Hey, you.
Sponges of Experience was written over the 4-day weekend of Memorial Day, 2025. It was a challenge to myself: when I was a wee teenager, I heard Elvis Costello mention on some talk show (I’ve long forgotten which) that he could write an album over a weekend. It was an offhand remark, a throwaway line as he was promoting something or other. As I had already become a prolific writer myself, I was curious if I could pull off something of the sort.
Fast forward to 35-odd years later, I decided to give it a shot. I offered myself FOUR days rather than just the two, and perhaps that’s a cheat, but since it was Memorial Day weekend I decided to allow it. As it turned out, I absolutely needed those extra two days.
The other rules were simple: I just needed to write a complete composition and completed lyrics for enough songs to fill an album. At least… eight songs, though I would’ve been disappointed with just eight. I kept pushing myself to write as much as possible, as I wanted to have enough songs to be able to weed out one or two of the crappier contributions. All of the additional arrangements you hear were written and recorded after the fact, casually over the remaining year, no rush nor rules on those parameters.
I have a nice little community online, a Patreon group called, “Tim Kasher’s home phone”, that I shared the weekend challenge with. They were incredibly supportive, helping keep me to task as I didn’t want to let them (nor I) down. As soon as I finished a song I went live online to perform it. ‘Receipts’, you might say.
I started strong: four songs the first day and four songs the second day. Excellent, after two days I had already hit that minimum quota of eight songs! But as mentioned, I wanted more; more songs to be able to pick and choose from.
The third day was rough. Unsurprisingly, I hit a wall and had to take the bulk of the day off as I simply could not muster any inspiration. I managed to eke out one more song that day. But the fourth and final day bore more fruit, including The Collapse and Don’t Hang Up, a couple of favorites. What a ride.
Spurred on by many of the kind folk in the Patreon group, I decided not to cut any songs from the album and let it be released as a complete artifact of the weekend. I can’t claim to love all these songs, but I do love some of them, and certainly, all of them are endearing to me.
This funny little trifle of a weekend project wound up meaning a lot to me. I love music and songwriting in a way I don’t think I’ll ever quite be able to explain, though I’m sure I’ll continue to try, and will continue to express this adoration for the rest of my days. I feel so incredibly thankful for being a songwriter, and I encourage all of you to become songwriters as well. They don’t gotta be good songs, it’s enough that they’re simply yours. With sincerity, Tim.
