Tom Meltzer

I should start by explaining that I spend much of my professional day immersed in AI LLMs. I make my living as a marketing content creator and editor, and in our times that means AI-generated text, which is both cheaper and, sadly, more reliable than freelance writers. This is particularly true in my area, where novel content is extremely rare. We churn existing content into new content, something AI is very good at .

I was curious what AI agents would make of my songs. Songs that practically nobody knows present a novel challenge to AI; it can't just find hundreds of existing reviews to pillage as it could for a famous musician. It actually has to do something that resembles analysis. Could it?

I posed the following prompt to three popular AI agents: Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, and ChatGPT. I did not include Claude because I have only a professional Claude account; since someone else is paying for it, I don't feel right using it for personal tasks.

Anyway, here's the prompt:

I have attached the lyrics to the album Nice Things. In 500 words or less, summarize the artistic style and worldview of the artist who wrote these songs.

And here's what they came up with. I've got to say, I can't find much fault with any of them. Do you find that unsettling? I do.

Microsoft CoPilot

The songs in Nice Things sketch a remarkably consistent artistic voice: wry, self‑aware, philosophically restless, and emotionally direct. Across the album, the writer blends plainspoken storytelling with reflective, almost essayistic commentary on human frailty. The tone is conversational but never shallow; humor and melancholy sit side by side, each sharpening the other.

A core worldview emerges: people are flawed, fearful, and often trapped by their own habits of mind. In Nice Things, he writes, “You pay me a compliment / And I question your intent,” a line that captures his recurring theme of self‑sabotage and suspicion. Yet he treats these flaws with compassion rather than cynicism. Songs like Be Kind and Let ’em Go insist that regret is universal and forgiveness—especially self‑forgiveness—is essential. The moral stance is gentle, not preachy: we’re all struggling, so we should try to be better to each other.

Love, in these songs, is both salvation and trouble. He’s clear‑eyed about its contradictions: “Only love can make us whole / It also makes us lose control.” Romantic songs like Every Day I Fall in Love With You All Over Again embrace devotion without irony, while others—What Goes Up, That Time We Kissed on the Brooklyn Bridge—acknowledge fear, ambivalence, and the way memory distills moments into myth. He treats love as a human experiment we keep attempting despite the evidence.

There’s also a strong sense of mortality and impermanence. In Place Where There’s No Parting, the narrator imagines reunion beyond death; in Black Suit and Tie, he confronts the grief of an old friend’s passing. These reflections aren’t morbid—they’re grounded in acceptance. Life is short, relationships fracture, people change or disappear, and meaning is found in how we carry those losses.

Stylistically, he blends folk, country, and singer‑songwriter traditions, but always with a meta awareness of genre. Country Song is both homage and critique, celebrating emotional honesty while rejecting cultural gatekeeping. He gravitates toward simple, sturdy melodies and narrative lyrics, but the writing is studded with philosophical asides: “If identity is an accident of time / Then egoism is the only crime.” This mix of everyday language and metaphysical musing is a signature move.

Finally, there’s a persistent humility. In Moses Never Reached the Promised Land, he admits generational limits and personal blind spots. He’s politically empathetic but wary of claiming full understanding. The worldview is progressive in spirit but grounded in self‑questioning rather than certainty.

Taken together, the album presents an artist who sees life as bittersweet, absurd, and precious. He believes people are messy but redeemable, love is risky but worth it, and kindness is the closest thing we have to a guiding principle.

Chat GPT

Across Nice Things, the songwriter emerges as a humanist with a skeptical mind, a melancholy temperament, and a persistent belief that love and kindness are the only reliable answers to an indifferent universe. The songs acknowledge mortality, regret, disappointment, and uncertainty without collapsing into nihilism. Instead, they repeatedly argue that while we cannot control the world's cruelty or make sense of existence, we can choose compassion, forgiveness, and connection.

The album's worldview is existential but not cynical. The lyrics frequently confront death ("Place Where There's No Parting," "Black Suit and Tie"), aging ("Moses Never Reached the Promised Land"), and the limits of human understanding ("What's the Matter Now?"). Religious imagery appears throughout—not as dogma, but as metaphor and moral vocabulary. Biblical stories, Buddhist philosophy, and hints of Christian hope coexist comfortably, suggesting a writer more interested in spiritual wisdom than theological certainty.

Emotionally, the songs are marked by self-awareness rather than self-pity. The narrator readily admits his own flaws—unkindness, insecurity, stubbornness, missed opportunities—and repeatedly advocates self-forgiveness alongside accountability. "Be Kind" and "Let 'em Go" reject shame as a productive force, arguing instead for empathy toward both others and oneself.

Love is treated as both humanity's greatest blessing and its greatest vulnerability. Romantic relationships are never idealized; they involve disappointment, impermanence, and risk. Yet the songs insist that enduring love is possible, whether through lifelong commitment ("Every Day I Fall in Love With You All Over Again"), resilient partnership ("That's How I Know That I Love You"), or simply preserving affection after romance ends ("Let's Be Friends"). Even when love fails to protect us from suffering, it remains life's central source of meaning.

Artistically, the writing favors clarity over obscurity. The songs rely on conversational language, memorable hooks, humor, and accessible storytelling rather than dense symbolism. They mix wit with gravity, often undercutting profound observations with self-deprecating jokes or ironic turns. The perspective is unmistakably that of an older songwriter looking backward without nostalgia and forward without illusion. There is affection for ordinary people, cultural curiosity, and an evident distrust of tribal identities and ideological certainty. Even "Country Song" celebrates the emotional truth of a musical tradition while rejecting its stereotypes, illustrating the album's broader conviction that authenticity matters more than labels.

Taken together, these songs portray an artist who sees human beings as frightened, imperfect creatures trying to navigate an incomprehensible world. We are prone to fear, regret, and conflict, but also capable of generosity, laughter, forgiveness, and enduring love. The album's quiet thesis is that we may never solve life's deepest mysteries, but we can still choose to be kind—and that choice is what gives our lives meaning.

Gemini

Here is a summary of the artistic style and worldview expressed in Tom Meltzer’s album Nice Things:

Artistic Style

Meltzer writes in a conversational, self-aware folk-Americana idiom. His songwriting leans heavily on genre traditions—explicitly calling out classic country instrumentation like the D18 acoustic guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and pedal steel—while maintaining a distinct self-referential lens. Rather than posing as an authentic cowboy or southern figure, he acknowledges his suburban roots and outsider perspective.

His lyricism combines structured, accessible rhyme schemes with straightforward, unvarnished imagery. He effortlessly pivots between lighthearted wit (e.g., negotiating a "friends with benefits" arrangement) and profound existential reflection (e.g., referencing William Blake, the Big Bang, and quantum physics). The poetic tone is characterized by:

• Self-Deprecating Humor: Acknowledging personal hypocrisies and aging out of modern trends.
• Narrative Clarity: Story-driven lyrics that capture specific moments, such as traveling to a funeral in a "black suit and tie" or kissing on the Brooklyn Bridge.
• Direct Emotional Expression: Unfiltered confessions of regret, loneliness, and devotion.

Worldview

Meltzer’s underlying philosophy balances a pervasive, weary existentialism with grounded compassion and acceptance.

1. Fatalism & Human Limitation

A core theme across the songs is the inevitability of loss, conflict, and impermanence. Tracks like Nice Things point out inherent human self-interest and fear ("We were born to cower in a cave / Waiting for the comfort of the grave"). In Moses Never Reached the Promised Land, he meditates on generation gaps and the necessity of stepping aside for what comes next, recognizing that humans rarely get to see their ultimate goals realized.

2. Radical Kindness as the Highest Good

Despite the heavy themes of regret, aging, and mortality, Meltzer lands on a simple imperative: kindness. In Be Kind, he reflects on past cruelties and failures, concluding that amidst a culture driven by social ladders and ambition, the only lasting legacy worth leaving is basic decency ("If it's just two words / I hope those words will be 'be kind'").

3. Love & Connection in a Flawed World

Love in Meltzer’s world is both a sanctuary and a mystery. It rarely prevents hard times or pain, but it remains the primary mechanism for endurance. Whether through romantic devotion (Every Day I Fall In Love With You All Over Again) or shared grief (Black Suit and Tie), human connection provides the solace needed to navigate a chaotic universe.

Ultimately, the writer views life through a realistic, slightly battered, but enduringly warm lens—acknowledging that while "we can't have nice things", love, music, and simple kindness make the journey worth taking.

Only Love Can See You Through

This was one of three songs I wrote while recording Nice Things. I suspect I was so productive because I was allowing music to take up more space in my head than usual. It was a little exhausting but also very enjoyable.

I originally tried to sing this song in a higher key. I hope I had the good sense to delete all evidence of that effort. Imagine someone singing Chris Stapleton karaoke who really, really has no business doing that. It sounded like I was in pain, but not in a way appropriate to the song: more "wounded hyena" than "broken heart." 

This one's pretty straightforward, not much to say other than it felt right as soon as it was done. Some songs let you know they'll get better if you beat on them some more; this one let me know it was OK to move on.

Let's Be Friends

Another song I wrote during the recording process, and the closest this record comes to a novelty song. Those familiar with my previous work know I've written a number of humorous songs; I enjoy writing them and they usually go over well live, an especial bonus when playing for a new audience.

I had written a number of such songs that I intended to include on Nice Things but as the track list took shape, they kept getting replaced by weightier fare. So, now I have a pile of funny songs sitting around; I intend to record them soon and release them later this year as an online-only EP. In honor of my late father—who was fond of telling me "Everything's a big goddamn joke to you!"—the EP will be entitled Everything's a Big Goddamn Joke.

Black Suit and Tie

The third song I wrote during the recording process, occasioned by the unexpected and untimely death of a long, dear friend. None of the details track; she and I were suburban Baltimore high school nerds, not Carolina badasses. Still, her passing hit me hard, and when the thought crossed my mind that I was entering a phase of life when I really needed to buy a black suit, the central image of this song locked in, and the rest came pretty quickly. I recently deleted all the deceased contacts on my phone; there were a dozen. When did I get old?

What's the Matter Now?

This song has more chords than any other song I've written, maybe more than any other two songs I've written. Musically, it feels very Paul Simon to me; I was thinking of "Everything Put Together Falls Apart" when I wrote it, but there's a small but significant chunk of chord change and melody that will remind astute listeners of “I Do It for Your Love.”

I try not to pat myself on the back, but I am quite proud of the lyrics to this one, especially the double-meaning title and the William Blake needle drops. I am not a practicing Buddhist but I am an aspirationally practicing Buddhist, someone who loves the ideas but can't submit to the discipline. This is probably as close as I'll ever get to a Buddhist song.

PS On streamers, this song appears as track 16 under the title “What Goes Up?” That's also the title of track 8. Do not upload your album late at night while you are drinking scotch, is the takeaway here.

Moses Never Reached the Promised Land

I hesitate to perform this one live because I fear casual listeners will take it the wrong way. The lyric includes some unwoke sentiments that I do not endorse. That said, I recognize that I have a much harder time with gender fluidity and transexuality than my kids do, and that's the point of the song—times change and we olds get left behind. The narrator of this song is smart enough to know he's a dinosaur but not smart enough to get up to speed. He's maybe where I was 8 or 10 years ago, before encounters with my daughters' non-binary/trans friends opened my eyes a little wider.

I see this as a song of hope: the next generation is summarily dismissing the prejudices that were my generation's reality, and the world is slowly becoming a better place as a result. 

I don't remember where I first heard the explanation that the Hebrews wandered the desert for 40 years so that the slave generation would die out and the new nation could be founded and led by a generation that had only known freedom. It does explain why it took Moses et. al. 40 years to travel approximately 200 miles. Even for a bunch of old Jews, that's mighty slow driving!

The Let's Dance Waltz

In preparation to record and mix Nice Things, I listened to a lot of acoustic records, trying to find a sonic template for my album. I started with the eponymous T-Bone Burnett album but ultimately settled on Townes Van Zandt's At My Window and Guy Clark's My Favorite Picture of You. It was while listening to "Cornmeal Waltz" over and over that I came up with this one.

In performance, I try to switch up the singers referenced in the bridge. Al Green remains a constant, but sometimes Leonard Cohen changes to Vic Damone or PF Sloan or Willie Colon or Joey Ramone, but never Sly Stone because are you really working your way up from Sly Stone to Al Green, or are you just making a lateral move?

That Time We Kissed on the Brooklyn Bridge

This song is about being young and in love, and then growing older and more cautious, and what we gain and lose in the process. It's also about scratching a musical itch: namely, my desire to attempt an homage to the Beatles' "And Your Bird Can Sing," which has always been one of my favorites. Recording the guitar parts was the single most challenging task of the project, but in the end I got them pretty close to what I heard in my head. When I lived in Brooklyn, I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge almost every day, and Manhattan did indeed rise ahead like a glorious hallelujah chorus, every single time. 

Every Day I Fall in Love With You All Over Again

Love songs have always been a challenge for me, and I had to get pretty old before I wrote one I thought was any good. I wrote this one during my second marriage, which, like the first, did not take. It follows another rhyme scheme I love, AABCCB. Someday I'm going to sit down and try to figure out what makes certain rhyme schemes so satisfying. Or maybe I'll just ask a Chatbot, and then use the time I save to gamble online. I believe that's how we roll in the 2020s.

Let 'em Go

Paul Simon has a wonderful song on Surprise called "Sure Don't Feel Like Love." It's basically about giving yourself permission to stop beating yourself up for all your past mistakes. "Let 'em Go"  is a simpler exploration of the same theme, set to this sort of jangly pop I've been writing since the Special Guests days. It includes the Beatles-signifying minor four chord, which I try not to overuse, but sometimes just can't resist. If I ever get Alzheimer's, the silver lining will be that maybe I'll finally forget every stupid thing I've ever said or done.

That's How I Know That I Love You

This is the oldest song on Nice Things; I wrote it as my first marriage was winding down. If you're surprised by the number of Biblical references on this record, you aren't the only one. I guess the Good Book is more compelling than I've sometimes given it credit for. Adam and Eve pop up in a number of my compositions; that entire semester spent reading Paradise Lost was, apparently, not wasted on me. I find the rhyme structure of this one—AAAB—very appealing, and I have a pile of half-finished songs in that format; for some reason I keep forgetting how challenging it is to sustain over multiple verses. That hard-to-identify instrument playing ornamentation is a short-scale 12-string guitar.

I'm a Stranger Here

The only cover on Nice Things; it was written by Paul Foglino. Paul first played it for me as I perform it on the album. He subsequently rearranged it for his impressive fingerpicking style, which you can hear on his new album Monday Street. Paul manages to write emotionally moving songs that also demonstrate a mathematician's precision; pull this song apart and you'll find that every line is carefully interconnected and symmetrical. In his Clark Kent persona, Paul is a math teacher.

What Goes Up

Boy, I sure write a lot of songs about failing relationships! I try not to focus too intently on the common denominator in all of them. I'm stuck with it, after all.

As a college English major, I learned how TS Eliot frequently dropped allusions to other poems into his poetry as a way to supercharge meaning; reference a Shakespeare sonnet in a few words and, bam, you've introduced an entirely different world and set of emotions to contrast or complement your creation. This song references "You Are My Sunshine" in that way, I think/hope; bonus points if you remember that's actually a sad song as you contextualize it in mine.

Nice Things

I like to start songs with an attention-grabbing line. Sometimes it's intended to be funny ("She reminds you of your mother in a dirty sort of way" "My girl's like a wading pool, she's shallow and full of piss") and sometimes it's just odd. 

Nice Things is the latter sort. I think at least some audiences will hear "Water is a scarce resource" and wonder, "Where the heck could this be going?" I also like painting myself in a corner, a la Monty Python's "Your majesty is like a stream of bat piss." I find songwriting is a lot like doing crossword puzzles; managing the challenge of an oddball first line is like completing the NYTimes Saturday crossword in under ten minutes.

This one's a bit dark for an album opener, but it does feel like a pretty apt mission statement for the entire record.

Place Where There's No Parting

So many people have indicated they think this song is about my first wife that I have to clarify: no. My first wife was many things; a "bright-eyed ingenu with the wind behind her sails" was not one of them. On the contrary, she, like I, was a "cynical slacker." It was one of our congruences.

This song is about someone I dated in NYC in the early 90s—not for long, but she left an impression. She was smart and funny and beautiful and driven and one of the most upbeat people I've ever known. She was also way out of my league; hence, "I knew on the day that I met you that someday it would end." We stayed marginally in touch on facebook over the years but it had been years since we'd been in contact when I learned of her struggles with depression and eventual suicide. I ruminated on my feelings for a long time before this song emerged.

Country music has so many great songs about death. I was thinking of "Your Long Journey," "Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone?", "Angel Band," and "The Little Girl and the Dreadful Snake" when I wrote this. I struggled to find a core around which to build the song until I stumbled on the phrase "In the place where there's no parting" in Zora Neale Hurston's Baracoon. That struck me as particularly appropriate as the subject of this song was a devout southern Baptist.

Be Kind

This song languished in development for years. It started as a direct message to my daughters. It was originally a gentle bossa nova with the lyrics:

If I could only leave behind
Two words for you to keep in mind
The words would not be hard to find
The words
Would be
Be kind

There were problems. First, that's a whole song; there's nowhere to go from there. Second, I can't really play a bossa.

And then one day I was playing Mississippi John Hurt's Payday and I started messing around with it, and the riff that now defines Be Kind emerged. I took a fresh look at the song and tried it again from a confessional perspective: "Sometimes I've been unkind?Sometimes I haven't been thoughtful." The song pretty much wrote itself from there.

Country Song

My introduction to country music was inauspicious. My father played two country albums constantly: Ray Price's For the Good Times and The Legend Lives Anew: Hank Williams With Strings. The former is pretty standard countrypolitan stuff: not awful, but it sounded awfully treacly to a kid raised on 60s and 70s pop and rock. The latter is irredeemable, a desecration of great Hank Williams records with overdubbed backing vocals, Floyd Cramer-style piano, and way too many strings.

Neil Young, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead and a few others sneaked some country sounds and sentiments into their music: that was my first introduction to country as a force of good rather than evil. That was high school.

Then, in college, I caught the bug. My aunt gave me a copy of The Silver Tongued Devil and I, and a college friend got me listening to The Gilded Palace of Sin. I found a cheap Hank Williams album called Moanin' the Blues and heard what he actually sounded like sans drek, and I was hooked. My subsequent descent into American music's back catalog—country, blues, old time, R&B, gospel, jazz, early rock, all of it—coincided with the demise of first-wave punk and the rise of 80s corporate music. I did not want my MTV.

Country Song is a pretty straightforward homage to this Jewish suburbanite's lifelong passion for music from communities very unlike the one in which he grew up. The bridge name checks three classic country songs.

The Nice Things liner notes include namechecks of songwriters whose work inspires mine. I meant it as shorthand for listeners who don’t know me—which is almost everyone. Hello, stranger! You love John Prine? Maybe you'll like this, too.

It also enables me to tip my hat to great songwriters whose songs run through my head constantly. Those songs are the raw material I reshape into something I hope is original and engaging.

These are the folks I acknowledged on the back cover of my new CD.

JOHN PRINE

Prine opens up so many doors. He writes in the vernacular about ordinary things and somehow transforms them into profound revelations, and he does it with a pervasive empathy and a killer sense of humor. He belongs with Twain and Whitman among great American originals.

It took me time to get Prine. My first encounters with his songs came when I was working at a camp where every counselor played guitar, and at least half of them sang "Dear Abby" way too often. "Dear Abby" is a wonderful song but it's not the right gateway to Prine's catalog; it makes it too easy to dismiss him as a novelty songwriter.

Years later, I found my way in with Bruised Orange—not his best album, but good enough, with plenty of meat on the bone to distinguish Prine from other "funny guys with guitars." That led me back to his eponymous debut, Diamonds in the Rough, and Sweet Revenge—all stellar—and teed me up for The Missing Years, still my favorite. "Life is a blessin'/It's a delicatessen" are words to live by, as are “I got no shame/And I got no pride/I got so much love that I cannot hide.”

PAUL SIMON

I know Bob Dylan is supposed to be the pre-eminent songwriter of his time. I also know there's no need to compare Dylan and Simon, no necessity to crown one the ultimate singer-songwriter of the generation that rewrote the rules on lyric writing. Still, it means something to me that I re-listen to my Paul Simon records waaaaay more than I revisit Dylan. His songs continue to speak to me, continue to show me new things.

Simon's default attitude, like Prine's, is bemusement. "She looked me over and I guess she thought I was all right/All right in a sort of a limited way for an off night." "When something goes wrong I'm the first to admit it/The first to admit it and the last one to know." In his writing, I hear an acknowledgement that we are all flawed, all foolish, all occasionally vain and self-important, all worthy of empathy. In his lyrics, I hear my inchoate thoughts given shape, meaning, and context.

CAROLE KING

As my musical tastes developed, King's music seemed to be there every step of the way. My earliest memories are of listening to the Beatles; "Chains" was a perennial favorite. The Beatles were my older brother's band; the first band I discovered on my own was The Monkees ("Pleasant Valley Sunday," "Take a Giant Step"). Herman's Hermits ("I'm Into Something Good") were also in heavy rotation in our house in the mid-60s.

Then came the singer-songwriter era and the Laurel Canyon era and there was Tapestry, the album that never seemed to leave the album charts. And then later still as I dug deeper into Sixties music I missed the first time around, there were all those amazing girl group songs and "Up On the Roof" and "Some Kind of Wonderful" and "Take Good Care of My Baby" and, of course, the transcendent “Natural Woman.”

Carole King is a songwriter's songwriter. I don't know a songwriter worth a damn who doesn't wish they had written even one of King's hits, not for the revenue stream but for the satisfaction of having created something so great.

MERLE HAGGARD

I listen to a lot of country music. That should be evident from Nice Things, an album my friend Paul Foglino describes as "unrepentantly country." I could list numerous country songwriters who have influenced my writing—Hank Williams Sr, of course, like everybody else, and definitely Kris Kristofferson and Ira Louvin—but if I have to pick one (and one was about all I had room for on the back jacket of my CD), it has to be Merle.

I love that Merle is an ornery cuss and that he doesn't try to hide that in his music. I also love that he has a soft side he also doesn't try to hide, and that he has no problem acknowledging both sides and feels no compulsion to reconcile them. I love his cynical optimism ("Rainbow Stew," "Are the Good Times Over for Good?"), his earnestness ("The Way I Am," "No One to Sing For But the Band"), and, usually, his sense of humor ("My Own Kind of Hat," yes; "Sam Hill," no; “White Boy,” HELL no!). I love his commitment to his music, to being not just a star but a band leader and a guitarist and fiddler of considerable skill and a continual seeker, a guy who kept writing great songs for decades after it became clear he'd never have another hit record. Merle Haggard is a musician's musician, and one of country music's greatest songwriters.

And now I shift gears from songwriters I have admired from afar to songwriters I've had the good fortune to admire from closer proximity.

PAUL FOGLINO

I have been playing music with, and singing songs written by, Paul Foglino for more than 40 years. We learned to write songs together, first with the horn-driven bar band The Special Guests, then with the Americana/roots-omnivore band 5 Chinese Brothers. We have recorded together, toured together, foregone pay together to make sure band projects and band members were sufficiently funded, and spent countless hours talking about music, musicians, songs, and songwriting. These are always rewarding exchanges.

We play each other our latest compositions, offer each other critiques and suggestions, and commiserate over a world that did not see fit to reward our musical efforts with mountains of cash. We remind each other of songs each of us has written and would rather forget. Pretty soon we will be calling each other regularly to report who has recently died, and our transformation into the Sunshine Boys will be complete.

I still frequently open solo shows with a Paul Foglino song--"Alone Together," usually, which was often 5 Chinese Brothers' opener. I included exactly one cover song on Nice Things: Paul's "I'm a Stranger Here," which also appears on Paul's new solo album, Monday Street. If I can't accurately assess the influence of Paul's writing on mine, it's because of the forest-trees phenomenon. I bushwhack through these songs.

ROBBIE FULKS

I met Robbie around the same time I met Paul, when we all three attended Columbia; I later spent a summer working in a publishing house mailroom with Robbie. He did a hilarious impression of the freight elevator operator. Even then, he was funny and a showman.

Robbie is intimidatingly talented and intelligent and exceedingly tall; more to the point for the purposes of this post, he is a wonderful songwriter. He has in the past demonstrated a gift for snark that I suspect arose from our mutual punk rock roots, and in recent years he has glided toward more traditional themes and styles. I feel a kinship on both fronts.

Throughout his career, Robbie has admirably followed his muse, taking on projects and challenges that could not have seemed like safe or smart career strategies. I recently watched "Without Getting Killed or Caught," the Guy Clark/Susannah Clark documentary, in which Clark explained that he began to enjoy his career when he finally decided to make music that pleased him, regardless of market trends. Robbie figured that out long ago; it's an inspiration.

GREG TROOPER

In a just world, Greg Trooper would have been a star. He was an extraordinary singer and a truly great songwriter. He was like a songwriting Mondrian, rarely using more than three chords to propel his straightforward lyrics, creating masterpieces in the process.

Paul and I met Trooper in NYC in the 1980s; our band frequently opened for him at Tramps, back when Tramps was just a Union Square Irish bar with a stage. He already had a batch of great songs, including "We Won't Dance," "Ireland," and "Little Sister." Over the years, he'd write scores more just as good. He also had a killer band that featured Larry Campbell on lead guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and pedal steel. Our band went to school every time we shared a bill.

Troop eventually relocated to Nashville, where he would generously open his guest room and family room floor to 5 unwashed Chinese Brothers. He and Claire could not have been more gracious hosts; I tried to return the favor later by hosting him whenever he came through the Triangle.

I've been listening to and playing Trooper's songs for a long time, evangelizing when the opportunity presents itself. If you don't know his music, get thee to Spotify. He has way too many great songs to list them all here: start with "Nothin' But You," "Real Like That," "When My Tears Break Through," "Don't Let It Go to Waste," and "Halfway," then hunt down "Every Heart Won't Let You Down" on youtube for good measure. 

Greg passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2017.

My friend Jim Allen tells me that Tom Petty once said something to the effect of: "Promoting a record is your punishment for making a record." I can't find the quote online but it certainly sounds Petty-esque, and regardless it's a good one, so I share it here.

My record is done, pressed, and sitting on my dining room table, alongside a pile of flat "Please Do Not Bend" envelopes and a stack of one-sheets proclaiming me a Singer-Songwriter Worthy of Your Notice. Jim, Jon Shain, and various cherished internet friends have provided me with lists of press and radio people who might be interested in what I do. If you hear from me, you have them to blame.

And so tonight I stuffed envelopes and sent out countless (43, more precisely) emails and tried not to obsess too much on the futility of it all. My friend Paul Foglino and I mutually agree that many life situations—and certainly all pertaining to the entertainment business—closely track Kafka's parable of The Law, in which a hapless fellow waits his entire life outside a guarded door waiting to get in. He tries to bribe the guard, who tells him: "I'll take your bribe as a favor to you, only so you don't feel as though you would have gotten in if only you had bribed me." He dies on the doorstep many years later.

Now, there are professionals who will handle promotion for you, and I am sure many are very good at what they do. It's just that, as noted in a previous blog entry, I expect zero return on this record so I am loath to invest more in it than necessary. I want it to have a chance to be reviewed and played on the air, but I don't want it "pay a gatekeeper" enough. 

I've been down that road before: for the third 5 Chinese Brothers album, Let's Kill Saturday Night, we hired a prominent Americana promoter, who landed us a feature review in Stereo Review and some other big publications as well as a trip up to the top 5 of the CMJ Americana chart. Problem was, when the process had run its course, we were in exactly the same place we had been before. CD sales didn't improve, the gigs didn't get more frequent or better, and nobody was busting down our door trying to sign us to a major label. My biggest takeaway from the process was disillusionment.

So this time, I'm keeping it very artisanal, very rustic, very analog. I'm not spending too much time fussing over the nuances of press releases and emails because the gains to be had there are nominal, and a nominal gain on nothing is nothing. Plus, winging it is fun, and liberating. I think I maybe actually enjoyed this little exercise tonight. 

I'll let you know if it yields any results.

Some musicians are comfortable in the recording studio. I am not one of them. Here's why:

• My wide-ranging imposter syndrome includes all matters regarding musicianship. In the studio, my lack of confidence in my ability to complete a clean take is amplified by the presence of a producer and, often, other musicians—all, in my mind's eye, scowling as I toil away at a simple rhythm guitar part—and the ever-ticking meter calculating studio time and expense. 
• My ADHD and old-man energy level make the standard recording session—four to six or even eight hours—way too long. I prefer to work in one- to two-hour bursts.
• I am a homebody who grows increasingly uncomfortable the more time I am away from my dog, my couch, my kitchen full of goodies.

Thankfully, modern technology makes home recording possible for a project such as mine. For recordings that involve no percussion (the first day of every 5 Chinese Brothers session invariably started with hours of drum miking and processing, the first of many buzzkills) and only acoustic instruments, you can get by with a MacBook equipped with GarageBand, a decent interface (I use the Focusrite Scarlett Solo), and, most important, a quality microphone (mine: the AudioTechnica 4033a).

Home recording enables a work process ideally suited to my skills and attention span. Mine is an intensely iterative process: I record what I think is a complete track, mix it, then listen to it obsessively, returning to it often to tweak a vocal here, a mandolin part there. I can noodj a track a few dozen times before reaching the point of diminishing returns and declaring it done. Likewise, each mix undergoes countless reconfigurations of the signal paths until the optimal combination and ordering of EQ, compression, limiter, and reverb is found or approximated.

Thanks to my solitary work conditions, no one need know that that surprisingly adept guitar solo required 15 takes, or that its 16 bars were assembled two or four bars at a time on multiple tracks. Nor do they need to find out that I record harmony parts by playing them on a keyboard on one track, then singing along to them on a second track. That is, unless I choose to divulge that information.

The downside of working alone at home was that it required me to relearn GarageBand, an app I had more or less mastered 20 years ago when I was creating a musical podcast for The Princeton Review. The app grew more robust and I had forgotten much in the intervening two decades; also, my standards had risen. I wanted this to sound good and was not sure how to go about it.

For that reason, 10 months passed from the time I decided to make this record until the day I started recording, in late December 2025. In the interim, I made a few false starts, watched a lot of youtube tutorials, and, happily, wrote more songs. Five of the songs on this album were written after my intended February 2025 start date. Hurray, procrastination!

I am only slightly embarrassed to say that, when it came to technical questions, I came to rely on Microsoft Copilot, a fawning chatbot whose sycophancy is made tolerable by its generally solid advice on such matters as how to EQ a dreadnought to eliminate low-end rumble. In case you're wondering, Microsoft Copilot is certain I've just made the greatest record ever!

Still, in the end, I needed to use a studio lifeline. I spent an extremely productive afternoon at Good Luck Studio with FJ Ventre, refining final mixes and learning a ton about track panning, signal processing, and applying a light touch with all the enhancement tools (especially the compressors and limiters; FJ is the reason Nice Things does not sound like an acoustic Ramones album). 

Accounting drove my commitment to recording at home, on my own. My predicted return on investment for this project is nothing, and I am a zero-sum guy; I generally don't buy a new musical instrument without selling another off to finance the purchase. I could not envision a scenario in which investing thousands of dollars on this record didn't leave me feeling ill and disinclined to proceed. Now at the other end of the journey, I am pleasantly surprised that the final result is, to my ears, good enough.

I'm looking forward to to hearing whether you agree.

Welcome to tommeltzer.com, your information center for all things me, at least as far as music is concerned. Occasional musings about movies, others' music, food, golf, and life may find their way here as well.

So, why record my first solo album now? I've been playing music for 40+ years in various bands; I made one abortive attempt at a solo album back in 1999, but neither the will nor the funds were sufficient to see it through. Since then, I've been content to play the occasional gig, write the occasional song, and relearn to love music after a few decades' effort trying to make it in the business had knocked that love clean out of me.

About three years ago, I was invited to join a songwriting group that meets monthly. Until then, I had been generating about one good song a year, at most. A song idea had to come up to me, knock me down, and hold me to the ground until I finished writing to get my attention. The group changed that; suddenly, I was in song receptor mode, seeking song ideas in ways I hadn't in over 20 years. It was exciting and very engaging.

I have been quite pleased with the results, no doubt substantially owing to the high quality of the other group members. I have to bring my A game to hold my own with Wes Collins, Dean Driver, Barry Gray, Glenn Jones, John Saylor, Tim Smith, Isabel Valls, and FJ Ventre. Eleven of the sixteen songs on Nice Things were created for, and shaped by the feedback of, that most excellent group of lovely people.

Second, my younger daughter has taken a serious interest in songwriting. Thankfully, she's very good, and I'm not just saying that because I'm her father. (Although I would, but fortunately, I don't have to.) At some point, when I get more adept at this web management thing, I will post links to some of her TikToks. Anyway, that compelled me to get off my butt and create enduring versions of these songs. I wanted her to hear what I've been doing, and now that she's an adult on her own, I have no way to compel her to sit down and listen to me sing my songs at her. And so, a record it had to be.

And yet a third reason. Some years ago, a Baltimore friend commented favorably on the songs I wrote in my 20s and, concurrently, opined that songwriters do their best work when they are young. Not most songwriters, not "as a general rule"—the assertion was categorical. For some reason, that stuck in my craw, and since then, I've wanted to prove him wrong. I honestly do think these are some of the best songs I've ever written. Then again, I'm not exactly an objective observer. We'll see who is right when the album comes out, perhaps.

Finally, hard as I try, I cannot shake my awareness that my father—whose body type and various conditions (high cholesterol, high blood pressure, sleep apnea) I share—died just before his 71st birthday of coronary failure. In that context, "I'll get to it eventually" is more self-evidently an excuse not to do something I may never have time to get around to than a rational decision. I do want these songs to have a chance to persist, and I won't always be here to champion them. 

And that's why you can have Nice Things.