Day 15: February 13th, 2010
Joe "Krafty" Kowan  

Joe Kowan sounds like Jonathan Richmond and Woody Guthrie both had sex with a nasaly voiced woman on the same night and no one really knew who was the father. He has been making audiences laugh and occasionally cringe in the Boston area for years. His songs include titles like “The Stalkers Love Song,” “Double-sided” and “Polly Wally Dizzle” which includes the immortal line “I made a diorama of me getting with your momma” Most recently, Joe released his song “Crafty” to youtube as his alter ego J-Crafty, “the original crafta.” www.craftygangsta.com

       Joe suggested that perhaps today we should write a nonsense song. Joe has written some great nonsense songs in his day and I feel there’s an art to nonsense songs though I’m not sure exactly what it is. Hoodoo Voodoo from the “Mermaid Ave” album that Billy Bragg and Wilco put together is a great nonsense song. Just plain fun. James Mercer of the Shins does something else entirely in his songs writing in metaphors that point an emotional truth and hint at action within the song without really giving anything away. And then there’s Dylan of course and Bowie “Ziggy Stardust” happens to be playing right now on my itunes.
       Nonsense is a blessing a curse. When you can write anything, what do you write? I dove in by taking a look at the picture above and writing down all the images that stuck out for me. Bike, grandma, bucket, etc…. Then I started word map but only did one string of words. I decided I would put one of those words in each line of the song. I figured that would give all the nonsense song sort of subconscious connection at least. And then? I just wrote stream of consciousness-like until I felt I was done. I did tidy things up a little so it felt like a story to me. That almost felt like cheating.

Timmy Riordan

Timmy has been called ‘the hidden gem” of the Somerville/Cambridge music scene. In February 2009 he wrote and posted 28 songs on his website. This year he’s doing it again.  He has also decided there should be 8 day in a week (in honor of the Beatles of course) and has invited 32 of his songwriting friends to support him through the month by each writing a song themselves. Over the last summer he recorded 8 of those songs on a CD entitled “Peter Let Me In.” Each CD includes an original cover, hand-drawn just for you in Sharpie by Timmy. Proceeds from this hand-crafted album are all going directed to the making of “New York’s Ignoring Me” his next studio album to be released in summer of 2010.