Okay. I’m really falling behind now. But I got a good reason. I’m playing in a great music show this Saturday, October 23 at Cafe Mustache in Logan Square with some other great musicians.

So it’s not like I don’t have time to write, or that I’m not writing, it’s just that I’m trying to get down some of the new songs I’ve written so I can sing em at the show.

That’s as good as “my dog ate it” if ya ask me.

Now, this song is kinda in the vein of a talkin’ blues tune. I coulda done a talkin’ blues themed week (didn’t I do that already?). But it ain’t exactly a talkin’ blues, cause I sing this one really good. Give it a nice close listen. Ease back into it. Let it slide on into yer ears.

It’s just a song about opposites and how they stick to each other in every instance until every feels just about comfortable.

So, this music show I’m playing at Cafe Mustache is gonna be real cozy. Jonas Friddle plays some mean old time tunes on fiddle and guitar and a few other weird instruments that he totes around in his white Subaru station wagon. I’ve heard it tell that he just wrote 15 songs in one week and he’s gonna try out all fifteen Saturday night. Woo-Eee.

Then there’s the sultry Jessica Robbins. If she don’t hook ya like heroin then yer up and blind. I met Jessica a few years back out playing open mics around the city and she’s gone from there to way out into the cosmos.

Katie Alvarado I’ve only heard one other time, but I invited her to join the show because of that. She’s kinda got this strange voice and guitar movement going on and I’m not sure what it’s all about, but ya gotta hear it.

So, we’ll all see ya there. There’ll be CDs for sale. The show is absolutely free, though. In the meantime you can look at the show poster that Katie drew up.

Okay, here’s something a little different. This song I wrote on Monday has a lot of chords. A lot of chord changes. A lot of singing. That’s pretty different than most of my songs. And I think I pulled it off fairly well, at least okay enough for having a sore throat all week long.

Writing this one I framed it around a personal experience, but I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s about that personal experience or that it’s even a personal song. It’s not totally or exactly about me. It’s not all the truth either. And it ain’t all bad. Most of it’s pretty good, I’d say. Turns out really well in the end.

So, anyway. Give it a listen and let me know if you think anything in particular about it. Took me around 10 minutes to write the song and set it to some music, so I’ll give ya about 10 minutes time to think up a response and write it down.

Also, I’ve got a couple solo shows coming up soon. First one is at Cafe Mustache in Logan Square on October 23, which is a Saturday night. The show starts at 7:30pm and will be done by 10pm. Katie Alvarado, Jessica Robbins, and Jonas Friddle (from the Barehand Jugband) are also playing. We’ll all be doing about 35 to 40 minute sets.

Then, on November 6 I’m playing in a festival put on by the Chicago Roots Collective at the Elbo Room. I’ll be one of the “songwriters” performing in the upstairs part of the Elbo Room. Here’s a link to the facebook invite for some more info.

So hopefully I’ll see you at one or both of those.

Okay, posting one new song every Monday and then more, old songs throughout the week is slowly becoming just posting one new song late in the week. I’ll admit that. It’s hard work writing a new song every week. And finding a theme. And then digging through my old recordings for similar songs.

Anyway. I got a new song finally. Wrote it yesterday. I thought I had 2 or 3 others over the weekend, but when I started putting music to them they just weren’t going anywhere and the words seemed less interesting than when I wrote them last week.

So, I missed Monday, but this song is okay. It’s about cold hard facts. That’s it. This song is indisputable. Unquestionable. I challenge anyone to find a hole it it. A crack. Or any fiction or lies.

See ya next week.

Wrote this one just last night. I’m kinda unsure about it right now. Don’t know what it’s all about. Don’t know if I like it at all. Don’t know where it came from. And don’t know where it’s going.

Anyway. That’s it for today.

For the rest of the week I’ll be writing about how I get to next Monday’s song. I’ll probably post some of what I write. I’m gonna go for writing one new song a day until I get something. So that’s that.

Also, the Barehand Jugband is playing some really great shows this weekend. First, on Saturday the 2nd we’re playing at the Design Harvest Festival on Grand Ave. You know the Hideout’s not having a block party this year, right? Well the Design Harvest Fest is kinda taking the place of that. There’s a bunch of great bands playing. We go on from 2:30-3:30.

Then, on Sunday, we’re sort of playing at the Design Harvest Fest again. It’s not at the official festival, but at one of the sponsor businesses along Grand Ave., Grand Street Gardens. It’s their Fall Festival. We go on around 3pm.

Sunday night we’re playing at the Old Town School of Folk Music. It’s a benefit concert to buy gravestones for a couple old jugband blues musicians who died and are buried in unmarked graves. We play a couple of their old tunes, joined by a host of other really good bands.

Okay…here’s the new song for this week. It’s a few days late, but you can read my excuse in my post from Monday.

I sat down yesterday with my mind set that I’d write a song. Sometimes…or most of the time, I do this with some instrument in hand (guitar, mouth harp, pentachord), but yesterday morning I was doing some writing trying to come up with something just on paper with a pen. Here’s how it went:

First I thought of what style I really wanted to write in. That’s to say, what style I would really like to play in. And I realized I’d been writing songs in one way for awhile and so, maybe, I should do something different.

So I made up my mind to go for a softer song. Something nice and beautiful.

Next I tried to figure out what I wanted to say. I wrote this line first:

If I’m not there

Then this one:

If you don’t find me there you won’t find me anywhere

And then:

If you can’t find me there don’t bother looking here

And finally:

If you can’t find me where I was
Don’t bother staying there cause
I won’t be back any old day

And just like that I had a repeating chorus line part. I tweaked it one more time, so it said this:

If you can’t find me where I was
Don’t bother staying there because
I won’t be returning this-a-way

So, I had the meat of my song done. That’s what a good chorus line is. Everything else just helps hold it together. So, I needed some sort of something to hold that together and make sense out of it to someone who wasn’t me. Cause I already knew what this song was about, but who else could tell that just from the chorus line?

At this point I asked myself a few questions:

Who’s looking for me? Where am I going? Do I even know? What am I going from? Did I say goodbye? Why did I leave? Do they know why?

I wrote these out. That’s what’s in my notebook. And that’s basically what formed the whole song. I wrote 3 verses from those questions in about 10 minutes. The second, third, and final verses. So i still needed something to start off the song. I felt those each jumped into the story a little too abruptly.

I worked at that first verse a little and then I took a break. After a couple hours I came back fresh, wrote the first verse pretty easily, did some cleanup of the whole song (you’ll notice the chorus line is a little different than the original), and then set out figuring out how the melody of the song went.

Now, I did have something basic in mind while I was writing it. And I did pick up my guitar while I was writing the initial verse just to make sure it fit what was in my head and the style I was going for. But once I finished the song I realized it was a little boring and I had to work on the music to make it sound better.

I’m not totally sure I’m at the end of that. But I wanted to get the song posted (mainly because I need to start working on another new one for this coming Monday…so i’m not behind or late again).

Anyway. That’s the whole ball a wax. Hope ya like it.