Songs

Make Your Way Home (cowrite with Laurie and David Easterling)

February 26, 2021 — Leave a comment

Now this was fun! The Easterlings are a couple in Tennessee who I met through my songaweek.org group, and they are prolific songwriters. Just about every week they post multiple new songs they’ve written with other people. The day of my Zoom session with them, David had already done another cowrite earlier that day.

In college I was part of a drama team that worked together to write and perform farces of well-known musicals, and that was some of the most fun I’ve had in my life! But since then, I’ve done very little collaborative writing. Being introverted, I feel most free in my writing process when I’m completely alone. As in no one else in the house. Which hasn’t happened much this year, but I’m grateful for the tiny studio Nathan built me in the basement, that helps me feel isolated enough to get creative.

David and Laurie were wonderful to work with. Our songaweek group has been doing monthly Zoom open mics all year so I’ve gotten to know them a bit through that already, and as I expected, our cowriting session felt like spending time with extended family or good neighbors. We had limited time but we pulled it off and wrote this song in about an hour, using the week 8 #songaweek2021 prompt “change please.” I really enjoyed the different feel of writing a song with other people. Always good to get a different perspective and a little glimpse into someone else’s creative process. Not something I will probably do regularly, but what I love about writing a song a week is that I feel free to try new things because everything isn’t riding on this week – there are always more songs to write!

You can find out more about David and his music at his website http://www.davideasterling.com.

Oh, and the picture for the song is a fairy house my daughter Luthien built on the banks of the Mississippi in summer 2019.

Please change your mind 
Don’t leave me behind
I was desperate to say
But I left it unsaid
The words wailed in my head
You’re leaving today  

May you never be sad enough to give up
Or too busy to explore the unknown
Remember no matter how far you go
You can always make your way home

I’ve been waiting so long 
To sing my own song
Can’t stay in this place
Stretch my wings and try
To see where I can fly
Cast off my old ways

May you never be sad enough to give up
Or too busy to explore the unknown
Remember no matter how far you go
You can always make your way home

The road is always there
Time may not be fair
The same road that leads away
Leads back home someday

May you never be sad enough to give up
Or too busy to explore the unknown
Remember no matter how far you go
You can always make your way home

Sunny and Cold

February 18, 2021 — Leave a comment

This week’s weather in Minnesota – and even Texas!! – am I right?! It’s nothing worse than I expect for living here and if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the coldest winter days, when it’s too cold to snow and you can practically feel your nose getting ready to bleed when you step out your front door; it’s that with the intense cold comes intense sunshine and bluebird skies. And I’ve decided after all these years that there’s something to love about sunny and cold.

I wrote most of the lyrics for this week’s song while out on walks with Cody (my dog) in the sunny and cold. This is a one-take live video and audio recording made about an hour after I brought my jumble of lyric ideas into my studio today and hashed it all out into a song. I rarely write, record and publish all on the same day but time was running short this week so here we are.

Sunny and cold still cheers my soul
It’s the sparkle of the light on the satin snow
It’s the red geranium in the windowsill
On a golden afternoon

Cold and sunny like a jar of honey
Amber glow
Sleepy flow
Sunny and cold like a twelve-year-old
All the fire of youth
All the chill of give me the truth

Sunny and cold still warms my heart
It’s a parka wrapped around my tender parts
It’s the people in the park walking happy dogs
And the smiles in our eyes

Cold and sunny like a wad of money
Burning a hole
Freezing your soul
Sunny and cold like a secret told
Flaming passion
Cooling ashes

*Note – I’ve gone off Facebook for Lent and so instead of posting my weekly songs there as I have been doing the past couple years, I’ll be posting them here on my blog. I’m secretly hoping that doing this will motivate me to *keep* posting on my blog each week even when (if?) I go back to the big FB.

Christmas Day

December 19, 2020 — 2 Comments

Another year (and what a year!) and I haven’t posted much on my blog again. I’ve still been writing songs – one every week this year so far. Many are on my YouTube channel. Wanted to share here on my blog the one I wrote for this week. Christmas Day is always hard for some people, and this year many more of us will be feeling blue and alone.

Additionally, for a little more sad but then some punk rock cheer, here’s my family’s tenth annual holiday greeting:

Peace and love to you and yours as we end out this year and bravely go forth into the next!

CoL@home

July 31, 2020 — Leave a comment

Yesterday my folk pop duo-sometimes-trio (aka family band) Cabin of Love released a new 7-song EP, CoL@home. It’s made up of songs I’ve written from 2016 to 2020 for www.songaweek.org. Three of them were written and recorded just this year, while we’ve been mostly staying home. The first track, “Slowly Exploding,” was specifically written about living in this new pandemic reality; and you can see us performing it in an upcoming TPT show set to air in September, featuring several artists and work they’ve made during this time of COVID-19.

So, without further ado, the album!

White

May 29, 2020 — 5 Comments

Race is a fabricated social construct. And. In my country, race is an inescapable reality, as plain as the nose on your face or the skin on your bones.

White is a lie. And. White is a hideous truth that kills and steals and destroys.

“Black is beautiful” is a powerful idea that many people have needed to internalize to arm themselves against the ugly face of white America.

People need to repeat and believe that black lives matter because white piously proclaims that it doesn’t see color, white forgets and ignores and excludes and overlooks (and kills and steals and destroys).

We can all dream a world where white and black and brown are no longer categories for people. AND. We must do the hard work of facing the living truth in the here and now – and those of us who got dealt the white card have the furthest to go in this, because we’ve had the least occasion to notice that anything is wrong.

Each one of us is the only one of us, exquisitely unique in all of time and space. And. Every one of us is, like every other one of us, completely and thoroughly human.

In our shared humanity, in our singular hearts and souls, we can untangle and break the horrific bonds of race. Not today, not all at once. And not if we don’t see it for what it is, and listen, and tell the truth.

George Floyd’s killers must be arrested, charged, and sentenced. No ifs, ands, or buts.

Here’s my song for week 22 of #songaweek2020:

White tears are decorative
White grief keeps its distance
White guilt is optional
White passion lacks persistence
White promises are broken
White skin is thick insulation
And a most effective cushion
To smother a human soul.

You can download the song for free here – https://cabinoflove.bandcamp.com/track/white