New Love Stories comes out on May 3rd. We chose that date because it’s a Bandcamp Friday, when Bandcamp doesn’t take its usual cut of sales.
When I mentioned the date to a good friend, she said, “Whoa, that’s an auspicious day.” It took me a beat to know what she meant. Somehow I had blocked out what had happened.
May 3rd, 2022, began as one of the best days of my adult life — and then ended as the single worst.
That morning I was painting an empty apartment for my landlord for whom I periodically do odd jobs. Every few minutes, my phone pinged with people saying nice things to me. They had read that morning’s story in Style Weekly by Davy Jones about my life and the making of our first album.
I’ve spent a lot of my life not quite sure I exist (and wishing at times that I didn’t), so hearing other people respond to our story that day was incredible — it made me feel ... substantiated. Visible. With each encouraging response my heart swelled. I thought: “It’s finally getting better. Maybe I’ll make it after all. This must finally be the path.”
That afternoon I’d planned to go hear a jazz trio with a friend at Quirk Hotel. Before I headed over there, I took Fuzzy — the greatest dog who’s ever existed — out for a walk around the block. Fuzzy was studiously inspecting the neighborhood’s new peemail when another dog escaped its owner’s control, charged across the street, and attacked. It was awful. I did everything I could, but it was too late. Fuzzy died from his injuries that night.
I can’t put into words how painful losing Fuzzy was. We’d been together for nine years. Fuzzy was a mess when I got him in 2013, and so was I. We were one another’s emotional support animals. He had the worst separation anxiety the animal behaviorist we worked with had ever seen; I was in and out of psychiatric hospitals a lot back then. He was not an easy dog. He was cantankerous and stubborn. He was a little guy, with wiry fur and an enormous persona that required me to take mine down a peg. Loving him well made me extend myself in ways I didn’t think I could before he was in my life. He was my sweetness.
I miss him with real pangs of longing at random moments. There’s no upside to this loss. But there’s only upside to having had him in my life. We made each other new. I loved him. There are a thousand great stories about Fuzzy. We were one another’s new love story.
All of which is to say, here’s the cover of the new record:
This makes me think about what is one of my favorite-ever songs, "Tears," by the Chameleons. I first heard it when I was about 16 and bought their magnum opus, "Strange Times," at Peaches Records on Midlothian Turnpike, kind of coasting off three factors: 1) It had amazing album art; 2) Mark Lewis from Ten Ten said it was his favorite record; and 3) it was an LP that included a bonus EP, so more bang for my scarce buck. Man, it was the greatest blind purchase of my record buying life. I wore that shit out, at home, in my room, alone. Which is how I spent most of my teen years.
When you're that age and you get absorbed in music, you don't necessarily analyze or know what the lyrics really connote, you kind of surf the larger impression it makes. So I always thought the song was about a girlfriend, or a parent. But years later, amidst my obsession with the band and their singer Mark Burgess, I learned that the song is about his family dog, Sandy.
During the pandemic I signed up for Mark Burgess's Patreon to help him out, because it was all cancelled tours and visa separation from his lady who was stuck in Texas, and that dude was in a bad way and he meant so much to me my whole life. And one day he posted a photo of a dog on his Patreon, no explanation. Commenters speculated about it and asked questions and so on. But I knew somehow exactly what it was. I posted, "Is that a photo of Sandy?" And he just said yes. No further explanation. I maybe wept a little.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLSbb7_8f3s
There's also an acoustic version that's significantly different.
I loved Der Füz. Rascally little bastard. What a sweet ornery little motherfucker. The greatest. I've said it before and I'll say it til my dying breath: I've learned more about love from my dog than from about any other relationship in my life. (Sorry, babe.)