I thought I’d tell you a bit about each of my songs.
It takes me a year to write and record a song. Why? Because life interferes, that’s why. If I can work in my home studio a couple of nights a week for 1-2 hours on a song, I’m lucky. By the time I finish a song, I’m relieved that I can start to work on the next song.
Here are my latest songs.
Click here to listen to Cannonball!
Cannonball is my latest song, released December 2022 and again in February 2023 when I realized the volume on the mix was too low. I started recording bass lines for the song in November 2021, rough vocals over the winter, redid my entire home studio in March and April, recorded the guitar part on the right side and the drums in April, a new set of vocals in May, took off June and July for vacation and other reasons, laid down some keys and special effects in August, recorded the rhythm guitar on the left side and redid the entire vocals in September (they needed it), did the lead guitar in October, and then mixed, mixed, and mixed over November, then mastered the mix in December. That’s the way it goes.
The drums use drum patterns assembled in Groove Agent, but I did all the rest – vocals, guitar, bass guitar, and keys.
Click here to listen to Vegas Love!
Vegas Love was released in November 2020. Vegas Love was a fun song to write and produce. The lyrics, which came together very quickly, just crack me up. The song itself is a parody of any Hair Nation band from the 1980s.
This was my first use of drum patterns in Groove Agent. I wanted this to be a guitar song, since I have always been a keyboard player. I didn’t own a guitar until I was 44 and it took me a long time to learn how to play it at all. I played the guitar, the bass guitar, and sang the vocals, no keys on this song at all. I had a lot of fun putting the pre-song and post-song effects (crowd noises, voiceovers, etc.) together, too. It’s meant to be a fun song and not taken too seriously.
Click here to listen to Miracles Happen Every Day!
Miracles Happen Every Day is a song about how we really don’t know how lucky we are and how we have to grab the chances given to us whenever they arise. The lyrics draw upon the stories of two friends of mine and myself. Released in March 2019, this was my first public song. The lyrics came together quickly. The bass line came after the lyrics, then the trumpet keyboards, then the airy guitar during the verses and in the chorus that sounds like it could be keyboards. The fact that the guitar ended up sounding like synthesizers, even though they were exactly what I wanted, has annoyed me ever since. No one would ever know there is so much guitar in the song. My favorite part is the saxophone solo, done on the keyboard.
I look forward to releasing new songs and hope you will join me. Thanks for visiting.