songaweek2021

All Our Living Lives

March 10, 2021 — Leave a comment

“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do” randomly popped into my head this week, along with a tune. So I followed it out and wrote this song for week 10 of #songaweek2021. Recorded on a rainy day in March in my basement studio, the perfect kind of day to spend in a basement studio!

“A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do”
That’s what you said but i don’t think it’s true
Somebody somewhere’s been lying to you
All your living life

Drop what you’re fighting and give me your hand
Let’s just relax for now
Follow me down where the waves meet the land
You’ve been waiting all your life somehow

“The bigger they are the harder they fall”
But that don’t seem right cause I’m feeling so small
I don’t know if you can hear me at all
All my living life

It’s never been easy for me to explain
Let’s just go somewhere new 
Follow me hard like a runaway train
I’ve been waiting all of my life too

Out of the frying pan into the fire
Let’s just keep breathing now 
Over the limit and under the wire
We’ve been broken open anyhow

Something about you, something about me
Something about the wind in the trees
Nothing much out of the ordinary
All our living lives

Come with me, run with me, under the sun
Let’s just embrace the day
Follow me close and I’ll try to keep up
Life is for the living anyway

Matter of Time

March 5, 2021 — Leave a comment

We’ve been in a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers sort of mood around the house lately – Nathan and I just finished watching the fabulous Runnin Down a Dream documentary with our 17-year-old Luthien who is deep into schooling herself in the history of rock and roll, especially 90s music. (You can watch that documentary free at the Crackle link I attached to it!)

All that to say, I owe a good deal of the sound of this song to Tom and the band. The song itself came together surprisingly quickly; it felt as if I’d been carrying around this nebulous muck that got heavier over the winter, and somehow getting myself inside the head of the thing that was messing around in my head turned into this incredibly freeing, actually joyful-feeling rock song about aging and decay and everything as I know it falling apart.

Oh and Nathan added a plethora of guitar tracks, drums and bass (and he sang!) which certainly added to the joy for both of us in making this song! This is what being 45 feels like today, and I’m quite alright with it.

Week 9, #songaweek2021. I actually used the week’s prompt too, verbatim in the bridge (“you could turn back but why would you want to”). You can also download the song for free at our Cabin of Love bandcamp page – https://cabinoflove.bandcamp.com/track/matter-of-time

You’ve got sparkle, you’ve got spunk
You’ve got apocalyptic piles of pixie punk
I’m gonna dumb you down and lay you low
You won’t believe what hit you but I think you’ll know

Take it easy, it’s just a matter of time
Don’t take it personally, I’m gonna mess with your mind

Now you’re older, you think you’re so smart
You’re just a rusted cage around a broken-down heart
I’m gonna chill your bones and haunt your dreams
With ghosts of chances and washed-up schemes

Take it easy, it’s just a matter of time
Don’t take it personally, I’m gonna mess with your mind

You could turn back but why would you want to?
Nothing to see but visions of what might have been

So what you got now? What you gonna do
With whatever is left, is left up to you
I’ll keep right on rolling like I always do
And for a little while I might remember you

Take it easy, it’s just a matter of time
Don’t take it personally, I’m gonna mess with your mind
Take it easy, it’s just a matter of time
Don’t take it personally, nobody said I was kind

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.