BrienTravis.com

Tales of Lazy Wednesdays
(The Best & Worst...Reworked)

01. Daylight
02. Boy In The Corner Cafe
03. Betty Louise (Coffee Shop Mix)
04. All American*
05. Another Year
06. Dispatches (The Back Road Mix)
07. Back When We Were Older
08. Edge Of The Sky
09. Paris
10. Hocus Pocus
11. Throwing Stones
12. Bells & Towers*
13. Voodoo**
14. This Fairytale
15. It Goes This Way (Acoustic Version)
16. Dance On The Railroad (Instrumental)

All songs written by Brien Travis
Piano, keyboards, synths, harmonica, hammond b-3, harpsichord, fender rhodes, toy piano, programming, all vocals-Brien Travis
Live drums & loops-Matt Chamberlain
Live bass & guitar-Jaycen Lee
Remixed and remastered by Brien Travis & Phillip Giabani
*Previously Unreleased
**Video avaiable, scroll down to view

Notes:
While digitizing masters of older recordings, Brien Travis spawned the idea of culling material from his decade-plus span of recording and created 2009's Tales Of Lazy Wednesdays. A far calling from a 'best of' compilation, Tales contains only a hand full of college radio hits along side of Travis' nonconformist folk-rock, thus providing a more through-and-through look at one of the most overlooked American treasures of our time, the singer-songwriter. There's no way songs like "Paris" and "Throwing Stones" would survive long on today's radio format, but Travis never intended fame for such psychological material. His college radio plays are here-spanning from "Boy In The Corner Cafe" all the way to "Voodoo", but it seems apparent that this retrospective focuses on the history, or rather "back story" of this singer-songwriter rather than gather the best commercial sounding productions. Must listens are "Hocus Pocus", "It Goes This Way", the instrumental "Dance On The Railroad", and the harrowing "Edge Of The Sky"-an extremely personal song Travis wrote about a cousin that committed suicide. Tales is remastered and reworked audible proof that just because your heart is broken, doesn't mean it beats any different thereafter.-All Music Guide

Lyrics(click here)

Other album artwork/photos:

Stories about 'Tales'...

Daylight...This is one of those songs that I really shouldn't take credit for. I don't know where it came from. I've never been in the situation that the guy in this song is in. He's wanting to leave, making plans to leave, but doesn't really want to leave. I don't think that I should clarify if the relationship was bad, or if it was just a matter of an urge for change. A lot of women will cringe when they read that last line, but it's true. You start to mistreat your man, and he'll want to change-without you involved. This song is really about the battle of the sexes and how women have long perceived men as simple minded and less complex as themselves, when the exact opposite is the actual truth. The guy in Daylight does indeed leave and is gone by the time the sun comes up. It's just more real that way. The girl wakes up alone and doesn't know why-and she won't know why for a long time or maybe never if she continues to believe that she is always the victim and the heroine at the same time. I've often wondered why there is no Father Earth to be paired with Mother Earth. Maybe this song explains why. Through out the ages, in printed history it has appeared that women have been the less fortunate when it comes to power-only the foolish ones will believe that. The guy in Daylight does not believe that, and therefore, he leaves before sunrise.

Boy In The Corner Cafe...The boy in this song is every kid in the world that's been misunderstood. I was one of those. But this song is not about my story. The guy in this song was the one who was always chased in high school-not by bullies, by everyone. The girls wanted to be with him and the boys wanted to be him. He was cool to the scene and hot to the touch and knew how to work the field. But everyday after being worshiped through out science class and American History, he went home to a broken mess. A father full of hate, or was it envy? A brother that ignored the reality and a mother that chose to turn away from the ugliness. So one day, he jumps out a window. Not to kill himself-a lot of people misunderstand the proverbial-ness in this song-but to free himself. "Somebody tell him why angels have to fall to learn how to fly"-that line explains it all.

Betty Louise...There was this girl that came into the coffee shop one night when I was writing at the end of the counter. I know, how very Suzanne Vega of me. She had on red, glossy knee-high stripper boots, and a plaid skirt with a Dave Mathews Band t-shirt. She pulled up in a BMW. I was almost certain that it was a fashion statement or some form of rebellion against her lawyer father and doctor mother. And I bet if asked, she would not have been able to name one DMB song. There were all these skater boys at the opposite end of the counter, and she was trying her best to play them, or to play along with them-to fit in with them. And it just wasn't working. They had already made a joke about her when they spotted the car outside the window. But there was one guy out of the group of skaters that made it apparent he was into her, daddy's BMW and all...

All American... I've always called this the "guy’s version of 80's Ladies", because of my love and adoration of K.T. Oslin. When I wrote this song, I was in this place where I was trying my best to bring forth a song that would project the real spirit, or the essence of being a guy. I then decided that to attempt to do that would be a back-stabbing situation with all my guy friends. Not to mention, it would have been so misunderstood that rumors would have started. So instead, I wrote about how men are remembered in history, and it worked just as well as I had originally intended. A lot of people ask me if the men in this song are related, is it a generational thing? No. The three men in this song probably don’t know each other. They are from different times and different places in America, but they are tied together by just that-they are the typical clean-cut, all-American boys next door that turned out to be pretty interesting.

Another Year....It was a cold winter day, it was sleeting so hard that I could hear it over the piano. Weather affects my songwriting just like any emotional state of mind. I tend to be a lot more visual than audible when it comes to my writing. This song is all about the rights and wrongs that happened in your past, and on one winter, sleet storm day, you are remembering all of it and how you could've changed this or that. Within my circle of friends that I had in high school, I have really wonderful memories that I would not trade for anything-but outside of our circle, it was not a happy time for me. In high school, you're surrounded by some pretty raw assholes. Sometimes those people change and ten years later you run into them and they actually say things like "Hey, I'm really sorry for how I acted towards you in school." And always, the smartest thing to do is to pretend that you don't remember what they are talking about and you say something like "I don't want to offend you, but I don't know who you are." Which for me, is ninety-nine percent true, but sometimes there is this voice in my head saying, "Yeah, sorry, I bet. You're that raw asshole that gave me crap everyday.” But the majority of this song is about this girl that I was really into, and through out one school year, I chased and chased, but apparently I wasn't good enough for her. I saw her a few years after high school, and I knew who she was, but I didn't recognize her as being who she used to be. And in that moment, I looked to the sky and said, "Thank you, who ever you are, for not answering that prayer."

Dispatches...A lot of songs that I chose to include as part of this retrospective pertain to breaking up or reflecting back to happier times. I'm quick to say to people who discuss this that I've not really lived any of this, it was just all imagined in my head while sedated at the psych ward. Dispatches is the story of this guy sitting in a bar, hundreds of miles from the girl he's thinking about, and he knows he can never go back. Timeline-wise, Dispatches was written several years before I wrote Daylight, but perhaps Daylight is the prequel to Dispatches. In Daylight the guy wants to leave and then builds up the courage to do so, in Dispatches he's having second thoughts after he's gotten away. A thief of hearts is one to never return. There's no going back. This is the real world, not a film or a book where everything ends up in the happy zone. I think in the end of this song, he gets over it. He realizes he's chosen wisely. He needed to leave, and because of that, he's a different person and sets his course to an unexpected destination.

Back When We Were Older...This is one of those songs that I had no clue where it was going while I was writing it. It was a difficult song to write, and what made it on tape is actually the demo that was made in a practice session. I had started this song in an improv while performing at a coffee house. Over the course of three or four performances, it became what you hear on Tales. I was going to record this song for a full length album that was never released, it was turned into the Hearts & Indians EP. Half of what made it to that EP was actually just demo versions of songs that I had intended to cut for the full length that never came to be. Back When We Were Older came from the clichéd phrase "if I knew then what I know now". When you're young and the world is at your feet, you think you know everything. I never really thought that way. I was always tied up in the thoughts of "how to avoid this stupid person today". What you don't hear in this song is what it's really about. This guy is thinking back, thinking that he could be a father if the girl had not had an abortion. That's the hidden message in this song. Again, this song came from thin air, this is not from my personal life, and I did not live it. When a song comes to me. the best way to explain it is..I channel them. I'm the car radio picking up the signal. Sometimes it's full of static and it's hard to receive the codes, sometimes it's crystal clear. This is one of those songs that I really didn't know what I was writing about until it was finished.

Edge Of The Sky...If I had been asked seven years ago if I knew anyone that would commit suicide, my answer would have been 'no'. In fact, it would have been 'absolutely not'. I lost two people I loved dearly to suicide. It leaves nothing but questions, hurt, and anger. And it never leaves you. The questions and the reasoning and the uncertain mentality about it never leave you. What leaves, leaves you gradually. I can clearly recall an eyebrow and a nose, but I can't remember a face as a whole. I think it's because like many, I've tried to block the pain and the questions so much that accidentally I've blocked the person that the pain is attached to. I can hear laughter, but I can't see the smile. I can feel my hand being held, or having an arm over my shoulder, but I can not see the hand or the arm. I can feel a kiss, and smell a perfume. I can not see it. There is a catch phrase that comes to mind..."we soon forget the things we cannot see." It doesn't apply here. I'll always remember, and maybe one day I'll be able to see everything as a whole again. It haunts me; it haunts me so much that there are not enough words for it. This song isn't enough, the lyrics aren't enough. What I have felt for seven years is just the beginning. I know this and I deal with it everyday. I feel as though what I'm saying at this moment is more intimate than the song itself will ever be, but when I wrote it, which was just a few months after losing these two souls, I was in a bad place, so no-the song isn't enough but it's what I brought to the table at the time.

Paris...For almost a year, I lost myself. There were no maps drawn to get back to from where I came, I had to find it without any help. And in the end, I don't think I made it back there, because that city didn't exist after my journey. What happened was I had built a city over ruins and came back to that. I think that everyone at least once in their life meets someone that represents everything that they've always wanted to be. Or what they thought they wanted to be. Paris represents this year that I wanted to be this person that was, in my mind, extraordinary. Cool, inspiring, and one of the most intriguing people ever. So...what actually happened was that I knew this person as I had built them up in my head. The structural beams for a friendship was built, but was never completed. After I figured out that what I had spent a year trying to be did not actually exist, there was no need in finishing the tower, so to speak. I had convinced myself that it was a situation where this chocolate chip cookie was trying to be flan. I didn't realize it at the time, but the flan was just a cookie, too, maybe even generic, not even name brand. I've been stalked, and I've been the stalker, not literally in either terms, but there are people that you meet that you want to know what makes them tick-what they smell like, how they sleep, what they eat, and then if you allow it, it will become an obsession to the point where you want to know how it feels for them to breathe. That's when you know it's time to pull your ass out of the dark water before something grabs your leg and pulls you under. The wake up call. Fortunately for me, the bridge over that water was pulled apart by the other side of the river. The smoke and mirrors were pulled away by the actor himself, not the director, and therefore I knew it was just smoke and mirrors and I could pull that off. We all can. So it was a moment where I just said, 'screw this, give me some tea or coffee and I'm over it.'

Hocus Pocus...My heart is in Tennessee, but my soul belongs to New Orleans. This is one of those songs that I really didn't know where it was leading to. When I was writing this song, everything was very blurry. It was August-as hot as steaming coffee spilled on to Georgia asphalt. Heat sometimes brings out the sex in people. I'm not talking gender, either. But this song is very dark, but at the same time, it's very playful. It's a balance that I hardly ever find while writing. I love the dark; I love to dance with it and chase it and make it scared of me instead of the opposite. When you have this not serious, almost skeptical thought process of the darkness, that's when songs like this happen. There is magic, several forms, and I've always thought that magic could be relative in any religion, but that's for another song. When you have this belief in magic, and this sex inducing heat, that's where this song lives. It's a bit of a time traveling song, because of the story within it. This woman is hanging out of her second story window right out of the French Quarter, tempting the beach boys and the business suits both to visit for a good time. In a different time, she would have been labeled a witch instead of a prostitute. But the song is basically about just letting it go, let the steam valve open before the valves blow, and just see how sexually brave you are. That's Hocus Pocus.

Throwing Stones...is about another form of identity crisis. It's questioning what we've been taught to believe over what we invent. Everyone has their own Garden of Eden, and everyone has this so that they can screw up and be banned from it, and spend the rest of their lives trying to squeeze back in through that hole in the fence. It's about learning to see the beauty in things other than face value, other than visual. And I think once you learn that, and once you preach that to your congregation so to speak-and definitely after everyone believes you, you'll have the world in the palm of your hands again-just like before you were expelled from your paradise for screwing everything up.

Bells & Towers...This is my version of an impressionist painting. It tells just enough of the story for anyone to presume and pull together their own version of the entire story. That's the way these characters wanted it to be. What really goes on is the guy is a modern day Clyde, but instead of Bonnie, he gets a bad apple version of Juliet. She does bad things, he likes this, he helps her cover her wrong-doings up. She likes the fact that he plays a guitar and smokes real cigarettes and his long hair. They're a great team, but she moves on and he's left with his guitar and long hair.

Voodoo...This song, which is a lot of my friends' favorite, was written about a former boss. This chick was a big bowl of crazy. Tried to burn out everyone that wasn't involved in her bad-girl fantasy. In the end, she couldn't handle it and she lost her grip for awhile. You're forgiven, now that I don't have to work with you. But never get within arms reach of me. Never mess with an honest man and his paycheck.

This Fairytale...I think this song is really self-explanatory. It's a modern day fairytale. This guy meets this girl, doesn't really want anything to do with her, but all of a sudden, finds himself completely in love with her. He's been hurt before, doesn't want to get hurt again, blah blah blah. As I try to act like I'm blowing this song off as just a song, it is one of my favorites. It's very light hearted. It's popcorn at the movies without the greasy butter, so yes, it's very light hearted. But sometimes boys do believe in things like this, we just never admit it. Just hope for the best under your breath and everything will pan out.This is Jane's favorite, I think strictly because I gave her the perfect excuse to dress as a fairy for the slide-show music video that she created for it.

It Goes This Way...Lyrically I've always said this is one of the best songs I've written. There are two versions of this song. I jokingly call them "the city version" and "the country version". The "city version" originally was on the Magnolia Railroad EP. It has tin drums and a sax. The "country version", which you hear on Tales, was re-cut for the Karma Lounge album. Don't ask me to choose between the two, because I like them both. But only one could be placed on this retrospective, and I chose the "country version" because I knew it would be the last song and I wanted it to be an easy-like-Sunday-morning kind of exit. Everyone always exclaims after they listen to this-"You've never been married and you wrote this?" There are different forms of marriage in my opinion, and some end, and some go on and on.

Dance On The Railroad...I started out writing instrumentals, it was as my friend Julie says "before I found my voice". Writing instrumentals with a meaning behind it is very difficult, so I have a deep respect for instrumental artists. I cut four instrumentals for the Magnolia Railroad EP, and this one was simply the best, and the one that really brought my sketch to life.

-Brien Travis,
September 2009