Ticking seconds invented by men determined to provide context for their private little wars – occasionally reveal oddly specific details regarding sudden life changes – that desperately needed reprieve before things get out of hand. tick, tick, tick, Ted, Ted, Ted.

One day yur taking a job you never thought you’d go back to and another yur singing, “I read the paper, just like you” at 4:30 in the morning while putting on yur name badge. But all is well despite the hour. We lean on our music men as guides through the dark spaces of new beginnings. We rely on them – be they queer or be they straight – to tell us stories that elicit fantasies about our own frailties and the fetishized optimism we might use to make it through spells of addiction, infidelity, or overwhelming grief. Perhaps some of us will actually give in to these continuous bouts of self-destruction. Most of us will not. Most of us are content to battle the daily frequencies of bodily sensation paired with the demands of the so called prefrontal cortex (pfc). As is, even without the doping and promiscuity we remain in a state of damn near slavery. Eager to provide the final assist, private and public institutions peddling true life theories shadow our every movement. tick, tick, tick, decide, believe, kneel. Ted, Ted, Ted.

Enter Hawkins – sage scratched out master raconteur of venice beach boardwalk gawkers – eager to find a savior to transfer el warmth de la corazon into el dinero de our pocketbooks. They did, after all, discover this busker via Sam Cooke in a blender with some dude who can’t play the blues – but sings affectingly touching odes to the mistress of all the sex organs. Inside this signature is a thumbprint with all the tripled inky parallel orbits – you hear it when you hear it and you know it when you know it – the rediscovery when an empath tells you yur not alone inside there. They don’t use big words, it can be a simple look or turn of phrase or in this case songs about how a dog of your lover neighbor bites you and barks at the welfare lady but wiggles like a worm with three happy yaps when that one special man (who isn’t you) stops by. Not to mention the TWA airline company weeping cold and bitter tears over a hot dishpan as your step kids lament their real mommy’s absence.

“What do you want from the liquor store? Something sour or something sweet? I’ll buy you all that your belly can hold. You can be sure you won’t suffer no more” – Ted Hawkins, Sorry Your Sick

 …open guitar tuning with a voice reaching back into the Ozarks and delivering 15 other ghosts for those inclined towards the more arrangements the better.

“I was ok but these words from you, stayed in you sick and made me sick too.” — TH, SYS

Dude did worship Sam, but unlike Cooke he was a shattered weirdo jailbird – no record company would sit around a boardroom and cook his music with a clean looking doppelfaker. Outsider yeah we covered all that sychophant trying to share this with the world, as if everybody trying to help the guy was Alan Lomax telling him to stay in blackface when he played white labs for jewish anthropologists who dig ethnic and jazz.

Welcome to happy hour bro. People laughing and having fun but when the smoky dim lights clear – your gal is dancing with another fella. Telling her all the pretty words her longtime beau no longer says without fear of losing all credibility for the higher stages of post romantic love. But dang she pulled the rug out from under me and it feels fine to have some new stranger smile at you when the rest of the world simply regards you as a troll to either be handled or humored to provide just enough time to get away, go home, put the lights out, and hop in bed with all the covers sliding over faces around sheets that should’ve been washed two weeks ago. Then the sliding would’ve been better and you could’ve relaxed earlier and woken up real refreshed like.