Okay…I know it’s late, but I don’t care…it’s still Monday, officially…so here’s the brand new song. It’s called Southland Blues. It’s in the key of A Major. I wrote it down in Starkville, Mississippi last Thursday. It was God-awful hot, at least to me and my sweat glands. I was just sitting outside, enjoying a beer, noodling around on the guitar box I had down there, and I just started singing this one. It’s not patterned after any song in particular. And I’m not even sure it’s officially a blues song, but I put the word “blues” in the title so that makes it a blues song.
Really, all my songs are blues, or most of them, probably…I’m not counting them up. This is how Blues Song Week is gonna go:
I post a new song on Monday (today) and talk about it a little
I post a song each day following Monday from my archive of recorded songs
Maybe I’ll re-record one or two of those if I deem it necessary
I’ll question whether each of these songs is a blues song or not
So, here’s the first song in honor of National Protest Week. This is a new one that I finished on Friday last week. I’ve had the chorus running around through my head for a few months now. I picked it up from the old Woody tune The Sinking of the Reuben James. It’s a song I’ve really always loved and I couldn’t quite understand why until I sat down and went about learning the guitar parts a few weeks back. Turns out it’s just an adaptation of the Carter Family’s Wildwood Flower, which is another really great song and probably one everyone knows, or should know, on guitar. Anyway, this new song kinda fell into place over the next couple weeks pretty easily. It’s called The Sinking of the Deepwater Horizon. It’s what you’d call a current-topical-protest-song, I guess.
I really struggled in the beginning with this one because writing a good protest song is really hard. I’d say 99% of them get up there on a high-horse and don’t ever come down. They preach and they yell and they don’t say very much. The first few drafts of mine were exactly like that and lots of other songs I’ve written are exactly like that (some of which I’ll post this week in honor of National Protest Week).
So, this song (hopefully) does not tell you what you oughta think or believe or be fighting. I think it just states some facts and then puts the bulls-eye right squarely where it oughta be placed.
Okay, that’s enough talking. Listen to this first installment of my protest songs in honor of National Protest Week and let me know what ya think.
I almost didn’t get Hammer ‘n’ Nail done on time, but it’s 11:12pm and here it is. I just got back from a jugband show at Reggie’s down on the South Side. I skipped out on my check, I feel bad, I’m wearing tight jeans, my hair is greased up, my wife was up when I got home. I’m in no condition to write a song.
This song is a sketch of a song from a few months back and in no way finished and probably never will be finished, but I needed to do something today. I added a “gospel choir” effect and recorded through one condenser mic in the mono setting. I thought that was appropriate to capture the mood and feel of the moment. I’m pretty surprised this one clocked in at almost 3 minutes. I guess lots of obnoxious guitar notes will do that to a song.
Here’s the tune for this week. It’s another song from probably about 6 or 8 months ago that I dug it up in an old notebook. Anyway, it’s called Where Have You Gone? It’s a short tune, which means it’s easy to listen to. Let me know what you think.
I use to uploaded my Monday songs to my facebook page, but for some reason the Facebook music player stopped working, so here it is…again. it’s called I Have No Idea and I wrote it about 6 months ago and then it sat in a notebook. I pulled it out again because I’m starting to put together a couple albums to be recorded, pressed, and sold at a reasonable rate.
And it did eventually end up on my full-length album. The album version is similar to this original one, but I changed the lyrics a little. So you can see the full arc of the song (not that it’s done with the new recording, though). It’s some kinda arc.
Music Vomit 