My Secret Career 36: The Tourniquet Blues, Summer 1994

I was leaving town. Seems like a decisive move, right? Definitive. Psychological, yes, but geographical to boot.

The end of summer approached and I rehearsed for the show I was playing on my way out onto 95 South. Many of these songs I never performed live in any other context, mostly because they were stranger than the songs I wrote for The Mahoneys, gnarlier, harder to elucidate.

To call any song a “blues” has always seemed sketchy to me, something that signaled meaning in lieu of delivering that meaning effortlessly. I named this one “The Tourniquet Blues” as a nasty wink, and to remind people that blue is the natural color of blood.

Also, musically, technically, formally, this music is categorically NOT blues.

My longings were inchoate, my desires obscure, my dysfunction crippling, my ambition enormous. I was absolutely not ready for prime time. But I knew it was time to jump and I’d just have to learn before I hit the ground.

Which, dammit, I did. But not before I had to sing the blues, baby, sing the tourniquet blues.

The Tourniquet Blues