Multiple times several years ago, my wife worked in community mental health organizations. They had burnout, turnover, and inevitable gaps due to management mishandling these.
I made this to hang on the inside of her locker.
As a bonus, there's a speaker in the back that plays Dan Reeder's Work Song (cw 12.5% profanity) when the "gauge" hits "empty."
Between someone spilling coffee on it, the speaker no longer functioning, and her moving on to other lines of work, we are retiring the piece, but figured some folks might get a kick out of it before we did so.
Stay down, man
If you get up again he'll probably kill you
Stay where you are
I'll go get the car and we can go
But I swear to god I'll leave you here to die
If you say one more word to that guy
Song Review: boygenius - “Stay Down, Man” (Live at SiriusXM)
Though there’s precious little of them on the record, boygenius’ non-DNA, yet sisterly, harmonies dominate the trio’s cover of “Stay Down, Man.”
Performing the Dan Reeder number for SiriusXM, Phoebe Bridgers plays acoustic guitar and shares lead vocals with Lucy Dacus. And when Julien Baker joins in on the chorus, Reeder’s experience at the culmination of a drunken and bloody night suddenly sounds beautiful and enticing as the women of boygenius sing:
Stay down, man/if you get up again he’ll probably kill you/stay where you are/I’ll get the car and we can go/but I swear to god I’ll leave you here to die/if you say one more word/to that guy
No one will ever know if the subject of “Stay Down, Man” lived or died because Reeder didn’t finish the story. But boygenius advanced it big time with this luscious and illuminating cover.
Grade card: boygenius - “Stay Down, Man” (Live at SiriusXM) - A
Song Review: Dan Reeder - “You Don’t Have to Ask” (Alternate Version)
For Dan Reeder, cutting an after-the-fact alternate version apparently means changing the lyrics, reworking the melody and shortening an already-short song while taking away its meaning.
The quirky artist’s new rendition of “You Don’t Have to Ask” finds Reeder - in his home studio playing an acoustic guitar to pre-programmed piano - telling listeners they already know what the song is about, apparently assuming they’ve heard the original from 2022’s Nice Clear Bright Colors.
Nothing about this should work. Not the erasure of substance. Not the piano that doesn’t fit Reeder’s guitar. Not the homemade nature of the recording. Yet, like so much of Reeder’s too-weird-for-normal-music-fans material, it‘s completely engrossing in a what-the-fuck-is-this-guy-really-about way.
Grade card: Dan Reeder - “You Don’t Have to Ask” (Alternate Version) - A