What you’re about to read, in the description to the first song of this session, is a platter of cold food and a leaky roof. It’s a horrible doctor’s appointment and it’s finding a ghastly key scratch across the driver’s side door of your car, not to mention a nail ramming through the rubber sole of your shoe, for which you’re going to need a tetanus shot. Nick Jaina, the Portland musician, was having a bout of the flu bug or something that was hobbling him so badly that he actually wanted to fall prey to a cold death in a usually deep fat fryer grease-smelling alley connecting our studio to a coffeehouse that we don’t go many days without ordering a tall house or two from. He sounds miserable in his account. The day sure could have been cold and snowy/drizzly, though if memories were to serve properly, a quick rewind to that afternoon probably would reveal that things weren’t really all that shitty bad. ... [Story Continues Below]

First song
One Hand Washing The Other (Nick Jaina) [3.50MB] [724 downloads]


– original version appears on 7 Stations
I was deathly ill when we went in to record at Daytrotter. It was cold and snowing. We had been on tour for a month, and by that point we had only had two days off. I had a severe cold and my voice was shot, my body was aching. We set up our instruments in the studio and I walked across the street to get a bagel. I shuffled through a slushy, freezing alley and I didn’t have a coat on. My shirt was getting wet and I was shivering. I remember thinking, “How am I ever going to get through this? I feel awful. I could just fall down in the street right now and I’d probably be frozen numb in ten minutes and all the suffering would be over.” I got to the bagel shop and ordered a turkey sandwich. The woman behind the counter was middle-aged with glowing skin and short blond hair. She said, “Okay, Nick, one turkey sandwich.” I said, “How did you know my name?” And she said, “I was talking to my son, the cook, who’s name is Nick,” and she pointed to the kitchen where a young fellow nodded. And I said, “Oh, I thought maybe you were an angel or something.” And she said, “What’s wrong, are you sick?” And I said, “Yes, I’m not feeling well.” And she said, “Do you want some orange juice?” And I said, “Yes, that would be great.” And step by step, I got back to the studio and apparently recorded this song, although I don’t remember all the rest of the details.

Second song
I Know I'm Your Man (Nick Jaina) [3.52MB] [718 downloads]


— unreleased
One of those songs written to make a specific person wake up and realize that they love you (which NEVER works, by the way.) The only response I got from her to this song was “I don’t drink wine.” Still, it’s maybe a good song to play at weddings. I played it at my friends’ wedding in New Orleans just a few days after we recorded this. I was still sick and my voice was still shot. The bride and groom sat right in front and held hands and smiled. They both looked so beautiful. I thought, “Isn’t it amazing how people look their best on their wedding day? I didn’t look good at my own wedding. I looked terrible. And here I was, at their wedding, looking and sounding terrible. Am I allergic to weddings? I don’t want to be.” Maybe I’ll get a second chance.

Third song
Luck (Nick Jaina) [3.24MB] [688 downloads]


– original version appears on Wool
My friend Dustin from Run On Sentence doesn’t like this song. He specifically doesn’t like that it’s a song about luck because, he says, he doesn’t like the idea of luck. I try to tell him that the song itself questions the idea of luck, basically saying everything is luck or nothing is luck. But he won’t have it.

Fourth song
Winding Sheet (Nick Jaina) [2.98MB] [725 downloads]


— unreleased
This is one of those songs that hung around for a while but would never get its act together. Originally the chorus was in the future tense…(“I WILL dance with you”) and a little bleaker (“The third longest day of the WORST year of my life”). I decided to change WORST to BEST because, really, the worst times are often the best times as soon as you’re not actually living them. And I changed it to the past tense to make it more wistful. But there was still a verse missing when we went in to record a radio set back in January, and I really wanted to play this song. I thought for a minute before I started, and just had the image of soldiers and whales in my head, and when I got to the missing verse it came out as “When the soldiers open up after marching for so long, all the whales in the ocean can sing along.” And there it remains, until I think of something better.

It might have been brisk, but it was no day to die or to fantasize about it in such a glorified manner that would make the option the greatest preference on the table. Amazingly enough the extra peppy barista at the coffee club jolted him out of his physical and mental stupor that day – with the ultra cheery chatter and the perky teacher-explaining-something-to-a-moron tone – allowing him the energy to fight off the ugly thoughts enough to make it through a splendid recording session and as seems obvious now, the rest of the day and the rest of the over-extended tour. Jaina is full of these musky moments of Sam Beam finding Jim Beam and having an alibi in something slightly more “Bridge Over Troubled Water” way. He clings to his tenderness without letting it make him too red. It’s a method to get to the crux of weariness, without getting too worn out by the business. His is a chilled bottle, a light fire, a calm temper that rummages through brush and the brambles to finally get into the clearing – never getting too peeved, just brushing off his pant legs and pulling the burrs out of his shoelaces, throwing them onto the grass to the side. He takes so much of his material – and what led to that material – in stride, coolly fixing an even brow and a need to see the light at the end of all the tunnels that seem to be stretching out before him endlessly. He has ink-stained hands that he accidentally wipes on his face as he swipes to catch the bead of sweat that falters down a cheek from a contour near the eye socket. The ink gets all over, making those experiences that he’s made into the kinds of literate chestnuts that have become the notable mascots of the Portland and Seattle, Pacific Northwest scene-scape. Art imitates life, but art can become the life that takes on artistic labyrinths and slogs through the copious amounts of questionable changes and hair-pin turns. Nick Jaina was going through one of those days when these songs were laid to tape. They were written on other days – maybe worse days – but they come off as the brilliantly hopeless times that never seem like they’re going to get better, the very blunt rationalizations that this is all there is and there’s no reason blubbering over it. It’s not about depression or the sky falling, just what is and what can be looked forward to seeing more of. It’s the plain truth of seeing things with the clearest lenses – no tint and no exasperation. It’s just the way it is. There’s recognition that songs don’t change a woman’s mind. They don’t make her drink wine. They don’t make her love. A song doesn’t really do anything but remind the one singing and those hearing that things aren’t fair and we just have to live with it no matter our disapproving takes.

Nick Jaina MySpace Page
Hush Records