I\u2019m actively recording music again. As such, I have a need to return to this blog and finish my songwriting journey so I can actually blog about other stuff and post new recordings. Because I know you want them.<\/p>\n
Bald<\/a> was very much a lesser tune, although it\u2019s a crowd pleaser when it\u2019s performed live. I have several other songs from that era, none of which deserve an entire blog post to themselves. So I thought I\u2019d dump \u2018em all on you at once as I attempt to reboot this blog for the umpteenth time. (Look, it\u2019s not like you\u2019re paying for this or anything, right?)<\/p>\n 1. The Laundry Song<\/a> was attached to a melody that had been floating around in my brain since the early \u201890s. It began with the words, \u201cClean Your Clock\/You\u2019ve got God on your side\/You\u2019ve got nothing to lose\/So you\u2019ve got nothing to hide.\u201d I actually still like that, but that\u2019s all I could come up with for years, and I have no idea where to go with it. I also feel wildly uncomfortable writing religious-themed music. I hate pop\/rock religiosity, and I also don\u2019t take myself seriously enough to write real hymns. So the stanza became \u201cClean Your Clothes\/You\u2019ve got soap on your side\/You\u2019ve got nothing to lose\/Except your animal pride.\u201d Problem solved.<\/p>\n I fleshed out the song, such as it is, some time around the turn of the century. This was recorded at Tuacahn in the summer of 2001. It\u2019s a terrible recording, and the song really bugs me, only because it doesn\u2019t really have a third verse. The one that\u2019s there is a placeholder, filled with nonsense. I really like this tune, though \u2013 I\u2019ve used it for a number of things, including a parody I sang for the final MBA awards dinner in 1999 when I was the evening\u2019s entertainment.\u00a0 I think there\u2019s a fine lyric that should be attached to this tune: just wish I knew what it was.<\/p>\n 2. The Dog\/Birdie War<\/a> was written while I was bored at the Utah State Fair sometime in the mid-to-late 1990s.\u00a0 I sang the first verse to my wife off the top of my head \u2013 \u201cGot a load of birdseed, and fed it to my dog\/ The bird got very angry and said I shouldn\u2019t hog\/ All the seed for the dog when the bird needs it more\/ That was the start of the dog birdie war.\u201d I was impressed with that spontaneous burst of creation, so I spent the rest of the night coming up with the rest of the story. It all fell together very quickly.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a fun conceit, but the song doesn\u2019t work, because it has no chorus, and it\u2019s too busy \u2013 it\u2019s all exposition, and it needs somewhere to land. The verse about the drooling dog named Otis bugs me, too \u2013 it doesn\u2019t move the story ahead at all, and it was just written as an excuse to mention drooling. Because, come on, who doesn\u2019t like drooling?<\/p>\n I\u2019ve retooled the song with a chorus, and it\u2019s much better, but I haven\u2019t rerecorded it yet.\u00a0 This recording was from the fabled Tuacahn sessions of 2001. It was recorded in the key of C but then digitally lowered a full step, because I liked hearing my voice sound lower than it is, and almost everything else I recorded was in the key of C, and I wanted to be a bit more diverse.<\/p>\n 3. The Pterodactyl Flies<\/a> has its roots in spontaneous jam sessions I used to have with an old USC buddy, where he\u2019d vamp out a chord structure and I\u2019d start improvising a lyric. The one that always brought down the house was the one that began with sentence, \u201cI sing a song of pterodactyls screaming through the sky.\u201d When I got an mBox mini recording studio for Christmas of 2002, I decided to put it to good use and write a whole song around the theme. I don\u2019t really like it \u2013 it doesn\u2019t have the playfulness that was inherent in its original inspiration. It has the feel of an academic exercise, and it has too many verses, none of which are particularly funny.<\/p>\n 4. Dig<\/a> was written while I was filling the baptismal font for my second daughter\u2019s baptism the day after Christmas in 2006. There was only so much hot water in the tank, so you had to get there early in the morning to empty the tank of hot water, wait a few hours, and then fill it again. I really enjoyed this song while writing it, and I hoped to record it with a real heavy metal feel. My limited musicianship skills killed that idea. I still think the song has its moments, but it meanders and has no real conclusion. The most painful part in the recording is my attempt at a guitar solo. It sounds like a pathetic piano solo, but it\u2019s really an even-more-pathetic attempt at a guitar solo.<\/p>\n Some have asked me if this song was inspired by the character The Shoveler, played by William H. Macy in the underrated movie Mystery Men. The answer is that, no, it wasn\u2019t, but it should have been. It was, however, partially inspired by an old SNL sketch with Will Ferrell where people dig tunnels across the world and then die. <\/p>\n Ironically, this song was written the day after The Miracle of the Christmas Poo<\/a>, which became the inspiration for one of my better tunes, about which I have already blogged.<\/a><\/p>\n I think these are all the songs I have recorded at the moment. More shall come. That\u2019s both a promise and a threat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I\u2019mactively recording music again. As such, I have a need to return to this blog and finish my songwriting journey so I can actually blog about other stuff and post new recordings. Because I know you want them.Bald<\/a> was very much a lesser tune, although it\u2019s a crowd pleaser when it\u2019s performed live. I ... 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