Today I’m pretty stoked to share with you all the first release exclusive to crookedforest.ca – Blister.

Press play to list to it now!

(This track was previously released under the Crooked Forest band name but now lives on as an early Neither Could Dylan cut 😉

Lyrics

I open my mouth and my teeth turn on my tongue
and now I’m bleeding straight from my gums
It’s a war of words and I‘m losing
Have we begun?

Keep those lips pressed, I’ll be the fool
Because If I’ve lost you already,
I’ve got nothing left to lose

And now they’re falling faster than my thoughts can run
Tied down, held captive by my own desperation
Choking on definitions of words heard but never learned
A knee takes my neck under the guise of honest work

And now I’m breaking down and I’m breaking out
A million little blisters formed with every touch
Seeping through my skin to the floor I’m crawling on
Burning holes around my knees
You’re fucking killing me

For the sake of wasting time, let’s amuse the thought
This is going to end poorly for one if not both of us
And if we never make amends, what could’ve been still lives
So we can rest our heavy heads knowing we gave it all we had

Did we give it all we had?

About The Track

Blister is kind of a funny track to me because part of it was writing way back when I first started crafting songs. The first two verses were among some of my first lyrics, as was that acoustic guitar strum pattern you hear leading up to the heavier half of the track. But it otherwise didn’t have much more to it than that and I’ve largely left it unfinished since my early teens.

Sometime in summer of 2020 as I was, like much of the world, enthralled and dismayed by watching tragic events unfold like the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th, 2020, I returned to those initial verses to pen what you can now hear as Blister.

Inspired largely by the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, the latter half of Blister attempts to put itself in the mind and eyes of people just like George Floyd, who during encounters with police officers often find themselves in a position where there is no safe route to take; tongue-tied and desperate for escape so that they don’t become another statistic; another black life taken by sheer brute force and power.

In the final verse, we take a moment to consider and reflect on these events and how we could behave differently in the moment to ensure life is not senselessly lost, almost as a plea to those very officers who respond to the calls or events that lead to them to reconsider their actions, words, biases and viewpoints and their role in these events.

I often wonder to myself as I read news articles about these types of tragedy’s, and particularly during those in which the officers stand trial: Did they really think that this was the best course of action, did they really believe they were doing what was best to uphold the safety and law for their community and country? Often times, it just doesn’t appear that way.

The Production

Blister is a collaborative effort. I was really fortunate to have two friends join me for the production of this track, Michael Chan on lead guitar and Shane Slimmon on drums.

Both musicians took the initial acoustic guitar demo track to their respective studio spaces and tracked their parts independently before returning the files to me to piece it all together, and the track is far better for it. To know that this track has in many ways been sitting in my file folders for so many years and to finally hear it in this way is a very surreal experience.

My immense thanks to Michael and Shane for volunteering their time and skillset to it.

You can listen to the original demo of this track on my Soundcloud page, released as part of the Roots demo recording series in January 2021.

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Credits

Produced, Written, Arranged and Mixed by Jaimee Jakobczak.
Acoustic Guitar, Vocals, Electric Rhythm Guitar, Bass performed and recorded by Jaimee Jakobczak.
Lead Guitar performed and recorded by Michael Chan.
Drums performed and recorded by Shane Slimmon.

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In Support Of

This is a free release in support of Black Lives Matter Canada.

If you are able to, please consider a donation today by visiting their website.

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