Disposable Day Volume 6: David Karsten Daniels

Seriously dorky confession: when I'm trying to impress someone, and especially in the past when I have tried to impress boys, I put on an album by David Karsten Daniels, and just let it play for awhile. Usually, though not always, the person that I'm trying to impress has yet to hear this album and so I score a few points for that. Then, inevitably, the person discovers that they really like this album, and so I score a few more points... wait for it... then ever so casually I throw out, "oh yes this is an album by David Karsten Daniels, he's had a song featured on This American Life, and the dudes over at All Songs Considered seem to like him a whole lot. Yeah, he's signed to FatCat Records (the same record label that initially signed the likes of Animal Collective and Bjork), and it just so happens that he's an old buddy of mine, and back before I moved to Texas to go to grad school I used to take press photos (on film, processed by me, that I printed in a darkroom) for him and his boys from the bu hanan collective."

By now, many of my friends, as well as my duly impressed music snob (now) husband own and love all of David's albums. And get this, his latest album 'I Mean To Live Here Still' is seriously phenomenal. The lyrics are taken from Henry David Thoreau poems, and the album is a collaboration with Fight The Big Bull, a jazz band out of Richmond, Virginia. It's a melting pot of folk, afro beat, and old school experimental jazz... all of this and it is not just accessible  for the unpretentious listener, it has subtle hooks that keep you wanting more. Are you impressed yet? Go on, listen to the album, it is sooooooooooo goooooooooooood. It's one of those albums where the first time you hear it you're like: what? The second time you find you like it, and after that you don't listen to anything else for like a month. As soon as David Karsten Daniels agreed to participate in Disposable Day I knew we were on to something, because this dude dosen't efff around. To prove it, we included a wee treat for y'all at the end of the post, so be sure to check it out! Okay, okay I'll shut up now. Here's David.  —Lauren                               

In the space of about 2 weeks, my wife gave birth to our son, my grandmother passed away, my new little family left our apartment in San Francisco and moved into my grandmother's house in Texas.

This house we now inhabit is repository of 50 years of my extended family's life mixed in with a uhaul-trailer's-worth of new baby gifts, toys, clothes, bottles and disarray.   

In every room and in the yard are relics of lives well lived. 

My mother comes over each week and goes through the objects — reminiscing, categorizing (...keep....discard...keep...discard...).

I eye the swing set my grandfather built and consider replacing the long disappeared tire swing with a new one my own son could one day play on.

I don't know if any other time in my life could be described as more transitional than right now; the old family giving way to the new family to one day become the old family again...

"Smoke" - David Karsten Daniels & Fight The Big Bull from Justin Hamilton on Vimeo.