Enjoy Jar Of Bad Habits on your favorite streaming services now! This post was a bit belated due to a recent gig and then Thanksgiving festivities; it went live November 22nd.
(Posted by Jason)
This launch brings mixed emotions, as it’s the last single from our recording session back in March of 2024. On one hand, it’s a huge relief to have all of these songs out in the wild. On the other hand, it will be a while before we will have enough songs and enough time do this again.
Unlike the previous two EPs, we took our time polishing these tracks, which were originally intended to be released together as an album called The Spider and the Butterfly. We decided to be more patient than with past releases and bring in more collaborators who could give these tracks more layers and depth.
This made things much harder, but the wait was worth it. I’m grateful for everyone who contributed, and especially grateful for our engineer Gordon’s patience in getting all these extra tracks to him. To keep things interesting, I decided we should launch each track separately, with a (campfire version) that gives a glimpse into the simple singer/songwriter origin of each song.
Jar Of Bad Habits is another product of the Big City Folk Song Club. The prompt word was change. The problem with that prompt word was that I had already written two new songs about change!
Both Preservatives and Wings have themes deeply tied to their narrators navigating changes in life, so to have an explicit prompt of change seemed… redundant. The best way forward was to pick a different definition.
Growing up, my dad had a huge glass jar full of coins where he would toss his spare change at the end of the day. The song prompt also reminded me of the Simpsons episode where Homer collected coins in a swear jar. The goofy lyrics grew out of those images.
Speaking of my dad, when I was growing up, he used to play the harmonica from time to time. I’d be fascinated by how much sound could blast out of such a tiny instrument. This year I sent him a new set Hohner harps for this birthday. He hadn’t played in years but picked it back up and with a little prodding I convinced him to join us on this track.
He was suffering from sciatica when I came to visit, so he had to play his part from his couch. He had never recorded music like this before, so it took him almost two hours to get comfortable enough to get through a full take. Once he had a good take down though, he was able to relax a bit and get into a groove. We got four good takes in total, the last two taking only about twenty minutes.
I’d recorded him with a Shure SM57, which was clean enough for Gordon to add some nice effects and give it the kind of punch you might get from a live show using a Green Bullet instead. I also gave him a mix of acoustic and electric guitar tracks to play with, and I think his editorial choices on what to keep and what to cut added some excellent dynamics.
The final mix has a lot more kick than I expected we might get back when we started working on it, and I’m thrilled with the result. I hope you all enjoy it too.