Your Top 5

Songs While Drinking and Enjoying Tea/Coffee

Your Top 5 was born out of my love of music and reading and the book and film High Fidelity. Each week, I ask a new guest to give me their top 5 tracks, albums or artists relative to a topic.

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Source: Wikipedia

This week on Your Top 5 we are sitting down with our favorite hot (or cold) beverage that may or may not contain caffeine, but does an excellent job of awakening senses and either stimulating or bring peace to our day. These beverages, of course, are tea and coffee. However, this week’s guest, Thea Wood of the Herizon Music Newsletter, came up with a novel idea to list her top 5. So read on and always remember that the only rules here are that there are no rules!

Thea’s Top 5

Pairing music with activities (or anything really) is one of my favorite distractions. When Christopher asked me to contribute my “5 Songs for Morning Tea,” I giggled with delight. However, it became overwhelming as there are so many songs that are perfect for morning reflections. How can one possibly choose only five?

That’s when it dawned on me that pairing morning tea songs based on seasons plus a bonus song for all seasons might reveal a path. And it did!  After living in Texas where there are only two seasons (hot and hotter than hell), I happily embrace the four beautiful seasons that Michigan offers. Whether sipping tea on my back patio on temperate days or in the solarium during inclement weather, these songs are mini-escapes before hitting the day head on. 

As Earlene Grey so poignantly analogized, "Tea is to the body as music is to the soul.” May your tea cup over runneth!    

AUTUMN

Fall is my favorite time to visit New York City. Strolling under Central Park’s colorful foliage, inhaling the cool breezes between museum tours, chatting with locals at the Irish bar around the corner. It’s really quite glorious. But nothing compares to the annual run of Tedeschi Trucks Band shows at the Beacon Theater. The local fans treat it with the reverence this band deserves in a theater that rivals the City's churches in its beauty and history. 

I had to cancel my trip last month due to project deadlines, and it broke my heart. Fortunately, my husband was still able to go (and I encouraged him to do so). Halfway through the show, he texted me a photo of the stage with a little note: “It’s just not the same without you.” 

It’s only appropriate to assume TTB's song “Midnight In Harlem” would be my morning tea choice. But as riveting as the location is, being with my husband is what makes it truly magical. So, my morning tea Fall pairing is TTB's “Anyhow” with lyrics getting to the heart of the matter.

Youtube link: Anyhow 

WINTER

Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year. I enthusiastically change my LED tree lights daily, creating different patterns and color schemes for the neighbors to enjoy. At least that’s my excuse. Logs burning in the fireplace, cheesy Hallmark movies, and lots of classic holiday tunes… The list of reasons to love the most wonderful time of year is long. It’s also the time when people on my father’s side of the family tend to cross over. My grandmother, great aunts, and most recently my uncle Mark all passed on Christmas week. 

Why didn’t I choose a holiday song for my winter morning tea? Because Macy Gray and Vella's song “Blue" about packing up and traveling to meet the one you love just struck a chord. One day, I’ll pack my memories and crossover to my loved ones who await me.  I hope it’s on Christmas surrounded by family, twinkling tree lights, nostalgic tunes, and white snow glistening under a full moon.   

Blue Vella & Macy Gray

SPRING

There’s nothing like a fresh spring shower to invigorate the senses in the morning. Sipping tea while meditating on rain's sound, feel, and aroma is a heavenly way to awaken. In 1964, scientists gave rain's earthy smell the name Petrichor. The combination of lightning-induced ozone droplets with the soil's bacterial secretions and plant oils creates the earthy odor. All of these elements dancing together to our olfactory system's delight! How can we not gape in awe? 

Madonna's “Rain” captures this intangible connection between humans and Mother nature. It comes as no surprise that music's mother of reinvention is the woman who delivers this message of hope and renewal.

Rain
Feel it on my finger tips, hear it on my window pane
Your love's coming down like
Rain
Wash away my sorrow, take away my pain
Your love's coming down like
Rain

Madonna’s Rain

SUMMER 

On hot summer days, my morning tea is best served cold. The best iced tea I ever had was the homemade “sun tea” that our neighbor Elinda Wise brewed when I was a child. You knew it was summer when a glass pitcher filled with water and teabags appeared on her back porch soaking up the sun. It is such an American heartland ritual that I appreciate today more than I ever did growing up. 

Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway’s “More Like A River” captures that same heartland spirit. This particular live performance takes place on an outdoor stage in the heat of summer — which is probably why she isn’t wearing one of her stellar wigs (she has Alopecia Areata, an autoimmune disorder that causes hair to fall out). The setting sun, shade tress, blankets, and tents blend with the song’s imagery for a refreshing wakeup call:

They say love strikes like a roll of a dice
Like an arrow flies, then it's gone in a blink of an eye
But a river takes you with it
All you gotta do is jump on in it

So while you're away on your midnight ramble
Singing on the West Coast, it's hard to handle the months
The miles, the mountains between
But love springs up just like a bubble of steam

Step on in, feel your whole body shiver

We got love more like a river  

Molly Tuttle’s “More Like A River"

FOUR SEASONS SONG

My musical love affair with the Grateful Dead began at age 17. There is not a season in my life since then that their music has not touched in one way or another. Robert Hunter and Gerry Garcia were a songwriting force that transformed a menial thought or moment into something larger than life.  

Their song “Eyes Of The World” does just that. Contemplate these words:

Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world
The heart has its beaches, its homeland and thoughts of its own
Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings
But the heart has its seasons, it's evenings and songs of its own

The line “Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings” captures one of the most profound moments of self-realization ever written. I’ve included two videos with this morning tea. The first is an epic live cover from Joe Russo’s Almost Dead.  The second is Holly Bowling’s instrumental interpretation that will transport you to another world, no lyrics required. 

Eyes of the World, JRAD

Eyes of the world Holly Bowling. Lyrics

My Top 5

One Sunday Morning—Wilco

I think I once discussed how much I love this song playing whilst I sit on my back patio with a cup of coffee. It is 12 minutes of Jeff Tweedy lyrical beauty that is elegant in its simplicity.

This song is so good for quiet reflection that even George Saunders wrote about it—and he describes the feeling he gets from listening to it so much better than I ever could—and that was eight years ago.

In the current bombastic and frightening political moment, I find myself listening obsessively to Wilco’s 12-minute opus, “One Sunday Morning,” which induces in me, reliably, a suite of feelings I might describe as patient quiet-mindedness + firm resolve to love better, and serves as an antidote to the harshness of the moment; a reminder that, with enough patience and fellow-feeling, things can sometimes prove workable between people, even if they disagree.

So turn on the kettle or brew your coffee and espresso, put this song on tomorrow morning and sit outside in the crisp fall air and reflect, meditate, or just listen while sipping, I promise you won’t regret it.

Mr. Coffee—Lagwagon

From quiet reflection to speedy punk. I could have populated this list with 5 songs about just coffee or just tea, but I wanted to stick to more moods. Sometimes after I chug down my Americano, I feel like I am on this song. “Legal speed, the American way (the American way).”

I used to love adding this to my mix CDs in high school to play on my way to school or during open campus. I was introduced to coffee at age 9 when I spent a summer in Mexico—my grandparents had a property there and I used to HAND GRIND the coffee beans in the morning. Naturally the work and the reward made me a coffee lover for life. Imagine my joy when I first heard this song. An honorable mention in the same vein would be “Coffee Mug” by the Descendents

Peaches En Regalia—Frank Zappa

I am a firm believer in afternoon coffee or tea, despite what my doctor may tell me, caffeine after 1 pm has 0 effect on my sleep. I am good to go to bed around 11 and up at 5:30—ready for more coffee. What do you think of when you’re having afternoon or even evening coffee? Jazz. This particular track comes to mind when I am imbibing my afternoon cup of (usually) coffee. Occasionally I am throwing in a chai tea here and there.

Magenta Mountain—King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard

This song is another one to include on a chill morning playlist while drinking your coffee or tea and watching the sun rise. Better yet, this song would best be enjoyed whilst ingesting some strong herbal tea—and I mean the not for the faint of heart kind. I am talking about the kinds of teas that take you on a journey and give you visions—Aaron Rodgers style.

For those of us not looking for that kind of journey, brew up your fav chamomile tea, put on your headphones, and get lost in this song.

Blue Sky—Allman Brothers Band

Late fall and early spring are some of my favorite times of the year. When I was in college and I’d wake up to find a beautiful blue sky, I’d pour my cof—walk to Starbucks and buy my coffee and then to class while soaking in the blue sky. This song would either be in my headphones or rollicking through my head while I walked, sipped, and reflected. People may have even caught me playing air guitar to the solo, but I don’t suspect any photos of that exist…hopefully.

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Have a top 5 list that you want to discuss relative to this week’s topic, share it with Thea and I in the comments!