If it’s December at You Ain’t No Picasso then it’s time for Mixmas. Every year I use the holiday season as an excuse to get some of my favorite musicians to contribute a mix centered around a theme of their choosing. They share some of their favorites and we get a little peak into their playlist and their brain.

MP3: Wooden Wand – James and the Quiet

One of the best things to happen to Lexington in the past year or so was the arrival of James Toth. He’s been making great music for years as Wooden Wand and now he’s doing so in Kentucky. We’re almost as happy to have him in town as I am to have him involved with Mixmas.

“Five Songs With Great Lyrics” by James Toth

No Dylan, Westerberg, Lenny, Boss, Prine, etc here – too easy. Here are a few you might not know.

MP3: The Mendoza Line – A Damn Good Disguise
This scathing, frosty number rivals the best Elvis Costello kiss-offs. Dig this opening line:

You long for a bar with a quiet room
But no one’s gonna treat you like a kid that way

I long for a bar with a quiet room all the time. Best of all is the resignation of the chorus, which states that, should the object of his affection / derision experience a change of heart, the narrator both ‘might be around’ or ‘guess(es) (he) might be found.’ Might. Guess. He’s not sure. He’ll see what else he has going on at the time. Let’s play it by ear. I’ve listened to this song hundreds of times and I’m still in awe of its completeness, its profundity, its poignancy. It’s like when you tell someone “You’re fucked up, man” and instead of them saying “no, I’m not!,” they say “yeah well…you’re fucked up, too.” Timothy Bracy is a natural among naturals, and a writer I look up to very much.

James McMurtry – “Out Here in the Middle” (YT link)
I’m usually wary of so-called fortunate sons, but James is every bit the talent of his slightly more famous father (Larry, author of Lonesome Dove, The Last Picture Show, and dozens of other masterpieces) and writes just as vividly. This snarky, sarcastic tale of the so-called “good life” in middle America is full of hilarious first-person testimonials about cell phone towers and Elvis sightings, but the critique of the wasteland is briefly suspended by a chorus that suggests a vulnerable sort of longing:

Wish you were here, my love
Wish you were here, my love

Of course, it could just be the narrator saying, “wish you were here, because you too deserve to suffer amidst the Starbucks-guzzling corporate relo refugees and the Red Man-chewing Great Unwashed.” I prefer the less cynical read, but either way, great writing.

Drive By Truckers – “Marry Me” (YT link)

Mike Cooley is the closest this generation has to a Tom T. Hall – an outlaw soothsayer, a prescient shit-kicker, an astutely sensitive pie-eyed observer. Perhaps one of my favorite lines in all of music is this one:

Rock and roll means well
But it can’t help telling young boys lies

but I also really love this one:

A baby on the way’s a good enough reason to get you out alive
And get you out without having to swallow any pride

If you’ve been playing in bands for a long enough time, you’ve heard some variation of this. “Dude, I’d love to go on tour with you, but you know…the baby.” The fact that Cooley sums it up so eloquently is a testament to his myriad gifts as a writer. If he’s ever written a bad song, he hasn’t released it, because I haven’t heard any.

The Handsome Family – “Your Great Journey” (YT link)
Taken either literally (holy shit you totally don’t exist, dude!) or figuratively (alienation in an increasingly depersonalized society), this song is a perfect example of the supernatural brilliance of Rennie Sparks and her darkly comedic way with words. Here’s an especially good bit:

When automatic sinks in airports no longer see your hands
And elevator doors close on you
And buses drive right past
When the only voice that answers is the whir of a ceiling fan
Your great journey has begun

I find these non-judgmental observations about the experience of walking the Earth without leaving a mark at once terrifying and provocative. Great journey? Into what? The life of a pariah? The afterlife? Some sort of invisible netherworld? Rennie Sparks may be my very favorite contemporary lyricist. Nobody writes like her, especially not in the superficial and trite world of rock and roll.

MP3: Damien Jurado – Ohio
I’ve heard that Damien Jurado doesn’t even like this song, but all good artists (and even some bad ones) have their ‘claim-to-fame’ tunes that follow them throughout their career like needy pets, and this masterpiece will rightfully haunt Jurado as long as he’s making records (and likely long after). I have an extremely hard time writing songs that tell stories – it’s undoubtedly my Achilles heel as a lyricist. I tend to work in metaphor and quote-fingers poetry than in anything resembling a narrative voice, though not for lack of trying. “Ohio” is the kind of song I aspire to write, a simple story shaped by a song. It’s about a girl who is to be reunited with her mother after a childhood spent hidden away from her by a domineering (and likely dangerous) father. The boy in the song falls for the girl, but knows that this girl has bigger things to deal with than his dumb little crush. The song is rife with beautiful, direct language, but my favorite line is the last one:

See you some time
I’ll see you some time

This simple goodbye is striking to me, and moves me nearly every time I hear it, not just because it’s deceptive casualness rings very true – “see you some time” is the perfect forlorn adieu spoken by two would-be lovers who know the timing is all wrong – but also because, the way Jurado half-hums the line, you just know it isn’t true. Their last words to each other are lies. The girl will stay in Ohio and he will never see her again. God, how fucking extraordinarily beautiful.