Here’s a song I wrote last summer. It’s a lullaby. Not much else to say about it.
It is on one of my 2 new albums that came out a few weeks back, though. You can buy and download the mp3s at iTunes or on CDBaby.com. It’s pretty easy to do and you’ll feel great after you do it.
In other news, I’m playing a house concert at The Grand Manor (3721 W. Grand in Chicago) this Thursday, 9/9. The show starts at 7pm. Al Scorch is first, then me, then Madeline Adams. The show’ll be done by 10:30pm. It’s free and CDs will be available for purchase. Maybe I’ll see you there.
This is a week of songs that I wrote with children in mind. Really, all my songs are written with children in mind. These are just a few of them, though.
I wrote “Shapes” last week at the dinner table during dinner-time. Dinner-time is a pretty good time to write a song and this one just came spilling on out. Until I ran out of shapes that I knew off the top of my head and to go searching for some more. There’s only so many verses you can write about a square. Unless you’re writing any kind of political protest song or something like that.
I tired to keep this song fairly complex because children really appreciate it when you give them complex things to puzzle over. That’s in contrast to adults who need simple things to muddle their brain. That’s why most of my other songs are really simple with repeating lines and such. “Shapes” is loaded to the brim with difficulty, though. I’m not even sure how to explain it. I bet I couldn’t even try.
I wrote Fairway 12 back in May of 2008. Or, really, I reworked it from the original tune, Banks of the Ohio, which you can see here. Mine’s pretty much the same, except for the parts that I changed.
Anyway, I wrote this because two of my close, affectionate friends were about to get married. So this is from their perspective. They spent their wedding night at the Fairway 12 on June 7, 2008. Actually, most of the wedding guests stayed there. Only some of us made it home without developing a foot fungus.
They do have the “best dance floor around,” though.
That’s the song for today. It’s a funny song. And it’s a true song.
Here’s a song I wrote a few years back. It’s a true story. So true that when I play this song out I usually tell people it happened to me. It felt like it happened to me. Here’s what actually happened.
But, then again, you could just search for “CTA Blue Line Crash” and you’d come up with a thousand different examples, the most recent being this: http://www.wgntv.com/wgntv-blue-line-smoke-aug28,0,5246199.story
Anyway. It’s a funny song about a sad thing. It’s almost as funny as this article: http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=155614
Finally, Chicago is tops in something.
So I took the point of view of someone on the train. But, really, we were all on that train because we all ride every train and if you haven’t yet been in a CTA accident then you surely will soon.
The Talkin’ CTA Blues is also on my new album “It’s Chicago!” that just came out on August 10. You can buy and download either just this one song or the entire album, which is all about Chicago, at CDBaby.com or through iTunes.
Or, you can always come out and see a live show and I’ll have real, touchable CD albums.
This is a week where I post songs that I wrote from someone else’s perspective. Either because I wasn’t around to actually experience the event, or because someone else has a better view (as far as I know or think they do) of something that I just don’t get.
So here’s this song. It’s from someone else’s perspective. It ain’t my perspective. I don’t even know if it’s right. It’s just maybe what they’re thinking. Or what I think they’re thinking. Or hope they’re thinking.
It’s a pretty basic blues structure, expect that there’s a two-chord in there where the five-chord usually would be. I stole that from another song by someone else. But that’s okay cause everyone does that and there wasn’t any sign saying I shouldn’t. So I did.
Anyway, there’s the song for today. Tomorrow will be another one from another perspective.
Music Vomit 