Greetings Darling Ones,

How are you? I’ve spent most of March hiding out from my economic anxiety and doing my best to ignore the fascist overthrow of the United States with varying degree of success.

Lately, I’ve been filling my days writing fan fiction in my head about the relationship between Jason Isbell, Amanda Shires, and Anna Weyant. If you don’t know these people, that’s okay neither do I.

This fan fiction is based on Isbell’s excellent new record “Foxes in the Snow;” Shires’ last record “Take it Like a Man; the documentary “Running With Our Eyes Closed;” and things I’ve gleaned from social media.

Here’s a quick primer: Isbell and Shires were the Johnny & June of my world and when they announced their divorce in December 2023 I was heartbroken. Anna Weyant, a 30-year-old painter based in NYC, is Isbell’s new partner.

Depending on the day of the week, how much sunshine there is, and how much sleep I’ve had Isbell does not do well in the court of spinster opinion. Ovaries before Brovaries and all.

Let me restate, FITS is a beautiful record. It’s the first Isbell record I’ve truly loved in a long time. Gone is all the guitar wankery and what not. This is just Isbell’s voice and a guitar. Lovely. Lyrically it’s brilliant & brave, cliché & mean, and overall very human. What’s not to love?

In my head most of the songs are about his ex-wife and his new lover. This is where the mean and cliché come in.

“Foxes in the Snow” is a song about the new woman and it makes me cringe so hard I’m surprised I haven’t lost three inches from my height and have a permanent rictus grin. The repetition of “I love my love is ick. The line about everything putting him near her skin, the carrot and the stick. . . it’s all basic and feels a bit like it’s trying. Isbell knows how to write a love song and this ain’t it.

The two songs I really like to go back to are “Eileen” and “Gravelweed.” Boy, do they give me the thinks.

“My own behavior was a shock to me, he sings. “You should have seen this coming sooner. . . You thought the truth was just a rumor.”

In the court of Spinster Opinion I’m all, “Exactly what are you confessing to here, Mr. Isbell? what should she have seen and exactly what was the rumor? Hmmm?”

And his lawyer, Mortimer, shouts, “OBJECTION. Hearsay.”

“Gravelweed” is the knock me on my ass, infuriate me, and then begin to put me back together song.

In it Isbell sings, “I was a gravelweed, and I needed you to raise me. You couldn’t reach me once I felt like I was raised.”

This one makes me feel very fuck you, very much. Thanks for the self-reflection and all, but you see how shitty it is to require your partner and lover to raise you, right? RIGHT? That’s a lot to ask of someone who is supposed to be your equal, not your mother. It’s so selfish and then to abandon her when you gelt all grown up? Garbage.

But he gets back me with the next line, “And now that I live to see my melodies betray me, I’m sorry the love songs all mean different things today.”

Damn, the stark and beautiful honesty.

I also get pissed at the song “True Believer” with the whole All your girlfriends say I broke your fucking heart and I don’t like it.” Tough titties, friend, you don’t get to decide if you broke someone’s heart.

Like a good lawyer I’m cherry picking the lyrics to fit my argument. Like a good Gemini I’m not entirely sure what I’m arguing.

Regardless, the jury agreed unanimiously that “Foxes in the Snow” is a sparse, beautiful record worthy of the attention, argument, and thought.

You may be seated,
Honorable Judge Jodi Chromey

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Hello Darling Ones,

I spend roughly six to eight hours a day listening to music. This isn’t an exaggeration. I usually put my headphones on as soon as I’m done with breakfast and don’t take them off until it’s time to make dinner. Sometimes I put them back on after dinner. It’s why 90% of my selfies include headphones, my hair has a permanent headphone divot in it.

My sisters laugh at me because I wear headphones all the time even though I’m the only one here and I won’t disturb anyone with my loud rock & roll music. I like them. I find it nearly impossible to work without headphones on. I blame all those years in corporate America.

After rediscovering The Kooks, I decided to take a stroll through the music I loved in 2006 via my Top 25.

For many, many years I would keep track of the Top 25 most-played songs in my iTunes. It is a wonderful time capsule and as I was perusing 2006, I wished I had kept up with that. I had kinda given up the ghost when I stopped using iTunes in 2012.

Since I only had 30 minutes of work to do today (for real, the lack of work is killing me) guess what I did? I logged into last.fm and then I created seven years worth of Top 25 lists. It was the most fun I’ve had, well, I had some fun when I woke up at 6 a.m. this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, but other than that it’s the most fun I’ve had all week.

So far. I think I might watch “Twister” tonight while eating a frozen pizza, because this spinster knows how to party.

It was fun watching my musical taste evolve. The early aughts lists are very dude dominated and you can watch them virtually disappear once the Turnip was elected. You can also tell when I switched from just listening to songs to listening to entire albums. Here, I’ll show you, these albums show up nearly in their entirety on that year’s Top 25:
2010: “The Wild Hunt” by Tallest Man on Earth
2011: “Wild Flag” by Wild Flag
2012: “Gossamer” by Passion Pit
2013 “Southeastern” by Jason Isbell
2014: “Somewhere Else” by Lydia Loveless
2015: “Short Movie” by Laura Marling
2016: “My Piece of Land” by Amanda Shires
2017: “The Nashville Sound” by Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit
2018: “Historian” by Lucy Dacus (Though Phoebe Bridgers’ entire “Stranger in the Alps” is on the list too)
2019: “The Highwomen” by The Highwomen

2008’s list is probably my favorite because it makes no sense. It’s The Decemberists, Liz Phair, The Hold Steady and then randomly “Peg” by Steely Dan. Who was I?

The one thing I tripped over that broke my stupid heart was Ryan Adams’ “Dear Chicago” showing up six times over the years. I fucking love that song and I have failed thus far at carving it out of my heart. It’s so hard to do and something I struggle with when I have fallen in love with art made by men who turn out to be bad people. Like, I get that he is a dirtbag extraordinaire, but my heart doesn’t nor do all my memories and associations with this song. WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?

Barf,
Jodi

The post The COVID Diaries: 15 Years of Top 25s appeared first on I Will Dare.

Well, well, well, Darling Ones,

Guess what? It looks like I have stumbled upon the cure of insomnia.

Aside: Yes, I know you don’t care about my sleep habits, but I’m like that friend with an infant who tells you all about their sleep habits and the baby’s sleep habits and even though you don’t care you still listen because that’s what friends do. We’re friends, right?

Second Aside: When I took PSYC 101 back in the early 90s on the first day of the class the professor ran around asking random people in the giant lecture hall if they were his friend. And people kept saying yes, and he kept asking until someone said no, and then he was all, “Phew, you know what? People are more likely to be murdered by a friend, someone they know, than a stranger.” I’m sure he said more stuff about how that related to PSYC 101, but I have forgotten every single thing about that class except for that. Yay, aging! Also, don’t murder me.

So yes, I found a cure for my insomnia. Here’s all it takes, apparently, be alive during the last gasps of the Unmitigated ScumSuckingStates of America the week before an anxiety-inducing election and then have the most corrupt senate in the history of senates confirm an unqualified conservative judge sending her to the supreme court where she will certainly take the rights away of anyone who is not a cis straight white man.

As soon as that news blipped across my phone I noped right out of consciousness and then proceeded to sleep for the next 10 hours. And then I took an hour nap this afternoon. And I’m already looking forward to going to bed tonight, because a bitch is tired. So tired. All the tiredness belongs to me.

I’m legit worried how I’m going to make through these next seven days, and the idea of next Wednesday? Like my brain cannot even comprehend it, no matter which way the election goes. I’m pretty much just waiting for our entire country to fall into the sea. That would not surprise me. Everything else will probably surprise me.

In other news that you care deeply about, I emailed the Plant Mom team at the place where I bought my lavender plant. I had patience for an entire 24 hours then I was done. I’m hoping that they’ll tell me it’s nothing to worry about, or if she’s a lost cause they’ll send me a new one (they have a 30-day guarantee and I’ve only had her for 13 days).

That’s all I got today, Darling Ones. I’m currently obsessed with wether or not I should by some lilac perfume and also the song “Celebrity Skin” by Hole, which is weird because I don’t like to think about Courtney Love because of all the conflicting emotions she brings up, but then the line My name is might-of-been, my name is never was, my name’s forgotten snagged in my brain and apparently I need to hear it 48 times in a row. Plus, it makes me think of Jason Isbell’s “Alabama Pines,” which is never a bad thing.

Keeping you posted on all the things,
Jodi

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Jason Isbell is probably one of the best songwriters alive. Yeah, the same list with Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. I’m not messing around. I say this having listened to Jason Isbel & the 400 Unit’s new album “Reunions” about 33 times since it came out on Friday.

The lines in “Be Afraid,” which I didn’t take to when the single was released slay me now. It wasn’t until I watched the Isbell/Shires lie stream on Friday that the line, “tell the truth enough you’ll find it rhymes with everything” jumped out at me. All credit goes to Amanda Shires and her incredible voice.

Before that night it was the line, “And if your words add up to nothing then you’re making a choice to sing a cover when you need a battle cry.” I love this sentiment as it applies to all modes of creation. Like, I dig goofy memes as much as the next person, but I’d much rather see something you wrote. Our internet society is all about doing covers. I want more battle cries.

Anyway, I came here not to praise Isbell but to whine. Yup. No battle cries here just petty whining about things that annoy me even the tiniest bit. As I told my friend Em on the phone yesterday, “I just want people to do what I want them to do when I want them to do it. IS THAT TOO MUCH TO ASK?”

Amongst my petty grievances are not knowing what to make for dinner ever and not being hungry for anything in particular. Last night I whined to my nephew, Maxwell, that I feel like we just had everything. He agreed. Dinner: it’s what’s bugging the shit out of you.

The online dating app has been a fucking trainwreck. One man sent me paragraphs and paragraphs about fighting for my life and bravery, because my shaved head made him assume I have cancer. Cancerman also spent a lot of time going on and on about how much taller I am than he is (11 inches) and that was a giant red flag. Another man said, “Hey Sexy” and I just told him to do better.

Anyway, I did come here to whine, but not about the endless annoying miasma that is pettiness in the time of pandemic, but about something specific and Isbell-related.

Here’s the thing, he uses the word “appetite” in two of the first three songs on “Reunions.” Each time the word comes up there’s a record scratch in my brain and I make a shitty Veruca Salt face. The word calls attention to itself and it pulls me out of the song for a few seconds. I like to maintain a fictional dream ala John Gardener (and yes, I recognize I’m mixing literature and lyrics, but they’re both writing and also this is my website I can do what I want to).

In “Only Children” there’s “fighting my appetite” and on “What Have I Done to Help” it’s “and showed up to work on time and watched my appetite.”

I just have to accept that he loves the word because it’s also there in “Traveling Alone” off of “Southeastern,” “damn near strangled by my appetite.”

And if you go way back off of the self-titled record there’s “you pray that I banish my appetite and lie there alone” in the song “Sunstroke.”

The one good thing about Isbell’s continued use of the word appetite is always reminds me of my writing teacher Dale Gregory Anderson who taught us that certain words you can only use once a story. He was talking specifically about one student writer who used the phrase “apricot moon” twice in their story. DGA said it’s a great description but it becomes less so with repetition.

Isbell’s lucky he’s one of the best songwriters alive because he can get away with the repetition. However, I’ll still be making the Veruca Salt face every time the word comes up, because that’s who I am. Except, for in “Traveling Alone.” That’s where he uses the word the best and that line is great.

The post The COVID Diaries: Jason Isbell & Appetite appeared first on I Will Dare.

Here at Aunt Jodi’s Home for Wayward Nephews we had a pretty quiet and mellow weekend, which was a fucking delight after the high drama of of last weekend. The only thing that would have made the weekend better would have been getting a break from work.

I am not complaining, because I’m grateful to have work, but it’s really very busy and working seven days a week in the middle of an apocalypse while also trying to acclimate a traumatized kid to you house has been a lot. I’m behind on all my hobbies. I haven’t finished reading a book in over a week and my temperature blanket? Whoo.

It’s just been stress on top of stress on top of stress and oddly — knock on wood, cross myself, thank my lucky stars — I have been sleeping like a muthafuckin’ champ. This surprises me to no end. Every morning I wake up and I’m all, “DAMN, I slept the whole night without waking up at all.” It’s nice and I think it’s the sleep that has helped me keep my shit together for the most part.

Another thing that has helped tremendously? Watching live-streaming performances from my favorite musicians. This weekend I got to watch Wolfdogg twice. As my friend EM, who joined the Twitch stream today said, “That just filled my heart up.” Mine too.

I’ve also been joining Amanda Shires’ “I So Lounging” YouTube live thing every day at 5 p.m. (central) and basically low-key weeping for about a half hour while she and Jason Isbell sing songs and riff with their friends. Both the nephews know to leave me alone while I’m “watching my show” and they don’t question if tears leak from my eyes and for that I am also grateful. Because I can’t really explain the weeping because it’s not joy or happiness, but maybe it’s just the relief of the momentary absence of dread that makes me cry.

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