Joseph

There's another tune up on my music page. This one is a live recording from the "ROCK FOR TURKEY!!" event I played for a few months ago.

Note: The name of the event was not at all "ROCK FOR TURKEY!!" It was "Turkish Delight: A Benefit Concert." But I will persist in calling it "ROCK FOR TURKEY!!" until the day I die.

***DANGER! TECHNICAL DETAILS ENSUE!! WOOOP!! WOOOP!! WOOOP!!***

Just FYI, it's a mono board mix. Which means that it is the recording directly from the mixing board--which is not at all intended for sharing--and that it is not a stereo recording, which means it is a little "dead" sounding.

I'm really talkin' it up, aren't I? You want to go there and listen RIGHT NOW, don't you!?

I cut this song out of a much larger .wav file, put it in GarageBand and added a little seasoning to make it more palatable, then converted it to an .mp3 file. I probably could've made it sound a little better, perhaps somehow compensating for the huge room reverb that appears suddenly about halfway through (it was our second song, and Jeremy was still tweaking the sound). But I think it's pretty good for what it is, and I see no point in spending the next hour of my life working on it to make it almost sound like what it is not.

***END TECHNICAL DETAILS. RE-ESTABLISHING ENJOYABLE BLOG CONTENT***

The full title of this song is "The Ballad of Joseph." I wrote it, if memory serves, back in the winter of 2000--about 6 months after leaving Nashville--in a tiny little bedroom of our tiny little rental house, on my grandpa's old archtop guitar.

In this performance I am playing electric guitar and singing the lead. Rachel Newell is singing harmony. Byron Grimes is on fiddle, Henry Kappler on bass, and Dan Anderson on drums. I seem to be singing kinda shakily--not sure why. Probably too much turning around to see what Dan & Henry were doing, I guess. After listening to the recording a couple times through, Matthew said, "Dad. You'd make a pretty good second Elvis. (pause) You know.. in a good way."

Lyrics are as follows.

V1
Joseph sat there on the stool / with nothin left in life to prove
and talked to me with cigarette-stained breath
With grizzled chin and waterin eyes / he told the story of his life
of better days when he had been his best

And I told him of my secret plan / my dream to be both boy and man
the reason I had made my homeward trek
I'd been away far too long / but flatland roots are oh so strong
so I decided I could make it stretch

Pre-chorus
He looked me sadly in the eye / hurt so deep you'd wanna cry
said "Son you're only foolin' yourself."
And he said, "Dreams are born and die here but they do all their living someplace else."

Ch
Nah-nah.. etc

V2
"I once was young and beautiful / Son, my cup was always full
No concern for life or worldly wealth
But time and tide caught up to me / and tipped me over endlessly
now nothin's left for drinkin to my health

Pre-chor
I once was young and beautiful / but now I'm old and cynical
jaded, feelin sorry for my self
And I say dreams are born and die here but they do all their livin someplace else."

Chor
Nah-nah.. etc

V3
Well now those dreams are laid to rest / with nothin bad as second best
I've closed that book and put it on the shelf
And when the young man comes to me / to tell me of his happy dream
I'll draw my breath and think of someone else

Pre-chor
I'll look him sadly in the eye / I hope to God that I don't cry
say, "Son, you're only foolin' yourself."
And I'll say, "Dreams are born and die here but they do all their livin someplace else."

Bridge
Dreams do their livin someplace else (although they may be born here)
Dreams do their livin someplace else
Dreams do their livin someplace else (though they may come to die here)
Dreams do their livin someplace / Dreams do their livin someplace
Dreams do their livin someplace else

Ch-out
Nah-nah.. etc..

a little something (more) redux a.k.a "music and lyrics"

Back before I left the old job, I posted these lyrics. Neat subject matter, given that I didn't really know I was leaving. (Other than the part where I thought that I heard God tell me that I was going to... but I think that's probably its own blog.)

A couple days ago, I went ahead and picked up a guitar to see if I could make a noise kind of like the one in my head. And it turns out I can. Make one. Kind of like it.

Also, it turns out that I can sort of work "GarageBand", which is a recording program that comes installed on the Mac. I'd been wanting to learn how, and I think I've got the basics figured out now.

The results of all these things can be found on my MySpace site, here.

It's a little more "adult contemp/top 40" than the version in my head, but it's just a writer demo, after all. Gets the point across. I think it sounds pretty good, considering that I haven't played the guitar for months (note the awesome fret buzzing in the first section), and that I recorded the entire thing in the living room, hunched over the laptop, into the internal microphone. (That's right. My sole input was the built-in mic on a laptop computer.) Guess I must have learned something in recording school, after all!

wow

wow it sure has been a long time since i posted anything on here i'll have to do something about that my car needs oil bye!

Never shoot yourself in the head

Never shoot yourself in the head, because Bob Dylan might just not have gotten around to calling you yet.

Grace

Grace is the parachute on a plane that's the world gone bad.

Art. Church. Good.

I'm not gonna draw any real conclusions based on this article that I read. Just on a very general level, though, I'm saying, "Art. Church. Good."

While you walk

There are two schools of thought on knives and dishwater.

That's right, "knives and dishwater" is a category. Didn't know that, did you?

One school says, "Never.. ever.. put a sharp knife in the dishwater. Because you can't see it. You might not know it's down there, or forget about it our something, and while you're swishing around in the sink like hungry raccoon you'll slice yourself open like a Christmas turkey and THEN how will you feel!? Huh!?"

The other school says, "Why wouldn't there be knives in the dishwater? They're dishes. Duh. Try not to hurt yourself while you walk, m'kay?"

These are the two schools of thought. On knives and dishwater.

Movie Review

I have often said* that if a movie review (or an album or a book review, for that matter) can't be done in 3 words or less, it shouldn't be done at all. Bearing that in mind, here is my review of the TRANSFORMERS movie, which I just saw today:

LOUD, DANGEROUS ROBOTS.

It didn't occur to me to use my phone to take a picture of everybody. I'll have to remember that next time. But it probably won't be as cool, because no one will be wearing their TRANSFORMERS shirts.


*I have never said this. Not even once.

Waiting for the works

So here we are. Waiting for the works.
Live from the lake. So cool. ;-)