In Which Todd Comes, Kicking and Screaming, Into the Modern Era: A Mission Statement, of Sorts.

I am a Luddite.

I have a turntable at home, on which I play vinyl albums and 45s, and I enjoy them.

I have a working cassette deck in the car, and many tapes to play in it. Not only that, I still record them for use in that environment.

At home, I still use an electric typewriter on occasion.

You are (and will be? I certainly hope) experiencing the ramblings of a man who uses modern technology to an extent, but is a little slow to embrace it wholeheartedly. Many of the rest of you have iPods, while by comparison I have several means of musical reproduction that don't involve accidental crashing of miniature hard drives or arguments about battery life. At heart, I am a person who likes things that last, things that have duration and yet can still surprise.

All of this probably goes a long way towards explaining why OverEasy tends to be the way it is...at the root, a majority of musicians, save people mostly on certain extremes in classical, avant-jazz and atonal rock, are working with the same 12 notes, repeated across a collection of octaves, mixed and reworked into a multiplicity of chords, with those precise 12 notes across the octaves deployed as melodies against those chords.

Simple.

And yet...not so much.

At the heart of OverEasy is a desire for melody, something hummable, but something distinctive...the eternal verities under which the best music always operates. Beyond that, lyrics that bring their own demonstration of quiet skill are a plus; all the rest of it is just window dressing if the words don't support the song well. In a way, the work is at least as complicated as a construction project downtown - if the structure is made out of toothpicks and festooned with sewing thread, it won't matter a whole helluva lot whether you slam the door or crash a car into it, it's still flimsy. (I'd rather hear a well-constructed instrumental over a ho-hum lyric any day.)

Good music has to be airtight, and yet let inspiration flow easily through it. Not only should it support what you want to add to it in your head (we all bring our own preconceptions to things, after all), but it also should take some of you with it as it departs. It's a balancing act to rival Calder's mobiles, if done right.

That...is what it's all about, and OverEasy on a weekly basis tries to give you a sizable scoop of what can be sustaining and vital in music. It's that simple, and all that complex, all at once: laid-back doesn't mean that it can't be fearless in the process. Acoustic does not equal slow, eclectic doesn't mean unlistenable, deliberate doesn't mean unenergetic and freewheeling doesn't mean chaotic.

Almost every Sunday, and at sporadic other times, it's a mission for me to try to bring music to you that will hopefully give you joy, aid your thinking, help you dream, show you what love could be, spawn your writing, and maybe even grow the desire to do a little music-ing of your own. It's a big world for us to share, and I - sincerely - appreciate you taking part.

-Todd Berryman