Free Downoadable Christmas Cheer! Blistering Fiddle! Mooing!

If there's a person out there who says George Strait isn't a poet (I mean, look at this American specimen), I say strip off yer fancy blouse while I take off my nice ring, we've got a brawl to get into.

She's Playing Hell, Trying to Get Me to Heaven
There Ain't No Way All My Sins Can Be Forgiven
They Say There's Only Ten Commandments, but I Broke at Least Eleven
She's Playing Hell, Trying to Get Me to Heaven 

Poetry, man. 

A couple of years back I fell into a country band thanks to a certain Tony Award winner and songwriter and professional JJ Abrams TV creeper. (Why. Wasn't. Fringe. Ever. Nominated. For. Emmys?)

In keeping with the very little tradition yet established since this motley band of musicians came together, Loose Cattle returned to its Semi-Annual Last Minute Holiday Christmas Single this year with a crumbly sweet cover of George Strait's "Christmas Cookies." Recorded in, oh, about 1 hour, fueled with pizza and beer and the desire to hang out eating pizza and drinking beer, it's the least we could offer as a gift to supportive, wonderful, fascinating characters in our lives.  It has blistering fiddle and sexual innuendo, we think. It's hard to judge the level of purity Mr. Strait operates on.

The link below will letcha choose between streaming or downloading, but both are free. We humbly ask if you like it, share it on your interwebs and keep the spirit moooooving. May it tickle your funnybones and make at least 3 minutes of your Christmas Eve a little brighter.




Wishing you all happiness and health in 2014.

Fa la la la mooooooo moo moo love you. -- LOOSE CATTLE

LOOSE CATTLE featured on this track:

 - Michael Cerveris, lead vocals and guitar
-  Kimberly Kaye, lead vocals
-  Gabriel Caplan, guitar
-  Lorenzo Wolff, bass
-  Eddie Zeibeck, drums
-  Fiddle - Justin "Giant Fidder" Smith

Cupid and His Paintball Gun, or, Black Tears and Happy Apocalyptic Ballads

I don't do Valentine's posts (she says as she posts on Valentine's Day. For more information on bloggable hypocrisy see the original rules of The Trouble With Poet, specifically: "The Trouble With Poet reserves the right to be totally full of it at any time"). But I do have amazing little nuggets gifted from other artists recently that make me feel someone similar to Cupid is fluttering about, carrying a paintball gun instead of arrows. And I prefer paint splatters to chalky conversation hearts any day.


The first is the picture above, given to me by street artist M.F. Rey. Titled "Single Black Tear," the duo-tone stencil piece was inspired by my favorite Walk of Shame element: the single charcoal path of mascara that runs like a slug's slime-trail down one cheek during the cold trek home after a long, long night or a long, long fight. He's mounted a small version for me to keep in my room and that would be enough, but there are plans for it to be blasted before the sun rises on the side of LES buildings sometime in the near future, along with M.F.'s numerous other installations. For that I'm honored and touched. (I'm also on call to bail him out of jail when he inevitably gets arrested, as street artists sometimes do.)

The second is the song below. I mentioned to a dear friend from Desperate Times Call for Tangible Lies on a sad day that I wished I had a happy song for bad afternoons, a little uptempo ditty I could play like underscoring in a twee indie film to buoy me when I'm sinking. Within an hour this rough lovable popped up in my inbox. "The Ballad of the End of the World" may not sound all that romantic or optimistic, but in my twee indie film it plays while I wipe away a single black tear, buy a handful of colorful balloons, tie them to the back of a rusty old bicycle and ride down Broadway with warm breeze at my back. (I run over Zooey Deschanel as I go, leaving her mangled body and stained baby doll dress crumpled at the crosswalk behind me.)

Do listen. It's lovely. He's lovely:



Last is an epic gift given to me last night. It is so epic that I have to wait to take pictures, then post, which I will do soonly.

Thanks are in order to my various Cupid paintballers. I hope the rest of you have been similarly splattered.