Song-A-Day 2022

No Molesté

1984 I’m a junior in high school. My father, a professional musician, has brought home a drum kit, an electric piano, and an electric guitar and practice amp to see if his sons might be interested in any of it. We were. My dad may have regretted bringing all of that home, and ultimately nothing came of it (because my parents were too nice to push us to the point where we might have done something), but we definitely had some fun jamming. My brother, Eric, still plays the piano part from one of those jams/songs every time we sit … Continue reading

My Girl

Ah, the rare love song rears its ugl… uh… beautiful head. Whatever. Love songs, happy songs… they just don’t come naturally to me. Anyone who has spent more than ten minutes with me and gotten beyond networking and small talk knows that I’m a snarky cynic for the most part, but with an unexplainable general optimism about people and life that not even the last two years has been able to squash (though not for lack of trying). So why are happy songs so difficult for me? Superficially, I still have these weird hangups that date back to childhood and … Continue reading

Lambent Memory

After a lovely day that provided one of the first hints of Spring-to-come, Mary and I headed over to the neighbors to hang out, have dinner, watch a movie, and just get generally silly. I’ll say nothing more other than I laughed so much that there was no chance I’d be doing a song with vocals, even if one had manifested itself in my brain. Getting a relatively late start around 10 pm, but with my new “I’m working ahead” mindset, I’d guess I spent around two hours on false starts. There was the random granular IDM techno weird thing … Continue reading

Kaleidoscope Badland

What a difference 24 hours can make. After deciding to post Dad, The Bringer of Age Just Kidding as my track for the 10th, I’m suddenly ahead of schedule. My new branding slogan is Tomorrow’s Music Today! In most ways, nothing is different. I still need to write a track today. I will, in all likelihood, still be up until 2 or 3 in the morning. But when I get up tomorrow, my song for the day will already be done and I can work on the next day. It’s exactly the same, except I don’t feel like I’m late. … Continue reading

Just Kidding

I’m not sure exactly how to write about this one, because it might not stay. I wrote the lyrics and recorded the entire thing on January 31 for my father’s birthday. Not only does it fit the “written and recorded in one day” criteria for Song-A-Day, but it was written on a day I might legitimately have done something to post as my February 1 entry. There is a brief writeup about this in my article Older Than the Planets, but I thought I’d write just a bit more about the process as well as what prompted me to post … Continue reading