Message in a Bottle
February 2025
T.K.
Over a decade ago, I found myself in a dirty Adams Morgan bar in the middle of the day after taking an extended lunch from my seemingly important day job. It was clear from my pastel tie and matching blazer that I didn’t belong there. I could feel the patron’s eyes on me but perhaps that was just my ever-present feeling of never quite belonging anywhere at anytime. Between the petty ridiculing of my boss and the pressures of a complicated family, I needed to be somewhere that I could disappear for the afternoon. I sat there in a dark corner with a rail vodka soda that was more vodka than soda and allowed myself to fully listen to the whims of the gruff bartender’s musical selections. That’s when I first heard you over the crackling speakers.
Your voice was striking. Filled with razor-sharp pain as you shared so confidently of the trials and tribulations of relationships. You seemed to understand the power of accepting mistakes in a way I had not yet acknowledged in my own life. But it was how you unified so effortlessly with the rest of the band that shook me. Unlike my life at that time, you had found your own rightful place. It seemed so simple in that moment but somehow along my own journey I had started to resist the sheer might of music. Yet in one forceful spin I was thrust back. I’d later learn, much to the bartender’s surprise at my asking, that the song was ‘I’m Your Man’ from your Ghosts of Champoeg album with The Hill Dogs.
Much of your writing feels like a steel bear trap. It strikes suddenly and in unexpected places but once it attaches, it truly never lets go. It can cause pain but more importantly its the pause in step that makes it so powerful. It forces you to take time to stop and confront all that you have attempted to run away from.
There is a moment at the beginning of ‘Strange Leaves in a Strange Light’ from your solo debut Wannabe that I sometimes think about in the quieter moments of my day. The nearly 23 seconds at the beginning along with a deep breath struck me as such a critical choice. A grounding moment to connect and to allow us to pause before you deliver poignant lines like “You laid your graceful hands on my spine and each vertebrae you pressed combined with leaves the trees had left.” Perhaps it was a casual selection but it impacted me.
You seemed to ferociously unleash your wild side on the hiliariously, boisterous work with TK & The Holy Know-Nothings. Even so many years later, Arguably OK remains to be one of the best Americana albums of the last decade. It’s self depricating honesty about self-sabotage, manhood and trying to find love in a harsh world strikes again and again. Upon each listen, I hear a new layer. A choice I didn’t notice before. It echoes all the glorious influence of Terry Allen’s expansive storytelling that continues to captivate and inspire. I can only imagine what he might have thought upon his first listen to it as a whole.
Likely that perhaps the world isn’t so doomed with your art in it. Perhaps there is still honor in being honest. And perhaps, just maybe, there is peace and joy to be found even in the rubble.
With immense gratitude,
S.C.
