Everything, Nothing, And All

released: 07/12/2024

The second album by Jack Ziesemer

Songs:I Have Tried
All I Could
I'm Not Angry Anymore
New To Change
You Will Stand And I Will Bow
Interlude
ISS
Butterfly And The Butcher
The Answer
Sing A Simple Song

I Have Tried

is a song I wrote about feeling unable to "top" your last project, whether it be an album, a piece of artwork, or whatever. I picked it partially because I thought opening a second album with a song about the pressure of making a second album was sort of funny. The phrase "I have tried so hard to fail, and I've succeeded every time" is kind of weird. If you're trying to fail and you succeed, are you succeeding at failing, or are you failing at failing?

All I Could

is a song I wrote about personal issues with personal people.

I'm Not Angry Anymore

is a song I wrote about the end of a friendship. A band I was in called "The Problem Children" broke up shortly before I began making this album, so this was sort of inspired by that.

New To Change

is a song about the overwhelming need to freshen your day to day life with new things, and seeming to never find the thing to fill the void, which is pretty bleak for a song that sounds like a peppy mid-60s Beatles track. This song wasn't even supposed to go on the album. I just came up with it shortly before finishing recording, and decided to just tape it and it sounded so good I threw it on the record last minute. In a way, New To Change is a bonus track.

You Will Stand And I Will Bow

is a song about 2 narcissists constantly battling with one another and putting themselves higher above one another, and putting the other down, until they both end up depressed and angry.

Interlude

is an instrumental that interpolates the melody from "All I Could".

ISS

is a song with similar themes to "I'm Not Angry Anymore" but more direct. It was recorded and produced at 4 AM.

Butterfly And The Butcher

is a song I wrote about growing up with an alcoholic father, and missing the innocence of childhood, only to realize that sometimes, things weren't better back then, you were just happier. The version on the LP is actually the second version of the song, there's an earlier version on the Deluxe Edition which is a full band version of the track. The reason it got changed is because one of my musician friends and bandmates, Miles Smith, who played bass on "Hudson Avenue" from Warm Days of the New Harvest, had written a song with an extremely similar chord progression. So I re-recorded the song as an acoustic ballad, and revised the chord progression.

The Answer

is an anti-war song. The interlude tacked at the end has many names, on pre-release material I called it "Outerlude", but it's technically just called "Interlude 2".

Sing A Simple Song

is a song I wrote about the need to slow down, and how most people just work their lives away without a thought, and how our society empowers that.

the people who play on this record:

jack ziesemer - guitars, synthesizers, bass, drums, piano, midi programming