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7.14.2007 Pictures by Euna Kim Here are pictures from Euna's camera..
Keep sending 'em in!!! 7.09.2007 All the songs, all the songs With the final Jack show it's time for the entire cast to come out and take a bow. All the songs are now available on the Music page (linky above) for streaming and free download (mp3).Enjoy, and please feel free to share. Just mind the CCL (at the bottom of the Music page). 7.08.2007 After the Roxy show... I think.. that was our best show. How about that room, eh? Everyone was super friendly, which is critical for me.. there are so many bitter sound guys in Hollywood (just quit, mate..) and last night, Franky was awesome. I heard the house mix was great too.Setlist: Yes, it was bitter sweet, our last show. But honestly, more sweet than bitter. The four of us will certainly continue to work together, outside of the close community we're all a part of already. We're having a Ken Chan Cookout (have you been?) in a few weeks.. anyways. I did see a lot of cameras out there, so thank you for taking pictures for us. Please email them to isawyouattheroxyon777@jackthevain.com or you can also upload them to your favorite intertubes site to share. Just let us know where it's been posted. And soon I'll share them back with everyone else. It was great hanging with you last night. 7.06.2007 How far we've come  The Orange Room, June 28, 2007 The very first time I ever went on a stage to sing my own songs (Ofivina, 2001), I had Shane and Ken there with me. Looking back then with what I know now, I see so much more what good friends they had been, encouraging and supporting me like that. It often is not very gratifying to back some amateur, who has no prior experience, wholeheartedly as they did. They were water to a small seed in my heart. Gosh how far we've come since then. They saw me through my first EP as well as my last. Ken and I recorded an acoustic duo album in my livingroom. And the many many gigs throughout (with their stories). The hours at Norm's on Pico. And that's just the music-related stuff. I sang at Ken's wedding, and some day I'm sure Don will ask me to sing at his wedding too. :) Shane never liked my singing, so we'll see about when he gets married. Don joined early last year, and after a small warm-up gig at Molly Malone's we were off to Chicago to play Northwestern U. I think the first night Ken, Don and I wandered Evanston until 5 in the morning. Needless to say we got to know each other pretty well. It's strange how our lives thin and fatten, and when two thin threads coincide they seem more susceptible to stick. I guess we all need one another. But man, stick 4 guys in a studio to create some songs they all can put their names behind, and you REALLY get to know each other. Ken threw a drum at Shane. I kicked a dent in Shane's car. Don spit at me. Shane got angry. None of that really happened, but we certainly challenged one another, and as such I think we all grew. Which brings us to our last show. We are ready, are you ready? We've been working on a set that will send off Jack in proper form. Over the past week or so, I've been posting, in our blog, stories behind each of the six songs we will perform tomorrow night. So get to know them - take a good listen as you read each story. Have your tickets? Know how you're gonna get there? Got an exit strategy? Just get yourself in. We'll take care of the rest. Saturday July 7th 8:00pm @ The Roxy 9009 W. Sunset Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90069 All ages, tickets $10 [TICKETS] [MAP] Thank you for the memories, Steven 7.04.2007 Far From Home Far From Home was written earlier this year, around April. Ken had written a series of chord progressions as an exercise in voice leading. We got together, ate some food and sat to write the melody for it. Some of it survived to the final version, but as usual the band tore it apart and reassembled it to be what we recorded.Live a life Chasing the wind Building castles that house A heartache Live or die It all feels the same In the end you will find All was in vain Truths and lies Speak to me What they find Teach a memory Of a life Far from home It never dies The need or the shame All these treasures you hold In dust they remain Truths and lies Speak to me What they find Teach a memory Of a life Far from home God and man are calling out to me Calling out to reach a part of me So in need of peace and love God and man are calling out to me Free But they tell me to be Be all I can be Make all that I can make Build all that I can build tall That God and man call to me As to reach, reach a part of me In need to see Truths and lies Teach a memory of life Far from home Truths and lies Teach a memory Of a life that's Far from home I wrote the lyrics soon after, after some heavy thinking I'd been working through. It was basically a meaning of life question, to which I found the bulk of my answers in the book of Ecclesiastes. This guy, Solomon, a king, decides to expend the resources he has toward this same question. After having entertained everything a man could possibly desire: - a harem, check. - built vineyards and castles, check. - wealthier than anyone in history, check. ..and came to this conclusion: it's all meaningless. And whatever you accomplish, gets erased and wasted and trumped eventually anyway. Which got me thinking. Are we here to accomplish anything? Does God need us to carry out his work? Who are we to say we offer our endeavors to God? So I came to my version of this conclusion, which is we're here to grow. Learn, become better people, through our successes and despite our failures. And in the end the purpose of this growth is to understand God better. We are not here living our lives for this life; it is for the next. That is the jist of the chorus ("Truth and Lies..") The bridge ("God and man...") along with the following verse ("Free..") is my criticism of the church today. Its emphasis on ministry (doing something for God) seems dangerously contorted without the right foundation. The message that we must accomplish for God seems to put right back on us a weight that was lifted by Christ. It's a root cause, I believe, of the lack of long-term success in the church today. ... The song was originally written in 6/8 time, and we tried many variations on the feel. A radiohead version, a rock ballad version, even a Tony Bennett version. The song at one point switched back and forth between 4/4 and 6/8 as it moved from verse to chorus and back. Eventually, we felt that once the song launches it shouldn't return (a formula used in many Jack songs) and settled on the recorded arrangement. This song sets me free. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed being a part of creating this song. 7.03.2007 Together Apart Together Apart was another song originally from the Acoustic Sessions album. The song was written in 2002, and it's been performed in various forms at past Steven Kim Band concerts. To tell you the truth, I don't remember what the song is about.Courage for the future To find ourselves What keeps us together What tears us apart To share in oppression To love is to gain What keeps us together Won't tear us apart Ran into the future Running from the past Into her arms I fell Forty times I knelt Begging her to please Give it to someone else Throwing condemnation Kicking the fallen Who will keep us together When you tear us apart Looking through a plank The speck in her eye He keeps us together But we tear it apart Ran into the future Running from the past Into her arms I fell Forty times I knelt Begging her to please Give it to someone else Love will come On that final day And make us one Sun to sun We're prepared for What we'll become And we're dying for Nothing more Than empty wars It's a crown of thorns Ran into the future Running from the past Into her arms I fell Forty times I knelt Begging her to please Give it to someone else The two recorded versions are very different, and in both versions my favorite parts are the bridge. In Acoustic Sessions, Ken and I took a very western, almost Spanish approach to the song, which is especially pronounced in the bridge. When Ken was gonna lay down the solo, I described to him a moment where the character, having long run away from his demons, decides to turn around and face them. It's a final charge in slow motion. I think he dies. The VAIN version was decidedly more rock. We added a bridge section (well, lyrics and a lead-out). We simply took to fun with this song and came out with a high energy 80s hard rock homage. 7.01.2007 Beautifully Strange Ken has released several albums with his Jazz Trio, and Beautifully Strange appears on his second CD. His version and the Jack version share the chorus sections, but the two songs are very different. I had written most of the lyrics down one evening when I ran into his CD on an iTunes playlist, and the cadence of the lyrics just stuck to the chorus section he had recorded. We fleshed out the verse, pre-chorus and other sections together, which we then recorded.The song is about losing everything, and in it finding a freedom that was there with Creation. Free from self-hype and its balances, free from those expectations which are unsustainable, free from playing the game, whether ours or someone else's. And when tragedy strikes, when you lose everything, perspective comes into town selling valuables in trade of the fake things we cling to. It's interesting What trauma brings To men like me See it It breaks a spell No one can tell The truths it sells See it Careful what you say Just might let you have your way Taking it day by day Keeps the monster at bay Beautifully strange With nothing left to cover me Life without a blame What you get is what you see And you breathe so easily 'Cause what you want is what you need I hate myself Won't you help Break the spell See it My fingernails Give away My last betrayal See it Careful what you say Just might let you have your way Taking it day by day Keeps the monster at bay Careful what you say Just might let you have your way Beautifully strange With nothing left to cover me Life without a blame What you get is what you see You take it day by day Try to keep the thoughts away And you breathe so easily 'Cause what you want is what you need What you need This song has an alternate version that is very different. Fully written, though we abandoned it for the current version. In the end we liked the spacing in this version much better. But man, I had such a hard time singing this song. It may not sound like it, but it is a tough song to sing. Breathing right is very tricky in certain sections, and you have to rapidly switch between voices to make the song neither oversung nor undersung. Maybe we'll release a karaoke version some day to prove my point... |
