3-31-09 I'm Relying On Your Hands

Short, but potentially club-ready. You know, if it wasn't all a cappella. Link.

3-30-09 Lazy Eye

This is a fun one. It's recently been expanded and turned into a more fleshed-out song with a new trio I'm playing with, Railroad Tycoons.

3-29-09 Can You Dig It?

Random ukulele funk. (funkulele?)

3-28-09 Forty Dollar Bill

This one actually came from a dream I'd had the previous night. It's a bit hazy now, but I remember being in a hotel suite with some people who were drunk and disorderly. One of them had spilled wine on the floor, and I was freaking out about it. It just so happened that my friends Amanda and Patti, who run the fabulous Theatre Off Jackson here in Seattle, were in the corner of the room sitting on high stools at a sort of cocktail table watching the proceedings. Seeing my distress at the spilled wine, Amanda handed me a forty dollar bill to help pay for the damages. Of course, it was totally logical that I'd received such a piece of currency in the dream.

The song itself has very little to do with the actual dream, but I just loved the idea of a night out on the town with a forty dollar bill.

3-27-09 Write It In A Letter

The garageband funk samples approach a David Holmes-esque groove quotient, but the vocal performance, sadly, falls short of being close to groovy. Oh well. Link.

3-26-09 I Have Nothing

A tough day. When you can't come up with an idea, you write about not being able to come up with an idea. Link.

3-25-09 Would You Rather

Wish I could claim responsibility for the awesome banjo line, but, alas, Garageband prevails. Link!

3-24-09 The Concerted Effort

A cappella yearning.

3-23-09 Careful With That Spanner, Eugene

Sometimes it's fun to just go with the first stream of consciousness lyrics that come in to your head. I think I was influenced by Paul Gude's lyric writing in this one (stay tuned later in the year for some of his lyrics set to music). Link!

3-22-09 Her Cakes

I made a cake for Sarah's birthday last year, this awesome chocolate cake with salted caramel frosting that our friend Val had made for our wedding. Mine didn't turn out nearly as good as Val's. The song takes this disparity seriously by elevating her cake, her cakes, to near-mythic status.

(For the record, I've never tried her muffins.)

3-21-09 Let That Someone Be Me

A song for my wife on the day before her birthday. Link!

3-20-09 Spring Song

Just spent the afternoon walking along the ship canal with my wife in the promising spring air. Today, that is, not a year ago today. Anyways, this song felt like a nice, calming way to welcome in a new season. Link!

3-19-09 Silvery Mooncat

One day I'll have a studio with doors that close. Link!

3-18-09 I'm Fading

something ghostly for you.

3-17-09 Sound Unbound

The title of a book by Paul Mullins, aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid. Extra reverb? Why, you're soaking in it! Link.

3-16-09 Fired From The FBI

I have no idea what inspired this song. But FBI agents have it hard, so judge not lest ye be judged.

3-15-09 25 Lbs. of Glitter

I'd had a random conversation at the Canoe Club with an aerialist in the fantastic (and, sadly, defunct) troupe known as Circus Contraption. She'd just come from a performance. Although she was in her street clothes, she hadn't had time to remove her makeup, which essentially consisted of glitter. Lots and lots of glitter on every exposed body part. She made a joke about requesting 25 lbs of it every week. Now that's a good inspiration for a song. Link!

3-14-09 Don't Give Up Your Day Job

Garden-variety dumb blues song.

3-13-09 Beef-C

We sometimes play this game called Bananagrams - it's basically like Scrabble, only without the board. Sometimes we'll have a hilarity round where everyone picks somewhere between 4 and 7 letters, and, using all the letters, need to make up a word and a definition for the word. I don't remember who made up the word, but I do remember that it was a vitamin supplement made entirely from beef. So this song is a PSA (apparently sung by Gordon Gano of The Violent Femmes) to remember to take your Beef-C every day.

3-12-09 Covered Wagon of Death

This is another West-themed song. I liked the thought of the West being full of chuck wagons heading to their demise. Full of ghosts. Link!

3-11-09 Good Night

This is one of my favorites.

3-10-09 National Procrastination Week

The shortest entry of the year. It's fitting, of course, that I waited until the end of the day to post this. Procrastination is my friend and my fiend. Enjoy all 14 seconds of it.

(Last week was actually National Procrastination Week for real, by the way.)

3-9-09 Flying Blind

Another West-themed song that will not appear in the show.

3-8-09 Your Prescient Seeds

Mostly, I like the fact that I wrote a song with the word 'prescient' in it. It's got some lovely chord changes, too. Link!

3-7-09 It's A Bouncy Thing

A mandolin instrumental, mostly improvised. Cat in the background playing with a crinkle ball. Come to think of it, 'Crinkle Ball' is a much better title than 'It's A Bouncy Thing'. Link!

3-6-09 Maybe You're Crazy

I think I'd been listening to a lot of The New Pornographers that day. I think this song could have worked with AC Newman's vocal sensibilities (and a healthy dose of that cheesy Farfisa organ doing the little melodic uke line). Featuring Sarah on dirty dishes.

3-5-09 Monroe's Walk

A somewhat sloppy tribute to bluegrass great Bill Monroe.

3-4-09 California

Not the most lyrically inspiring piece, but it's nice and sunny with some cool chord changes. I think the inspiration was that we'd just bought tickets to visit some friends and family in San Francisco. Link!

3-3-09 I Forgot

A plaintive little love song.

3-2-09 Rubbing A Balloon

Full disclosure on this one: It had been one of those days. I just didn't feel like making anything. One thing I got to notice throughout the course of the year was the ebb and flow of the creative impulse. I'd like to say that I'm the kind of person who just has musical ideas spilling out of me at all times, but it's just not the case. In some ways, it was comforting to recognize the ebb and flow, because it made the fallow days feel more purposeful.

Anyways, when I came back to mixing the songs down later in the year, I realized that all I had for this day was that highly annoying titular sound and some hand percussion. I couldn't bear to have it be just that, so I added the vocals at a later date. It changed the sound effect from highly annoying to mildly annoying and somewhat perverted. Link!

3-1-09 I Can Walk On The Ceiling

Not sure where I was I coming from with this one. Enjoy!