“I'm a conceptual musical artist but the concepts are vague and I'm not willing to explain them.”
This has been the description on my SoundCloud account for years. It’s mostly true but also a bit of a joke. I really don’t, usually, like to explain any of my songs. I’d rather they explain themselves. I think, though, that perhaps that’s a bit stingy sometimes. So, I’ve decided to get into Muy Fuego and dig into what’s going on, in my head, on that one.
I made my living as an ironworker right up until I fell in April of 2022. It’s a very male-dominated world. This culture dominated my life. I made most of my friends there, spent much of my time there, and focused most of my attention there to make a living, right up until I fell and then, poof, it was gone.
I couldn’t play at all for almost a year, and it took a bit longer to start writing new music again. Muy Fuego was the third song I wrote that made it to the album. The first few, not on the album, went in the trash. I also mostly stayed at home while I recovered, although I did move in the middle of that first year of recovery.
I wrote the song after a visit with a friend. We had never met in person before. We had met online, sharing music, but my move left me much closer to him. While Jonathan is nothing like the construction guys I had spent so much time with, the male bonding brought back, for the first time in over a year, a distinct pleasure.
The song is meant to be a sort of love letter to male friendship and, to some extent, the culture of American macho.
Let me start with the music.
The decision to use a vaguely early-sixties sound is very personal to me. I wrote the song partially with another online musical friend in mind, Laurent Proy. Laurent and I shared a love of taking older music and songs and refashioning them into new pieces, using how we felt about the songs or their cultural meanings to say something new. Here’s a track of Laurent’s, on that theme, that I love:
https://soundcloud.com/laurent-proy/you-go-to-my-head
I became closer friends with Laurent after I posted a version of Tequila named Champagne (The Lost Lô Version), where the spoken “Tequila” part was replaced by a pompous-sounding French-language “Champagne.” Sadly, I don’t think he ever heard it. I subsequently found out that Laurent was either very sick or had already passed away from cancer at that time.
This was not the only reason I used the style I did, though.
When I started as an ironworker in the late eighties, I would carpool with the other workers to the jobs. It would be a mix of workers of all ages, but the older guys would usually be the ones who organized the ride and, often, whose car we’d be in. Usually these guys would be the foreman or in some other leadership position. They would drive in the morning, drinking coffee and listening to the news, but would tell one of the younger guys to drive home while they chain-smoked, drank alcohol, and listened to music.
I have a great deal of affection for these guys, almost all of them gone now. The ride was free, and they watched over me as a young, inexperienced worker in a very dangerous profession. The cultural dynamic was very much like that of the Clint Eastwood character in the movie Gran Torino. “Jesus kid, stop standing there like an un-wiped ass and do something, even if it’s wrong,” is a line I remember. That mix of insults, homophobia, sexism, and racism, mixed with some begrudging understanding and genuine affection, is so well represented in the movie.
Anyway, on the ride home, the music would always be the oldies station. At that time, that meant music of the fifties and sixties. The strong preference was for pre-Beatles rock ’n’ roll and the generally simpler harmonic and emotional styles typical of that music.
The choice of musical style for Muy Fuego is because of that emotional connection. For these personal reasons, this style is the soundtrack of male friendship for me. Even the classic novelty style dovetails with this theme. The cheeky wink so common in that genre mirrors the humor that has always played such a central role in those relationships for me.
The jokes in the piece are part of the point. The lyrics are where that teasing is most explicit. The flipping of some of the gender clichés while keeping the macho delivery. Mocking the sexism of the era but also making a sly comment on the fear of women behind some of that sexism.
The music is meant to mirror that humor and commentary. The first part stays fairly loyal to the genre, with the faux-Latin feel matching the lyrics, but it morphs into jazzy, harmonically rich parts. That change is meant as a tease to the same culture the lyrics are already teasing. For example, those expectations set by style or a macho sound. Both mirror the type of chop-busting that is often such a part of male culture. Humor provides a unique way to show both love and criticism at the same time. The traditional rock ’n’ roll sax solo over an unexpected jazz/pop harmonic structure.
So the concept is taking the teasing and humor that I love, and some of that culture of my work life, and converting it into music. Trying to recreate it with all the contradictions, flavors, and camaraderie. Those concepts are meant to be vague and open to interpretation on purpose.
My lack of enthusiasm for explaining is because, in part, the explanations are usually too long. But really, it’s because I’ve come to see music as not just self-expression but part of culture as well. Both shared culture and unshared culture. When a piece of art is shared, it can say things about both the consumer and the maker. Often things that are unrealized, and telling the audience what to think limits that.
Hence the quote at the onset.