a midway bikelog

John Moe of Minnesota Public Radio created this series of shows called Wits, where he and musical guide John Munson have a writer and a musical guest and they’d talk about a topic with sidetracks and fun. I went to the second show with George Saunders, who i’d never read before, and had a great time, very smart and funny guy. Mike Doughty was the musical guest, and that was fun too, as i’d seen Soul Coughing play but not him solo.

The big finale of the series was John Hodgman, who i love, but i wasn’t able to make it to the show. Happily, MPR did a video stream of the entire show, and that is now available on their website, so i did get to see the whole thing, just a bit delayed. It was a great show, as expected, and they had Neil Gaiman onstage and Hodgman read from David Foster Wallace (who is another favorite) and their musical guest was John Roderick.

I don’t know what cave i’ve been living in to not have heard of John Roderick and his band The Long Winters, but wow am i glad i heard that show. He’s the real fucking deal songwriter. I’ll be heading out to collect his back catalog shortly.

The song he played at Wits is a new one for the new album he’s been working on for over a year now, maybe two, and the song is called Not Moving To Portland. It’s one of those deceptively complex songs with some simple chords and really interesting phrasing and a good story to tell all at once. Doing a little digging to hear more of his stuff, i stumbled upon the following recording of the song from the beginning of this year:

It was recorded for a Seattle arts fundraiser, and the video is pretty cool, but i noticed that the lyrics are a little different than the version i’d heard. Here’s the Wits show, jump to about 40 minutes in to get to the song intro (though the whole show is good):

The arrangement is slightly different, with Munson’s bass rather than backing vocals, but the lyrics are also changed, making the storyline stronger and more personal. And it was a fine song before, top 95%, but i like the newer one better. What grabbed me on the first listen was Roderick’s big voice ringing out on the chorus and how the verses sort of dance around the phrasing of the 3-chord repeat. It’s a beautifully constructed song. I wonder if it’s done, or if he’ll tweak it again before the album is released.