The Dumb and Ugly Club//Red Dust

Dumb, Ugly and Local.
Tell me...what is this Local Music Fridays?

Here I am doing this again, but it feels ok, because honestly, it’s been so long since I was in this band that it truly feels like ancient history at this point (sadly). Also, there’s a reason!

This is a band that Michael Beauchamp and I started our freshman year of college. We decided to name ourselves The Dumb and Ugly Club after Liz Bair made some crack about us being dumb and ugly in the East Quad caf (something along the lines of, guess who’s the dumb one; guess who’s the ugly one).

Michael holds a special place in my heart for a few reasons. One is just that he’s a remarkable human being. Another is that he’s the only other person I’ve ever been able to actually write songs with, which turns out, when it works is a super cool experience. We wrote and wrote and wrote and then went to Chicago to recorded an EP in this friend of my aunt’s (same aunt as yesterday, guys) basement. We called it Dead in Chicago. Get it?

A little time passed and we decided to write another album, but we also decided to give ourselves some parameters. Here are the parameters:
1. The album is set in 1967.
2. In this version of 1967, JFK has not been assassinated.
3. In this version of 1967, we are fighting a war on the mars

What emerged was a retro-sounding space-themed sci-fi-esque album, with a cultural storyline told song by song from vastly different perspectives (the child who watches her father leave for war, the veteran who sees his life desimated, the citizen who waits for his lover to return, or in the case of this song, the soldier drafted into the Martian fiasco). Copies of the album, called Mars, 1967, probably exist in numbers around the mid-70s. Most of them are likely floating around Michigan



Red Dust.mp3

If you're around for this holiday weekend, Michael and I are playing a show together, with our respective bands, this Saturday at The Sidewalk. As for a reunion...oh, hmmm. Who knows?


Oh the red dust eats me whole,
Smoke a bowl.
They tell me it’s for freedom,
But they mean rich guys.

Michael Beauchamp//Do What You Could

[Local! Music! Friday!]
Tell me...what is this Local Music Fridays?

Although I rarely see him these days (damn you, too-large America), Michael Beauchamp remains extremely dear to my heart. Michael was one of my very first and very best friends from the Michigan portion of my life. When we first met (back in the days of burning CDs), we traded selections from our music collections. His highlights, a 30 disk stack of Modest Mouse, Cat Power, Leonard Cohen, etc for my highlights, a 30 disk stack of Sleater-Kinney, Liz Phair, The Smiths, REM, etc. This is where we had a startling revelation that we were the only two people in the United States of America who owned the album, Tales of Great Notch Glory, by a strange mostly unknown band called Sammy. We had both bought it used. We drove around listening to it on many occasions. There was also one particularly amazing evening of walking around the Arb. Oh A2, I miss you some days.

Michael and I were in a band together called The Dumb and Ugly Club. It was so fun. I miss writing and playing music with this man, dearly. He is a beautiful man with a beautiful voice who writes beautiful, beautiful songs.

Thank god for all of us, he’s still at it. He released his first stellar solo album, My Northern Voices, earlier this year. It was great how I got this album. I was on a train going from Ann Arbor to Chicago. The train stopped at Kalamazoo. I got off the train and Michael was there. He gave me a hug, handed me the album and then I got back on the train. It was very romantic.

This song was one we used to play together. It is a heartbreakingly good song about heartbreak.



Do What You Could.mp3

You can hear more from Mike on his myspace and you can purchase his album at CDBaby or at iTunes.

I ain’t your problem no more, problem no more.
Lord, how I miss being your problem.