Mixtape: Waxwings
Good migrations.
February’s final mixtape comes from my good friend me.1 I just finished making one, wanted to share it, and it happens to be a perfect soundtrack for a Sunday. Also, I thought I might as well go through the process so I can see what hell I’m putting all the other mixtape makers through.
Give it a listen and read the liner notes below:
Listen on Spotify: Waxwings by Joe Petro
Liner Notes
This mixtape is of the birds,2 which is to say that I started building it almost exactly a year ago during a “nesting” period. Nesting is the instinctual urge that expectant parents feel to prepare their home—or, “nest”—for an incoming baby. Its lizard brain stuff. I mean, lizards don’t live in nests, they live in holes in the dirt or something, but I’m obviously not going to call it bird brain stuff.
And so, certain warm and welcoming songs start attaching themselves to this period and a large playlist starts to grow out of a seed from George Harrison called “Run Of The Mill.” Over time it gets watered and fertilized and grows new branches and gets pruned and trimmed and repotted and then you discover that your efforts to make a mixtape for nesting ironically resulted in a mixtape about migration.3
Enter the waxwing, a remarkable bird—lovely plumage—with migration patterns that fall under the classifications of nomadic and irruptive. In other words, their behavior ranges from “less predictable” to “highly unpredictable.” Waxwings are transient. They come and they go. And if you’re fortunate enough to encounter one, it’s probably only passing through.
That’s what this mixtape is: songs about people just passing through by people who were just passing through.
Songs about people just passing through by people who were just passing through.
The songs on Waxwings were all recorded in the sixties and seventies and there’s a heavy skew here toward the folk music of the time. A substantial portion of the songs were recorded in the UK or in Greenwich Village, NY—a landmark neighborhood for folk music and bohemian culture. Coincidentally, the most common species of waxwing is known as the “Bohemian waxwing.”
But while the songs here will speak for themselves, in many cases the artists who recorded them never really got the chance to. Of course, some of them basked in the spotlight, but others stumbled into it before stumbling right back out of it, a few only found it after their death, and some are still searching for the glow.
For example, Karen Dalton was a Village folk musician who Bob Dylan once called one of his favorite singers, but she never achieved any commercial success, struggled with addiction, and eventually died of AIDS-related complications—unsung.
Norma Tanega was a folk-rock innovator who had one single hit and then was quickly forgotten by the industry before leaving to become a professor.4
Elyse Wienberg was once mentioned in the same breath as Joni Mitchell, but she left the music scene altogether after too many bad brushes with the industry side of things.
Bridget St John recorded three critically acclaimed albums in the UK, but they generated unimpressive sales. She moved to Greenwich Village in 1976 and then slipped out of the public eye for decades.
After Fred Neil made a name for himself in the Village, he moved to Florida and slipped into musical obscurity after deciding to dedicate the rest of his life to dolphin research and preservation.5
Jackson C. Frank recorded one album in 1965—which was produced by Paul Simon, no less—and then proceeded to suffer a string of personal tragedies that derailed not only his career, but his life.
Nick Garrie quit the industry after his debut album only to return under an alias several years later only to retire a second time to manage a ski resort in the Swiss Alps.
Ronnie Lane was magnetized to bands with high turnover. He was in Small Faces who then became Faces who Lane then left to live on a farm in Wales. His attempted comeback was called Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance—a reference to his (accurately) perceived chances of commercial success—and he spent the rest of his career playing with “a loose-knit conglomeration of available musicians.”6
Fairport Convention, the band that is credited with reinventing British folk rock, was also plagued by constant personnel changes. In one particularly tragic example, their drummer was killed when the band’s van crashed in 1969.
Then there’s Zuider Zee, an obscure Memphis band who released one album in 1975 and then nothing—until a collection of previously unreleased tracks was collected and published in 2018.
Nick Drake failed to find a large audience before overdosing at the age of 26 and Tim Buckely never achieved real stardom before overdosing at 28.
Some of the artists featured on Waxwings found the spotlight and even some career longevity, but that doesn’t mean they were free from struggle agains the ephemeral.
George Harrison was in the biggest band on the planet,7 but his contributions to The Beatles were largely marginalized until he struck out on his own. (And what is more transient than a Traveling Wilbury, anyway?)
John Cale’s career spans many years, but an even greater number of genres and innovations; and as the co-founder of The Velvet Underground, to some extent, his work will always remain just that: underground.
Led Zeppelin abruptly disbanded after the death of John Bonham, The Byrds only had one consistent member throughout their existence—also, birds—and The Rolling Stones gather no moss.
Anyway, you get the point. That’s enough of that. Everything is in its right place. Just enjoy the music. I didn’t make Waxwings to inform anyone of anything, I made it because I really like these songs and I think they fit together well. That said, I did learn something as this mixtape unfolded. I hope you did, too. But if nothing else, let’s just all recognize how fortunate we are to have encountered some of these rare birds while we were passing through.
Thanks for listening. Thanks for reading. I hope this makes for a more pleasant Sunday. And since there was no formal Q&A this week, we can conduct an informal one in the comments section if you’d like. Leave your questions there.
Share if you care. Inscribe to subscribe. And remember to always read the footnotes.
Big things coming in March. Big things.
Stay safe. Stay sane.
I know, I know. This is like Bill Belichick playing quarterback, or Ronald McDonald flipping burgers, or Walter White doing meth.
It is not for the birds.
And you hope nobody psychoanalyzes that.
They call this a “one-hit wander.”
Maybe this is what he meant when he wrote “I’m going where the sun keeps shinin’ through the pourin’ rain.”