RE:Entries (2017)
A book by Scott Rutledge.
Foreword
In 1990, I moved from a coach house in Evanston, IL to Streamwood, which happened to be a mere five miles away from where Scott lived, in Hoffman Estates. We’d known each other for three years at this point (having met at the wedding of his sister, Milissa, and John Zerndt, an old friend, with whom I’ve lived during “Streamwood Phase I”, six years earlier). Scott and I had a potent chemistry right from the start, and this dynamic was based largely upon a penchant for finding the absurd in the present moment on one hand, and a passion for diving deeply into the philosophical on the other. During these first few years, we would occasionally spend time on the phone together… but we weren’t within the “20-minute radius”, which Scott had referred to as some kind of sweet spot, in terms of thriving-relationship-nearness, so we seldom saw one another. Well, something suddenly shifted when I made my move to a much closer suburb, landing me well within this 20-minute zone. Our time together suddenly increased exponentially. On one of our Wednesday nighttime walks through my neighborhood (a 2-year ritual that I still cherish when it enters my mind), Scott revealed to me that he had been doing a lot of writing recently. Given that I happened to have several hours’ worth of wordless melodies lying around (having spent much time singing at the piano in the past four or five years), I asked Scott if he would like to “put words into my la’s”. He quickly obliged, and rather prolific songwriting team was born.
During this time of proximity (when we both delivered pizzas at a Rosati’s in a neighboring town), our friendship evolved and flourished. This friendship was inextricably linked to the work, and we would spend hours discussing all manner of ideas, many of which ended up in the songs, and many of which did not; but the important thing was that we discovered a way of doing things, and I know that this process positively impacted the flow of every single creative endeavor which U embarked upon. It would be impossible to overemphasize the enormity of Scott’s role in terms of enabling a song’s completion (be it in the context of CHEER-ACCIDENT, Stopped Clocks or my solo work). There are literally dozens of songs that would have never come to be, had it not been for Scott’s uncanny ability to ply music with words, and albums like The Why Album, Not A Food, and Enduring The American Dream (to name just a few) would have never existed.
Suddenly, thirty years have gone by, and, while our friendship/working relationship continues to evolve, it does so at a slower rate. (We no longer reside within that “20-minute zone”, nor do we deliver pizzas together). You will find in these pages, however, that there continues to always be something brewing between us: for instance, that future CHEER-ACCIDENT album which will be unlike any other CHEER-ACCIDENT album? Of which we both have apparently fully visualized? While it would be tempting for Scott and I to simply enjoy its presence inside our respective heads, I sincerely hope that we find the time and energy to coax it into existence… because think you’ll like it as much as you’re going to like this book that you’re about to read.
Thymme Jones
Chicago, 2017
