Beatnik Turtle's Song of the Day

Ironically, "Face Down In The Snow" was written on an extremely snowy weekend. Wait, that would be unironically, wouldn't it? Oh well, the point is it was quite a blizzard, with traffic accidents, and power outages all over the area.

We had luckily made it up to the cabin in Wisconsin for a big recording weekend before it hit. But shortly after arriving and settling in, we suddenly realized that Steve Owens, our keyboard player and John Owens' brother, was nowhere to be found. He was there...then he wasn't. Weird.

John's reaction was: "Jeez, I hope he's not face down in the snow somewhere." We all looked at each other, and said, "That's a song!"

Rather than head out in the blizzard to find him, we headed back downstairs to write the song. It's a song that couldn't have been written with Steve. Luckily, we didn't have to play it at any memorial for him or anything: Steve made it safely back home through the blizzard in one piece.

Years ago, Jason got trapped in his room many, many years ago during some big party his mom threw. Luckily, he was trapped with his Casiotone and a four-track. Having nothing better to do, he wrote this song.

The old lady crowd noises at the beginning and end of the song are all real and were recording at the time thanks to Jason's spy training and his cunning ability to slip the microphone out the door unnoticed. Contrary to public opinion, no old ladies were harmed in the making of this song.

In 2006, Beatnik Turtle was not only working on The Song Of The Day, Randy and Jason were also working on the Indie Band Survival Guide., which got some tremendous press from Billboard Magazine, Reuters, the Associated Press, and the blogosphere.

During the time of writing it, all Tom Roper heard, week after week, was "it's almost nearly done!" since Randy and Jason kept writing, editing, researching, re-writing, re-editing and re-researching it. All this instead of recording music which was all Tom was hoping to do. So, he wrote a song about it.

About two years ago, Beatnik Turtle got an email from a band out of the UK that wanted the chords to a song we wrote called "I Think You Think I Think You Don't Like Me." They wanted to add the song to their setlist. We gave them the chords, but in return, we asked for a song that they wrote. After all, it's only fair that if they were covering one of of ours, we should do something with one of theirs.

What we got back was what became the first verse of this song. It was about one of the band members, Chappy, and how he had the flu. Jason ended up turning the 20 second email idea they had into a full song and this is the result: a song created via a "US-UK Music Exchange Program."

This is also the first Beatnik Turtle song to feature Tom Roper on guitar. He had just joined the band at that point.

Written as a theme song to a road trip. A road trip that when all was said or done, was shaped like a trapezoid.

This song came about when Jason and a friend misheard the lyrics in Belle and Sebastian's song "Me and The Major." ("Me and the Major don't see eye to eye") and thought the misheard lyric would make a great lyric.

This song was inspired by two fortune cookies. One said, "You have an active mind and a keen imagination." Another said, "All your plans will succeed."

This song was inspired by an idea from Dana while working on the website and Tom realized into a song within a week. We then used the golden throat of the Beatnik Turtle's bass trombone player as our announcer since he does professional voice-over work. (He cut us a break on his rates!)*

*Well, actually he didn't.

This is the demo of the version on Beatnik Turtle's The Cheapass Album. The song was written shortly after playing the classic board game by Cheapass Games, Deadwood. Jason and John related to a particular card from the game's "Another Day, Another Dollar" Horror Expansion pack that contained the song's title and inspired the song. They have both since had interventions and are on numerous 12-step programs.

Check out the bigger, better, and brassy-er version available on: The Cheapass Album. Available at iTunes, Rhapsody, and finer online music retailers near you...

Let's face it, there needs to be a song about Traffic Cones. This is that song. Find out more about them at The Traffic Cone Preservation Society. Though our song says traffic cones don't make good pets, this site disagrees.