The Velvet Hammer
Finally, I get to be the hero for once.
For two weeks running, Maggie and I had it made. I’d wake her softly at the crack of dawn, bottle feed her, then take a long, slow stroll around the neighborhood until she slipped off to sleep. Everybody won: Abbi slept, Maggie ate, and I gained QT with baby and bonus points with mommy.
For nearly two weeks now, though, she’s refused the bottle. Our mornings are now a protracted battle that invariably ends in tears, frustration, and a solemn handover to Abbi. It’s a heartbreaking exchange, one fraught with the guilt of my uselessness in the face of feedings, to say nothing of my typical 12-hour daily absence. Sure, I try and make everything else easy — dishes, laundry, groceries, meals — but it’s small solace.
Last night, I received this text just a few steps from home:
Just warning you that I’m going to need extra help tonight; Maggie is cranky. She hasn’t slept all day.
When I stepped inside, Abbi was standing in the dining room with Maggie, doing the now-familiar bob and weave. Abbi turned to flash an exasperated grimace as Maggie struggled against her embrace. Without a word, I reached out to cradle the baby, then began bobbing and weaving myself.
“Have you dropped the velvet hammer?” I asked.
And so it began. Without breaking rhythm, I nudged the bath mat off the tub with my left foot, then turned on the shower with my right. I stepped to the sink, cranked it, then positioned myself in the perfect aural center between the two spigots facing her towards the darkest spot in the room. Then I began counting. Somewhere around two hundred, Maggie’s head settled into my shoulder. I ticked off another 150 back-and-forths for good measure, then crept into the bedroom and gingerly lay her in her bassinet.
I quelled my impulse to grin as I stepped into the living room, then opened my arms to my wife.
Jeff Jacobson’s Abatab
I first met my pal Jeff Jacobson at singer/songwriter Casey Shea’s wedding. He was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee with chanteuse Amy Hills. I sat down and slipped right into their conversation, one that continues to this day.
Jeff has a thoughtful demeanor and dry, self-effacing wit. He’s one of the best guitarists and most capable singer/songwriters I know. He pitched in on the first two Holiday Benefit albums, and sings “Sweet Baby James” with me on my forthcoming “Forever Young” benefit album. He’s an awesome guy.
Jeff launched a brand-new, super-innovative website, abatab.com, on Monday. Abatab sell officially-licensed indie sheet music for artists like Ari Hest, Allie Moss, and Bess Rogers. So I asked him a few questions about it. Here’s that conversation in full…
Benjamin Wagner: How did you come to music? What was your first instrument? Was it your college major?
Jeff Jacobson: Well, my mom says I asked to play guitar when I was five, but I just don’t think that’s really true. (Sorry, Mom.) However, I do remember being very young, sitting at the kitchen table with this huge guitar (which I now know was half-sized!), crying and saying I didn’t want to practice. And she said, “Okay, then we’ll stop guitar lessons.” That was a good move, because a year later I asked to start again. I was a psychology major at NYU (which has come in handy in the music business!) and a music minor.
BW: When did you start transcribing? What does that involve? What’s your technique? For whom have you transcribed?
JJ: I started when I was around 12 because there were no note-for-note transcriptions of Van Halen back then, and I really wanted to know how Eddie Van Halen was doing all that stuff! So I got out my trusty tape recorder and found I really loved the challenge of figuring it all out myself. But it does involve listening in ways that people should never be forced to listen to music, haha. I’ll say it like this: most people listen to music horizontally, as it smoothly goes by. Transcribing requires listening vertically, breaking down every beat in fits and starts. I’ve worked for big publishers around the country and have done about 300 books by artists from all over the spectrum: John Mayer, Bonnie Raitt, Metallica, Eric Clapton, Les Paul, Tom Petty, The Black Keys, Beck. And because I do guitar books, there’s tons of heavy metal. I can watch MTV Headbanger’s Ball and recognize all of the bands before their name comes up on the screen. It freaks people out!
BW: How/when did your solo career come about? How has your day job transcribing influenced or informed your own music? Do your songs begin with the music? Or the melody?
JJ: I’ve been writing songs since I was a kid, but was never confident enough in the material to perform them until about 5 years ago. For me, the music always comes first and then I love the challenge of finding the right sounding lyrics that tell the story and evoke some type of imagery. If I can’t see pictures in my head while I’m writing the lyrics, I know I’m on the wrong track and they go right in the garbage can (which can get pretty full). I’ve been able to pretty well separate out transcribing from actually playing or writing music. Transcribing is honestly not very creative, as the goal is to figure out and notate exactly how a certain artist plays their songs. Writing is much more free-flowing and creative. But still, transcribing has helped me to be able to listen to music and have a sense of what’s going on – give things a name so to speak, so when I hear a certain type of chord in my head when I’m writing a song, I can tell what it is and pull it out of my bag of tricks… well, usually.
BW: Did the release of your eponymous LP in 2007 meet your creative expectations? What about in terms of career or impact? Having been immersed in the music business for years, how did you find the experience?
JJ: Conceptually, it turned out how I thought I wanted it to. I set out to make an album where my guitar wasn’t the focus all the time, with varying colors and textures. And the album really has a nice balance of that while still sounding like all the songs belong together on one album. But in the end, it ended up being a bit less personal than I would have liked if we had kept the production a little more streamlined. Don’t get me wrong, there are no tubas or symphony orchestras or anything like that. But I learned that less really is more, and earlier this year I put out a free download (the “Lunch In The Park EP”) of a live solo show, just me and my guitar. Seemed right somehow.
The experience of making albums really is kind of cool. It’s a lot of work but it’s great to hear the songs slowly build up and start to sound something like music. ‘Cause at the beginning, you really wonder if they ever will. And it’s fun because musicians are generally funny people to be around. But from a life perspective it can be all-consuming, and when you’re done, you’re kind of glad it’s over. I remember there being a lot of stomach aches.
BW: How did you get involved with The Undisputed Heavyweights? The group had some phenomenal local success. How did you find that experience?
JJ: Casey, Wes Verhoeve and I all started out in the NYC music scene at the same time. We met at various open mics and found we shared a love of 40′s/50′s pop music and culture — Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr — when it was about more than just the music. It was entertainment, too. Those guys were amazing; they could do it all and were also really funny. The three of us all were going to tons of local bands’ shows and kept saying how tired we were tired of seeing bands where there was just no entertainment value. Casey really was the one who brought that element to the band, and it was tons of fun being the straight man. Those shows, and the rehearsals and all the crazy stuff we did, those were some of the most fun times I’ve ever had. It was almost like being in The Monkees — in a much smaller way of course — and also, they were way better. But to be able to do it with your best friends was really kind of special.
BW: Word is your on hiatus from writing, recording and performing. How come?
JJ: I just don’t have a reason except to say that I felt that I needed to get away from it for a while, maybe even for good, not sure. But when I decided to step away, I knew instantly that it was the right choice. And looking back, even without ever having had this huge career, I’m feeling more and more that I accomplished what I set out to. Sure, at the beginning, I wanted to be a hugely successful singer/songwriter touring all over the country. But in the end, I’m finding that I mostly wanted to confront the challenge of playing my songs for people. I avoided it for years — “the songs aren’t good enough, I’m not ready,” etc. But somehow I found a small kernel of confidence to actually do it even though I was totally scared out of my wits. And that’s something that I now carry with me when I approach other challenges that I might initially feel I can’t do. I think we all have that little kernel of confidence even if we don’t know it. It’s more a matter of being willing to look for it when you’re scared to do something you know deep down you really want to do.
BW: So how did the idea for Abatab come about?
JJ: I had been thinking for a couple of years that I wanted to somehow combine my transcribing with my love for indie music and the community of people surrounding it. But I just couldn’t come up with a viable business plan that would work for everyone involved — artist, fan and me, too. Then, and I don’t think this is a coincidence, the very week I decided to step away from performing, as soon as I came to terms with it, the last piece of the puzzle fell into place in terms of a profit-sharing system I implemented for the artists that they’re really responding to. In a nutshell, my goal for the store is to offer indie fans accurate, affordable sheet music, provide artists with a new revenue stream, and also promote new artists, which I do by offering free sheet music with mp3 included.
BW: Where’d you come up with the name?
JJ: The name took a while, and I have a notebook filled with pages of horrible names – seriously bad. I had narrowed it down to a couple of run of the mill names I really wasn’t happy with and then had friends say, “you should come up with something non-sensical – you know, like ‘Hulu!’” That sounded great but I felt that it had to mean something, too. I remembered the Genesis song “Abacab,” which is just a nonsense word representing that song’s form (a=verse, b=chorus, c=bridge). I was, like, perfect! What’s more basic to a song than it’s form? And my site at it’s core is all about songs. So I changed the “c” to a “t” (since “tab” is a short-hand term for guitar sheet music) and voila! Abatab.
BW: What’s your plan for the business? And how did you find web and business development in relation to other, more-creative efforts like songwriting?
JJ: I’m finding that there’s so much I learned from being a singer/songwriter and songwriting in general that I can bring with me to developing the business. Building an audience for both requires a similar mindset – the willingness to do the little things, to work hard and be patient. Not ever settling for “good enough”. Even having spent all those years writing lyrics, fiddling around with words and their meanings and sounds. Whether it’s composing emails to artists I don’t yet know or writing text for the site, phrasing things just right and making the best choices with words can give people a tangible sense of who you are and what you’re about. And that helps to create a connection. And in the end, that’s mainly what I’m hoping to do. So I guess it really hasn’t changed all that much.
***
Visit abatab.com today. And hang tight for Jeff and my awesome cover of “Sweet Baby James” on the “Forever Young” benefit available October 2.
Sundays With Maggie
I set out like a total rookie: no sun hat, no burp towel, no bottle, not even an extra diaper. I scarcely pulled a baseball cap over my eyes and flip flops on my feet. It was just Maggie, me and a stripped-down stroller.
Funny how quickly we forget. It doesn’t seem like much now, some fifteen hours later. But at four in the morning, when her mother and I’d both taken hour-long, overnight turns endeavoring in vain to sooth her to sleep, her tiny, spastic head butts, grunts and gasps — adorable as they may seem in the daylight — turn downright maddening.
By sunrise, we’d lost track of the time-space continuum. All I knew was that, when she cried, it was my turn to feed. Mags and I lumbered into the kitchen, warmed a bottle (applying to the kitchen sink the now, five-week-old rule that running water calms), then sat quietly in the living room. Some thirty minutes later, when four ounces of delicious, high quality, Mommy Milk was gone, burp delivered, and swaddle applied, I began rocking her to sleep.
No luck.
Abbi tossed and turned in bed, trying to sleep despite Maggie’s racket and my obvious frustration, then said, “Why don’t you take her for a walk?”
Within ten blocks of random, early-morning wandering, Maggie’s eyes fluttered closed, her flailing arms settled, and her mouth fell agape.
I kept walking for nearly two hours as the city woke up. Doorman tipped their caps and paused their street cleaning. Early shoppers (all elderly) smiled and asked, “How old?” And a steady parade of Daddies on Duty passed by with a knowing nod.
Later, Abbi and I strategized our break. As Maggie’s afternoon feeding wound down, Abbi said, “Everything ready? Sun hat? Burp towel? Bottle? Diapers?”
Maggie had scarcely dozed off into her post-breast feeding stupor when we strapped her into the stroller, and sped downstairs for the earliest JG Melon cheeseburger ever. We grabbed a table outside just a few minutes before five o’clock, ordered in haste, and then ate nervously as she startled and stirred with every passing Hampton Jitney. Success!
And that’s it. That’s Sunday with Maggie: a roller coaster, funhouse, coffee-fueled all-nighter where laundry, dishes, and diapers are regular, repeating and relentless. Still, I am filled with more love than I ever thought my body could hold.
Just now, I spent thirty-eight minutes rocking back and forth in the bathroom positioned in the perfect-aural center between the shower and the faucet holding Maggie tightly against my heart, her bottom in my right hand, her head in my left. I gingerly rocked my way into the bedroom, and carefully lowered her into her bassinet like a high-stakes game of Operation; touch the sides, and the baby cries. She stirred, then settled. I tiptoed out of the room, and resumed writing.
Eight minutes later, she began crying. I stepped back in the bedroom, and scooped her up. Her eyes were wide and black, lips splayed, limbs all akimbo. She’d broken free of her swaddle, and was screaming. I rocked her for another ten minutes, swaying side-to-side and shushing gently in her ear. She stopped crying. Her body relaxed in my arms. And finally, her tiny head slid softly onto my shoulder as if it was custom made for her.
Because it was.
Harlem River Ride
Many, many July Fourths ago, before Google Maps or Garmin GPS, before to the city’s best efforts to develop greenspaces, and well before being a husband or a father, I set out to circumnavigate Manhattan on my bike. I managed pretty well below 125th Street, but was thwarted by the vast complex of unknown bridges, urban developments, and industrial wastelands of the city’s northeastern reaches.
Since moving to the Upper East Side in April, I’ve endeavored to tackle those unknowns, searching Google, pouring over DOT and MTA maps, and teasing at the edges of my known universe on long runs. I’ve made the Triboro Bridge, Wards and Governer’s Islands my playgrounds, run to Yankee Stadium, and pushed as far northeast as Orchard Beach. One stretch of Manhattan real estate has eluded me, though: Harlem River Drive. That is, until now.
Inspired in no small part by the realization that the New York City Triathlon is just a few weeks away and I haven’t ridden more than ten times in the last year (or, for that matter, swam once), I studied my maps, and set out during a narrow sliver of available time (read: Maggie’s nap) to find my way up and along the Harlem River.
I raced north on First Avenue, west to Third, over the Third Avenue Bridge. I was to 161st and Morris (the under-safe and over-budget Bronx County Hall of Justice) in roughly one fifth the time of my last two runs through the Bronx, and coasting past Yankee Stadium (Counting Crows’ “Hangin’ Around” was blaring from the ballpark where the Toronto Blue Jays later felled the Yanks 6-1) in a little more than twenty-five minutes. (Hard to believe Yankee Stadium used to seem so far away; it’s actually quite close, and quite easy to get to).
I crossed the Macombs Dam Bridge (New York City’s third-oldest bridge dating to 1895) some 2500 across and 150 above the Harlem River, then began the long, slow uphill to St. Nicholas Place. Which is where the magic happened. I turned right, and coasted down the west side of the street towards Harlem River Drive. The west side aligned me with exiting southbound traffic, though. I wanted to head north. I jumped the curb, slid between two cement pylons, then spotted it ahead. I crossed the drive, then settled in along the river with a “Whoop!”
The river narrowed and mellowed, buffeted to the west by Highbridge Park’s sheer walls of bright green. The trail was wide and empty, the sun high and bright. It was clear sailing beneath the great, steel arches of High Bridge (a now-closed pedestrian bridge); the Alexander Hamilton Bridge (part of Interstate 95); and the Washington Bridge, past Columbia University Boathouse, and back onto the city’s grid.
I turned onto Tenth Avenue and headed north to where it intersected with Broadway, then raced beneath the elevated tracks. There beneath the racket of the subway, I felt a little like Gene Hackman in “The French Connection” (though the film was apparently actually shot below the D line in Gravesend, Brooklyn). I crossed the island’s northeastern-most bridge, Broadway Bridge, then turned around and headed home along the west side (below the GWB, past The Little Red Lighthouse, etc) as I have a thousand times before.
In just under an hour and a half and some twenty-one miles, I pushed past my boundaries to unlock a few new vistas. I felt like I’d been gone a lifetime. Fortunately, Maggie was just waking up.
