Cardboard Box of Batteries

The death of Kelly Joe Phelps on May 31st got me thinking about my favorite Kelly Joe song, so I've dug out and updated some notes I made back in 2005. First, here are the lyrics, based on the liner notes for Tap the Red Cane Whirlwind, with a few minor changes to punctuation.

make a dent in the shovel
run the mud through a sieve
paste your hopes on a windmill blade
and plant 'em up on the hill.

a pencil sharpened with a putty knife
a pretty girl as a pretty nun
maybe you wake and think this is great
i just want somewhere to run.

oh, the walls blend into ceilings, and the faces they disappear.
never enough time to think it out only time to forget i'm here.
oh, and the bill is on the table but i've got no coins for pay
a beer half circle around her name, and what the hell did she say?

ah, the wise are playing tetherball and the ball's eyes they look like mine
rollin' around all on the end of the cord i can't make up for down
oh, i'm a streamlined engine with a cog chipped out of the wheel
i remember a dirty joke or two but i can't remember the feel.
i remember a dirty joke or two but i can't remember the feel.

too much time alone i spend, a miser with a nickel worn
starving like a mother, well, but i can't let go.
i'll spit the hours across the room and I'll kick 'em out that door
hell, you can have them. another thing i've got no use for.

well and it's funny that this comes out dark, it is not that bad
Oh, there's still a sparkle of silver in my cavity that plays music in the winter
i've a cardboard box of batteries hidden in a tire swing
a miner's hat with a light on top and a handful of wedding rings.
a miner's hat with a light on top and a handful of wedding rings.
a miner's hat with a light on top and a handful of wedding rings.

It doesn't quite "tell a story," but as a mood piece or character sketch it's about as precise as you can get. Memories, regrets, hopes — they're "all in the bag with the coins" (to quote another KJP song). I've highlighted everything that refers to prospecting, money, metal; it's a vein (so to speak) that runs through the whole thing. Some of the imagery is homely and eccentric — has anyone else used the word “tetherball” in a pop song? — other bits (“a pretty girl as a pretty nun”) just raise questions.

It's a melancholy picture, but there's that little "sparkle" at the end. The looseness in the fit between the lyrics and the tune adds something when Kelly Joe sings it, making it seem more spontaneous and conversational. And then there's the acoustic guitar, which after the intro mostly stays in the background but then bursts into extravagant arabesques at the end of some of the lines.

Kelly Joe was clearly a complicated guy, both personally and musically. He had a jazz background that shows in his playing, but his well-received first record, Lead Me On, was a collection of acoustic blues covers featuring slide guitar. He could probably have stuck to that indefinitely and made a career out of it and session work, but instead he repeatedly reinvented himself, abandoning the slide for fingerpicking (and occasionally, banjo) and becoming a gifted if sometimes frustratingly cryptic songwriter. In what turned out to be his final record, Brother Sinner & the Whale, he created a kind of unassuming Old Testament gospel music (if that's not a theological contradiction).

About ten years ago Kelly Joe said he needed a break and stopped touring and recording. At the time there was some mention of ulnar neuropathy, but as the years went on it was clear that something else was going on. His fans waited to see what new iteration of Kelly Joe Phelps might eventually emerge from the ferment, but for whatever reason it never happened. Maybe we'll know more in time, but maybe Kelly Joe just preferred his privacy.

Kelly Joe Phelps 1959-2022

And it's funny that this comes out dark, it's not that bad
There's still a sparkle of silver in my cavity that plays music in the winter
I've got a cardboard box of batteries hidden in a tire swing
A miners hat with a light on top and a handful of wedding rings.

Word is that Kelly Joe Phelps died on Tuesday. The Guardian has an obit. A fine guitarist and singer — and eventually, songwriter as well — whose career encompassed jazz, blues, original songs, and gospel, he took a break from the music business about a decade ago and sadly never came back. Few details are available at this point.

Maybe I'll have more to say when this has sunk in for a bit. For now, here are two examples of Kelly Joe in happier days.

The Owl & the Pussycat

At daybreak they stopped at the ocean
Took a walk as they watched the sun rise
In the palm of God's hand
They rolled in the sand
As the lazy foam danced in the tide

Corinne West, "The Road to No Compromise"

Though it's only an EP of six songs*, one of them a cover, this record is full of little mysteries and illuminations. I've been an on and off fan of Kelly Joe Phelps since his first record; Corinne West's name meant nothing to me until recently, though she's released three earlier CDs. They met late last year and are now touring together; whether they're "a couple" I have no idea but musically their alliance seems to have benefited both parties, Kelly Joe by bringing him down to earth and smoothing out some of his eccentricities, Corinne West by giving her songs (all of which she has recorded before) the fire and momentum lent by Kelly Joe's guitar playing, which has never been less than brilliant even when, in the past, some of his own material tended to be a little opaque. Compare the fairly tame version of "The Road to No Compromise" on Corinne's first record to the one on Magnetic Skyline and you'll appreciate the difference. His playing here is driving and relentless but never obtrusive.

But give full credit to Corinne West for her songwriting. In the week or so since this record arrived I've given repeated listens to "Whiskey Poet," "Mother to Child," and the other tracks and I keep finding more things hidden in their depths; since some of them first appeared almost ten years ago when she must have been pretty young she clearly has a gift. Time after time some little detail leaps out, like the brilliant and unexpected last line of "The Road to No Compromise."

To the lost child the road is a cradle
For the outlaw the road's where you hide
Takin' you in
You travel again
'Till blindness becomes sight

As for the title of this post, it first struck me when I was listening to this song that some of the stanzas seemed to capture the deft touch and rhythms of Edward Lear's timeless nursery rhyme, which ends, for those who don't remember it from their childhoods or those of their children, as follows:

They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

Then it came to me that both compositions were, in the end, about lovers setting out together to find their place in the world, and even though Corinne West's song was written long before she and Kelly Joe Phelps met, Kelly Joe makes a very fine owl, though, things being different in our day, he's not the only one crooning over a "small guitar." I'm not a believer in metempsychosis, but I find appealing the idea that the wandering shade of Edward Lear, stranded in 21st-century California, might temporarily have made its abode in the body of a young woman writing a road song.

(By the way, kudos to the designer of the packaging, aprobertsarts.com, for the clever emblem containing the musicians' names. It's made to look like an old soda bottle cap; the back cover reproduces several antique bottle caps, made to appear as if they were affixed "magnetically" to a metal surface, possibly a weathered refrigerator magnet.)

*Soon to be expanded to a full album to be released by Tin Angel in the UK, reportedly in September 2010.

Corinne West & Kelly Joe Phelps: "Amelia"

Not Joni Mitchell's tune from Hejira, but a very different song by Corinne West, performed here with Kelly Joe Phelps. The pair (are they a couple?) will shortly be releasing an EP of six songs (this one's not included); it's called Magnetic Skyline. There are two cuts streaming on Kelly's website, and so far I have to say I've liked everything I've heard.