Sunday Song # 8, "Lil' Cowboy Tune"

This melody has been stuck in my head for approximately ten years now. I think I first sang it in the shower when John Demartino and I were sharing a dorm room our second year at New College, which was late 2000 and early 2001. I never bothered recording even a demo of it because I always assumed chords and words to it were right around the corner, but they never came. I also think it sounds so much like some other song out there already, but I can't put my finger on what exactly. I played it for some of my old high school buddies and they started singing "P.O.W., M.I.A., M.I.A," but that is a song I have as far as I know never heard.

But so this week I spent a little while trying to put chords to it, which ended up being trickier than I predicted, and I'm still not entirely happy with the chord progression I ended up with. I don't think I've ever started with a melody before, although this is the way that some of my very favorite songwriters go about it -- Stuart Murdoch of Belle and Sebastian for example, and I think Dan Bejar from Destroyer as well.

And as for the effects I put on here, I'd initially had very tasteful snare drum, viola, and piano combination but it sounded so much like what you'd hear in the Ken Burns Civil War documentary.

Sunday Songs # 7 - "A Kickin Bod"

You heard right, friends. We have returned.



Coming to you now once again from my parents' house, where I have moved from Athens (hopefully temporarily). My job had to cut my hours down to just one shift per week, and instead of looking around Athens for additional work (almost certainly of the minimum wage variety), I decided to take a break from Athens entirely and move back in with my parents. Again.

The good news is my mother's family is paying me relatively well to look after my grandparents on weekends, so I plan to remain here in the Blue Ridge area at least until I am able to save up a bit of money. I guess there is a big future in looking after old people? I'm not too terribly far from Athens (a 2 1/2 hour car trip), so I plan to keep visiting every couple of weeks to keep the band going and see my friends. I still want to record very soon and I am still planning on playing Athfest, Thursday June 25 at Cine.

Blue Ridge is isolated enough that hopefully I will be more productive with making songs and maybe other things too, but I am pretty ingenious at figuring out ways to procrastinate. I've read interviews with novelists talking about this and apparently this is always a problem, that it is always so easy to put off actually sitting there and writing. I tend to wait for a feeling of inspiration, but these feelings are few, far-between, and short-lived -- and I'm not sure if the thoughts or ideas I have at these times are that much better than those I have when I am just churning things out in very workmanlike fashion. I hope that by setting aside time to actually sit there and work on stuff, I will be providing a space or outlet for the inspiration to come.

But, PS, I think some of the best melodies come just when I am driving or walking around or waiting somewhere. And that is wonderful, but I never remember. So I plan to soon carry around a recording device, singing into it like a maniac. But I worry that it's one of those things that when you have the tape recorder and are ready for it, it scares the songs away. They're shy little animals!