The High Strung

Please listen to my new release, solo improvisions, drone/ambient/noise

Improvisations for the Loralee Grace Exhibit 2025, by honest to goodness 2 track album

Here’s one from
Our last show at The Loving Touch.
https://youtu.be/ux-kuWYrFCw

“Possible o impossible”

thank you Lisa Joan for recording this! You’re a gift to us all

Josh Malerman Derek Berk. Mark B. Owen Stephen Palmer.

The High Strung plays "¿Posible O' Imposible?" at The Loving Touch 9/6/24 Detroit band The High Strung plays "¿Posible O' Imposible?" at The Loving Touch, Ferndale MI 9/6/24@TheHighStrung2011 ...

Stunner of a special edition in the mail. Slipcase and all. Red piano.

SST Publications! Thank you.

(the title of this book came from a High Strung song; check it out, the guitar sound is sick)

Happy birthday to one of the great American songwriters, living or not, here (thank the gods) living, and a year older at that. Mark B. Owen is one of the most fascinating, flummoxing, brilliant personalities I've known and like all real genius he's a combination of seemingly opposing parts: wisdom and wonder, suspicion and enthusiasm, confidence and questions. Though I had yet to learn to name such things, I sensed a depth the day we met, a demeanor and a POV exclusive to him. It was a lot to fathom at once. And it ruled. We learned to write and play music in tandem, and I watched, in real time, this sense become tangible reality, often in the form of his lyrics. But more than that, too. A s**t ton more. But for the sake of this birthday, let's stay on those lyrics and let's look at 23 gems Mark has written. We've written some 150 songs together, but Mark's lyrics remain unmistakably him. Youtube these songs as you go. Or Spotify. It'll blow your lid.
1) DARLING WEIRDO- (Quiet Riots, The High Strung) Those opposing parts again: the outsider and the insider at once. "Darling weirdo, come look in the mirror. Above us is a halo. Below us is a zero. And even if you said so, I would never let go."
2) NEVER, NEVER, NO– (Soap, The High Strung) The guy has a crazy ability to distill big ideas into tiny, playful verses. "There's a fortune teller, buried in the cellar. One time she read my palm, she said, 'You're no Rockefeller.'"
3) DIFFERENT ANIMAL– (Address Unknown, The High Strung) A merging of the dreamish and the rooted. "We shared a cigarette. She said you wanna make a gentleman's bet? There's someone you can't forget, a world away."
4) I GOT FRUSTRATION– (These Are Good Times, The High Strung) Even when he's snarly he's smart: "Fell asleep to channel fifty-one. Now I know why a spider eats its young."
5) SHOCK OF WHITE HAIR– (Malerman/Owen I) The double entendre, but never in a passé way. Are we singing about a solitary shock of white hair and how cool that looks? Or the shock of discovering we're aging? A classic Owen question.
6) TURNED IT AWAY– (Hannah, The High Strung) Quick, potent imagery. Always with this guy. "Walked out the door, on the street was a fallen tree... I made my way around it by the lightning."
7) YR BROTHER– (Address Unknown, The High Strung) A serpentine melody with matching winding lyrics that turn what should be a little country song into a centerpiece peak of the album. Flat out brilliant. Go listen.
8.) BASEMENT LEAR– (Address Unknown) That opposing combo again, here in the form of a character, a delusional ogre of a musician blasting his guitar with the "amp up all the way", loving every beautiful second of his atonal chaos. "Banging on a single note, got a Memory Man by the throat."
9) MANISCHEWITZ WINE– (Malerman/Owen II) He'll likely say I had a hand in this line but I don't remember it that way. "Abraham, he toasts to life and winks: it's what's to drink. Manischewtiz wine. It won't get you drunk but it's a good time."
10) OVERCOAT & SKIS– (Address Unknown, The High Strung) Maybe the ultimate example of that tendency to distill: "Oh, herringbone, tracks in the sky, and the kick with the pole for a long glide. Following the Dog Star can only get you so far. Luckily I know the way by heart."
11) GOFFIN AND KING– (Quiet Riots, The High Strung) If there's one thing we wish we were, it's Brill Building songwriters. "On the windows, write lyrics in frost, as Diamond's in the room across from Goffin and King."
12) SHOW A SIGN OF LIFE– (These Are Good Times, The High Strung) That playfulness again, in how he could've repeated the first line of the first verse when the third verse comes around, but instead he gives it a little more thought and the change is a big one: First verse "Late in the night, I heard, 'The Flight of the Bumblebee.'" Third verse: "Late in the night, I heard 'The Ride of the Valkyries.'"
13) THE MILLIONAIRE– (Soap, The High Strung) He's also got crazy good timing, like knowing to save this lyric for the song's breakdown, bringing us out of the bridge and back home: "I made a deal with the millionaire. A foolish thing to do but at the time I didn't care."
14) A LEG, MAYBE AN ARM– (Sure as Hell, The High Strung) These lyrics aren't ranked. They're all equally badass examples. If they were ranked it'd be hard to top this one from start to finish. "Now your ruins are in Rome, where your family owns a home, in the spring sometimes you go." This blip doesn't do it justice. Gotta see this full painting. It's on Spotify.
15) NORTHERN PYGMY OWL– (Address Unknown, The High Strung) So freakin inspiring because this should be a tiny song. Just some chords and a melody and some words, right? That's all there is to a song, right? But then he sings these words in that (combo again) brittle but bold way he does, and you're like, s**t, a tiny song can get huge: "I found an abandoned cabin, at the center of the maze. My senses shattered, my memories changed. I'm not doing any harm. I'm not mailing any bombs. I just focus on the song of the Northern Pygmy Owl till it fades away."
16) ALIEN MADMAN– (Quiet Riots, The High Strung) In which he literally spells out the chorus in the chorus. Just go listen. I heard about this song before I actually heard this song. Peeps in our circle were talking about how Mark spells the lyrics out. It was a myth for me before I heard it myself.
17) CORED OUT APPLE– (Hannah, The High Strung) Surreal, sure. Still, distilled: "Thinking about the empty spaces in my head. Wondering if I laid down in a tomb or just my bed. Either way, I'll be okay. I'm beginning to look at the world a whole different way. Out a cored out apple."
18) CALIFORNIA FIRST– (Soap, The High Strung) By this album the rest of us had come to expect amazing lyrics. Like how you're excited for a new movie by a director you already love and trust. And they just keep coming with Mark. "I try each day to find out more, what great prize waits beyond the golden doorway. Maybe you know. Maybe you won't say."
19) A NIGHT– (As Is, The High Strung) We need an album of Mark alone with the guitar. That's gotta come sooner than later. An inverse birthday present. It's HIS birthday, fine, but we should get this present. "Below your window, under the storm clouds, I called your name loud, over the thunder. Maybe you heard me, and wanted the same thing. The name I was screaming, it broke on the glass pane."
20) LOVE AND DEATH ON CHRISTMAS EVE– (Here Comes the Cheer, The High Strung) Such good imagery here. You can see the freakin flakes of snow. "'Oh what a wretched time of year,' Eliza whispered in my ear. As she brushed the melting snow, from my dirty overcoat."
21 & 22) COMMON LAW and HARBOR SPRINGS– (both originally recorded for the first go round of Moxie Bravo, The High Strung) Two nods to Michigan, in their own ways. "Harbor Springs" is self-evident; a vacation up north. But with "Common Law" it's found in one lyric alone: "For a thousand years, I'll be the Great Lake to swallow up your tears..."
23) CAPITOLINE HILL– I have no idea where this song is. Mark and I recorded a version at the house where I wrote Bird Box. The song is unreal. But it's not on an album yet. Maybe that means we need to record it next.

So tell Mark happy birthday if you see him. And go listen to these songs. These are just two sentence flashes of what there is to unearth here. This is all just... the tip of the iceberg.

pic by Misty Lyn Bergeron

Happiest birthday to The High Strung's Stephen Palmer. Obviously I have 10,000 memories with Stephen even as we make more BUT... one of the first things that always comes to mind is when I lived in the basement of his Oak Park home, and with me on guitar, him on drums, we worked out most the songs for the album ?Posible o' Imposible?
TEN HIGH STRUNG TRACKS THAT SHOWCASE HOW GREAT HE IS ON THE GUITAR:
1.) "Parachute" (?Posible o' Imposible?)- here you get the slinkier side, the pretty guitar lines during the verses, the gorgeous solo. This is SP being water.
2) "Riots of the Mind" (Quiet Riots)- A wide spectrum of SP in one song, from the chugging "what happened to the riots" part to the wild Am "age of Aquarius" bit.
3) "King Drum" (I, Anybody)- one of my favs of SP as he becomes the wall of sound, the emotional tapestry hanging in the room that the song is.
4) "So Lonely" (Address Unknown)- From the midpoint on... unbelievable tone and placement. Somehow equal parts playful and sincere.
5) "?Posible o' Imposible?" (?Posible o' Imposible?)- the guitar walk down, the peak solo... again, sets the entire mood, in this case (like the title suggests): sad with hope, or hopeful with a tinge of sorrow.
6) "Address Unknown" (Address Unknown)- I think it's a slide of some sort? I don't what he's doing exactly but the entire song is loaded with heavenly slide lines, totally giving the sense of heading into the future, making progress, on the move, go.
7) "When I Lay My Egg" (Quiet Riots)- Like Joey Santiago, SP takes what could be a much straighter song and turns it into something that becomes his (and the band's) own. Melodies on the verses, cool chords during the breakdown chorus.
8) "Half a Dream" (I, Anybody)- just go listen to this solo. Next level holy s**t solo. Pure SP.
9) "The Bomb" (Address Unknown)- I'm not sure if SP plays before the ending or not, but whatever happens here, when he comes in at the end, the emotionality makes me cry every single time. Just genius coloring on the long ending.
10) "Big Game Hunter" (?Posible o' Imposible?)- the long solo in the middle that sounds like it's played out of a tiny practice amp. Chef's kiss.

And these are just ten. Go check it all out. Unreal.
I love you, Stephen!
Happy happy birthday.

And while we may or may not sound older (I hope we make albums at 90), we DO age... and so here is a pic of Mark reading the freakin set list to me because I don't wanna wear my glasses on stage anymore.

Played The Lexington Bar Saturday. 'Twas wonderful in there. Thanks to those who came. My favorite parts were watching one of my favorite bands in Rogue Satellites and then all the talking that went on out back after. So many funny people in one place. Brilliant night.

The High Strung

Pic by Allison Laakko