Theme song from another fine episode of Unpacking Coffee. Featuring Zoë and Greta Brigleb singing.

Theme song from another fine episode of Unpacking Coffee!

Theme song from another fine episode of Unpacking Coffee.

Theme song from this week’s unwieldy episode of the world’s best-dressed coffee show, Unpacking Coffee.

Theme song from this week’s unpredictable episode of the world’s best-travelled coffee show, Unpacking Coffee.

Theme song from this week’s gripping episode of the world’s preeminent coffee show, Unpacking Coffee.

1. Guided by Voices – Jabberstroker
2. Butthole Surfers – Creep in the Cellar
3. Tortoise – Eros
4. Prince – Dirty Mind
5. Herbie Hancock – Mega Mix
6. Budos Band – Old Engine Oil
7. Neu – Hallogallo
8. Talking Heads – No Compassion
9. Pixies – Dance the Manta Ray
10. The Ventures – The Mighty Quinn
11. Serge Gainsbourg – Ford Mustang
12. Equals – Baby Come Back
13. Replacements – Lazy and White
14. Butthole Surfers – Waiting for Jimmy to Kick
15. Young Gun Silver Fox – Midnight in Richmond
16. Fugazi – Lusty Scripps
17. Iggy Pop – Nightclubbing
18. David Bowie – Heroes
19. Steely Dan – Monkey in Your Soul
20. Rolling Stones – Citadel
21. Kinks – Victoria
22. Grateful Dead – Candyman
23. Eric Clapton – Mainline Florida
24. Big Star – September Gurls
25. Replacements – Kids Don’t Follow
26. Ramones – Blitzkrieg Bop
27. Suicide – Ghost Rider
28. Black Sabbath – Children of the Grave
29. Led Zeppelin – Rock and Roll
30. Curtis Mayfield – Ain’t Got Time
31. Lee Perry – Wolfman
32. Ventures – Flight of Fancy
33. ESG – Moody (Spaced Out)
34. Wire – The 15th
35. The Cure – Three Imaginary Boys
36. Fugazi – Arpeggiator
37. Velvet Underground – Sweet Jane
38. Beck – Beercan (skipped a bit)
39. Neu – Negativland
40. Beta Band – I Know
41. Iggy Pop – Dum Dum Boys
42. Black Sabbath – Sweet Leaf
43. Dukes of Stratosphear – You’re My Drug
44. Equals – Black Skinned Blue Eyed Boys
45. Curtis Mayfield – Kung Fu
46. Young Gun Silver Fox – Kingston Boogie
47. Prince – When You Were Mine
48. Stone Roses – Fool’s Gold
49. Beatles – You Know My Name
50. The Byrds – One Hundred Years from Now
51. Kinks – Shangri La
52. Equals – Have I the Right
53. Turtles – She Always Leaves Me Laughing
54. Tortoise – Seneca
55. Budos Band – Arcane Rambler
56. Lou Reed – Vicious
57. Wire – On Returning
58. Pixies – Manta Ray
59. Brian Eno – Needles in the Camel’s Eye
60. David Bowie – Beauty and the Beast
61. Isaac Hayes – Do Your Thing

I was particularly proud of this set. It had some of my best transitions to date. And I really tried to stretch myself to connect the dots of as many different records and genres as I could.

On the walk to the gig, I started a note on my phone of a bunch of songs that would string together well, and while I didn’t end up using quite everything on the list, it was a super helpful starting point.

Theme song from this week’s stunning episode of the world’s toppermost-of-the-poppermost coffee show, Unpacking Coffee.

It was a fun set with a couple of technical issues. The recording started a bit late, ended a bit early, and there’s a ton of little skips because of the environment! But lots of fun!

Theme song from next week’s thrilling episode of the world’s premiere coffee show, Unpacking Coffee. Special thanks to Eric Lucas, on drums.

He wore glasses that covered up his eyes
She was suited in a suitable disguise
They roasted coffee, mmm the lows and highs
Dapper, dapper and wise.

If you’re divided, you balkanize
If you’re stealing, you burglarize
Well if you’re messy, you organize
Dapper, dapper and wise.

Dapper, dapper and wise…

Theme song from another stellar episode of the world’s premiere coffee show, Unpacking Coffee!

Theme song from another underrated episode of America’s premiere coffee show, Unpacking Coffee!

Theme song from another fine episode of America’s favorite coffee show, Unpacking Coffee!

Theme song from an episode of Unpacking Coffee.

Theme song I wrote for an episode of Unpacking Coffee!

Theme song I wrote for an episode of Unpacking Coffee.

Well me and the lady were spending some time
on a beach in Southern Cali on the corporate dime
This guy comes up to us says he loves the show
I asked him for some coffee and he couldn’t say no

He took us to a place on Long Beach Boulevard
Very theraputic, some quinoa bars!
We drank something, cold but it wasn’t cold brew
It was just iced coffee that’s what I’m tellin you

It’s recreational… coffee, Long Beach California, see
It’s recreational… coffee.

We helped ourself to their Yirgacheffe roast
some vegan donuts and the avocado toast
We said hello to Bobby and Correne
before we headed back to the beach scene

We got on the plane and flew right back
sometimes I still get a recreational attack
That’s when I know turn the plane around
let’s get a cup of coffee next time we’re in town

It’s recreational… coffee, Long Beach California, see
It’s recreational… coffee

Theme song from the Thanksgiving episode of Unpacking Coffee.

Theme song from the La Colombe episode of Unpacking Coffee.

Theme song from the Birchbach episode of Unpacking Coffee.

Theme song from the Upper Left Roasters episode of Unpacking Coffee.

Theme song from the George Howell episodes of Unpacking Coffee.

Theme song from the Bluebeard Coffee Roasters episode of Unpacking Coffee.

Theme song from the Onyx Coffee Lab episode of Unpacking Coffee.

Over this weekend Zoë and I decided to work on a song together. I had her write down five topics and we picked “Chocolate Chip Dip” as the subject. She wrote the words pretty quickly and we put it together. Then we decided what the heck, let’s shoot a video too.

Theme song from the Junior’s Roasted Coffee episode of Unpacking Coffee.

Sometimes, in an attempt to get the kids interested in music, I sing about them while they’re in the room, or coax them into recording some vocals. It’s pretty easy to take samples of them and build a song around it. That’s basically what you have here.

A mash-up of the theme songs from Season 2 of Unpacking Coffee. Twenty songs in 5 minutes.

A much calmer take on the vocals, without the autotune effect and stereo double-tracking. I kept this one around because I liked the lighter feel of it. The guitar part is different as well, I felt like even though I was playing the right part, it kind of sounded wrong, which is why I went with the other version.

Meant to mellow things out at the end. I think this was meant to have lyrics to tie it all up in a bow.

Absurd, was meant for an interlude or a video piece in the show we were putting together.

Just pure silliness. I’m not sure if The Frogs or Ween are more to blame for inspiring this.

The idea for this sprang right out of the rhythm. Fit like a glove.

I think I had been listening to The Frogs. That’s probably my best defense.

Just a dramatic break. Maybe you would run to the bathroom or something.

Somehow I talked Kandace into singing this one, and I’m glad I did. She had a cold, and hated me for making her do the vocals, which were sung directly into the laptop microphone.

Needed a track to develop the story on our concept album a bit. Doesn’t sound like I quite finished the lyrics, but it did the job. It doesn’t seem as though I wanted to let the track end.

I’ve never been quite sure where I stole the chorus at the end from but I’m pretty sure it’s been done before. The first half was built onto that, drawing on Guided By Voices for inspiration. Another surprisingly disciplined mix.

A dance track, for people who don’t.

At the tail end of my band days I had recorded a demo of this track and always meant to come back to it. Under the “influence” I laid down some overwhelming noises, and had the good sense to come back and edit it the next day. The result is one of my more disciplined mixes.

Yes, I’m using a little of the autotune, but I’m also not using it. It’s called balance.

Thus begins an unlikely “concept album”… about a river tsunami. And what such album would be complete without a song about a girl?

I believe Michael Paulus is playing the actual instrument. I’m just playing around in the background.

A play on the word heroin, but it was inspired by a gilded statue in Portland that I don’t remember the name of, so this seemed apropos.

Couldn’t help myself, we just had all those nice instruments sitting there, and who doesn’t love a reprise.

Not sure what we were going for here.

I think I spent too much time on the bus.

I believe I had just gotten a copy of Reason at the time, which had fantastic evolving synth sounds.

Play it loud… but not too loud. It’s a loud track. If you’ve ever listened to Medicine, you know what I was aiming for.

Song kept building. Rare attempt at sincerity in songwriting. Don’t hold me to it.

Don’t you know, that’s Atari spelled backwards. Boy can you hear that guitar buzz.

Not much point but the playing-with of the knobs on the devices. The real goal was the video for the show.

During 2002 and 2003, I curated a number of video “shows” in Portland. At first they were all at Bar of the Gods, and so I wrote a theme song (and produced a video). A bit tongue in cheek.

Abandoned demo, perhaps rightfully so.

A demo of a song I would return to years later.

I feel like we got about halfway through building this track, and both RC and I had added a bunch before it got left behind.

Another demo of a rather serious song we were working on at the time.

The political theme, and lines like “we are patriotic by design,” were surely rooted in the first term of George W. Bush. It was 2002; after all.

This was a demo and I played many of the instruments myself, but Mike Squires pitched in with bass and lead guitar.

This is a very slick version of a song that was in our set for some time, and that had been written more or less a couple of years prior.

This must be my third or fourth take on this song, now with an actual band. It’s certainly well-developed at this point.

One would think it would be a happy song!

A meditation on addiction and soured relationships.

Didn’t dive too deep; came up jaunty. It wasn’t easy to fit “inevitable” in like that but if Dylan can do it, so could I.

Another retake. Transparent, you might say.

This might’ve been among the first songs that RC and I wrote together. Here it is for you now, polished like a pebble.

Another song we developed from a demo of mine, this one features us beating on the air ducts with sticks to make percussion loops.

Revisiting an earlier demo, this time it sounded a lot more like it should. RC plays great drums, I do my best Elvis Costello impression on the keys.

A suitable end to the Kitty album. Not for anyone, but rather for everyone.

Rejected pitch for Sherwin Williams. Assumed it would sell a lot of paint…

A homesick song for a homesick generation.

A commission for an indie film by the same name that never got off the ground.

During the year I was making a lot of this music, I also spent a lot of time at this bar. They also hosted my video show every month.

So I wrote them a theme song. Like Cheers. Just like Cheers.

It all happened so quickly. This was the only phrase I remembered…

This song would be rewritten as “Tellina Lie” and performed band-style. Vocals in bridge just had to go.

Pitch for a theme song for Sara Lee Corporation, but the song was too “edgy” and was not actually “played” for them.

Originally pitched as a theme song for U-haul, but rejected. Their loss, your gain.

Contract work for NASA. Expected to be part of the first manned trip to Mars.

Tried to rework a year or two later with a band, didn’t work. Too moody. This song wants to be a happy one. So smile already.

Around this time I’d started recording some music with a band, and I had found myself unemployed, so I took advantage of all that free time to make an album. It was a concept album only in the sense that I made the whole thing in a short period of time, so it kind of all fit together.

Figured it would be a good album opener. Basically making up the lyrics as I went. This was my “Hey Bulldog.”

We kind of considered this the end of the “album.” Seemed like we were ending on the right note.

Not only did this track provide us with a name for our act, but the laid-back groove gave us our second video, which is sufficiently abstract that I think it holds up pretty well.

This song developed as it went, and gathered meaning in its abstract nature like a snowball rolling downhill. At an epic length of almost six minutes it was our longest track, it kept growing organically until some kind of bizarre feedback-drenched guitar solo came out the other end.

I think we were playing a melodica. Neat instrument. I didn’t realize when I bought it that it was often associated with dub, but it’s fun to play.

“Me, myself, and my microphone” sang Lee, basically just freestyling over the beat. We did a bit of editing and called it a track!

On a bit of a whim, Lee Armstrong and I ended up making a hip hop album in 2002. I had been playing around with making some beats in Reason, but didn’t have much of a direction. We decided to use the equipment and beats that were sitting around to some good use. We recorded over the course of a week, gradually refining our ideas until they coalesced around six tracks.

In the end, we also put together two videos, both of which had their debut in the Hello! Video show I was curating at the time.

This was one of the more successful songs we worked on together. We’d get asked about this song years later. It was a crowd favorite.

Jordan Hudson plays drums. If you’re curious, you can listen to the earlier demo version.

I had recorded this earlier by myself, but felt that it would be a good fit for a band. It was a lot of fun to play live, and easy enough that I could actually manage it with my limited guitar skills, so it was a mainstay at our shows.

Sunlite was the second song I wrote just for the band we were calling Bootyproof. Having done a poppy rock track earlier with Officially, we were feeling like this was our groove. We had started to play shows, and these tracks anchored the set.

We were both also going through our own relationship issues at the time, and lines like “in the sunlight of your eyes, I found the rain” were inevitable. I remember writing the “vampires of the past” line in tribute to Sparklehorse, whose Sick of Goodbyes song had fantastic lyrics like “no one sees you’re on a vampire planet…” and were so damn good they’d bring me to tears.

There’s a video, too. This was produced for the Hello! Video show, and the footage came from my friend Lizzie.

This was kind of a half-finished version of this song, but it took a long time to build so here you go. I think we were kind of finding our footing still at this point.

One of the first songs I think I actually recorded with RC. Early 2001 in Portland.

Lyrics just kind of came while we were working out the rhythm in the studio, and we decided to take turns singing. We kind of play around at the end, so in a sense it felt like a “warm-up act.”

The bass line here was so awkward that when I asked RC to play it, he thought I was crazy. “Bill Berry felt the same way about that song on Green,” I told him, to which he responded “Bill Berry ended up not playing that drum part.” Touché.

I think the working title was “The Big Mistake.”

I joined Stumptown Coffee as the first employee in 1999, and soon started playing music with RC Gartrell. At some point it was decided to record an album in the first location after hours, and we formed a band to contribute a track. We chose the name Bootyproof, because it was funny.

This was pressed on vinyl and released soon thereafter, marking the only time a song of mine has been released on a record.

The inner dialogue of our conflicted protagonist. Another piece intended as part of a “concept album” which I had actually made a booklet and story to go along with, now lost. Recorded on the same day as Word Is Out.

Driving guitar sound, and yeah you can tell I used to smoke. Part of a series of songs I wrote as a sort of romantic “concept album,” but, you know how those things go.