Luke Burbank And The Never Ending Freeze 04.20.09

I'm starting to get up in the morning and run.  I used to do this more often, but the winter months have discouraged me.  I also needed a change in scenery from my morning routine of coming downstairs to my studio and trying to write a hit song every single day of my life(frustration implied).  

Well, last week as I was putting my running shoes on I decided that I did not want to listen to music.  I love listening to music, but I needed a complete distraction from my daily dose of 'everything music'.  Plus, I sometimes feel like I'm cheating on music if I'm not constantly listening or checking out a new record.  The fact is- I don't want to be a one dimensional person.  I enjoy baseball and great non-fiction books and art and refreshingly unimportant talk radio.  The realization that I desperately need something else in my life to enjoy occurs every afternoon when I listen to the day's song and decide that its not very good.  Its been a while since I felt really good about the daily song.  Actually, I feel more capable of the writing process now more than ever, but the ideas for the songs are slim pickins'.  

So I decided to turn to the wide world of podcasts.  It was a great decision.  Of the 4 I now listen to on a daily basis, none of them have to do with music.  I've been checking out some ESPN podcasts, a Cubscast (Chicago Cubs Baseball Podcast), and a great radio talk show out of Seattle called To Beautiful To Live with Luke Burbank.  

Luke's show is a smorgasbord of random conversations he has with his producer Jen Andrews.  The topics range from anything to absolutely anything-- but never heavy or super important.  Thats why I've come to really enjoy the show!  There's no talk of the financial crisis or market breakdowns or political agenda's or bailout money or who's right and wrong about religious views or the war on terror or anything like that.

As I'm listening one morning, Jen and Luke start talking about funeral music.  Which songs do/don't you want played at your funeral?  This is a great conversation that leads to Jen saying that she'd want to leave the decision up to her family because the funeral is really for the family.  Luke responded by saying that when he passes, he wants the earth to stop rotating on its axis and fall into a never ending winter killing most of the population.  He hopes to still control the lives of all the people who loved him and hopes that they live with eternal grief, constantly saying things like "Luke was awesome, Luke was awesome". 

Ok, ok I know what you're saying... but Luke is obviously joking around.  Anyway, Jen says that the song for his funeral would have to be a super specific song if those were all of the things he wanted.  So I wrote that song on Sunday and sent them an mp3 of the tune.  I felt good about it too...