Bliss and Drumming

You can listen to me read this post on Soundcloud or Youtube, or as Bliss and Drumming wherever you get your podcasts.

The Beaux Cheveux album Ro Sham Bo came out in 2018, and while it’s not a re-release, while I’m speaking about previously released material, I think it’s worth mentioning. I really love this record. Guitarist Adrian Conner and I wrote the songs together, and the writing process was fun and effortless.

Basically, I created ten drum tracks. We sat at my kitchen table, and I would hit play, and Adrian, a master of improvisation, played to the drum tracks until she felt she’d said enough. Then, I took the guitar parts and picked out verses and choruses and other parts and arranged them and wrote lyrics. Then she took those instantaneous melodic ideas and honed them into real parts. Then we recorded the songs with Rob Preston and made this little jewel of album. Continue reading “Reflections on the Song “Holiday of Love””

You can listen to me read this post on Soundcloud or Youtube, or as Bliss and Drumming wherever you get your podcasts.

“The World and You” was written for the Stars Turn Me On album Goldrush. I redid the version above with a full band, my songwriting partner Justin Caucutt and Judah Collins on bass, and the audio is on the album The Collection from 2014. I wanted to do a couple videos of songs where I was playing drums and singing at the same time. People would ask me if I ever sang back there, so I thought I’d record me doing it.

There are two problems with singing from behind the drumkit. First, it’s kind of a nightmare to get the vocal mic to not pick up the drums without some experienced and dedicated sound person to have your back. The bigger problem is I feel dorky, or more dorky than usual back there when I sing. I feel like all drummer jokes ever uttered descend on my head. There are a very few drummers who have pulled this off and looked cool doing it: Levon Helm, Brann Dailor, Trinidad Leal from Dixie Witch. I am just not that cool. Continue reading “Old Material, New Release: The World and You”

You can listen to me read this post on Soundcloud or Youtube, or as Bliss and Drumming wherever you get your podcasts.

On we go, back in time, to a song I wrote on my first album, Conversation with Francis Bakin from 2008, “River Now.” Gretchen plays guitar here, I’m playing the drums and singing, Rob Preston is on bass. These are some favorite lyrics, and at the time it felt to me as if the vocals weren’t strong, but now I can hear what I was going for, a stripped down, stark and wistful vocal treatment. The backing vocals were meant as a chorus of regular people singing, and I remember liking the way they fall in and out of key. These decisions illustrate my desire to paint a picture and let go of the need to make things that are “right.” Which contributes to the thwarting of pop star success, I guess.

Sometimes songs are cinematic, and this song evokes a complete movie that I experience when I sing it or hear it. Continue reading “Old Material, New Release: River Now”

You can listen to me read this post on Soundcloud or Youtube, or as Bliss and Drumming wherever you get your podcasts.

This next song in this series in which I’m discussing songs I’m re-releasing doesn’t quite fall into the category, as this is not a Clementine Moss song that I wrote the lyrics to, but a song from short-lived band The Solid, that I played drums in and that I helped write the music for. This song is “The Rich Girl and the Ranch Hand.”

The Solid was formed after guitarist Justin Caucutt and I met. I was playing in Zepparella and had just finished my first solo album and felt like I should have a third project to round things out in which I was playing original material on drums.

Justin is a great storehouse of riffs, and we started to get the music together by jamming a lot. He invited in bassist Greg Randolph from the Stonerrock band Greenhouse Effect, and the songs started to gel. Then Justin had the idea to bring in a singer from Denver, Brian Hagman. We flew him in and recorded a five-song EP, Arrivals and Departures, 2009.

Continue reading “Old Material, New Release: The Rich Girl and the Ranch Hand”

You can listen to me read this post on Soundcloud or Youtube, or as Bliss and Drumming wherever you get your podcasts.

For the next re-released song from the old catalog, we’re going to stick with the Stars Turn Me On album Goldrush for “ShangriLa Blues” from 2012. The audio shared in the video appears on the compilation album The Collection from 2014  .

Stars Turn Me On is the project with Justin Caucutt, and this song arose from this badass riff Justin came up with. That’s Justin’s forte, coming up with killer riffs. I love how this one just immediately announces itself and is relentless. I love the bassline, created by Robert Preston, who records everything I do. I love the way the vocal fits into the riff.

Continue reading “Old Material, New Release: ShangriLa Blues”

You can listen to me read this post on Soundcloud or Youtube, or as Bliss and Drumming wherever you get your podcasts.

Oh boy! The next song up for re-release is from my first album, Conversation with Francis Bakin from 2008, and it’s one of my favorites. “Sunshine” was the first video I ever created, and I think it might have been the first song I wrote in this period. Gretchen Menn provided her killing guitar here too.

This song has a special place in my heart, because it is so close to the essence of all the inner work of being Clem. It’s serious and silly both, and there are some facets here I love to explore about who we are as people and personalities, and the major lessons I’ve learned in my own journey.

Continue reading “Old Material, New Release: Sunshine”

You can listen to me read this post on Soundcloud or Youtube, or as Bliss and Drumming wherever you get your podcasts.

For the third re-release of old material, we’re going to turn to Stars Turn Me On, the project with my dear friend and guitarist Justin Caucutt.  The song is the eponymous song “Stars Turn Me On,” from the album Goldrush in 2012.

I met Justin old-school, through Craigslist. I had just finished my first album Conversation with Francis Bakin in 2008. Zepparella was working, and I had this songwriting project, and it seemed like there should be a third wheel to my musical being. I wanted to play drums in an original project. In 2009, a good way for me to do that was to put an ad on Craigslist, spelling out the type of player I was looking for.

Justin was the only person who answered the ad. When he showed up to jam, I remember us looking at each other in the practice studio lobby and both smiling goofily. We sort of immediately had a kind of recognition that we might already know each other, and we’ve been fast friends ever since. Continue reading “Old Material, New Release: Stars Turn Me On”

You can listen to me read this post on Soundcloud here, or as Bliss and Drumming wherever you get your podcasts.

The next song up on the docket for re-release is from my first album, Conversation with Francis Bakin from 2008, Cold Snap.

I had been living in San Francisco for seven years or so at this point, having settled here in 2001 after the year on the road with the band BOTTOM. In 2007, I was taken from a 10-day silent meditation retreat to the hospital room of my mom, who went in for an emergency surgery (she’s very healthy now). In that room, maybe because I was in a sort of manic state of being plopped into a very stressful and emotional situation after seven days of pure meditation and silence, a whole album of lyrics and melodies fell out of me. Those songs were recorded with Zepparella with Anna Kristina singing the words.

Shortly after that, I realized that if I was going to keep writing songs and lyrics through this new portal that had opened, I should figure out how to sing the songs myself. My fraught relationship with my singing voice had been a tussle since my early 20s, (I wrote about that in my previous blog post) and I set out to work that out through my own writing. I holed up in my studio and wrote drumbeats. Lyrics came out of the beats, and then vocal melodies, arrangements. Continue reading “Old Material, New Release: Cold Snap”

You can listen to me read this post on Soundcloud here, or as Bliss and Drumming wherever you get your podcasts.

Today begins the first post of looking back at early musical endeavors, re-releasing songs created in the first few years of my songwriting journey.

I imagine most artists are this way except the lucky few: when I revisit early work, it’s hard to get past hearing all of the problems with the track. For someone like me who has battled a harsh internal critic, it can be kind of excruciating to listen to the first songs I was putting into the world as a singer and songwriter. At first listen, I wade through the issues I have been telling myself the songs have for all the years since creating them.

However, I guess enough time has passed and I’ve done enough work to strangle that critic, or at least make some kind of peace with her, to be able to listen and appreciate these early endeavors. I see where I was and I see where I have been going, and now it is rather sweet to listen. I hear some pure impulses, and appreciate the bravery and creative output. I remember how it felt to be her, and to recognize how far along I’ve moved.

Continue reading “Old Material, New Release: Marathon Runner.”

I’ve been running around and sitting in one place, both lately. Zepparella shows, and then coming home glued to different creative projects I’m working on. Drum practice has been fun in a brand new way, songwriting is requiring a patience and deep dive that is both delicious and a bit terrifying, and another writing project has been sort of all-consuming and pure fun.

I drove down from Portland on Sunday after a few shows and the Old Man had a killer documentary waiting for me, “Milford Graves: Full Mantis.” To call Graves a drummer is to sell him short, as he was a genius, visionary, multi-disciplinarian, professor. Luckily, the Old Man has been collecting Graves albums for a while, so we’re in a lovely exploration of the music as well. Look up the doc if you haven’t caught it yet. I found it endlessly inspirational, and his explanation of what it is to swing was… chef’s kiss.

Continue reading “To Swing Means You Want to Live to the Next Day”