singer/songwriter

Hold Me Close Like a Telephone

May 6, 2021 — 12 Comments

In the course of writing this song I discovered that Bob Dylan cowrote the song “Wagon Wheel” and also that Darius Rucker of one of high-school-me’s favorite bands Hootie and the Blowfish did a cover of it, in addition to the one I had heard before by Old Crow Medicine Show.

I learned all that because after I wrote this song it kept nagging me that I had copied something somehow. My subconscious went to work and got me the answer, and Google confirmed it and taught me all those other details.

For artistic integrity (and/or because I’m just not taking the time this week for a big recording), I sang this one into my phone.

Here it is, my song for week 18 of #songaweek2021:

I don’t mean to be rude, I mean I never mean to be mean
Some days feel no good, so no no good to keep all to myself

Hold me close like a telephone
Ring me round with whispers of your love

There’s nothing we can do to change the days we left behind us
Every moment’s new, and this one’s telling us we can be too

Hold me close like a telephone
Ring me round with whispers of your love

There’s something to be said for everybody saying something
Nice and kind of kind to help each other help each other smile

Let’s hold our world like a telephone
Ring it round with whispers of our love

I Think I’ll Come Back Now

May 3, 2021 — 4 Comments

I’m guessing I’m not the only one who experienced that social distancing led to emotional distancing this past year. Now that more of my loved ones and myself are fully vaccinated and I’m relishing hugs again, and the world outside is greening up and springing forth, I feel an old familiar longing for closeness and affection coming back, which had been fading. That’s what was going on when I wrote this song for week 17 of #songaweek2021.

(But as with all art, what I brought to the song is in no way definitive. Much of my joy in sharing what I create is knowing it meets others in different ways. And more than once a song I wrote years ago will bring me something new when I bring it out again.)

Nobody told me I’d be sad and lonely, I wasn’t prepared for this
I don’t remember how I ended up outside looking in

I think I’ll come back now
Return from the somewhere else
Land this weary ship
I’m coming back home
Don’t ask me where I was
I never really knew
There’s nothing much to tell
I just want to come home

I was gonna change the world but the world changed without me
I was gonna change the world but the world changed me

I think I’ll come back now
Return from the somewhere else
Land this weary ship
I’m coming back home
Don’t ask me where I was
I never really knew
There’s nothing much to tell
I just want to come home

Ground of God

April 23, 2021 — 2 Comments

Here’s my song for week 16 of #songaweek2021.

There’s pits you never might get to the bottom of
There’s rivers flowing any which way but love
There’s words nobody with breath ever should have said
Reverberating inside your head

All is falling, falling down
Falling down on the ground of God

There’s peaks you never might wish to descend from
There’s roads going every direction home
There’s songs of healing and joy about to be sung
Vibrating on the tip of your tongue

All is rising, rising up
Rising up from the ground of God

Be still children be still
Breathe the breath of life
Be not afraid
To give it back 

There’s no beginning or end to the question
There’s battles around you and war within
There’s hope that hits you like a bolt from the blue
Obliterating what you thought you knew

All is falling, falling down
Falling down on the ground of God
All is rising, rising up
Rising up from the ground of God

Fire Inside

April 8, 2021 — 12 Comments

One thing pandemic life has taught me is how to write a song at a moment’s notice. Today my afternoon brought me an unexpected two hours to myself, so I set everything aside and started writing just a few minutes after the door closed and I was alone in the house. It’s become almost a habit now, to sit down and write till I get stuck, then take the dog for a walk and try to work out the rest of it. Which is how I finished this one.

The prompt for #songaweek2021’s week 14 is “inside there’s a fire” which was in front of me as I was writing this one, and I liked it enough to take my title from it too.

This week I have a cold so I got to use my low notes. Also I’ve upgraded my blog so I can now directly embed audio files here, rather than linking to Soundcloud. I didn’t make a video this week since I’m not feeling the greatest, wanted the recording process to be low-hassle.

Oh, maybe you can tell I’ve been hearing a lot of U2 lately thanks to my daughter having newly discovered them and playing their music pretty much exclusively all the time. I think some of Bono’s vocalizing influenced me 🙂


I’m sitting on the back steps on an April afternoon
Just minding my own business, making up a little tune
Nothing’s wrong
In this song
Sun shining and the birds are singing and the rain falls now and then
Grass growing, little buds are showing on the ends of waking stems
Everything
Is breathing

My heart keeps beating at the bars
Of this bony cage

I’m lying on my back one summer night when I was young
Eyes gazing through the blackness at a million sparkling suns
Up is down
Lost is found
Hand of another holding mine and fingers intertwined
Just-blossomed lovers coming close in body and in mind
So damn true
So brand new

My heart is pulsing with the stars
Through this eager flesh 

I’m looking for the way back to the best that’s yet to come
I’m jumping in the river just to find out where it runs
Sink or swim
I’m all in
My heart perpetually starts
And starts again

Into Your Hands

March 18, 2021 — 2 Comments

Every year for Good Friday my church puts out a call to artists to choose one of the seven last words of Christ and share something based on the particular last words they chose. For now our church is doing everything online – mostly Facebook Live – including the upcoming Good Friday service. I was getting ready to sign up for “Into your hands I commend my spirit,” and started writing the words to this song, before I realized our family’s plan to go camping that weekend will negate my ability to do any livestreaming that day.

Still, I liked what I had started and decided to go ahead and make it my song for week 11 of #songaweek2021.

Every winter I think I’m dying
Come the spring I feel like trying
Trying again
In the summer I know I’m living
Go to fall it all starts giving
Giving out, gone
On and on and on and on

Chasing down the speed of light
Face pressed up to window staring out of my existence
Back against the wall of furious insistence
Into your hands
Into your hands
I commend my spirit

Every night’s an invitation
To a sweet obliteration
Of all that I think I should be
In the morning I remember
Dreams that fade like dying embers
Light as dry leaves
Leaving, left, and lost

Chasing down the speed of light
Face pressed up to window staring out of my existence
Back against the wall of furious insistence
Into your hands
Into your hands
I commend my spirit