THE STORY
Songwriter Michael Kearns couldn't seem to get around to his own CD.
He moved to Nashville in 1996 and started to crank out demos to pitch to Music Row. "Of course I didn't sing on the demos," he says, "my voice wasn't country enough." Still, his taste in demo singers was good – too good. Choice talents like Jeffrey Steele and Carolyn Dawn Johnson kept disappearing into their own big-name careers. Kearns soldiered on, got some independent cuts. Got his own recording studio going and produced great CDs for artists like Gordon Vincent and Davis Raines.
His songwriter friends scolded him, saying, "We like it when you sing your own songs – the quirky ones, not just the 'commercial' ones. Do your own CD!" And he always said he was working on it.
In 2003 the last demo singer fell. Kearns thought he'd really found the right one this time, a baritone for a change. Dude name of Buddy Jewel. A month later, he won on Nashville Star.
So Michael Kearns finally bit the bullet and started his own band, the Lonely Mammals. "From then on, playing music was the destination, not a means to an end," he says. They debuted at the Sutler in April 2003 and have been delighting audiences ever since. But still no CD: now Kearns was too busy writing books.
Finally this year his bassist and guitarist ganged up on him and said: we'll record it, not in your studio, and we'll do it live, down and dirty, let it bleed.
And done. Death or Life was recorded in one afternoon, everyone playing at once. (Lead vocals too – only one was added later.) The next week Kearns had to leave for a media tour of Canada – his first book had been published there to great acclaim, with a novel to follow in 2008. Still the CD got done, quickly, and a songwriter's songwriter finally has a disc you can hear.
Death or Life: rather than the typical "sum of a thousand overdubs" in today's antiseptic digital world, this CD is the sound of four people playing together. Its title arose when Kearns realized that half the songs on the CD literally mention death.
A few song notes: Kearns lived in LA for a decade; "A little rain" is about that. Written long before The Office came to television, "I loved you for a day" is just one of several songs Kearns has written depicting the secret lives of bureaucrats. "Coal Tattoo": this classic by Billy Ed Wheeler is one of two songs on the CD about the terrors of unemployment – and employment.
