E2TG Featured Song - Danny Schmidt - "Standard Deviation"

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Today, I am proud to present a song feature on a recently released new song by Austin, Texas singer-songwriter Danny Schmidt.

The song is called "Standard Deviation" which caught my eye right away as the son of a mathematics professor.  Then, I heard the song, and I knew I had to write about it. 

Danny Schmidt has won a Kerrville New Folk award and was named to the Chicago Tribune's 50 Most Significant Songwriters in the Last 50 Years. "Standard Deviation" is the first single from his 2019 album of the same title, which will marks 10 albums and 20 years as a recording artist.

His hometown Austin Chronicle said, "Danny Schmidt is spoken of in reverent tones."

Q called his art "beautifully crafted, lonesome pines music and complex beguiling words."

As fellow songwriter Jeffrey Foucault put it: "Everything about the man is gentle, except for his capacity for insight, which is crushing."

I am looking forward to catching Danny at Americana here in Nashville next month. I just saw where he is playing the Wild Ponies Happy Hour which will be at Dee's on Friday September 14.


"Standard Deviation is a romance set in the multi-dimensional realm of theoretical physics, string theory, quantum mechanics, and descriptive statistics. It’s a song about the pushback that girls can face when expressing their smarts in traditionally male-dominated arenas. And it's about the parallel between quantum entanglement and human entanglement. And it's about how even the most guarded and unlikely heart has a matching perfectly twisted key somewhere that can open it right up.

And let's face it, it's about how sexy a smart mind can be when it's set totally and wildly free."

The song has already been featured on the popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale on Wednesday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POitG2eNjuM&feature=youtu.be

Lyrics:

A chalkboard full of secrets, it was like some kind of codeTo tell the stars and planets how to fall and how to glowBut when she turned to face the classroom there was chalk upon hernose Like the ghost of Madame Curie or a clown in women's clothesAnd the boys dismissed the work so quick, they laughed at her insteadAs just a girl who spilled some numbers from her headLate night in the library in the basement by herselfAlone amongst the books again, at home between the shelvesShe was searching for some answers when she stumbled in the darkOn a girl with colored pencils and black eyes like question marksThey said hello in stereo, then they both just stood and staredAs a normal sort of silence filled the airThe girl asked her what she studied, what she read so late at nightThe thoughts that filled her notebooks and the stars that filled hereyes But she said she couldn't tell her, she said she'd just get boredIt was story told in numbers not a story told in wordsBut the girl just laughed and leaned right back, said "Try me if you dareA story's when there's something more to share"Bridge:So she shrugged and her hands began to speakA dance of differentials and of poetry in GreekShe solved for new dimensions and vibrations of the stringsFrom a single derivation all the worlds could rise to beingAnd she drew concentric circles with her finger in the airAnd they glowed where there were nodes along the manifold they sharedTo be in perfect symmetry, joined in all degreesThey touched in ways that no one else could seeThe girl's eyes lit with fire, like milk and keroseneIt was the smartest thing she'd ever heard and the hottest thing she'd seenSo she grabbed her by the brainstem and she threw her to the floorAnd they kissed like their equations had never balanced quite beforeCause every lonesome thesis just describes the unobservedThere's always one who'll fall upon the tail of every curveThere's so many locks, so many doors, so many twisted keysWithin the standard deviation from the mean