Brooke Waggoner -- "Ink Slinger" (2013)

I can't contain the words

I am on fire

Brooke Waggoner is a classically trained pianist who played with Jack White when he recorded his debut solo album (Blunderbuss) in 2011, and then went on tour with him in 2012.

Brooke gets credit for the fabulous piano part on "Weep Themselves to Sleep," the Blunderbuss track featured in the previous 2 or 3 lines post.

But Brooke is a recording artist in her own right, with an EP and three albums to her credit.

Brooke and I were both born on May 30, so we are astrotwins (sort of).

Brooke Waggoner

If you want to get all technical, astrotwins are born not only on the same month and day, but also in the same year.  For example, Andy Griffith and Marilyn Monroe were both born on June 1, 1926 -- so they are astro twins.

Brooke Waggoner and I were both born on May 30, but she was born in 1984 and I was born in 19-NOT-84.  So we aren't true astrotwins.

Which may be just as well because Brooke Waggoner's sh*t is almost as cray as Jack White's.  (No wonder he picked her to play on Blunderbuss.)

If you don't believe me, just read what she wrote on her website about recording one of her albums:

This record began as small simple melodies on my spinet piano; a piano that was once a golden honey color -- a glorified brown.

I NEEDED this piano to be black.  In a burst of rash action I bought 9 cans of black spray paint and coated the entire instrument in layers of murky froth.  Pianos are heavy and this one couldn’t be moved.  So my studio, speakers, microphones, books & records were draped with tarps while the vapors clung to the wood.

A black spinet piano

I couldn’t wait 'til it dried to sit down and play the freshly painted instrument.  Surrounded in a cloud of white cloth tarps -- soaring on fumes -- I sat down and wrote songs; songs that bewitched me and are now smeared on the whites of the ivories.  Sweat and paint went into each note.

A party was had.

It was January then and I have a vague recollection of layered coats, dry skin, cracked cuticles on the keys, and passing the Chapstick around.  Harps, organs, big gold brassy instruments, field recordings, French films, basses of all different shapes and sizes, a magical choir, new friends and old somehow found their way into this music.  I’m forever grateful it did.

That sh*t isn't just cray, it's EXTRA cray.  Jack White's sh*t is cray, but I think Brooke Waggoner's sh*t may be even more cray.  (Women are generally crayer than men.)

"Ink Slinger," which is from Brooke's 2013 album, Originator, is a song about the process of songwriting.

The singer in "Ink Slinger" first fixes a pot of tea, then prepares for work:

Lock the doors and bolt the windows

Crack the knuckles, pop the elbows  

Songwriting is thirsty work:

Second cup of tea until this

Finish, 1-2-3, it will diminish

But suddenly the dam bursts, and and the songwriter is slinging ink like crazy::

Honestly, oh me, oh my

I think my nerves are growing high

I can't contain the words; I am on fire

Here's Brooke Waggoner's "Ink Slinger":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: