September 6 - Heel Turn 1

One of the joys of being a singer-songwriter is that it allows a creative soul to be their own commissioner, and that allows for occasional bouts of indulgence, such as writing a song about a subject, deciding that you prefer another approach to the same subject, and writing another song with many of the same parts. Without self-discipline this can become noodling. With self-discipline it becomes the paired versions of Heel Turn.

This version is in many ways the most identifiably Mountain Goats version, as it's a cheerful little folk ditty about deciding to stop being the good guy because being the good guy is a way of getting killed. It's light and only somewhat substantial, and is a great little party song. It's not on any records, so the cleanest recording is one that was recorded live in Chicago starting a show a few years ago. And that's a great role for a song like this.

We'll come back to the other things you can do with this concept tomorrow.