From ROY IVY: Enough about me. Let’s talk about me. I spill the beans in this episode, taking listeners against their will through my short lived successes and constant failures in the music trade. If you listen closely, you can hear an armada of ships being sunk by my loose lips.

To summarize, I’m an aging songster who’s run the gamut across three decades. I’ve been a waistoid rocker/wannabe punker with stories that will make you wince. I was a choirboy in a popular band of heliotropes called The Polyphonic Spree, which I sailed across three years of blackouts, smelly tour buses, and stadium shows (which I’ve never played since and never will again) that occasionally escape the recesses of my memories and fill me with joy and regret.

Reeking of hubris after forming my own “hey, look at me!” band, I hung up my robe just before the band really took flight, and still have never forgiven myself. I quit months before Polyphonic toured with David Bowie. If I had stayed, I could have made love to David Bowie…or at least bottled his sweat and gargled with it.

How did I wind up in Montana? I still don’t know. Long and short of it: after Texas and a failed marriage to another musician (you think it’s what you want…but don’t do it), I wound up reinventing myself in Chicago as a solo-acoustic performer (I’d rather be dead than be called a “singer-songwriter”. I ain’t no Gordon Lightfoot.) I made great hay there, finding an audience of respectful listeners (a recurring theme in this podcast) for my intimate shows. Then again, I was using a lot of tricks I’d copped from Calvin and Jonathan Richman about getting and keeping attention.

But after getting canned from my job cranking out copy at Groupon (it’s a lousy company you may have heard of run by garbage people creating garbage content), my bae Adriane and I could no longer afford the rush and mush of the Windy City. We wanted to live cheap, fuck mountains, and meet a new species of weirdos, and that’s how we wound up in Missoula.

Back to the big story: how I wound up becoming a Beaut.

After this podcast recording that you’re hearing today, Sandman asked me if I wanted to take his role in the band. He’s a busy fella, that rappin’ cowboy, and he no longer had time for this project (too busy charming the planet, working on a kid’s record, etc), but didn’t want to leave his fellow Beauts in a lurch.

I’ve never been Dred Pirate Roberts’d a band, and was honored as hell. But I was certainly trepidacious. Sure, I got the Calvin moves and the booming voice down pat, but taking the place of the irreplaceable Sandman is a daunting task, and I’m no picnic to be in a band with.

Yet it worked. It really worked. I was quickly accepted by these other Beauts, and we locked in fast. We christened the electrified Beauts 2.0 in a basement last month. Sandman was there. It felt like making love to someone’s wife as their husband watched with glee, but in a good way for once. It was synchronicity at its most surgent, and this podcast made it happen.

I wasn’t kidding when I asked the Pop Oracle, “How do I fake my own death?” It’s something I’ve seriously mused upon, and I even billed my final Chicago show as a funeral. Moving to Missoula was part of an unplanned reinvention. I came here with no friends, no connections, and no desire to repeat past glories. But thanks to luck, karma, synchronicity, and all that stuff, I’m starting anew with a new band that was magically bestowed to me, and plotting a new band that will need its own zip code.

I did get a lil’ jittery behind the mic, so I’m glad to have this moment to make a major correction. My ex didn’t urinate on my Polyphonic Spree robe, but it did get peed upon. I just can’t remember whose pee it was.

From ANDRAS JONES: Many years ago I wrote and recorded a song called “April 19th” about all the bad things that have happened on April 19th. Since today is April 19th of April ’19 I figured there might be some sync to it.

There’s also a nice sync to today’s Pop Oracle song of the day from the R8B App. Maybe Roy needs to lose the beard if he wants to fake his death.

POP ORACLE Song of The Day (April 19, 2019): SHMUSHKIN “Kenny Loggins’ Beard”

Foggy Eyes

Keep your eyes shut and live your life
Someone else will pay the price
Open-up your eyes and speak your mind
Leave your youth far behind

Foggy eyes lookin’ at their friends
Wondering what’s to become of them
Think about the way it used to be
Foggy eyes, why can’t you see?
I tried to tell you that it was okay that
You were gonna go away
You’re like the people that are never real
Like the foggy eyes walking down the street

Foggy eyes, lookin’ at foggy eyes
Foggy eyes, going bang bang bang
Foggy eyes, lookin’ at foggy eyes
Foggy eyes, going bang bang bang

Foggy eyes at home in a box of pain
Look in the mirror and travel far away
The world they see is enough to make you cry
Foggy eyes, say goodbye to love

Foggy eyes, lookin’ at foggy eyes
Foggy eyes, going bang bang bang
Foggy eyes, lookin’ at foggy eyes
Foggy eyes, going bang bang bang

There’s things we want each other to be
I’m sorry that you think you’re not important to me
I don’t know why we make each other cry
Don’t know why we all got foggy eyes
I think about all the things I never do
How I’m such a disappointment to you
‘Cause I wanna play with you
I wanna get away from you

Foggy eyes, lookin’ at foggy eyes
Foggy eyes, going bang bang bang
Foggy eyes, going bang bang bang bang

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