Friday, August 6, 2021

Invisible Audience

Happy Friday to my fans, listeners and people who have never heard of me but somehow landed upon this site. Welcome to what I do. I hope you dig it. 

Today's songs that I would like to share with you are all tracks that I practice regularly but have never performed live. They all come from the two albums that I released in the first half of this year, both of which I wrote during quarantine. For what it's worth, I also wrote a novel in that period, which I am presently revising. 

Welcome Back, Jack Kerouac comes from Embers, released in January. It's about the role of improvisation and experimentation in art. Fitting with this theme, I wrote the lyrics in a stream-of-consciousness and recorded the lead guitar track in one take. The entire process of writing and recording this song took about a half hour... which is fast, even for me. In all honesty, I didn't really like this song when I first wrote it (probably because I scribed it so quickly), but it has since grown on me considerably. 


    Where have you been?
    Were you on the road again?
    Say hello to Carlo, Moriarty and Old Bull Lee
    We're still looking for the beat

Next, from Petrichor, which I released in June, we have Dandelion Wine (If Only...). This might be my favorite song of mine at the moment, which changes fairly often as certain songs work their way in and out of my regular rotation. This song is fun to play on both guitar and piano. I'm kind of proud of the rhyme scheme in this one, too. It's about making the most of what you have, which more or less describes my entire creative process when it comes to making music (and movies, for that matter).


    Planted like a wallflower
    Sipping dandelion wine
    Daydreaming about tomorrow
    When everything is fine
    If only...
    If only in my mind

Here's another one from Embers. To date, Original Miles is by far my most played song on Spotify, with over 50,000 streams and counting. This one is also fun to play on both piano and guitar, although the DIY-studio version is pretty much all electric piano and upright bass (which was also played on a keyboard for this one), with no guitar whatsoever. This song is about loving each other despite our inevitable imperfections.   


    These are all original miles
    Some city, mostly highway
    You could even say
    I've been around a while

Finally, here's one more track from Petrichor. It's called Holiday. I have yet to work out a guitar arrangement for this song, but if I'm sitting down at a piano, then there's a pretty good chance that I'll play this one at some point or another. The chorus is particularly fun. It's basically about going stir crazy, which, after over a year of quarantine, is probably something that a lot of people can relate to. I also happen to like the way that the drums turned out in this song.  


    Let's take a holiday
    Pack your bags, we'll leave today
    Don't know how long we'll stay
    But I've got to get away, got to get away, get away
    Got to get away, got to get away, get away now!

That is all for now. Thanks for listening and for checking out my blog. You rock.  

If you like my music, please share it, add it to your playlists, and follow me wherever you listen. This is how my songs find their way onto automatically generated playlists and online radio stations.  As a one-man-band, I need and appreciate your help in reaching a broader audience. 

Thank you for supporting art that is not corporately sponsored.  

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