The Sunday Song: New Year’s Song/1990

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Jun 122011
 

I wrote this in 1994. We were living in Alabama at the time, while we went to grad school. A lot of the stuff I was writing back then was kind of like “short stories as songs,” very under the influence of folkies like Bill Morrissey; this song in particular is one of those.

Needless to say, it’s entirely fictional; I was seven years old in 1978. 🙂 It’s supposed to be a tale told from the point of view of a man on New Year’s Eve in 1990, looking back at 1978 and looking at where his life is on that day.

download “New Year’s Song/1990” (mp3)

This was one of the tracks of an album called “The Land of Red Barns,” all of which had that short story vibe, pretty much. I have never recorded decent versions of most of them, and I am making it a project to get all the couple hundred songs I have written recorded and maybe even out there somewhere, so here’s this one.

Music geek stuff from here forward…:

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The Sunday Song: April Snails

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Apr 102011
 

We moved to a new house. There is a huge backyard, with fruit trees. And there are many snails.

This is the first thing I have recorded in quite a while, and the first in the new house’s music room.

It’s pretty rough. I just wrote it, and haven’t learned to play it very smoothly yet, and I didn’t even try to mix it right, so it clips in places.

download April Snails.mp3

Open D tuning, on the 1962 Gibson acoustic.

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Crooked Still

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Jun 102008
 

Shaken by a Low SoundHop HighIt’s been a while since I called out any music that has caught my attention — so I wanted to mention Crooked Still.

The press is labelling them as bluegrass. I suppose — though to me they sound like Alison Krauss’ voice melded with some of the classical/newgrass crossover of Appalachian Journey, though less angular. And in many ways more in the folk tradition than “normal” bluegrass (if such a thing exists anymore). The songs are arranged for double bass, cello, banjo, fiddle, and voice — and they’re all traditional songs taken to the point of unrecognizability at times. Really dark deep tones and really hypnotic.

The first two albums are Shaken by a Low Sound and Hop High. You can hear what they sound like on their MySpace page.