Behind The Song ~ Workin’ Man

 Articles, Big Texas Sky  No Responses »
Mar 272012
 

This is the third of 7 blog posts about the songs on my new CD “Big Texas Sky”. As part of this posting, ‘Workin’ Man’ will be available as a FREE download for a limited time.

I had been teaching my middle school music students about the talking blues, a precursor to rap, and I was having them listen to some work songs that had been collected by Alan Lomax for the Smithsonian. I pointed out how the words went along with a rhythm of the work that the singers were doing while they chanted the song. I then assigned them to write their own work song and in order for them to be able to do that I had to model the technique. Oh Mr. Gregory gonna write a rap yo…

I had the kids start out by stomping and clapping a “work beat”and then we found a rhythm that would lay over it so we could fit in the words. Here’s what we came up with as a class:

I’m a workin’ man
I’m chained to the wheel <– I had to explain this to them because I came up with it to get things moving
I’m a workin’ man
They don’t care how I feel
I’m a workin’ man
I’m trying to keep it real
Yeah workin’ man

They got the point and got to work and came up with lots of good lyrics. This is always a fun lesson and we also write blues songs as well. Anyway… The first couple of lines stuck in my head and I wrote them down in my journal and thought nothing of it.

When you perform out live with just you and a guitar and your voice, you try to break things up in the set so that it doesn’t all sound the same. I try some finger style picking, some slide guitar, I use the ukelele, I use a harmonica, etc. I was thinking of trying something acapella in order to break up the consistent use of the guitar and was combing through my notebooks for something to use and remembered the work song lyrics I had written down. I fleshed out the story a bit by making more tongue-in-cheek about a man who works to support his high society girl friend. In the song she’s referred to as ‘Baby’ in the same way that Humphrey Bogart referred to Lauren Bacall.

I work
Cause baby needs a new dress
I work
Cause baby needs a diamond ring
I work
Cause baby needs some red shoes
I work
Baby thinks that I’m a fool

I have performed this for many years by thumping my hand on the body of the guitar and singing acapella. But for the album I decided to arrange it with a heavy bass and junk percussion. The singer’s voice is run through some guitar amp effects and a delay that makes it sound like he’s addressing a union rally. I threw in the slide dobro at the last minute just because I felt it needed that metallic sound of a whining machine and it lends a ‘rawness’ to the whole endeavor.

You can bury me with a shovel in my hand
I’m a working man

Take a listen and let me know what you think. This will be a FREE download until April 3, 2012.

The Story Behind ~ Aunt Jean’s Piano

 Articles, Big Texas Sky  No Responses »
Mar 132012
 

This is the first of 7 blog posts about the songs on my new CD “Big Texas Sky”. As part of this posting, Aunt Jean’s Piano will be available as a FREE download fo a limited time.

Aunt Jean’s Piano

I don’t know where the germ for this song actually came from but it is based on a true person and a true event. I probably got the idea planted in my brain from a casual conversation I was having about my father’s side of the family. He was the third child of 9 raised on a wheat and cattle farm in East Texas. The 8th child, Jean, was the creative, fanciful child. She was the one who sang beautifully and played the piano. She sewed and was an artist of some accomplishment. But in 1948 she collapsed and died from a brain aneurism at the age of 19. (In the lyrics she dies at age 24, but I needed a rhyme with door. Literary license.)

So the story of the lyrics start with the narrator touching a piano that had not been played in ages and we find out that he is in fact playing the piano that his Aunt Jean had played so many years ago. There is a connection to be made across time just by the fact that he is playing the same piano that his Aunt Jean had played. It’s like walking through a sacred place where saints had once wandered and prayed. There’s a magic to the touch of the keys and the sounds that come from the instrument because of who had played it and the circumstances of their untimely passing.

In recording this song I knew that I wanted to keep it simple. The guitar part already fills out a lot of the orchestration because of the finger style picking, so whatever instruments join in on this song will have to do so sparingly. I chose to go with a fiddle and a mandolin to add dabs of sound and fill where needed. I was so lucky to have Jim Allyn come in and play both instruments. Jim has a great ear and knows where to put the notes so they don’t step on the vocal lines. When you listen to the song, keep that in mind and not how the mandolin and fiddle play around the edges.

So where is the piano? The whole song is about a piano, but there’s no piano in the song as it stood. I really didn’t want to write in a piano part or a piano break; that would be way too obvious. At the last minute, after I had all of the previously mentioned parts recorded and mixed, I came up with an idea. In the lyrics there is a mention that Jean’s Pa liked the “Old Methodist hymns…”. So I thought why not start the song with a hymn being sung by Jean and the narrator. I found a Methodist hymnal online and chose one that I thought would fit the mood of the song that was to follow? I played the piano part  and I called in my friend Michel to sing the melody. The part was up in her range, but it turned out to be a flavor for the song because it intoned an untrained girl singing while at the same time she played the piano part. I harmonized by singing the alto part down an octave and then added a little spoken tag: Thank you Jean…

Take a listen and let me know what you think. This will be a free download until March 19, 2012.

CD Update ~ Writing Music

 Diary of a New CD  No Responses »
Sep 112011
 

Writing Music (on paper)

I thought that I’d write a short post about writing music. Not composing or songwriting, but the act of writing it all down on paper using traditional notation. It’s not something that is talked about in the songwriter symposiums or in a songwriter’s circle, but being able to notate music and hand a lead sheet to a fellow musician can be an integral part of creating a good performance.

I’m thinking about this now because I am in the process of recording my CD and I am about to invite other musicians in to play on some songs. Having legible lead sheets that make sense just makes the whole process go so much more smoothly than having nothing or some cryptic doodling.

I’m a trained musician – meaning, I went to a music conservatory and learned music as a trade so I have no issue with transcribing my songs; I’m fluent. But there are so many singer-songwriters that do not read music and have not gone to conservatory which is quite fine. But, I often wonder how they communicate their intentions to other musicians. Do they stand there in the studio writing letters on a piece of paper? Do they orally walk the performers through it? Do they make the musician sit at home and do the transcribing themselves?

Writing a lead sheet is really no big thing. But, the writer needs to understand a few basics of music notation: time signature, chord symbols, repeat signs, slash or rhythmic notation and perhaps a few other things like drawing a treble clef and the occasional drawing of a whole, half, quarter or eighth note. These are things that I teach to my 6-7-8 grade students in my music classes. So an adult songwriter should know about it presuming they had a proper public school music class… right? (That’s another article all together…)

So here I am. I just finished lead sheet #4 of 7 and will dive into #5 later today. It takes me about 20 minutes to do a lead sheet and I lay it out on my computer using a software program called Finale. I am only going to do 6 lead sheets though. Why not 7? Well, on one of the songs, I am playing all of the instruments and I do not need a lead sheet since I know the song.

It sounds like I’m contradicting myself. Darryl, are you saying that you do not always have to transcribe your songs? Nope! If you’re playing solo and you have the lyrics written and just write the chords over the lyrics to help you remember, that’s cool. Or, what most people do these days: record it on their smart phone.

But, if you’re going to hire me or some other professional musician to come in and play for you, I expect a decent lead sheet. I don’t want to have to sit there trying to figure out your song from a description, your chicken scratchings of chords (assuming they are even the correct chords – did you transpose the key because you use a capo?) or the recording on your smart phone.

I guess a lead sheet is just common professional courtesy. Are you a professional?

The CD Project ~ an update

 Articles, Diary of a New CD  No Responses »
Aug 062011
 

It’s been a while since I’ve posted something about the new CD and I blame Congress. Well, everything is Congress’s fault these days, so why not blame them for this as well?

I look back on the posts that have been about this new CD project and the funny thing is that NONE of the songs I’ve mentioned in the the previous “Diary…” posts are on the CD line-up. This album has take a turn for the dark country ballad and will probably go down in history as marking my black and blue period of songwriting. I found myself wanting to tell stories about about the things that form our chains ~ the chains that bind ~ and the heaviness of this life. Since the last post, which was on June 6, I’ve written three new songs specifically for this CD and one of those songs was inspired by the working title of the CD: Big Texas Sky.

So, where do I stand as of now? I have the first draft of the songs recorded and on a demo CD that I am listening to and will use for musicians that will come in to record specialty parts. I need to fill out the instrumentation with a pedal steel, fiddle and some piano; all of which I do not play very well. Also, I think I would hate to produce an album that had only me playing ~ a kind of musical masturbation… ewww. The biggest hurdle that I’ve crossed thus far is deciding on the track list. I did a lot of internal wrangling about how many songs I wanted to place on the album an decided that I should limit the line up and release a shorter set. The track list stands now at 7 songs: a little more than an EP, but fewer than what constitutes a modern full length album. When one looks back at the album from the vinyl era, 7-9 songs was an album!

So as a sneak preview of the CD, I will let you look at my mock-ups of the cover and the back. I will hand these over to a professional graphic artist as a starting point and hopefully they will improve upon the ideas. In the mean time, let me know what you think so far.

 

Front Panel

Back Panel

FAWM ~ Song #3

 Acoustic/Groove/Folk, FAWM  No Responses »
Feb 212011
 

February song number three!

Here’s a song about a person who, when things are going good, blows it all to hell because that’s what they are used to. We all know these people. We root for them to succeed, to get into a great relationship, to find a good gig, but when they do, they screw it up somehow. But the real kicker is that they seem to like to wallow in their confusion and pain – AND they want you to participate.

This video was shot at the Reid-Higham House Concert on February 19, 2011. What a great evening that was: good food, Gwenann’s art and me getting to perform for a great crowd!

This was also the premier performance, so give me some feed-back!

She Didn’t Feel Right

She didn’t feel right
Unless she had a broken heart
Love was a word
She could only guess at
Everything was good
Until it started being good
Then she’d bite and claw
Just like a cornered wildcat

She was a tornado in the desert
She was confusion in a pretty dress
She was afraid of being still
And listening to her awful mess
As soon as she was riding the smooth road
She’d reach for the dynamite
Unless her heart was in pieces
She didn’t feel right

She wanted the perfect life
They sold her in the magazines
A car, a house, some kids
And a man to love her
But as the pieces fell into place
She’d throw the puzzle to the ground
The walls closed in she felt trapped and smothered

She was a tornado in the desert
She was confusion in a pretty dress
She was afraid of being still
And listening to her awful mess
As soon as she was riding the smooth road
She’d reach for the dynamite
Unless her heart was in pieces
She didn’t feel right

A sunny day was so blasé
She needed clouds, she needed rain
Peaceful prayer, so damned rare
More satisfying to complain

She was a tornado in the desert
She was confusion in a pretty dress
She was afraid of being still
And listening to her awful mess
As soon as she was riding the smooth road
She’d reach for the dynamite
Unless her heart was in pieces
She didn’t feel right

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