Tuesday, August 31, 2010

8-31-09 Where Is Home

Nice mandolin hook. Somewhat high and lonesome. link.

8-30-09 The Road Of Bones

Sarah and I had been watching Long Way Round, a series about Ewan McGregor and his mate Charley Boorman attempting to ride his motorcycle east all the way from Scotland to New York. The Road of Bones is a treacherous expanse of highway in Siberia that they traveled as part of the journey. It's named for the labor camp workers who died while building the road during Stalin's regime. link.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

8-29-09 Please And Thank You

An ode to politeness, with an impolite interruption. Link.

8-28-09 Malefic

I decided to try an experiment for the lyrics on this one. In order to utilize a more colorful lexical palette, every line of the song contains one word obtained by a random word generator. The results were interesting, if a little awkward at times.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

8-27-09 Float Downstream

You won't feel anything. link

Thursday, August 26, 2010

8-26-09 Cinder Block And Concrete

An ode to my basement walls. Link.

8-25-09 Baby, Let's Go West

The title sounds like it might be an Elvis song, but it's clearly moodier than it lets on. Although it didn't end up in West, I really like it and it will probably have a life of its own somewhere else. Link.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

8-24-09 Keep Them In Your Heart

This one's personal. It needs to be longer, but I really like what's there, including the sentiment. link.

8-23-09 Rubberneck Dick

This title, and the first line of the lyric, came directly from John Osebold, so you can blame him for this song. Link.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

8-22-09 It's Hard Being Perfect

This song sets the bar for perfection shockingly low.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

8-21-09 Sunshine, Puppy Dogs And Lemonade

A 1920's dandy sings a song to his sweetheart, and it gets a little bawdy. Link.

8-20-09 The River

A simple song about accidental death on the way to a better life. Another West cast-off. Link

Friday, August 20, 2010

8-19-09 Old Man Kitty


Stevie has this certain meow that he does when he's trying to make us feel extra guilty. He sounds like a geriatric stray left out in the rain. We see right through his clever ruse. Link.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

8-18-09 Westward Meditation

Another West song. Lots of nice harmonies to accompany Evan falling asleep before he gets scalped. Link.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

8-17-09 Time To Get Up And Go

A nice little folk song. My $19 guitar sounds really sweet in this one. Link.

Monday, August 16, 2010

8-16-09 Lonesome Weary Moth

A children's song with a healthy dose of existential longing.

8-15-09 New Mandolin

An instrumental improvisation on my (then) brand new Collings mandolin. Sweet. Link.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

8-14-09 So Tired Of Calypso

I think I was on steel drum overload at this point. Lots and lots of calypso songs. Link.

8-13-09 Plum


This song was inspired by my honeymoon in Hawaii. One of my favorites.

8-12-09 Vituperation And Vitriol

Playing some catch-up tonight thanks to a couple crazy days and a summer cold...

The title came first with this song. I came across the word 'vituperation' in the Michael Chabon book I'd been reading. With his novels, I tend to look up a lot of words. It had occurred to me that my retention of these new words was next to nil unless I started using them. This was my attempt to retain that word. (I still needed to look it up just now to remember that it means 'bitter and abusive language'.)

Musically, it's a great little piece with weird chord changes and time hiccups, and it almost feels like it could be an interstitial track from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway. You know, if I sounded anything like Peter Gabriel.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

8-11-09 An Ocean Of Trees

A West song that did make it into the show. This is the very earliest version of the song. I still had Lewis And Clark on the brain when I wrote it. Oh, how far we had diverged from them by the time we opened the show.

8-10-09 You And I And This Room

Portrait of a relationship about to end. Time is an abstract painting you can't decode. Link.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Sunday, August 8, 2010

8-7-09 A Penny For Your Soul

The old man that none of us wishes to be. link.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Friday, August 6, 2010

8-5-09 Patient Boulevard

This is an honest song.

In looking back at the labels for the songs I've posted thus far, the tag I've used the most is 'working on my issues'. It's a bit of a self-deprecating thing, but it also signifies a time when I'm wearing my feelings pretty close to the bone. Sometimes it makes for self-indulgent crap, but sometimes it makes something worth listening to.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

8-4-09 Monsters?

Oooh, scary. Sort of. Extra points if you can guess the song tacked on at the end. Link.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

8-3-09 Why Am I Doing This Again?

An acoustic instrumental in the CSN vein. I like the changes a lot. It's pretty clear that it took several takes to get it down. link.

Monday, August 2, 2010

8-2-09 Something So Bad It's Good

This is indie-rock ready. link.

8-1-09 No More Sangria

A long alcohol soaked evening at Ben and Shari's. Sangria - yes. Bananagrams - check. Obscene telegrams - well, maybe not.
Drinky linky!