Singled Out: Rags Rosenberg's 'Song Of The Bricoleur'

Rags Rosenberg just released his new album "Song of the Bricoleur", and to celebrate we asked him to tell us about the record's title track. Here is the story:

I lived in Nashville for 14 years, and although there's no place on earth better for learning the craft of songwriting, I was always a Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan kind of writer and didn't fit in that country radio scene. When I moved to Joshua Tree, the magic of the Mojave, its vastness and extremes, brought me back to my roots, and I started writing more layered, image-driven songs. "Song of the Bricoleur" was one of the first of a batch of songs that emerged as I started putting the album together. It became the centerpiece.

I'm fascinated by and terrified of the upheaval we're all going through now. For better or worse, all our old traditions and institutions are crumbling. Our ideas about religion, family, and government have been undergoing a slow transformation that started with the enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Nietzsche declaring God dead. I'm obsessed with the idea that we are now at a similar pivot point in history where the old ways no longer serve us and what will happen is up for grabs.

The French word bricoleur refers to a handyman, a tinker, an ordinary person who fixes what is broken with what they have on hand. They take something old and no longer useful and create something new from it, and that's what we're doing now as we try to figure out what direction things are ultimately going take.

I found a way to talk about that using archetypal characters like you hear in Dylan's "Desolation Row" and Waits' song, "Time." In "Song of the Bricoleur," you're introduced to Father Ryan, who complains, "What can the Kingdom be worth / when the rent in heaven's through the roof / and angels are falling to earth." Columbus complains, "My maps are all dissolving, The compass spinning 'round." The Clown, a coyote-type trickster, tells him, "No need to worry / There's nothing we need to know / There's a new world on the horizon, Chris / We'll make it up as we go."

Musically, I felt like the song deserved something unique, so I wrote it in 6/8 and used a half-capo on the guitar to create a faux open-tuning that provides some unusual chord voicings. I did most of the preproduction in my home studio, but when it was time to do the full production, I went into Jesse DeCarlo's studio in Monterey. My friend Jeff Paris in LA created that stellar piano part that drives the whole song. Marci Chapa came up with that cool percussion that sets the stage at the beginning. Because the inspiration was the French Revolution and bricoleur is a French term, I thought a cabaret feel might work, and Mike Marotta's accordion was perfect for that.

In the end, what I want people to get out of "Song of the Bricoleur" is that, in times like these, nothing's guaranteed. Ordinary, everyday people like us have a great deal of agency if we choose to use it, if we dare to imagine a better world into existence.

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen and watch for yourself below and learn more here

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