unsigned artists – Kevin Trent Boswell

Three Day Beard

“Three Day Beard”- music video from the new Trent Boswell album, Area 25

“Three Day Beard” from Area 25, by Trent Boswell

Release date is February 22, 2023. Note, it may be up to a week before the album starts showing up on the various music platforms.

Available on all the major music streaming services, like Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, and many more.

Album cover art by Dorian Strange.

Lyrics for “Three Day Beard”

Standing in a soup line
Sucking on a tail pipe
Working on a new crime;
Against myself,
How many times
Can I kill myself?
Before I die?
God knows I tried
To find out

II.

I wandered where the women went
Thought my soul could be at ease
I never lost my good intent
But found myself wishing
I’d never had it at all
Never had it at all
Is that what you’d call
A fall from
Grace?

III.

Listen here man and wo-man alike
I won’t tell you about all the cigarettes
And the booze, and the other scenarios
I won’t tell you about all the hard feelings
And the petty larcenies
I won’t tell you about all the
Broken bones and homes
Rendered in brutal beatings
And I won’t even tell you about the sadness;
The heavy, “wish we weren’t here” melancholy
But I will tell you this:
There are people who walk this earth
Who are so beautiful, on the inside,
They make angels blush
And you…
Ain’t one of them

IV.

Allow me some time
To be angry
I’ll shout, not speak my mind
I’m hungry;
Don’t wanna eat

Forgive my trespass
I’m not sorry
Thought maybe you had grown,
Just a little,
I was wrong
But don’t worry
You will

You will
Just not with me

VI.

If you wipe the slate clean,
Just kick back and dream:
Never learn a thing
About what you see

VII.

My license to be blind
Has been revoked
Just in time
And now I see the work
Cut out for me

©️2023 Kevin Trent Boswell

Magus72 on Patreon - the music, poetry, and madness of Kevin Trent Boswell — Magus72 on Patreon – the music, poetry, and madness of Kevin Trent Boswell

The Crockpot Cartel

This was a refreshingly positive experience. With every post I make on Instagram, I get hit up multiple times for paid promotions. It’s always a sleazy approach like “I love your stuff! Let’s work together!” even though you know they sent that message so fast, they couldn’t possibly have listened to the song.

This guy Bobby asked me on TikTok if he could review me on his show tonight. I said yes, but I was thinking, “Wait for it… he’s going to hit me with a dollar amount, a pay-to-play thing.” I don’t do those. But he didn’t ask for anything. He’s got a pretty intelligent approach to it, he offers pay-to-play, but also gives free plays and reviews, no questions asked.

A spin and review on The Crockpot Cartel Show

He played a few minutes of my song (the format is that each song gets roughly two minutes, so he can fit more into the show). He gave some kind feedback on it and all he asks is that viewers stay active in the chats, giving ratings for each song (he uses a 1-1,000 rating scale). Even though most of what got played was either hip hop or rap, he stayed open to other genres. My music is really different from everything else I heard tonight, but he gave it equal time and thoughtful consideration.

In the chats, it looks like people rated my tune anywhere from 600 to 1,000 with an average of maybe 800 or 900. One person said 2,000 but that’s not inside the range you’re supposed to use 🤷‍♂️🙃

I was pleased, especially since most of the people there were making hip hop music. He asked everyone to add constructive criticism to any songs that they rated low, and said no hating on anyone. The overall thing was a nice surprise for sure.

You can catch his show and submit your music for consideration at: Bobby Everything

New Album on June 8th

This album has the song on it that was reviewed in the show. The song is called “White Elephant.” You can watch the full video here:

Support

Get exclusive bonus material at Patreon

New Album on June 8th

10 songs from Trent Boswell, coming June 8th

Preview trailer for Something in the Air

Something in the Air

available on major music streaming services like iTunes, Spotify, Apple Music, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, and many others

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God Willin’

God Willin’ from the album Something in the Air

God Willin’ – an original, psychedelic, art rock tune by Magus (Kevin Trent Boswell)

God Willin’

Devil jump on ya
When you least expect it
With blood lust in his eyes

But you’ll pull through
Like you always do…
God willin’ and the creek don’t rise

Tax man poundin’ hard on your door
Taking everything your money implies

Without turning to crime,
You’ll survive on a dime…
God willin’ and the creek don’t rise

Shacked up for love, but it didn’t work out
Ain’t it painful when the love all dies?

But you’ll get off the street
And find someone sweet…
God willin’ and the creek don’t rise

Until the Lord himself
Knocks you off your feet
You keep on swingin’
And you can’t be beat
God willin’

Screaming Boss Man Jack,
‘bout to break your back
All your time out the window flies

You just smile and pick up his slack
Because one day you’ll get him back…
God willin’ and the creek don’t rise

The rivers can flood
And the levies break
But you know you gonna do
Whatever it takes
God willin’

To pay your bills, you need a little scratch
So you borrow from Frankie
But there’s just one catch:
Frankie is one of them connected type guys

The juice is steep but you better not renege
Less’n you want ol’ Frank to break your leg
But you just know you’ll pay it off…
God willin’ and the creek don’t rise

Drowning sorrows, feelin’ bereft
You done lost a friend
And didn’t have but one left
And now that joker’s runnin’ around town,
Spreading rumors and lies

Such a double crossin’ can’t happen twice
Because after all, most folks is nice;
At least that is…
God willin’ and the creek don’t rise

Show ‘em a whole army
Can’t ring your bell
The devils, cheats and liars
They can all go to hell
God willin’

Vocals, bass, and all guitar parts by Magus

Full Moon Song

This is a song that I wrote in my early twenties but until now, no proper recording of it existed.

Trent Boswell – Full Moon Song

In the past year, I’ve learned several truckloads about “desktop music production” and how to get studio-quality recordings, using only my computer DAW (audio recording program) a basic, two input audio interface and a simple, Shure-58, dynamic microphone.

Also, I finally got a decent pair of studio monitors, so I can hear what is actually going on in the mix, without it being colored too much by the automatic tweaking of frequencies that is present in most speaker systems.

These factors combined, I’m now putting out recordings that are vastly superior to what I was producing last year. The latest material is sonically improved at least a couple hundred percent.

Lyrics

Sometimes I find out things about me
Just a little bit more than I’d ever want to know
Kind of put a damper on a real good mood
Just when I was sure I was on a roll

I was sure I was

In the face of greatness, we often feel small
Yeah, the Full Moon, she spits in my eye
And wouldn’t we all just love to know
Ooh, yeah… exactly why

I know I would

I look for answers in the other dimensions
I listen for stories that cannot be told
I seek someone to take my confessions
And if there is no one, then I want control

God knows, I could use some control

Control

If you could only see what I saw
You’d surely say that I’d lost my mind
But I know it’s true that all are one and one is all
I’ve seen it going on, all the time

Anyway you turn the question,
It cannot be answered
But anyway you turn the answer,
It cannot be questioned
I took a toothless profession in cancer
On a slighted word, best not to mention

No, no

And I look for answers in the other dimensions
I listen for stories that cannot be told
And I’ll do anything for direction
Anything short of sell my soul

If I’ve got one to bargain away

Away

from the album Something in the Air, by Trent Boswell, 2022

Something in the Air by Trent Boswell ©2022 Kevin Trent Boswell — Something in the Air – Music by Trent Boswell

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Support this work by becoming a patron and get perks like patrons-only releases, early access free music, poetry and other artistic goodies that help keep us from sliding into the abyss of modern commercialization of the arts.

Thank You

Special thanks to the following people for their video contributions:

Samphan Korwong https://instagram.com/kws636

White Elephant

Here’s the music video for my song White Elephant.

Collegiate Definition

White Elephant
noun

1: an Asian elephant of a pale color that is sometimes venerated in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Myanmar
2a: a property requiring much care and expense and yielding little profit
b: an object no longer of value to its owner but of value to others
c: something of little or no value

If I’d known all of this, back then,
I’d have learned how to leave
Arguing for something
In which you never believed

Hidden beneath gifts and gestures
And a sexy smile
Promises of forever,
Dipped in poison and guile

“Nothing is wrong.”
A comforting lie you could sell
I vaguely recall something about
Good intentions in hell

The dark witch’s oracle warned,
I shouldn’t let you pass
I taught myself to trust your love
And it bit me in the ass

White elephant on the bed
Whispers softly
“Come hide in the silence
Of secrets and shadows, with me.”

Mocked me at every chance,
Made sure everyone heard
For cruelty such as this,
I’m not sure that I know the word

Revenge is ill-suited to love
And so, I decline
The idea that mercy is weakness
Is yours and not mine

The way you spit venom
At those who tried to help you
I’ve no need to raise my bitten hand,
Your destroyer is you

The dark witch’s oracle warned,
I shouldn’t let you pass
I taught myself to trust your love
And it bit me in the ass

White elephant on the bed
Whispers softly
“Come hide in the silence
Of secrets and shadows, with me.”

All words and music
©2021 Kevin Trent Boswell

Support the creation of more music, poetry and madness by Trent Boswell, at:

Special thanks to the following people for providing the video footage and photos. If you enjoyed the visual aspects of the video, the credit is all theirs.

Hoochie Coochie Man (Slight Return)

Here is my cover of “Hoochie Coochie Man”. This tune was written by the preeminent Godfather of the Blues, Muddy Waters.

Muddy Waters, The Godfather of the Blues

The lyrics are heavily laced with references to the Hoodoo conjure tradition of the American South. One commonly misunderstood line is:

I got the John the Conqueror Root

I’m gonna mess with you

To mess with someone was to put roots on them, meaning to cast spells on that person.

The root known as John the Conqueror (Ipomoea jalapa) is widely regarded as one of the most powerful roots or Plant Spirits; if not the most powerful.

The root, all by itself, was potent and to possess it was to hold power to exert one’s will. However, to possess a mojo hand (aka, mojo bag), made and empowered by a knowledgeable rootworker, was an awe-inspiring thing.

It was not a simple matter to travel to Louisiana and get a mojo, especially for a Black person, who had less opportunities and greater obstacles. If you wanted the magick, the only way to get it was to find a skilled doctor.

This was a man or woman who knew how to coerce the Spirits to work on their behalf. First, you had to find a rootworker and then you had to convince them to make a hand for you and pay them whatever their fee was, no questions asked.

Any rituals they prescribed you or tasks assigned must be followed scrupulously. But once you had a mojo hand, especially one containing John the Conqueror, it meant that you were a force to be reckoned with.

I’m doing all the guitar, bass and vocal parts on this track. I added Slight Return to the title as a little tip of the hat to another major influence of mine, the immortal Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix was well aware of the lore mentioned here and his song “Voodoo Child (Slight Return)” references similar themes.

During the last verse, you’ll see a quote, placed over a pic of Muddy Waters. It comes from the movie Crossroads, starring Ralph Machio; not to be confused with the movie Crossroads, starring Britney Spears.

It’s the story of a young, classical guitarist who dreams of nothing but playing the Mississippi Delta Blues. He’s a classical music major at The Juilliard School of Music but is mostly obsessed with Robert Johnson, arguably the greatest blues man ever.

Robert Johnson, King of the Mississippi Delta Blues — Robert Johnson

Support the creation of more

music, poetry and madness

by Magus, at:

https://Patreon.com/Magus72

Magus72 on Patreon; music, poetry and assorted madness

The images in this video are

1) historic pictures of famous, Hoodoo rootworkers and practitioners of Voodoo (or Voudon, Voodou, etc) and a few that just look the part.

2) pictures of myself playing guitar

3) personal photos and video of workings I’ve done

4) random, “bluesy” stuff that gives the appropriate, Mississippi Blues vibe or the Hoodoo/Voodoo, sorcery vibe

5) images from The Key of Solomon, a European magickal grimoire (which became highly important in Hoodoo.

6) stock footage, provided by:

Thanks to the following, for some of the images in the video.

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Voodoo_Altar_New_Orleans.jpg

Unchanged

This is the video for Unchanged. The .mp3 song download is available for patrons, over at Patreon.

It’s an original, definitely in the vein of my signature brand, a type of madness so strange that I had to give it a new name. I call it Purple Mind Licorice Music®️.

It combines alternative rock, funk, jazz, folk, blues, heavy metal and psychedelia. It’s a long name but Parliament already has Funkadelic and well, let’s face it, Alterna-Funk-N-Roll isn’t nearly as sexy as Purple Mind Licorice Music. Why yes, I do tend to talk about my music like James Brown talked about his. Thank you for noticing.

Side note, if you haven’t seen the film Get On Up, it’s surprisingly good. I’m a big fan of The Godfather of Soul, The Minister Of New New Super Heavy Funk (even if he was a total wacko, in real life). But for whatever reason, I didn’t think the movie would be all that great. I was delightfully wrong.

Besides, alternative is a lousy category. Any genre that contains Nirvana, REM, Alice In Chains, Weezer, Coldplay and Bush isn’t particularly helpful in guiding listeners’ decisions. They seriously need to scrap that garbage and revisit the drawing board.Back to the business at hand. I’ve played this song live in my band but we just never managed to get a decent recording of it.

I’m doing the vocal and all the bass and guitar parts. Here, I abandoned my memories of how we played it in the band and just started from scratch, all by myself, just me and my computer drummer, Stinky the Robot.

Fake It ‘Til You Break It

I’ve got a habit of improvising my lead guitar parts, as opposed to writing out a solo in advance. There are songs that I write solos for but those are special cases. Usually, I just improvise and keep the bits that I like.

If anyone takes issue with that, many years ago I read an interview with David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) in a guitar magazine. He said that’s the same process he uses in the studio.

He would take several, improv passes at a song, then cut and paste the bits he liked. Later, he’d go back and learn those parts for the live shows.

Comfortably Numb was done that way and I think that song did alright. It sold like over a thousand copies or something. Trust me… in my head, that joke was hysterical.

Of course, I also have a habit of keeping what I regard as being some of “the more charming mistakes“, for better or for worse. There’s one or two of those in the jam section at the end of this tune. I was tempted to re-record those bits but if they make me giggle, then they stay. Giggles are a precious commodity, not to be wasted.

Unchanged

These wounds, open and tender
Reveal your face to me
Into the chalice of my arms
The blood of your suffering flows free

It’s a mild mannered possession,
This waiting for the rain
Encumbered by the spell and
Groggy in the slumbering delay

A scrap of ribbon, fallen
From a lover’s hair
Found by the boots of boredom
Lament for things not yet dead

A piece of my soul floats there
Down in the puddle below
Somewhere in a watch pocket
An insane notion explodes

Thank You

Special thanks to the following people for providing the video footage and photos. If you enjoyed the visual aspects of the video, the credit is all theirs.

The Weight

This is my cover of the song “The Weight” by that excellent group known simply as The Band.

“It consisted of four Canadians and one American: Rick Danko (bass guitar, vocals, fiddle), Garth Hudson (keyboards, accordion, saxophone), Richard Manuel (keyboards, drums, vocals), Robbie Robertson (guitar, vocals), and Levon Helm (drums, vocals, mandolin, guitar).”

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Band

I’ve had a deep love of this song for as long as I can remember. It’s got a fun, upbeat vibe to the music but the lyrics (as the title suggests) are very heavy.

It’s a song about loneliness, disappointment and suffering. It’s about asking where you turn when all your best laid plans have fallen apart.

When I do a cover song, I usually try to reinvent it to some degree. I try to put something of my own mark on it. In this case, it didn’t feel right to completely reshape the song. There are really only two ways that I’ve wandered away from the original.

One is that I had to somehow fill up the empty space left by Garth’s piano playing. I chose to do that with harmony guitar parts, because guitar is my instrument and I gave them a simple and slightly somber quality, to accent the lyrics.

The other is that I shortened the chorus and used heavy effects on the vocal harmonies. I’m doing all the vocal, guitar and bass parts on this. The drums are by Stinky the Robot, my computer-based drummer, who is even more difficult to work with than a real drummer, if that’s even possible.

Gratitude

Special thanks to the following people for providing the evocative video footage that helps bring to light our social problem of the lost and disenfranchised. Homelessness and mental illness are entirely too prevalent and much more needs to be done.

We can’t be a healthy society unless we take care of our own and that means everyone, however unpleasant it might be to look into that chasm and think “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” We must do more… much more.

If you have the means to do so, please donate your money and your volunteer time to one or more of the many quality organizations that offer help to the homeless, the mentally challenged and to stray animals. Most of the people and animals on the street got there by bad luck and they deserve a second chance.

MART PRODUCTION

RODNAE Productions

Mental Health America (MHA)

Anastasia Shuraeva

Support the creation of more music, poetry and madness by Trent Boswell, at:

Hey Joe

Nothing like a crime of passion to spice up your Saturday night. Here’s a little bit of murderous rage, tucked into a nice, folk song for ya. This is “Hey Joe”, a live cover song video by my band, Magus & The Plastic Infinity.

Words and music to the original are by Billy Roberts. Obviously, Jimi Hendrix is who made the song famous.

Guitar and vocals – Trent Boswell

Support the creation of more music, poetry and madness by Trent Boswell, at:

https://Patreon.com/Magus72

Many thanks to the following, for the images in the video. You may or may not like the music but if you like the video, the credit for that is all theirs.