Headless Household (this time around):

Joe Woodard; guitar, default vocalist
Tom Lackner; drums, engineer/Tompound studio keeper
David Binney; alto saxes, mastering
Chris Symer, electric bass

Had things gone as planned, the Santa Barbara calif-based band Headless Household would have plunged into its next album project in 2020—its 10th album in a 30-plus year discography. In the pandemical interim, the hopelessly, haplessly eclectic band created its first dance single, “Holed & Hunkered,” being released on multiple digital platforms (and possibly a future album).
The “lean/not-so-mean mix” is being released on June 15, in time for California’s declaration of relative independence from pandemic restrictions; a larger “party mix,” with other Household singers and players joining in the funk fracas.
Consider it a funky anthem, basted in a hope for hope, regarding life in a time of COVID.
The project was made possible through the expanding, everyday miracle of remote tracking, the means through which musicians globally have found an active root of expression in these isolating times. The Household’s home base of Santa Barbara became the hub, with remote contributions from songwriter/guitarist/vocalist-by-default Joe Woodard, drummer/studio maestro Tom Lackner, and alto saxist extraordinaire David Binney (charter member Dick Dunlap wasn't able to join on this party).
Tracking tentacles then extended South to Los Angeles (Binney) and to Seattle (original Household bassist Chris Symer).
On the song, shades of Sly, Miles, EWF, Steely Dan and x factors are tossed into the musical mesh, around a simple, loopy lyric, echoing the flood of days in pandemic life. All roads and riffs lead to a common desire to keep music making and hope alive, to keep singing the collective song in a world gone viral for the moment.

www.householdink.headlesshousehold
 
lyrics
“Holed & Hunkered” (Joe Woodard)

“Chorus:”
Holed up, and hunkered down
How long we gotta’ lug this thing around?
Like worried souls in the lost and found
Holed up, and hunkered down
Holed up, and hunkered down,
How long we gotta’ fear this thing in town,
Like wary souls in the underground
Holed up and hunkered, holed up and hunkered, holed up and hunkered… down

Bridge:
Blind-sided by the blind in charge
Side-spiraled in a world gone viral
A world gone viral


copyright 2021, by Joe Woodard
credits
releases June 15, 2021

Holed & Hunkered

Beyond

Peter Buck/ Drums, Jim Connolly/ anything else
Robinson Eikenberry/ Co-Produced, Engineered, Mixed, and Mastered
Jaco Connolly/Art

Polka Dot

Tempest

Antena [kaukam tur ija abu ut]

Le Show with Harry Shearer - March 25, 2018

Laughing

A choral work for mixed SATB choir, soprano soloist, and piano. Commissioned by Xavier University Music Department, on the celebration of 50 years of the university becoming co-ed. 

Features texts by Cincinnati poet Alice Cary, Xavier English Dept. faculty Anne McCarty, Kristen Renzi, and History Dept. chair Kathleen Smythe. 

Thanks to Polina Bespalko, Rachel Chrastil, Megan Boyd, and Shannon Byrne for making this possible. 

©2019 Steel Bird Music (BMI)
I. To Solitude
II. The Women with the Hungry Eyes III. Fifty Years
IV. Courage over Comfort

I. "To Solitude"
by Alice Cary

I am weary of the working,
Weary of the long, blind struggle
I am weary drifting, driving
  Like a helmless bark at sea;
 Weary of the long day’s heat;
 Kindly, comfortable spirit,
 To thy comfortable bosom,
 Wilt thou give thyself to me?
 Wilt thou take me, spirit sweet?
 Give thy birds to sing me sonnets?
  Give thy winds my cheeks to kiss?
 For a pathway bright and high,—
 And thy mossy rocks to stand for
 Weary of the dimly dying
 The memorials of our bliss?
 Hopes that never quite all die.
 I in reverence will hold thee,
 Weary searching a bad cipher
 Never vexed with jealous ills,
 For a good that must be meant;
 Though thy wild and wimpling waters
 Discontent with being weary,—
 Wind about a thousand hills.
 Weary with my discontent.
 I am weary of the trusting
 Where my trusts but torments prove;
 Wilt thou keep faith with me? wilt thou
 Be my true and tender love?

II. The Woman with the Hungry Eyes (for Theda Bara)
by Anne McCarty

My father taught me to tailor
so I tailored myself.
The “nice Jewish girl from Cincinnati” Now an Arab born in the shadow of the Sphinx.
The whole world turned into human eyes and I gazed back.
It paid to be silent,
gesturing desire,
jealousy, hate, love, and devotion.
in pantomime, keeping pace with the director’s metronome.
Women lead double lives—
many names, one role:
The Unchastened Woman, Cleopatra, Salome, The Devil’s Daughter, The Vixen, hell’s handmaiden,
the wickedest woman in the world, vicious to the core, and cruel.
The stake is always looking for a way into our hearts.
The heart adapts to deserts, the Sahara my home, where the bitter apple grows,
the creeping plant, tall lovegrass, the fig, orange, and acacia.
I am my own oasis.
Once pictures started talking,
it was my turn to be the watcher.
In velvet seats of the picture house, film flickering on our faces.
jealousy, hate, love, and devotion.

III. Fifty Years
by Kathleen Smythe, Kristen Renzi and Dan Wells

Fifty years doesn’t feel that long from when
we were thought too different to get along.
Coming so far, we’ve yet further to go
She was once young, radiant and graceful.
Eyes cerulean deep, reflecting faces from the bottom of the sea.
Golden hair, rays stolen from early Phoebus ascending his blinding throne. Slender, moving, gay, dancing.
Silken poise untamed behind the warming coal red lips of her soul. 
She danced and smiled through fifty years.

Over Millenia

The Road

Sonnet

Riding pale
Broken hearted
Gonna set sail
For that darkness
Just burning time
Brakes on the cradle
And a candle for your eyes
In this crazy little town 
You don't even try

And nobody knows 
How it got started
But the devil takes care 
Of his harlots
They come spiraling down
Selling skin in the garden
There's an image in my chest 
Where he carved it

Home again
In the land of the little rain

I'm a hand-me-down
So unwanted
And all of this life 
Just feels haunted
Just breathing time
Food for the spider 
In the days between stations
In this crazy little town
Where we're all wasted

Home again
In the land of little rain

Owens Valley Song

Toy Shop Ghost is Jim Connolly. 
"words and music that create a little temporary world. Like a short piece of theater"

Sonnet

Toy Shop Ghost

Related tracks