Ripe Track-By-Track Breakdown

The Caller

This song definitely served as the mood anchor for what I wanted to talk about on this record. It's a conversation with the version of yourself that promises you all these things as you continue on in a career in music, and how it feels to be left holding the bag when it doesn't pan out. This feeling of being spitted but looking around and only having yourself to blame. Really influenced by the big choruses on Pulp’s This Is Hardcore and the sort of amp destruction falling apart on Rentals records.

Things I Do

Cars and Thin Lizzy worship radio rock structure homework. A song about a relationship feeling right for the first time in your life of anxious overthinking. Really wanted that call and response feeling that comes with big Cars hooks. Snuck a little Jackson 5 in there with the octave riff in the chorus. 

Call Me, Ishmael

The first tune I wrote for the record, really leaned into Rentals world with the synth line. A song about the strange desire for something as dependable as a 9-5 just to make enough to breathe for a moment, but realizing that in this world of part-time and touring, that might as well be a jail sentence too. 

Directed and edited by Luke LeCount

Debbie & Lynn

Debbie & Lynn were characters in a Billy Collins poem called “Traveling Alone” that I really enjoyed and kept finding myself taking further into a world where these two stewardesses guided you on a trip from one failed relationship to the next, baggage in tow. It's a song about how if you don't fix the things you need to, you end up in the exact same places no matter how hard you try to leave them behind. 

Directed and edited by Luke LeCount

The Work

The last song I wrote for the record, right as it was about to be finished and I knew I was headed for the next year of pr planning and pitching and waiting around with my thumb up my ass. When I'm idle, I can feel my brain start to unravel. It was applicable to both being done with the record and also the end of the bands I was playing in, I wasn't personally prepared for all the down time I was about to have. 

Polish Deli

A song about going bald. Rotten Polish genes ruined my life, I should be digging a hole through concrete on the side of a highway somewhere. 

Unconfidence Man

The follow up to “The Caller”, “Unconfidence Man” is the dialogue being given from that side of the phone. It's the voice in your head that keeps you going, even if you secretly know it's full of shit. Definitely one of the heavier riffs on the record, might be my personal favorite track. 

No Moment

An ode to a perfect song, “Sweet Jane” by the Velvet Underground, I tried to see if I could write a song that was Only The Riff. turns out I cant and still had to write a chorus chord progression but I got close. A song about how Not Everyone Gets To Win, and sometimes we just go through life being “Some Guy”. I thought it would be funny if the song said “Some Guy” in the way they yell “Sweet Jane” and turns out I was right, it's very funny to probably only me. That’s alright.