality of Durham. I thought it was the kind of place where I could plug in and go weird and go loud, I thought people would hear it and interact with it and accept it as music, even if they didn't necessarily dig. Instead, the venue turned against me in the time I was most vulnerable and I was still feeling pretty shaky until I went to bed.

Then I woke up late... late for me is 7:30, even if I play a show the night before. I felt a momentary shock of dammit before realizing that it didn't matter. That maybe I should play more solo shows, but that it was ok if I didn't, but that there was a time and a place for everything. I've had some great shows at the Pinhook, but the solo one wasn't it.