Recorded and mixed by James Schroeder at ARC in Omaha, Nebr., September 2020. Adam Roberts helped engineer and was an all-around problem-solver.
Kevin Donahue: drums, percussion Stefanie Drootin: singing on “Phaethon” Colin Duckworth: electric guitar, dobro Dan McCarthy: guitar, piano, accordion, singing James Maakestad: upright bass, singing, string arrangements Morgan Nagler: singing on “Phaethon” Megan Siebe: cello, viola, violin, string arrangements
Horn arrangements by Luke Annis Luke Annis: trombone Lauren Milbourn: clarinet, bass clarinet Brian Nelsen: trumpet Hector Tornez: saxophone
Mastered by Doug Van Sloun at Focus Mastering in Omaha, Nebr.
All songs by McCarthy Trenching (SESAC)
Cover photo by Harrison Martin
Layout by Micah Schmiedeskamp
Notes
In the week leading up to the recording of this album, I went out to mow the lawn and found that the red maple tree between the sidewalk and the curb had cracked in half. Not from a storm or any other violence, just from the way it had grown. Until that day, I believed it was healthy and that it would outlive me. The red maple was still standing, its leaves just starting to turn in mid-September, but it was badly injured. I had planted it twelve years before, after the previous resident of that spot, a large linden tree, was uprooted in a severe storm.
I called Jack Phillips and asked if he would come take a look. He did right away, and told me the situation was dangerous. It was likely that the tree would fall onto a car or a pedestrian, maybe very soon. He called his associate Keith to tie a rope around the limbs and trunk to stabilize the tree for the time being, but there was no option other than removal. The city foresters came the next day, and it took them about twenty minutes to remove the tree that I had looked at nearly every day for a dozen years, the view out my window when I practice piano.
Thanks to Jack for his book The Bur Oak Manifesto, and for providing me with a new tree for the front yard, a red oak grown from an acorn harvested in an old grove in Iowa.
Other debts and books:
I wrote “The Glorious Giving In” for the band High Up, which starred the Fink sisters, Christine and Orenda. At their second performance, I heard them singing a dynamite version of “Lovely Still” and thought, I want to write a song for this band. The phrase “glorious ‘giving in’” is from David Foster Wallace.
“I Didn’t Come to Town to Get a Haircut” is something I heard my uncle Jerry say once. Jerry started the actual business called McCarthy Trenching, which does water and sewer projects in Iowa. I wrote this song for Dolores Diaz and the Stand-By Club, and I hope that band can perform it someday.
Some details in “Russian Olive” came from my grandma, Marie McCarthy, but any errors of fact or feeling are mine. Grandma is honest, and her memory is good. The musical quotation at the beginning of the song is, of course, Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1.”
“Asking for a Friend” owes something to Sigrid Nunez’s book The Friend. A tactic, maybe, and an awareness of a dog audience.
“Phaethon” owes some of its story to Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, an essential reference.
The Sibley Guide to Trees is another essential reference, most every day, when I haven’t lent my copy to somebody.
Just before making the album and quite a while after “Fruitless Beauty” was written, I read this in Eula Biss’s Having and Being Had: “I wade through the field of wild raspberries, the thorns tearing at my clothes, and this task seems newly impossible. The pursuit of beauty is fruitless, I think.”
I have a friend, all weekend long Wants to sit on his couch and watch football He has the mind of a nine-year-old Lucky for him, he was only born nine years ago His mom and dad let him watch one game On Saturday, and one on Sunday They make him read every day and sit down for dinner What he likes best is cheering for a winner But he likes me anyway
I have a friend teaches yoga classes I’ve taken a couple, and they’ve kicked my asses She doesn’t eat meat, and I still do She loves her dog, his name is Bruce We nearly lost him in a river once He’d never swum in a current, and he’d never seen ducks My friend jumped in chasing after Bruce I didn’t even take off my shoes But she likes me anyway She’s forgiven me
Forgiveness is an unusual word It can be freely bestowed, or laboriously earned By my age, I hope you’ve learned We’ll each need forgiveness in our turn
I have a friend with a broken heart When he tries to put it together, it’s always missing a couple parts But it still seems to be pumping blood And if you ask me, it’s still capable of love Aren’t we all alone in the end? I’m asking for a friend Everything I’ve done he thought of it first And he’s certainly seen me at my worst But he likes me anyway
Forgiveness is an unusual word I’m talking how the noun is formed from the verb Go on and call me a nerd We’ll each need forgiveness in our turn
