Old Melodies, New Lyrics ~ revisiting the bone pile

 Articles, Country Songs, Diary of a New CD  No Responses »
Jun 062011
 

Last year I started a collaboration with a lyricist on a new song that looked promising, but after many rewrites and varying attempts at orchestration, we called it a day. Part of the problem stemmed from the lyrics not being something that I would personally sing. I had a disconnect to the story and to the verbiage. But, I liked the melody and the arrangement that I wrote, it had this bright-spookiness to it that was interesting. I hated to see it abandoned.

I let the track sit for a while and revisited it to see if I could rewrite it somehow, but the original lyrics kept getting in the way when I tried to write something new. I just decided to let it sit. I had to let it sit long enough that I would be able to “forget” the lyrics that we had written.

So recently, I was writing something about a musician who has been out on the road and is coming home, but doesn’t really remember his place in the life of the person he left. I’ve been seeing a lot of stories on the news about soldiers that have been on a tour of duty for a year and then come back to their households and have a hard time trying to fit back into the flow of everyday life. The only time it seems to work is if the person that was left behind has a lot of patience and love.

I started the lyrics and wan’t sure of the form they were taking and then I remembered that I had this finished arrangement with the expendable lyrics. The hard part was making the new lyrics fit the exisiting melody and the form. I had to replace a bunch of words that didn’t work with the rhythms; a lot of scratching my head trying to think of different ways to say the same thing and still have them rhyme.

The only thing I kept from the original lyric was the phrase — beautiful again — which, in the case of the new lyrics, became the title and the resolving feature of the story.

Moral of the story is: never throw anything out… and, revisit the bone yard every once in a while to see if there’s stuff there that might inspire you.

Let me know what you think of “Beautiful Again”. Do you re-work old material? or do you just let it die?

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Beautiful Again

Verse 1:

Heading home

After miles on the road

Called you on the telephone

To lighten my load

It’s so damed hard

To just fit back in

I forget about the pleasantries

Don’t know where to begin

PreChorus 1:

But now you welcome me back with dust on my shoes

Tired to my bones I got nothing left to lose

Chorus:

Cause you pick up all the pieces

We left on the the ground – and then

You add some love and tenderness

And you make life beautiful

Beautiful again

Verse 2:

You know my heart

I’ve been a traveling man

Singing ‘bout the lonely road

Guitar in my hand

I broke your mirror

Threw my luck on the floor

Couldn’t stand to see myself

Walking out your door

PreChorus 2:

But now you kiss me like I never told you good-bye

You hold me together and make everything alright

Chorus:

Cause you pick up all the pieces

We left on the the ground – and then

You add some love and tenderness

And you make life beautiful

Beautiful again

Bridge:

Hypnotized and mesmerized

Counting all those white lines flyin’

Underneath my wheels

I knew this wasn’t real

But now I see

Now I see

How I colored it wrong

This is where I belong

With you –

Chorus:

Cause you pick up all the pieces

We left on the the ground – and then

You add some love and tenderness

And you make life beautiful

Beautiful again

 



Adding Another Song To The List

 Acoustic/Groove/Folk, Blues Songs, Diary of a New CD, New Songs, Songs with Video  No Responses »
Jan 182011
 

I’m still not satisfied with the list of songs I have for the next album. I really feel as if I need a bunch of songs to choose from so I get it “right” (whatever that means) and therefore I just keep on writing.

I finished the first draft of this song recently after going back over some journal writing. I had written an entry about having a house full of kids after a visit from my son’s cousins and some neighborhood friends. There were kids everywhere in the house and so my journal entry was centered around having too many kids in our usually peaceful house and what they might do to destroy the place and my sanity.

This is a great ‘live’ song and works well to break up a set of more ‘serious’ songs. I always get tired of the singer-songwriter who has nothing but breakup songs or political songs or angst driven songs… You gotta laugh a little during a set.

So this is a video of the first performance of “Too Many Kids In This House”. I feel the lyrics still need a bit of tweaking and it might be a tad long winded, but the message gets delivered and the audience really connects so the elements are in place I just need to refine. This was performed at a friend’s birthday bash (slash) house concert and the crowd really got into it as did the kids that were there (as you’ll see).

“Too Many Kids In This House!”
performed 1/15/2011

Diary of a New CD #3 ~ Reaching into the Past

 Blues Songs, Diary of a New CD, New Songs  1 Response »
Nov 062010
 

I’ve got just a couple of more songs to demo out before I start hacking away and formulating a working set list for the CD. As I was thinking about songs I’d like to still demo I thought about this little blues song that I perform every once in a while and said why not at least demo it and give it a chance to be on the CD. This is a song that I wrote ages ago, 1988 to be exact. Shoot, over 20 years ago! I wrote it about a roommate I had at the time who desperately wanted to play the guitar and write blues songs, but he was so bad at the guitar and could not sing on key to save his soul. But he had the attitude of a blues-man. He was a loner. He was not one to get “tied” to a woman. He traveled and had very few possessions. He just did not have the voice to yell at the world like a blues-man. His name was Earl. This is the song I wrote for him called “Blues for E”.

Let me know what you think!

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direct link: Blues for “E”

Blues For “E”

Babe I’m a loner
Don’t need love
Or that sentimental foolishness
I can’t rise above
I just play my guitar
And sing the blues
For a fool like me
For a fool like me

Well I ain’t got no worries on my mind
I just watch the world going by
And I take what I can find

Well you say you love me
That’s alright
But babe I’ll be travelin
I’m gone tonight
On the road with my guitar
Just singin the blues
For a fool like me
For a fool like me

Well now I don’t need a woman by my side
I put my stuff in an old knapsack
And I wait for a freight train to arrive

Babe I’m a loner
Don’t need love
Or that sentimental bullsheet
I can’t rise above
I just play my guitar
And sing the blues
For a fool like me
For a fool like me

Diary of a New CD #2 – Where Does This One Go?

 Country Songs, Diary of a New CD  1 Response »
Oct 152010
 

I’m still doing demos of new songs for the CD and I’m recording anything and everything that I think might go on the new CD. I’m not even starting to think about a theme or a thread of coherence, I just want to get some songs in the can so I can hear them.

But – after I recorded this song I asked myself – Where is this one going to go?

The title of this track is “Hillbilly Backyard” and it is a novelty/humorous song. It came from a journal writing I did while sitting on my back deck and looking at the crap that was laying around in the backyard. Meanwhile out front, where my wife holds dominion, the yard looked great with flowers and freshly cut grass and an air of suburban accommodation.

It will be interesting to see where this song fits with the other songs I have recorded. I don’t want to have this seem like an anomaly on the record, meaning I have these serious songs and then all of a sudden here’s this tongue-in-cheek song about suburban lawn care. But I’m not throwing it out just yet – perhaps it will fit somewhere. We’ll see.

Let me know what you think!

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Hillbilly Backyard

I moved up North from way down South
Got a corporate job and fancy house
Now I gotta put up with all these blue-blood Yankees

So if I want to fit in here’s what I gotta do
So this Dixie boy can be just like you
I gotta hire me some guys to gussy-up my front lawn

Put in some fancy shrubs and manicure the grass
A couple of lawn jockeys so when people drive past
They say – Hey! He must be one of us!

But I was raised down South where people understand
That a pretty face ain’t worth a goddamn
Until you take a look at what’s behind their eyes

So come on through my hedge
And take a look around the edge
You’ll see a chicken coop
A car on blocks
A refrigerator full of beer
Cigarette butts, an old spit can
And the grass is growin’ up to here
The paint is pealing off the porch
But I’m payin’ it no regard
‘Cause I brought my Southern Comfort up North
To my hillbilly backyard

Well I shop at the Mall, I drink white wine
I wave hey to the neighbors as they pass on by
But no one suspects I’m just a Good Ol’ Boy

Come on back and set fer a spell
Sip some white lightning but just don’t tell
About what you seen when you stepped out my back door

So come on through my hedge
And take a look around the edge
You’ll see a chicken coop
A Volvo on blocks
A refrigerator full of beer
Cigarette butts, an old spit can
And the grass is growin’ up to here
The paint is pealing off the porch
But I’m payin’ it no regard
‘Cause I brought my Southern Comfort up North
To my hillbilly backyard

CD Diary #1 – Song Demos – Help Me Out!

 Acoustic/Groove/Folk, Diary of a New CD  7 Responses »
Sep 222010
 

Looking into the future –

Bless me Father for I have sinned, it’s been 3 years since my last CD release!!! Yikes that is a sin!

Yep I’m gearing up for another CD release and I’m shooting for August of Twenty-Eleven. I thought that this time around I would blog about the process in order to keep me on target and as a point of interest to you all.

So where to start? Well I guess we start with the desire to put out another album of songs. I have more than a few that I’ve written since 2007 (the release date of ‘She‘) and a handful that didn’t make it onto the previous two CDs. I’ve made a list of those songs that I think would work well and now I am recording demos of those songs. Why demos and not the final recording? Well I need to get a sense of the songs to hear how they might work as a grouping and I also use the demos to work out arrangements. Later, I will give the demos to musicians that come into the studio to play on the final tracks just so they can have a reference. Some demos sound very close to what the finished tracks will sound like and then others will just be me and a guitar.

What I’d like for you guys to do is to help me out by commenting on the demos. Let me know if you like the song, if you think they might fit with other demos I’ve posted. You can tell me just about anything, but remember that these are not the final tracks so if there are mistakes or something doesn’t sound “finished”, that’s OK for now. But please let me know what is on your mind.

I thought I’d try my hand at a video for this demo and a little explanation. This is a new-ish song called “Still Life Painter”. I’ll put the lyrics under the video.

Enjoy and thanks for coming along on this ride!

~DG

Still Life Painter

An empty street
Every morning I walk through the blue
Then you appear
And the light is cast in a different place

Spun with colors
I watch you move through my life
Day after day
Until I’ve memorized your face

In line at the coffee shop
I catch a view
With the eye of a still life painter
I capture you
Casually I frame it all
And hang it someplace new
With the eye of a still life painter
I capture you

A pencil sketch
Done quickly as you walk on by
At another time
I’ll draw myself into the scene

I lean in close
To study the nature of my lines
A borrowed smile
But nothing more so it seems

In line at the grocery
I catch a view
With the eye of a still life painter
I capture you
Casually I frame it all
And hang it someplace new
With the eye of a still life painter
I capture you

A closer eye
Might strip all this beauty away
Breaking the spell
Like George Seurat
I struggle with a fine tipped brush
Resisting an urge
To look too deep

Waiting for the light to turn
I catch a view
With the eye of a still life painter
I capture you
Casually I frame it all
And hang it someplace new
With the eye of a still life painter
I capture you

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