A quiet and guitary morning

Actually sat down and played some guitar this morning, wonder of wonders. I have about... 5 sets of lyrics written that need music, and I think I cracked three of them. It will be interesting to see what happens with these wintery songs.

It is bloody cold this morning, my gods... supposed to be even colder tomorrow. Iowa really sucks sometimes. It's so cold that it's dangerous to expose your skin for even a couple minutes. I guess I've inherited that sort of sick Iowa pride:

Hey, Winter, is that all you got? Come on! Bring it!

Hey, look what I lived through!

Yeah. We can be sooooooooo stupid. Whatever, it feels good to sit on the couch where it's... um... kinda warm though not exactly toasty, and make stuff up.

A whack on the top of the haid

While loading my laptop and lunch into my car yesterday, the wind somehow caught the rear door of my station wagon and whacked it down on my head - the sharp cornery part of the latch housing dug into the top of my skull. It was so cold outside that the tears froze on my face in the bitter, bitter wind.

Commence tiny violin solo.

Interestingly, it set off a frenzy of creativity. I spent a lot of time yesterday thinking about the awful holiday music we're force fed at this time of the year, and started hatching a bit of a scheme to do something to fight the pablum. So the question to me is, WHY do most people write sappy, stupid, awful holiday music? Why does it have to have saccharine melody and ridiculously cheery harmony, and what is UP with the jinglie bells? Bad and wrong people.

Let's dig into some holiday history, shall we? Celebration of the winter solstice has been going on since some observant early early early humans noticed that the sun moves in the sky every day. One morning you wake up and step out of the cave and the sun is over there, and a few days later you wake up and it's over there. Well, surely, the Sun is a God, and hey! God! Where are you going? Why's it so cold? Build fires to get His attention! Do something! Oh look! It's working! He stopped! Hey! Let's party!

That's the impulse that sends a little shiver down my spine at the first sight of snowflakes, the first whiff of evergreen, the first touch of bitter wind that reaches down from the North to freeze heart and soul. But I can think of very, very few holiday songs that celebrate that - truly embrace that older, wilder side of the season. The life-or-death drive to survive it, to stay warm enough and have enough food laid by just to keep waking up every day until winter loses it's grip and things start to thaw. That's some powerful and (seemingly) completely untapped mojo that our modern world could use about now.

We have been feeling that a bit here in the Midwest lately. Damn it's cold. Ten below overnight with raging, howling winds that take your breath right away. During the long nights we feed the fire and pile on the blankets. Going out is exhausting. Staying in is little better. We tread lightly over the ice that now covers much of our daily Universe, braced against the wind that threatens to knock us right off our feet.

So why don't we embrace the fact that we DO it every year? Most of us don't tell the tale we live to tell. Especially not in song. I think maybe it's time to change that.

Simmering

I think I got a good handle on how to finish the one song that was bugging me...hopefully it'll come together tonight. Guitar needs to be changed up a bit, along with a few words...here and there, it's all good.

WAY sleepy this morning...want to crawl under the covers and tell everybody to get stuffed and leave me alone...but...sigh...

2nd listen

Well, after a second listen this morning, I'm really pleased with all the songs. There's one that doesn't seem "done" - it's a complete thing, but somehow when you stick the fork in it you go, hmmmm...just needs a better arrangement maybe. I'll work on it tonight. See what I can come up with...

Back to work work work...

Track Scratch Fever...

I am listening to the scratch tracks for the next CD...Stumble of the Fall...RIGHT NOW I am listening...recorded them this afternoon on my field recorder...put them in the order I think I want...all that doo dah. So far, I'm thinking it's good...I just need to get them more fluid and effortless - I still have to think too hard about them. It'll come.

New songs about to...

I have a mess of new songs, so I'm hoping to have the energy to record them all one of these days...going to be a challenge, but somehow I'll get it done. I feel like this every time I go through this process, but I feel like some of these songs are the best stuff I've ever written.

It's darker work than I've done in a while - not unhopeful, just...darker. I'm actually going to open the record with a song I didn't write - which is a rare thing for me. It's a song my friend Bill Nix wrote called "Stumble of the Fall," which just ties the whole record together. A lot of the songs are bittersweet, or joyful in a dark and complicated way, which is what my life seems to be a lot of the time.

And yes, it's really just past 7AM on a Tuesday...this is just undignified for a musician of my caliber. Argh.