Dinosaur Girl (She’s All Teeth)

One of my main objectives here at Drip Fed Music is to not only share my music with people but make music accessible for everyone.

Beyond sharing my art and experience with music I hope to offer the occasional opportunity for you to play a part in the form of small community sound art and music projects.

This is to start peeling back the imagined divide between those that can play music and those that can’t.

To blur the edges between sound and music, performer and audience.

If you find yourself in the “I can’t do music” camp, someone probably told you to shut up once.. we are here to prove that twit wrong.

If you find yourself in the “musician” camp you’ve been told to shut up a million times and haven’t stopped, so you have nothing to worry about.

Normally, I will try and keep my posts short and to the point to hopefully allow more time for you to listen, but where there has been participation from the community I’ll try and offer some sort of explanation for the madness they have been dragged into.

This song was written rather unsurprisingly in about 5 minutes at my kitchen table.

Not unlike the one you might make up to yourself to make the dishes go a little quicker, or the one you might sing to your dog when it’s treat time.

You know.. a song.

My beautiful partner had started to make some deprecating remarks about herself and unfortunately my guitar was in my hand at the time.

In order to match her level of silliness, and combat a little of the nonsense I was hearing, I took some creative liberties and immortalised the moment into a song. (Perils of loving an artist)

I suppose it’s about loving someone despite whatever they perceive their flaws to be and embracing the crazy creature they are. Even if it’s a little scary sometimes.

Nature finds a way I guess.

When I asked the wonderful people of Substack to roar as part of the track it strangely became about something more..

Dinosaur Girl (She’s All teeth)

She’s got a bony arse,
and a vestigial tail.

But I know that I love her,
She makes ontologists pale.

She goes Rargh!
She goes Rargh!
She goes Rargh!
She’s all teeth!

She’s got short spiky arms,
No strength in her upper body.

But I know that I love her,
The neighbours can hear her roaring.

She goes Rargh!
She goes Rargh!
She goes Rargh!
She’s all teeth!

She can only see movement,
Sometimes I hide in the car.

But I know that I love her,
SHHH!

She doesn’t know where we are..

She goes Rargh!
She goes Rargh!
She goes Rargh!
She’s all teeth!

I asked people to take a few seconds to roar like a dinosaur and send me the recordings. A simple task at face value, but it’s actually asking something deeper.

It was asking people to remember what it’s like to be child, free of self-deprecation or judgment. Asking them to use their voice to make a silly sound and share it with the world.

Making music forces you to experience that ugliness known as “what you actually sound like” and move past it. A lot of people outside the field don’t really experience that too much, and forcing them to confront it was never going to be an easy task.

The nerves in adults as they tried to remember what it is like to be an animal, and to shake free from the shackles of polite society that confine their voice was something special.

I experienced some of this vulnerability myself.

Learning to use my own voice has been a big part of my musical journey as a songwriter and performer, one that I continue today. I’ve found different ways to match myself to music over the years but anytime I perform a vocal in such a natural and naive way it feels particularly exposing.

My accent always comes through stronger and that can be a bit confronting.

One of the interesting things, that was also brought up by Bea during production, was the way different accents pronounce “R” sounds. A topic of hot debate between my Irish partner and I.

In the end the song became about the freedom of making noise. The act of leaving expectations behind, challenging the inner critic, experiencing a kind of free vocal expression, reclaiming vulnerability through silliness, and dinosaurs obviously.

Production Notes/Fossil Record

Projects labelled demo will usually be quick throw together projects until I proceed to full production.

Things will be left largely unedited, out-of-tune, out-of-time, and generally rough around the edges.

It’s all part of the fun! You don’t become a better musician by using a mouse, you do it by practicing your instrument! May as well share that process too.

Most of the lead guitar stuff was loose variations on the Jurassic Park Theme for those playing at home.

The art of Jonathan Richman was of comfort and inspiration during the process. Particularly in the proto-punk way he performs with a naive vulnerability, and always sounds like he’s always just been crying.

(Made me feel better about singing with a cold).

Massive thank you to Bea (and hive), Firdaus Epeer , Lee Summers , Written Dreammares, R. M. Greta, and Aoife Casey (backing vocals), for providing their beautiful voices to this project. It really made it something special for me to work on.