songs:365

  • day 127: Garden Song

    Garden Song, by Peter, Paul, and Mary.

    Doubling up here with a song I recorded today for Dad’s memorial service.

    This song is a multi-generational family favorite, with roots in the Peter, Paul, and Mary kids concerts we all saw on PBS pledge drive weeks in the 1980s and beyond. (Can I sing “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly” note for note matching the VHS, including the funny voices and weird throat noises? I mean, kinda, I’m a dad, too.)

    Our parents know it, our kids know it, and it’s a good lesson about doing the work. Plant seeds, give them what they need to grow, and don’t stop.

    //

    There’s a second vocal and a noodly second guitar track, but I was kinda in a hurry to get this done on time today so I could finish writing my speech.

    And of course, doing the reading on this one, it was written by David Mallett circa 1975, so it’s not an old Pete Seeger tune, but Pete Seeger did record one, as did Raffi, Arlo Guthrie, John Lithgow, and literally John Denver with the Muppets.

  • day 126: Home on the Range

    Home on the Range, cowboy traditional.

    Honestly, there are authors, but unpacking the Wikipedia page for this song feels like a whole research paper. Safe to assume I was doing it with some combo of Sons of the Pioneers (with or without Roy Rogers), Riders in the Sky, and idk maybe Sesame Street on repeat in my head.

    //

    Semi-successful multi-part “harmony” without digital processing, kinda? Maybe? Maybe not. I’ll take it. Happy Birthday, Dad.

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  • day 125: Red Right Hand

    Red Right Hand, by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds.

    Did I see Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds live at Lollapalooza in 1994? Probably. I mean, I was there, and I vaguely remember this happened.

    Are we a season behind on Peaky Blinders because we really just couldn’t take that much more violence at that particular moment? Yes.

    Did I add synths to this song? Yes.

    Do I regret it? No.

    Did I forget the giant timpani drums? Yes.

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  • day 124: California Stars

    California Stars, by Billy Bragg and Wilco.

    Famously with lyrics by Woody Guthrie (sometimes still Boody Guppie in my household due to a silly book of Dylan poetry — Bob, not Thomas) set to music by Bragg and Wilco, I always think I don’t have a thing for this song and inevitably, I do. (Kinda like California.)

    It’s not just that it reminds me of camping with my wife that one time in California, before kids and office jobs, but that’s part of it. It just does its own good job of transporting to another place without time. (Kinda like California.)

    //

    Anyway, layered on extra guitars and calling it a night here.

    All the days are long right now.

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  • day 123: Cold Cold Heart

    Cold Cold Heart, by Hank Williams.

    I’m not really sure when I got into Hank (Senior) for good, but it was likely after college when I played a Greatest Hits CD until I had accidentally just about memorized most of it. Even at this moment, after playing this song, I have Kawliga and On The Bayou stuck in my head, and it’s totally involuntary.

    Hank (Senior) is great, and Hank (Junior) is terrible, but if you really want to go for a ride, spend a meaningful amount of time with Hank III, who plays shows that are half straight up country where he sings just like Hank (Senior), and half psychobilly punk and it’s all terrific.

    //

    Back in the basement office, with a notable (audible) change: Some natural reverb from the new vinyl plank floor, replacing the (wet) carpet. As noted on this track, the refrigerator also gets that natural amplifier, though of course it’s quiet now that I’m editing and writing.

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  • day 122: Eyes of the World

    Eyes of the World, by the Grateful Dead.

    This song is one I learned in college from a sophomore year suitemate in our shoeboxes-stacked-neatly-but-not-brutalist dorm, where we lived in a much-envied specialized accessibility suite we didn’t need, because they build more than they needed, into said dorm which had a 13th floor and there was a story that it only had one of those because it was built during a union strike and union-built structures in New York City don’t have 13th floors. (That last part can’t possibly be true.)

    I think the unauthorized (on multiple fronts) Calvin-and-Hobbes dancing tie-dye shirt I bought at my second Grateful Dead show at Madison Square Garden freshman year (uh I managed to stay busy my first couple months in New York) on literally my 18th birthday had the “Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own” quote on it, and it’s still cute.

    //

    Took the keyboard out to do an awkward organ thing and messed it up a little but like how it turned out. Walked around an E major scale to try and Jerry it up, too, and it’s OK.

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  • day 121: All Along the Watchtower

    All Along the Watchtower, by Bob Dylan*.

    I mean, I’m obviously doing it in Jimi Hendrix’s cadence, since that’s the first one I heard, and the one I know best, and I probably heard the U2 version after that and long before the Dylan original. Seems like I never bought John Wesley Harding out of the $8.98 bargain bin. But I did own Rattle and Hum on VHS.

    This song comes up as a recurring theme in Battlestar Galactica (2000s), too, which I completely forgot until I was deep into a second or third play through it tonight.

    //

    Added bass and a lead guitar, but didn’t try to poor-man’s-version Jimi’s lines (or, uh, Dylan’s harmonica, since I was so clearly covering the Dylan version here).

    A friend requested Purple Haze, and we may have to get to that, for two reasons:

    1. It was a song I asked my guitar teacher to tab out for me circa 1990, so I played it (parts of it anyway, and poorly) for years.
    2. It was… involved… in my answering machine message for a while as a kid. I did a Jimi Hendrix voice and said Ryan wasn’t here right now, so, uh, leave a message, and it was all a setup for Jimi to say, “excuse me, while I kiss the sky” before the beep.

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  • day 120: One

    One, by U2.

    First appearance here of one of my favorite bands as a teenager. Somehow, it is an understatement to say the live U2 show I went to changed my life. (It was the second night of the Zoo TV tour, which was to promote Achtung Baby, and not Zooropa, for the record.) It’s also not an understatement to say 90% of it was spectacle and maybe 10% substance, but, still, life changing.

    I’m pretty sure I started keeping a journal, like, the next day? And those notebooks got me through high school on terrible poetry and highbrow aphorisms.

    This song was a runaway hit on MTV, and wasn’t personal for me then, although the words hit a lot harder as an adult. Oh, and I wasn’t trying to cover the Johnny Cash cover on this occasion.

    //

    Had to add a guitar to do a little bit of the riff and had a good time jamming on the two scales this moves between anyway. Speaking of moving between things, I need to learn how to position the mic so you don’t have to hear all the sliding around the frets I’m doing quite so loud.

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  • day 119: Big River

    Big River, by Johnny Cash.

    Look, I know I’m going to have to look up the origin story of this one, but it’s a Johnny Cash song! How can it not be a Johnny Cash song??

    [looks it up]

    It IS a Johnny Cash song, thank goodness!!!

    I know I watched the Johnny Cash show with my dad when I was little but… [looks it up] uhhh it last aired a solid five years before I was born, so maybe we were watching reruns on like PBS or something? Or we just watched the same Johnny Cash special over and over? Or this all happened one night and made up a whole series? Or my dad would leave Johnny Cash on the TV any time he was on? Or it was that one episode of the Muppet Show?

    I literally have no idea which of these is true.

    //

    Added a bass-via-guitar-transposed-an-octave-down line, and that’s all. Would consider a brushy drum track if I had the patience tonight.

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  • day 118: No Depression

    No Depression, by Uncle Tupelo*.

    Would you believe I didn’t remember this would be another cover of a cover before I did it? Singing the lyrics, I was a little like “Hmmmmm… this song is a wee bit evangelical and sounds a little more like an actual Americana song from the 1930s than a simulacrum of one from 1990.”

    Turns out, it’s a Carter Family number, which I probably knew somewhere in the deep recesses of my Doc Watson listening ears.

    Got annoyed with an “indie rock road trip” playlist in the car coming back from soccer with the 10yo and put on that Uncle Tupelo album instead; he goofed “toil and trouble” as “toilet trouble” and now I can’t unhear it.

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