Well, I've made another decision. Impulsive person that I am. I'm posting the last three songs from February all at once. I'd like to move into the next month with a clean slate so to speak. So here they are...

The Bells

Time is almost up
I’m shaking at my desk
The clock is moving backwards I swear
It’s almost there

To the Bells
To the bells
To the bells
Time to go home
Time to go home

Afternoons I used to go out and play
My best friend and I made up games
We lost track of time until …

I imagine
Some day I’ll lay
Waiting to know
My times coming soon
I think it will be a little like waiting for the end class
A little like playtime gone to soon

And then the bells
The bells
The bells
Time to go home.

Find Love

Love is a small child
Love is a small thought
Love is a tempest
Love is a cot
A place to lie down
While trying to our way home

Love is an embrace
Love is a kiss
Love is music
Love never misses
It’s mark
Though sometimes that’s when it hits

Could I find love
Could you find love
Can anyone find love

Love is a power
Love is a bitch
Love is a slipper
Love is a twitch
That we feel
The stronger it is the more it is real

Love is a sofa
Love is a squeeze
Love is a candle
Love is an easy
Way thing to say
But hard to practice every day

Could I find love
Could you find love
Can anyone here find love?

Orion's Belt

It seems
We’re blinded by ourselves
In our cities on our hills
The lights that keep us safe
Keep us blind

So we can’t see our way?
Could we guide ourselves home?
If they weren’t that bright.

I want to go out where I can see the stars
Where I can see the stars

There’s so many of them
When you get out alone
You don’t feel so alone anymore

The stars in the night
Make orion’s belt
Breathing steam in the air

The city night sky
So black like a chalk board
Waiting for somebodies thoughts

But there’s nothing to say
‘cept I want to get away
Where I can see the stars

       A quick note, I'll be taking the weekend off from blogging.  I'll be back on Tuesday through Thrusday with the last three songs from February!  Now, onward.

       To be a real folk singer there are a couple of songs you have to write.  
       One of them is the drinking song or a song about alcohol in general.  It's best if in this song the drinking has left the protagonist of the song in utter ruin.  The person's drinking should be like a crack that runs across a person's soul.  However if you want to just write about a good night out that's, well, ok.   But your not a folk singer if you don't sing about drinking at some point.  Preferrably whiskey.   Rum drinks don't count, unless you're singing about pirates, and then you're likely singing a sea shanty which is a different kind of thing.  
       Another song you have to write is the murder ballad.  People have to die in your songs occasionally if your a folk singer.   If you can kill more than one person in a song even better.   Is the murder based on historical fact?   Great!  The unintentional death of a friend by an ironic misfortune is a fine substitute for murder as well.  But murder is really the way to go.
      Finally, you have to sing about trains at some point which I'm not sure I'd ever done in a song of mine.  However I've covered both drinking and murder and two out of three ain't bad**.  So here's the train song I wrote last month.   I'm not sure it's folk.   I'll let y'all decide.  It occurrs to me though, I should really try to write a song with all three in there.  It would the folk trifecta.

**Meat Loaf will never be a folk singer.   It doesn't matter how much drinking and killing and riding on trains he does. 

Anyway, here's the notebook page I started with for this one.



And here's what i finished with:

Maybe we’re all hobos
Looking for our way
Running down that track
Trying to jump the freight

And maybe we’re all conductors
Calling out the names
Of the towns at the depot
That We’ll never see again

Sometimes I think things are connected
Like a train
Like a train
Sometimes I think my days are connected
Like a train
Like a train
Rolling down the track

Maybe we’re all riders
With our tickets in our hands
Looking out the windows
Wondering at what station we’ll land

And maybe we’re all steam men
shoveling in more coal
working hard to stoke the fire
And make the damn thing go

I think writing a song about drinking was our assingment for the song writing group I go to about once a month.   I've written drinking songs before.   Named my first EP 'Pick ME UP' after one even.  In way this song is an update on that song.
'Pick Me up' was a story song that I wrote because I wanted to write a song about drinking.   This songs reflects a lot more of my ambivalence towards booze these days.   These days booze mostly seems to make me headachy and sleepy.  In it's defense, it still tastes good and can be fun but mostly it makes me feel kind of stupid.   
So I stole the personification from the original song I wrote about drinking and made the person talking in the song me, or mostly me at least.  

Here's the first page I scrawled out on drinking from my notebook.



And here are the lyrics I had in front of my when I sat down, pressed record and started inventing a melody. 

I met out last night with my friends
I met out last night
We seemed to keep It on the mend

And I don’t know if I like how you talk to me
And I don’t know if I like how you make me feel
Yet here I am again with you

I never had a problem that’s I’d admit
I never had to give you up
No not for a bit

And I don’t know if I like how you talk to me
And I don’t know if I like how you make me feel
Yet here I am again with you

But when it’s bad it’s really bad
And when It hurts it really hurts
And when the mornings they sneak up on me
That’s the worst.

I’ve seen you leave people looking dog faced and old
And I’ve seen you leaving people
Face down in the cold

And I don’t know if I like how you talk through me
And I don’t know if I like the ways you make me feel
Yet here I am again with you

      It's 1:21 AM on March 25th right now.  Four weeks and a few hours ago I was just finishing up my song a day experiment for the month of February.  As those of you who were following along closely will recall.  I'd written the first 22 songs or so without missing a beat.  And then, I slipped... faultered, and missed a day.  I was tired.  The next day I went to a beer tasting and then followed that up by a viewing of "Milk."   Walking home I was filled with that sense of transport that I feel so often after a good movie.   The sense that the world is different somehow.  I was also filled with the sense that right then I had to finish writing all my songs for the month.   Grabbing onto the first things I saw and thought of I started to make a list of song subjects.   Train, Bell, Orion's Belt.  'Love' is something I never write about I thought.  Swimming Away, Drinking.   I sat down and sketch out my song ideas in my notebook, then wrote the songs over the course of the next twenty-four hours.  And then when I woke the morning after, my internet connection was gone.  In the words of a wise, wise man; D'oh!
     Now, four weeks latter the internet is finally back.  ('America's most reliable network' indeed).
     The last six songs give a more honest look into my usual song a day process than the songs I'd been posting the rest of the month.   I'd gotten frustrated through the latter half of the month with the way I started to censor my thoughts and the way I got tangled up with writing 'good' songs.  Scrawling out six songs in the course of two writing and recording sessions didn't allow for any of that.  And neither did my wanting to just be done.   Originally, I planned on rerecording all these songs... maybe polishing them up a bit for show.   But I think it serves the idea of this blog more to post them 'as is,' at least for now.  Warts and blemishes, awkward pauses and mumbled words.  Everything.   Because the process isn't so much about creating something beautiful, although it's nice if you can manage to.  It's about creating something.  Period.   
 
Here's the notebook page from my first writing on the idea "Swimming Away"



Swimming Away.  Stroke for Stroke/ splash for splash/ I learned before I knew/ how to ask.  Swimming pools/ fresh water ponds/  Ocean's edge &/ Devil's nods.  Nightswimming/ We never even kissed/ just friends/ just good times.  There's a swell of/ life in me when/ I remember/  The night air, the/ cool moon/ clouds moving.  We moved through the woods w/o a light.  Took our clothes off by a/ tree close the Thoureau's house.  We never even kiss.  Just did things like this.   The road was its/ own pool when I/ left.  A dark and moving/ slide of quiet/ & depth.  The summer's ends/ & we'd go back/ to school.  We never even kissed.  I brought another/ girl w/ me/ who I'd shown the/ road & and I wanted/ to see me/ An awkward kind/ of silence w/o/ you.  That night I kissed/ her & I/ never did kiss you.

Here's what it became when I came back to it the next day:

We walk through the woods
Took our clothes off by the shore
Swam by the moonlight
But but we never did kiss

Those nights I’d drive home alone
The summer came to an end
We went back to school
But we never did kiss

One time I brought another girl
It was silent without you
That night I kissed her
But I never did kiss you