Singalong 001: If I Were A Carpenter
Love is in the doing
Greetings Play It Like It’s Music listeners. Kind wishes to you in the new year.
Today I’m launching a series of singalongs.
While we haven’t been talking much lately on this channel, much is afoot. I’d like to extend a warm welcome to all the newer subscribers, I hope you are all well. I’m grateful to Nelson George, the Substack network and CTZNWELL for recommending me.
After my final podcast episode 80 with Chris White, I started catching up on some creative projects, namely learning how to play guitar and writing an album. I did some tour dates in 2023, then went to South America for a little while. My creative flow increased tremendously but I dropped, once again, off the face of social media Earth.
My career is all over the map. You might have found me through the podcast, my theater work, a substack recommendation, or through my music. But however we might have met, I want to offer you something special in 2025.
I’ll say it. I’ve been writing tons of new songs, but I’m not cut out for the music business. A record will come when the time is right, when resources allow. I perform the new songs here and there, but online I’m necessarily limiting their exposure until the album launch.
But I’d like to get the wheels turning here, and to that end I’ll be putting out two videos per week of the classic songs I love the most. You’ve probably heard most of them: they are the songs that shaped me.
A guitar (tuned like I tune my cello) is now my main rig. I’m still getting hired for bass and cello, but I’m developing my show on guitar because the cello somehow keeps getting broken on the way to a gig. Cellos are hard to play, expensive to maintain and irksome to amplify. They can also distract from the song.
And I’m song guy. So here’s my busking project. I hope you enjoy it.
Without further ado, the first song is “If I Were A Carpenter” by Tim Hardin.
"If I worked my hands in wood, would you still love me?"
A Renn Faire romance, I can't imagine any of the YouTube “project carpenters” singing this song. It’s too vulnerable, we live in the future now. Tinkers and millers are now tweakers and marketers. But no one is singing "If I were a marketer". A marketer would show you how you can make a $7000 table out of shipping pallets. A carpenter will tell you not to waste your time with cheap wood.
But here we are. In the chip age, where most of the tasks that used to employ whole cities worth of people are now done for us automagically, just by talking to the little monolith in our pockets. The tinkers and millers are further out of sight than ever.
Of course though, they still feed us. Carpenters still build our houses. Nothing has really changed about the physical requirements of the world, it's just that the actual carpentry is usually done by someone who doesn't speak the same language we do. And the pots and pans are made overseas.
Bits, and the engineers who program them, hold sway over our every thought now. Steering our feelings into the cognitive gutterball of doomscroll. It’s easy to start feeling like a loop closed on our agency long ago.
Did it?
"Save my love for sorrow - save my love for lonely"
The devices come into our lives, welcomed as agents of convenience and responsibility. Of progress:
"I will use this amazing modern device to stay in touch, modernly, with my fellow humans!"
"And I will be modernly entertained! It’s the future now: my telephone is a TV, DJ, department store, bank teller, datebook, and the post office." It broadcasts on infinite new channels.
I can yak into the camera myself. Sing, even.
But somehow we still get a loneliness epidemic and a love drought.
"If I were a miller, at a mill wheel grinding"
I worked full-time at a bakery for a while, and my head was never clearer. But so was my social calendar. And I wasn't making any music.
Some modern voices would have us believe we don't need to work with our hands anymore. It's certainly costly for a certain class of consumer to do so, unless it's all you do.
But working with your hands will keep you honest and connected. These days, I've even seen "working with your hands" get labeled as a mental health exercise. An experience you can buy.
But you don’t have to buy it. You can just do it. The love is in the doing.