 Time To
Go(2002) 1. Plastic The third tonyLkollman album. This album follows my life from December 2000 until roughly August 2001. It cover topics of loneliness, cold feelings, love won and lost, and desperately wanting to leave. It was finished in roughly August of 2001 but released in early 2002.
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Thoughts behind Time To Go all notes by tonyLkollman
Plastic this piece of noise is a clip from a long, useless thing I put together in what must have been january of 2001. i wanted to make a full song out of it with lyrics and everything, but decided it wasn’t really worth it. instead, i’ll just open the album with the beginning of it. so here it is. the drums and other background noise are a slowed down loop taken from a live version of "mel’s insanity" by fed by doris (a band in which i play the drums).
Room 115 pronounced "room one-one-five". this version is how the song was originally intended. it was supposed to be a normal kind of pop/rock song with the four basic elements; vocals, guitar, bass, drums. the drums are a loop from "dupree" by fed by doris recorded at our reunion show may 6, 2000. this version of room 115 was recorded on march 6, 2001 in my bedroom. to read more about this song, see the notes for the alternate version.
Finding Beauty invented in february of 2001. i went to sleep with the riff in my head and woke up in the middle of the night with the first two verses. i had seen the movie american beauty for the first time a few weeks previous and i was trying to find beauty in simple things. i wanted a third verse, but it didn’t come to me. i went to the red rooster coffee house and sat down and played the riff over and over on dan cl’s guitar. a very pretty girl i had never seen before sat down right next to me and started reading a book. when i got up to leave, she silently and very warmly smiled at me. we never spoke a word and i never saw her again, but it was a beautiful moment. so i turned it into the third verse for the song.
Floored invented the day after junebug’s "wolfstock 2001" gig. after what was to that point our best gig ever, i and my good friend went to her dorm room and had wonderful discussion. her intelligence, presence, radiance and very being contented me to a point that i can’t remember having felt previous. i was completely at ease save for the fact that i was wearing leather pants and i was very hot. it was time to go, but she didn’t want to be alone in the room. so she gave me a blanket and i slept on her floor. the first time i played this song for her, i was so incredibly nervous. i played it for her once only. and until this recording, no one else has heard it. i decided i would do one take and go with whatever came out. since i only played it once for her, i’ll only play it once for you.
Never the Bride a story about a girl whose relationship life doesn’t go so well as she might like it to. she’s very often rejected from love because the guys she dates are only after a roll in the hay. when her good friend tells her he’d like her to be his girl, she doesn’t think she’s good enough. there’s more to it also. you figure it out. invented in december 2000. it was inspired by a late-night junebug jam session from a number of years ago in which dustin played piano, i played guitar and anthony played some cymbal tings and some vocals. In fact, a portion of that very jam session appears as the outro to this song. i recorded guitars, vocals, and bass in march 2001. drums recorded august 2001.
Road to Illinois we took my car to bushnell, illinois for the cornerstone festival in july 2001. elizabeth rode with me and we picked up dan cl.’s friend sean in sioux falls on the way. he slept for most of the ride. she doesn’t normally go by the name beth, i don’t think. but that’s what i called her in the song. i drove the whole way from aberdeen to illinois, though elizabeth offered to let me rest. i don’t know what kept me going. on the way back at the end of the week, we encountered a turbulent storm in which the rain was flying at us horizontally and we couldn’t see. the wind tried to throw us off the road. we prayed for help and made it through. sean was, of course, sleeping in the back. i got tired and elizabeth drove. about two hours from home we heard a strange grinding or squeaking sound coming from under the hood. we didn’t know what to do. we stopped in summit and prayed that it would go away. it did, and i haven’t heard it since. aside from the obvious answered prayer, this was another quest to find beauty in simple things, much like "finding beauty". this song was invented in late july 2001 and recorded october 2001 in my apartment.
If I Could Cook one of my first solo songs, it was invented in april of 1997 when i was still in high school. it’s pretty much about leaving town for college and not knowing what to expect and not knowing what will happen with friends when you come back. a girl named nadeen liked this song a lot and i played it for her a lot. i told her i’d name the song for her, but after a time it just didn’t seem right any more. sorry, deena.
Seldom the Optimist i met a girl named angela at robbie’s one night. she’s a little bit younger than i am but she’s seen the world. she traveled in a circus as a fire breather and she took pride in telling me a number of times that she has a bra that shoots fire. i thought she was really cool and jeremy sw. and i had a couple drinks with her. it blew my mind that someone from this small town would have seen so much and done so much at her age. and what have i seen and done? not much, but i know there’s more to this. this isn’t all there is. i had a dream that junebug (a band i’m in with dustin and anthony) was in the top forty. as much as we seem to hate what’s on the radio, it felt good to be the ones on top. this isn’t all there is. bob the insurance salesman was nice to me and then tried to sell me insurance. always at work. i know there’s more to this, bob. this isn’t all there is. i’m just an average boy and i seem to know it. inventing this song helped me get through a slump of depression i was going through at the time. inventing an optimistic song helped me find a bright side or a silver lining. i tend to be a pessimist, but i’m recovering.
Day 9 first invented as a poem one day at work. i adapted it to work in song. i often don’t care for poetry that rhymes and none of mine does, but when it comes to writing words for songs, i usually rhyme them. listen to the words. find your own meaning. i know what it means to me. in the time since i’ve recorded the song, the "ninety-two days to freedom" have come and gone. the "freedom" i was hoping for did not arrive. the lyric is now changed to "just a few days to freedom". i know it’s coming. i just don’t know the specifics. "the budding young politicians smearing mud on concrete...send these sullen eyes to the bottom of this endless coffee cup." some of my favorite lines.
Room 115 (alternate version) this song was invented in early december 2000 and recorded shortly thereafter. i was in a hotel room in rapid city, south dakota. it was relatively late at night. greg and mandy had fallen asleep. so had cody, sprawled out on the floor. amanda and i had been talking and she began to drift asleep as well. i grabbed some paper and began writing. either the next day or two days later, we set out to return to aberdeen in our charter buses. two of them went into the ditch and we had to conglomerate onto the third. what you see on the album cover is amanda and i leaving our bus. leaving our belongings behind and venturing blind toward something new. and one of us is looking back. amy took this picture and i find it simply wonderful and so incredibly fitting. the lyrics to this song were very likely going through my head at the time the photograph was taken, since i was trying to memorize them on this trip. it was all recorded on my Tascam 414 using dustin’s line6 when we still shared an apartment. the lyrics have meaning. take what you’ve learned and apply them. figure it out on your own. if you wish to share, contact me. this song seems to sum up the entire mood of the whole collection for me. it was the first song on this project and my buddy stioux said he liked it. so i continued on. this version of the song fits what i felt more than the other version. this was recorded first, but it’s still the "alternate version.".
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