Part 2

(a form of Rock Opera)

An “opera” technically is where conversation is sung, along with songs maybe, and there is a story or a plot, and a denouement and all that, and so this is not an opera in that sense. But as a collection of songs, they express a snapshot, or a moment of observation and impression, in this very busy and fascinating era of the human condition, The Modern Age.

Certainly the universe has never seen such a “rock collection”. In “rock”, the genre, chords are mostly major and minor and progressions are simple and predictable. The band for this should include an electric guitar whose role it is to mock and mimic the singer, who’s clearly caught up in some sort of emotional issue, and begging to make a point. Perhaps the lead guitarist spends time on the stage, delivering his musical impression and rebuttal. (The bass player should be homeless and star-crossed at love and show a weakness for Bourbon, the drummer oblivious but steady, and yes, all the great rock bands had the keys back there somewhere, piano I mean.)

I thought these songs could fit together as a collection like this, and it took a long time to yank them from the ether, but here we go. In my wildest dreams I’d like to see somebody make a stage production of it. There are 5 songs from the ’90s album “This Elite Band”, 8 from 2002’s “Songs for the Modern Age”, and 9 from an unfinished album to be called “Images”. Though the last 9 need finishing, I’m turning loose the versions we have for the sake of this project. Actually finishing an album can take forever, and that’s a separate endeavor. And in the meantime I have written two more songs that could be added or used as alternates.

There are two acts of 11 songs, 50 or so minutes per “side”. There is me, telling the story of the collection, commenting on the songs, and introducing the next one. I’ve wondered if the narrator himself has a role to play, and perhaps that could be made operatic.

Intro

Briefly, the cast. There is “the kid”, in his 20s, kind, likable, intelligent, and coming of age with the realization that this “modern” age he is living in has complex and potentially overwhelming challenges. There is the co-star, “the muse”, older perhaps by half-a-generation or more. Wiser, informative. Evaluating, enlightening. Then there is the rest of the cast, “the cohorts”, the kid’s age and sharing the circumstance, albeit with different impressions and interpretations. One could decide who sings what, and many of the songs lend themselves to more than one singer.

In the recording I offered some suggestions of how such an “opera” could be presented, and pointed out that this is not in my job description as the songwriter. But I thought I’d help out. So I recommended a cityscape as the setting for the first set of eleven songs. Neon lights. Signs. The street. A street lamp. Can you see all the symbolism? For Act 2, the cast turns archetypal, with simple stage props and impressionistic style, or even a slide show.

I didn’t attempt an overture, where the songs are sampled musically. But all of these songs have “identifiers”, beats or feels that capture the musical identity, and surely a musical director could assemble this.

So, in Act 1, the first song, the kid is awed, and mildly shaken perhaps, by a taste of struggle, be it his or that of others. He knows he needs to watch out. He wonders how he might get to where he’s going, or headed. And with the cityscape as the backdrop, and The Modern Age as the backdrop, the kid:

Act 1

Song 1:   “Far As You Can See”

Wasn’t just a simple walking in the park

Next thing I knew it I was lost and in the dark

Don’t know how I got so blind

Guess I was looking for another way

Some other kind of game to play, and I had it in my mind

That life was so unkind.

Then a voice whispered in my ear

I had no business being there, and I didn’t need to see no more

Funny how it has to work some time

Like a poem where the words don’t rhyme

And you can’t be sure, what you went there for

(Bridge) Sometimes with your eyes wide open, it’s just too much to take

Hope that I don’t make some kind of big mistake

On a road that passes by this way

They come and go as if to say, “It’s not up to me.”

No surprises who’ll be on your side

For the hardest thing you ever tried to do or be

Or go as far as you can see.

The next song, the title track, “The Modern Age”, is a march, so it needs to be a very up song., perhaps with a lengthy intro. In fact, it probably should be a tad more upbeat and uptempo than the recording we did of it. This age we live in, with its demands and pressures, people are coping, and maybe a little exasperated. See the cohorts and their wild hearts, and the muse with his points to make?

Song 2:   “The Modern Age”

The early morning sun, looks like it’s havin’ fun

Got all the sky to play, don’t need me anyway

The time to fly is near, nothing hap’nin’ here

You listen what I say, won’t matter anyway

(Muse) To understand the best you can, there is no plan, only arrows in the sand

Bad old days were here to stay, it’s just the way

Of arriving in The Modern Age

Arriving in The Modern Age

I need gasoline, but my pocket’s clean

Don’t have no place to stay, hope I get by OK

The road ahead goes straight, don’t have no time to wait

Just hope that I don’t stray, won’t matter any way

(Muse) Who’s to save us from the pantomime

When we don’t even want to know the lines

Just a pill to chase the blues away, will set the stage

For surviving in The Modern Age

For surviving in The Modern Age

There’s a sign ahead, remember what you said

About the time you lost, that came at such a cost

Now you look at one, who’s out there having fun

The time to play is now, won’t you see some how

(Muse) Will you make it to the promised land

If all the while crossing arrows in the sand

They’ll tell you when they turn the page, the price you paid

For living in The Modern Age

For living in The Modern Age

With the busy and enticing backdrop of The Modern Age, this next song raises this question: Is this some kind of real thing or not? There is a cynicism in this song brought by disappointment. The first verse, a wisened child. The second verse, a romance that turned up empty. The third, a questioning of all we think we know. Until that instant, all that’s needed, comes “to shed some light on this insanity”. The Modern Age is full of these moments, as we stumble over ourselves “on our way coming back to the sea”. (This a line from a concept out there that eventually humanity destroys itself and life returns to where it all started, in the sea. All of our learning and “progress”. Where is it taking us?). Real thing, or not?

Song 3: “Is This the Real Thing”

What it seems in the beginning to be on the side that’s winning

Turns up a loser every time

So if you’re waiting for that moment when

Everything goes good again, you better learn to look between the lines

When suddenly there’s nothing there

But an emptiness that fills the air

With one more to compare

(Refrain) Is this the real thing?

Can I believe what I’m seeing, when it’s here today, then gone away?

If this is the real thing

Then I’ll believe it ‘till the future brings

Us all around to the other way

(2) Got a feeling as the hours passed

What’s the reason all I asked, for this lonely promenade

From in your face I thought I’d seen

The kind of light I would’ve never dreamed

Would offer this charade

Just a cross between a star of mine

And whatever was on your mind

When I caught you on a line

(Instr. Refrain)

(3) An instant all that’s needed

For advice that goes unheeded

To shed some light on this insanity

Even walked for a while on down

A road we had simply found

On our way coming back to the sea

It isn’t always what you do

That sets you back just a step or two

When it all comes clear to you

(Refrain, only this time, “Believe it” ‘till the future brings…)

Say we lighten things up a smidge. This next song is a “modern age nursery rhyme”. Picture a dude running to somewhere, momentarily through this cityscape, similar to what we see running through our own lives, at malls or over town or whatever. Where to? And to what? For us in life, it all generally spins “another time around”, and years rip by. (On this recording it was just me and the bass player one time through). The muse sings this one:

Song 4:   “Another Time Around”

With the night still runnin’ from the brake of day

And a street light shimmering the same old way

It’s the odd man out in the cold all night

With a line in doubt and a time too tight

There’s a hand in a pocket ‘round a roll of green

And a flippin’ old top says it can’t be seen

From the crow’s nest beacon it was hidin’ and seekin’

And a sail don’t know when a wind might blow

Kept on thinking it was out of time

Like a wrong new poem and a tired old rhyme

But your ears keep ringing from a fat chick singing

When the lights go out, on the twist and shout

Nighttime echoes from the break of day

Where an all new piper found a note to play

And they’re linin’ ‘em up for the trip up town

Where the wheel go spin another time around

The cohorts and the kid have seen enough idiot behavior to be able to recognize it and hopefully begin to distance themselves from it. In life we all know people, sooner and later, who have lost a grip on our version of sanity and give us the impression they are “so far gone”. Hopefully it raises the question, “Hey, maybe I’m the one that’s so far gone”…as to not even know it. Like my brother Buzz, the drummer, used to say, ‘It’s not knowing that’s worse’. (I continually accused him of being “so far gone”, jokingly of course, and that was his reply.)

Song 5:   “So Far Gone”

A poor man knows he gets to have his way

He don’t really have a lot to say

And it ain’t like he knows what he’s been missin’

He didn’t even hear he wasn’t listenin’

‘Cause he’s so far gone by now

Need to ask you what you meant by that

Did you really think it went like that

And wasn’t it you who never asked why

Were you afraid that you would just cry

Because you’re so far gone by now

Never really mattered where the road had led

Nobody remembered what was really said

How they gonna hurt you with the fights you lose

When there’s always one more trick for you to use

Just another day come callin’

And once again the sky hasn’t fallen

You looked up and couldn’t believe your eyes

The only thing the night had told you was lies

‘Cause you’re so far gone by now

When you lost your way and you hadn’t a clue

The end of something came and then you knew

Every other game you get to pick and choose

But now there’s just a little too much for you to lose

Looking back it never seemed so bad

In the end it never seemed so sad

But did you ever get to where you were going

Did you ever figure out what you were doing

And you’re so far gone….by now

Next, we go into an establishment, a bar. There is a scene of a kid striking out, and complaining that “pretty girls must have trouble identifying the cool guys out there”, like him. He tries pleading and bleeding, and eventually concludes that he “should’ve stayed at home”, the original name of the song. A modern age theme? Why not. Unrequited attraction is a timeless thing. But “Hey Baby”, which opens our first album, is a completely cute and electric rock ballad, and I had to find a place for it. A cohort who should’ve stayed at home:

Song 6:   “Hey Baby”

You know I don’t even know why I came here tonight

Guess I was hopin’ maybe something would turn out alright

I never needed to run into someone like you

And now I know that I shouldn’t do

What I’m about to do

(I said) Why oh why are you picking on little old me

You know the fool is the one that you don’t see

Why oh why, did you have to look so fine

If that was all the farther it went, the pleasure’s surely mine

(Refrain) Hey Baby, I’d do ya the best I can

But I know that pretty girls, can have a hard time pickin’ out a man

And I know all the losers, will keep from going home alone

It makes me feel like I should’ve stayed at home

Another drink or two is all I need to get me by

I’m gonna laugh but baby you may cry

But you won’t like it, it doesn’t matter what I say

You’re the, only, one who wants to be lonely

(Refrain)

Quickly we turn our attention to another cohort with ants in his pants. He’s quitting the place and headed out to the street literally and figuratively. And guess what, he finds things aren’t so easy, and maybe he needs to consider moving “home” somehow. You know, with mom. Not a good sign.

Song 7:   “No Direction Home”

Looks like I stayed around here too long

Nobody I’ll be missing when I’m gone

The sun was setting on a hill last night

Knew the time was getting’ close to right

But when I jumped back on the road, the feeling wasn’t quite the same

Just another pair of feet put back on the street

By the flash of a picture frame

(Ref) Well, even though it’s just a mile away

It didn’t mean you’d make it there today

Turning back minutes passing time away

Looking for some new words to say

Ain’t no direction home, a long road that you walk alone

Like everyone that you’ve ever known

You know I might’ve missed a highway sign

But nobody wants to hear that same old line

But in a minute it was time to go

Already knew everything there was to know

When I came to I was sitting at the foot of another day

When a door flew open I was sitting there hopin’

That somebody could show me the way

(Refrain)

Open doors present a major challenge for some people. They have a big toolbox for the closed doors of their life, but opportunity and responsibility can be too much, especially for the society’s simpletons.

Now back to the establishment, either in the “back line” of it, or outside having a smoke, this song is sung by a girl. She’s among the “losers” of the modern age, and you may not realize how many people eke out an existence on the margins of society, living with fools and idiots and abusers and drug addicts. But she’s trying. She’s working the menial job. And unfortunately all that’s shining on her is…the light of the night (the original name of the song).

Song 8:   “Lost Causes”

For so long I’ve waited in the back of this town

For a handful of happiness to turn me around

Through too many years of working too hard

Believing in luck, building bridges too far

(Ref 1) Seen my share of lost causes I know

Went to work in the dark with nothing to show

Puttin’ up a good fight, when all that’s shining is the light of the night

(2) The clock and the calendar are playing their game

Been around so many times, nobody they blame

Breaking backs and dreams when they can

And reminding the winners just where they stand

(Ref 2) Seen their share of lost causes I know

All dressed up and no place they go

To carry on their plight, when all that’s shining is the light of the night

(3) The lasting impression of all that I’ve seen

The tracks in the path, couldn’t see what they mean

Surrounded by fools I thought surely would be

A help of some kind, oh but alas, they were just like me

(Ref 3) Just sharing lost causes I know

Throwing seeds where nothing would grow

And knowing something ain’t right

When all that’s shined on me, was the light of the night

Yeah babe, whatever. This next guy is here to say hey, that’s life. Got to keep it real and light, and he’s hanging for as long as it’s fun. Keep optimistic, and if something ain’t happening, then move on. I mean, who slips down the right path anyway?

Song 9:   “Movin’ On”

Lookin’ up to see the world all passin’ by

Maybe been missin’ out but baby don’t you cry

It’s complicated I know but don’t ask me why

Gotta get where you belong

Just hope it doesn’t take too long

But how can everybody else be wrong

‘Bout another little trip to try?

Light of day shinin’ through the blind again

Same old thing going through your mind again

Time to look for something to find again

It’s a great big world out there

And you can find it if you dare

If it’s just me then I don’t care

But it looks like it’s time again

(Refrain) Who slips down the right path anyway

Let the chips just fall out where they may

It’s come and gone and it’s time for me to be movin’ on

(2) You know the best things in life you get for free

Close your eyes just hard enough to see

The game is on you gotta play to win you see

Hey, don’t you know I was only here a while

You know hangin’ ’round not my style

But you could maybe go an extra mile

To get where you wanna be

A lucky penny never lost its shine

Another train always coming down the line

Get it right, there might not be a next time

Don’t wait on a twist of fate

What happens when it comes too late

Take it all in for heaven’s sake

‘Cause it ain’t like the sun won’t shine

(Refrain)

Then, at a critical juncture in the opera, the muse sings this tenth song, “Vanity and Heartache”. The modern age is a terribly vain era, and people do what they feel they need to do, to feel wanted and to be a part of it. Perhaps in their frustration they lose self-awareness, and promote or protect the self too much, losing touch with the rest, embarking on a solo act that leads nowhere, or more specifically, to nowhere. The muse, firmly:

Song 10: Vanity and Heartache

In the cold and the darkness of night

Sure that everything is gonna be alright

Searching moments through and through

Holding out as once before

In another try at asking why go through an open door

Then a valley gives way to a rise

As hidden hallows take their turns at throwing out the lies

Secret messages again to speak their piece

To no avail the stranger fights emotion to release

(Refrain) Vanity and heartache all I see

Taking on the shades of hard reality

Looking for the truth to finally set you free

(2) Again before us now at a familiar place in time

A paradise we gain a bit from rays of lost sunshine

Asking for not much more than we really need

A fertile place to plant the gift of sow and seed

Some happy some sad do the best they may

For them tomorrow waits for yet another day

Never knowin’ for sure what it all could really mean

To trip and fall so far back in the machine

(Refrain)
(Instrumental Stanza)

(3) Some they weep before the rights and wrongs of now

Explaining to themselves it all makes sense somehow

And so it goes like no one know how paupers could be king

If only they could find a way to let their soul to sing, but… (Refrain)

The first set closes out with the kid singing the song “Broken Promises”. In this song, the point is that there is nobody there but you, to make your dreams come true. Your dreams must be more than “shadows of the night”, where your plan relied on someone else, who “broke a promise” of what you thought you had coming. Be careful with what you think is promised you. And hey, you can always “be an angel, just by being there for the day” for someone else. In life some people are more helpful than others, but that’s not their problem, it’s yours.

Song 11: Broken Promises

Broken promises are only dreams someone’s taken away

But shadows of the night are often known to end up this way

When you believe in angels and never hear a single word they say

(Refrain) There’s nobody there but you

To make your dreams come true

And who’ll care whether life’s been fair or not to you?

You can climb a mountain even if it’s higher the harder you try

And make it to the top never knowin’ the reason why

But don’t lie awake and wonder

Just close your eyes and leave this world aside

(Refrain)

(Bridge) It can seem like nobody understands

When you’re there with your face in your hands

Broken promises. Don’t let nobody take them away

Your visions of the night are what you need to show you the way

And you could be an angel just by being there for the day

(Refrain)

Broken promises. Broken promises

ACT 2

Act 1 can be considered more of a group of songs about personal issues of what to do or be or where to want to get to. In the second half the focus is more on all of us as a society and a people. Again, how to present these is not (necessarily) in my job description, but I have a suggestion. How about something simple and effective on the stage, and imagery of appropriate modern age happenings as a backdrop. Perhaps at times like a slide show. And who sings what? Think archetypes for the second half. Same cast in new roles.

At a last minute, we recorded this next song, called “A Good Ship Aweigh”, a tune I had written but not felt like it would go with the collection. But it does. When I’d written the song it seemed so out of the blue and weird to me. It is entirely metaphorical, but while speaking so clearly as a simple sea-faring song from a different era. And then the Arab Spring goes bad and the refugee crisis hits, and the song has a lot more relevance.

When I played it for the band, which took a long time, they seemed to see promise and variety with it, and of course it is a Modern Age theme, metaphorically or literally. Without the “we’re loaded up, are you coming with us or not” gene, nothing gets done. But are you sure about this? The boat won’t sink, right? You have taken proper precautions, right? Anyway, I was certain our gal Sadie and her accordion would capture the feel and it did.

It seemed appropriate to open the second half of this project with it. It’s the first song I have ever written in 3-4 time, and those songs are always so soothing and easy on you. And the concept of a journey, and the optimism of starting over in a new world, whether you travel an ocean or to a new job or career, a “good ship” is the one you want to be weighing anchor, and everything else you need, on.

Song 12: “A Good Ship Aweigh”

Off in the land of far-away places

Where the sun and the skies gets lost on the way

With the hope tomorrow the look of our faces

We know in our hearts we can get there some way

So here we stand looking out at the water

As we wait for the boat that comes in with the tide

Then it’s off to wherever, for little that matters

As much as the others, who never have tried, oh

(Refrain) The lines of the past disappearin’

With the clang of the bell that we’re hearin’

No time to borrow today from tomorrow,

Alright and Okay

For The Good Ship Aweigh

(2) Gone from the sands of a land long forgotten

To the new and the wonder of never before,

Oh, they’ll welcome us there, as if once begotten

Coming home once again from the waves to the shore

Now it’s the sun that’s slowly been risin’

The sails, they catch at whatever goes by

To the rare and uncertain on past the horizon

Adventures aplenty that never run dry, Oh

(Refrain 2) the lines of the past disappearin’

With the clang of the bell that we’re hearin’

No time ya borrow today from tomorrow,

Alright and Okay

For The Good Ship Aweigh

And we’ll see what it is that we’ll see

On a Good Ship Aweigh

For you and for me.

It then dovetails nicely into a song about America, and it’s immigrant history. On many occasions, a ship, weighed down with the possessions and hopes of real people. The next song on this side is called “The Wild Western Fantasy”. I point out that we are talking about the modern age in America. A country of immigrants, of utopian values, and of rule by the people, for the people. A wild, Western, fantasy.

I wrote a third verse that is played at the end of this group of songs as reprise, and when you see the lyrics you’ll know why. I had wanted to replace the second verse of the recorded song, keeping it classic, instead of this stuff about “little girl, where’s your daddy gone”. But alas, this verse fits, when you look at the recent wars of The Modern Age, and the dads who never came home. (Originally the lyric was intended to be metaphorical.)

Song 13: The Wild Western Fantasy

Can anyone hear the whisper of the springtime through the winter

The night will bring the sunshine and the wind and rain of the cloudy times

They brave the ocean’s hungry tide for a better world they know inside

To hear the symphony play their song

And hope that somehow they can sing along

(Refrain) Say a prayer for America, the Old Utopians’ legacy

And we’ll take care of America

So we can dream in our Wild Western Fantasy

Little girl where’s your daddy gone?

You haven’t seen him in so long

You mommy’s tryin’, she’s really tryin’

But late at night I can hear her crying’

You brothers need him to come home too

To save him from those things he do

Tell him you need him home today

In a world where tomorrow was yesterday

(Refrain)

My grandfather was an immigrant who came over on a boat as a teenager from Italy with no relatives. He braved the ocean’s hungry tide. Would I have? A nation of immigrants with a major immigration problem.

The next song is also about a very old character in human history, the man. The man of the house or the hut or the teepee, he is a threatened entity in the modern age. He wants to know, do you hear what he has to say? He knows he “won’t go away, long as they make us this way.” I call this the caveman song.

Song 14: Hear What I Say

I came around when the world was a real small place

Seasons bring a new wind in my face

But I know I got my work to do

It’s never done between me and you

Lookin’ after my own

I see how the world has grown

(Refrain) Do they hear what I say?

I won’t go away, long as they make us this way.

A century’s scene, the loss of too much everyman

What’s any different about a year two grand?

Knights and armor are all gone

A castle looms in a hill beyond

Fools in stupid screens, modern age machines, do they… (Refrain)

I’ll be back again when the world is a real small place

All that matters you never can replace

You’ll see it my way again

And feel like you’ve found your only friend

Standin’ big and strong, you could see me all along

But could you…(Refrain)

The man of the house theme continues with the next song, with him and his mate, and a song called “My Woman.” Again archetypal. Guy and a gal. And a screaming guitar. Again, I make a mention in the recording of the lead electric guitar’s role in “Rock”, from a Rock song to a Rock Opera to the Rock Genre. It is the countermeasure to the singer and his simple power-type chords and its inherent take-home message nature. The guitar augments these impressions.

Song 15: My Woman

I can see her standing there

For the moment a twinge of hair hangs in her face

The air of charm and grace

Every where I go I know

She’s there with all the loving so

I keep on what I’m doin’

And she’s my woman

But words can be so hard

You’ve got to make them up where you are

(Refrain) My woman just smiles and it’s alright

My woman just likes it when I hold her tight

The days are hard and the nights are longer

Timeout still just for a song or two

I play to you

Love is cruel I hear ’em say

For anyone who doesn’t know the way you make me feel

Like I’m for real

How could I ever make you cry?

We can make it baby if we try

(Refrain)

Come on baby take a walk with me

There’s so much out there for us to be

(Refrain)

In the modern age, the man/woman unit remains most critical not just for their kids but for almost every level of society. Stable, loving people and their households represent the hope for humanity. There’s so much out there for them to be.

We shift gears now. The diversity of behaviors presented to us in the modern age reinforces what we know about proverbials: they don’t go away. This next song, called “Proverbs” is a good song for a muse-type character:

Song 16: “Proverbs”

They put the message in your head

And you found it all easy to believe

It was fun until the start you said

When the fool sees what he sees

In the dark cloud hiding what’s up ahead

In a forest without trees

(Refrain) Only half of what you saw was there

But keep looking anyway

There’s nothing in the street you’ll hear

That means just what they say

It had only been a year or two

But it seemed so much further down the line

And while there was so much to do

Never seemed to find the time

To catch up to what’s behind you

Some trick that would save you nine

(Refrain)

(Bridge) You need to hold it all in your hand

To know for sure where it stands

When everything was said and done

It had taken too long to learn to play

But rules were there for anyone

Who showed up here one day

Was it over before it had begun

By taking the easy way?

(Refrain)

So now we’re making suggestions on how to act, which is the nature of anything proverbial, to be instructive. We keep this theme to a degree into the next song, the one I call “the gospel song”. Gospel, of course, aims to be similarly instructive, helpful. Be true to thyne own self. Don’t play games, and let simple dreams slip away. Because eventually people will shake their heads and move on without you.

Song 17: “The Games We Play”

Whenever I have to hear your misfortune

And the troubles that have found you on your way

When the hard part of livin’ is all you’ve been given

I just have to turn myself away

These tears you cry I guess you don’t know why

They keep finding their way to your face

(Refrain) Oh, the games we play

The simple things we don’t say

Oh the games we play

The simple dreams we let slip away

It’s so hard to be holy, I sure know

It’s hard to get up Sunday morning and go

It’s hard to see how it could really be

That some life in this party will show

Just hangin’ out? Well, isn’t it about

Time you learned what you know

(Refrain)

So there’s only one thing left to say

Only one thing I might ask you to do

Is to know that you are your own shining star

And to that light you will be true

Shine on! Your light is strong

If you will just shine it for you

(Refrain)

Again I point out that it is not in my job description as the songwriter to design presentation, but for these past two songs these are obviously characters of wisdom and guidance—with an edge, maybe, strongly suggesting such simple things as, don’t lie to your self, work hard at life to make it right, and don’t blame anyone for anything. In the modern age, we’re getting dumber, right?

So for the next song, the response. Hey, I was just trying to have a little fun, and, well, I didn’t mean for anybody to get hurt. Etc. A song of disclaimers by the mildly guilty:

Song 18: “Can’t Possibly Be”

Well I never even meant to speak my mind

Tell me what’d I say that was so out of line

I always wanted just to get along

I don’t need to do nobody wrong

Yesterday I was the man of steel

Right now I couldn’t tell you what I feel

Somewhere deep inside I cry for you

But who could ever tell you what to do

Life goes on and on it seems

And no one knows what it really means

When some things just are meant to be

And they’re happening so mysteriously

Wasn’t my idea living hard like this

I don’t see a thing except the things I miss

Wake up now and see it gone away

No time for any old songs to play

Where was I when it was going down

What happened when I didn’t come around

I knew all along you see

It’s a world you can’t be taking so seriously

Just you watch me make it through another time

I just shake my head and see I’m right on time

For a while I was the last to know

But now I see it everywhere I go

Last in line is just another way

To see ourselves and the games we play

It’s time to listen carefully

To those things, you see, that can’t possibly be

And while on the subject of misbehavior, especially by stars and celebrities, seeing big people take the big fall finds a comfort zone in the pitiful minds of a society of gawkers. Athletes with PEDs. Stars and their addictions. Fast living and its consequences. The modern age propagates these through its grand affluence and extravagance, and people find themselves having to rebound, and “make it through another time”, etc.

This leads to another song about the stars of society who are entrusted with, and indeed rewarded by, “making the moment mean so much”. Oh, to be the one, bowing when the show is done. And hey, we know it took a lot of work to get to where you are, as “the man in the tune”, but keep it real, and stay in your moment. We’re counting on you, to be great right now. This is especially true with the modern explosion of live music. Performers can be kept on the straight and narrow by remembering that “it’s only for the sake of someone else”.

Song 19: “The Face of Someone Else”

I look up and what’s this I see

Up in the lights for all the world to see

Them looking at you now it’s your chance to be

The man in the tune again

And on your face I see that silly grin

It’s just a game and you know you’ll win

These stories that you tell

People you say you know so well

You make the moment mean so much

You make the moment mean so much, whoa

(Oh, Whoa)

((Refrain) Just to be the one

Bowing when the show is done

To be the man who re-invents himself

And hides behind the face of someone else

So what’s it gonna be this time

You laughed about it but now you’re cryin’

We can always tell how hard you’re tryin’

Just what is it you believe

Just who is it you deceive

Just make the moment mean so much

Just make the moment mean so much, whoa

(Oh, whoa, then Refrain)

(Last time through:) You are the man who re-invents himself

But it’s only for the sake of someone else

Real quick, some “man in the tune violations”: breaking the 4th wall (direct interaction with the audience), get the audience to sing the big lines of songs, or any sort of echo-job, collecting signs, preaching, dancing with the hair or the outfit, getting the crowd to clap (“put your hands in the air now”, etc.), crotch-grabbing, braggadocio. You get the picture. Do much of this, and I leave your show, a terrible terrible development for you.

Still, we look up to our heroes, forgive them best we can, and in some cases thank The Good Lord they have existed for our benefit. And from more public figures to the heroes in our homes and extended families, it has always taken a village to raise people. And yet this grand expanse still fails to rescue all troubled souls, and some dismay us by their actions, where they are looking out as if something to see, in the darkness itself, a something to be. A troubled youngster sings this:

Song 20: “Rescue Me”

When hours have faded to moments again

The lonely will find it so hard to pretend

That some same old story is reaching the end

Slidin’ on down to wherever it goes

To the answers that lie in the lowest of lows

In battles lost that nobody knows

Closing your eyes to shades of gray

When they wake up again to another today

(Refrain) I need somebody to rescue me

There’s something that I don’t see

And even if I can keep on tryin’

Will they make it in time?

The merry-go-‘round that keeps wondering by

A face in the mirror keeps wondering why

It goes around again in the back of your mind

Looking out as if something to see

In the darkness itself a something to be

Something that’s so far away from me

Waited forever and ever it seemed

To wake up from all that I dreamed

(Refrain)

With just two and a half songs left, the theme again attempts to “encourage” members of society to be the best they can be. In this song, we point out that, in the modern age, people are just not as refined and that’s all there is to it. Work harder at your self! Practice practice!. We need you to be more major as dudes of society. Men especially. And women mean to pick up the “slack”, but at what cost? We know this much: people got it in their mind, there’s that something they need and it’s so hard to find. (I have always thought this song should have been more up beat than we recorded it.)

Song 21: “Hard To Find”

There’s such a thing as one in a million we all know

‘Cause they tell us so

A cool cat comes and takes the show but then before too long

You know he’d come and gone

With better things to do he wonders on

Up against the big odds all along

Just making on his way up the street know what he would do

And he say, “Wouldn’t you?”

(Refrain): Dark skies and a flash of light

For a minute, doin’ it right

And the people got it in their mind

There’s that something they need and it’s so hard to find

A glass jaw and a shallow drink makes a man of you

You gonna make that do

No help from the old man now he don’t come around

And he was so profound

Maybe he won’t know no more

Don’t you see he’s heard it all before

Couldn’t help but take the money and run and don’t see at all

It’s such a long way to fall (Refrain)

A lady friend now to carry the load and it’s just fine with him

Is she gonna sink or swim?

She’s seen and heard lots of crazy things and had to wonder why

She wouldn’t give it a try

She’s got a heart of gold we know for sure

But don’t ask her what she’s crying for

It’s not hard to expect a lot from what it might mean

When she makes the scene

(Refrain)

Now as the opera winds down, this sort of last song is an important message: say goodbye to yesterday. For so many, the past haunts them, and the harder they try to escape it the more they slip, and some never get over what they need to. And yet the only thing that ever matters is the hope of tomorrow.

Song 22: “Say Goodbye to Yesterday”

Up and down and all around simple dreams so much abound

On their way to the lost and found, and maybe lost again

For so fast they run and so far they come in the shadow of the morning sun

Get an answer when it’s said and done on the other side of now and then

But there are times when it’s all a big lie

And the world brings a tear to your eye

But then Monday turns to Tuesday

Just like any day that goes on by

(Refrain) Say goodbye to yesterday

Comes a time when there’s nothing left to say

Just the lines of some old song

Could ya see it, or believe it

Had to be this way?

All the time the words that rhymed had a meaning you had hoped to find

And the moment didn’t seem to mind if it was true alright

You’d let me know if lettin’ go made it easier to say it ain’t so

When everything you didn’t need to know would get you through the night

No looking back, no hanging on

No more being where you don’t belong

No more waking in the middle of the night

No more being wrong instead of right

Say goodbye to yesterday

Comes a time when there’s nothing left to say

Just the lines of some old song

Couldn’t see it, or believe it

Had to be this way

I have felt strongly that American culture is the heart of the modern age and all its issues. We set the tone, and freedom is the reason we can. So it ends with this reprise of The Wild Western Fantasy. Remember, I had attempted to replace the second verse with this one, which of course is nonsense. So with this reprise, as American as possible. Pick them out:

Song last: “Wild Western Fantasy Reprise”

From giant leaps for all mankind

To the little steps from the chains that bind

We’ll climb the hills before us now

To find happiness the fates allow

We’re there for all the world to see

All it is that life can be

When people live to find their way

In Freedom’s hand

At work and play

(Refrain)

And that’s that. So, whether someone ever can put a work like this into stage production does not change its identity: a rock opera, er, rock collection, called “The Modern Age”. Thanks so much for your time.

Big Red

From “This Elite Band” (1996):

Hey Baby, The Face of Someone Else, My Woman, Wild Western Fantasy, Broken Promises,

From “Songs for The Modern Age (Y2K):

The Modern Age, Is This The Real Thing, Proverbs, Hard To Find, The Games We Play, Can’t Possibly Be, Hear What I Say, Rescue Me

From “Images”(under construction):

Another Time Around, So Far Gone, No Direction Home, Movin’ On, Say Goodbye To Yesterday, Far As You Can See, Lost Causes, Vanity and Heartache, A Good Ship Aweigh

Wild Western Fantasy Reprise (Opera only)

Some questions

**Overall, was it a fun project? Did you like the songs, and did any stick out?

**Can you see the cast, and can you see the project as a stage production?

**What about a “rock collection” as a form or rock opera?

**The narration was meant to describe the project, as if to sell it as an opera, or as a potential stage production. Does the narrator have a potential role, and could it be sung? Or just delivered convincingly? Someone else mentioned this to me and I never thought about it. To do it, that means the intro/out-tro parts would have to be more direct, like some of them are. Any comments?

Thanks so much for your time.

My e-mail is: farmdudes@earthlink.net.

Back in the late seventies, I was hooked on the nightly news. Particularly the Huntley -Brinkley report, and then later with the man himself, David Brinkley. At the end of the telecast, they would feature a story about somebody or something that was interesting and thought-provoking. And one night they did a story about a bunch of office people who worked together, and they had all decided to learn to sing. Like somebody had asked, why can’t everybody sing? Can you learn to do it? They all did.

What it was, there was a congressional hearing of some kind where the lawmakers interviewed these people, and I don’t remember why. But they paraded them in, and they all looked like somebody you’d see in the mall, regular as can be. But they all could just completely sing, and they did it a capela of course, and I thought it was really something. Because I always thought singing would be a cool thing to be able to do, but I knew I wasn’t born with the ability and I wasn’t so sure you could learn to do it. But look at these people! They couldn’t, and decided to learn and now they can do it. Could I learn?

Then one night I was watching a commercial on TV, and there were about four different people in it, and they all had a real brief part where they were saying like one or two words, and really dragging them out as a long held note, and what amazed me is that they really sounded like they were singing, and they only said one word or two. What was it? They were holding a note, with a steady stream of air coming out of their self. See, that’s not how we talk, because when we talk we just say a sound, and put them together as words, but we do it in emphatic utterances. In singing it is a steady and even flow of air, a steady noise. And you hear those professionals with their use of vibrato, where their stream of air for a note is steady, but simply and purposely vibrated to allow for a more comfortable steady flow of air. For years I thought you could only vibrate like that, or you weren’t making the sound properly. But no. Any style that generates a steady flow of air to hold those notes, that, somehow, is singing.

So I decided to take lessons. It was about 5 years later, and I’d started banging on pianos, and after three years or so I could move around enough to keep a rhythm, and while I wailed away with myself, I didn’t sound to myself like I was singing. And that story about those people all learning to do it was still in my mind. So anyway, I looked in the yellow pages, and I found this ad about this lady who gave singing lessons at her home. So I show up at my first lesson, and she comes around the corner with one leg that’s about a foot short and she wore a real long shoe to make up for it. And despite this stigma, guess what, she’s over it and can flat do the hardest thing there is to do, which is sing. There in her self, that lesson. To sing is a very humbling thing, so if you’re already humble, doing this is maybe easier. Or maybe because singing is such a cool thing to be able to do, maybe some people learn to do it because it’s quite the esteem builder. So away we go, and I just tried to absorb what she said, even though it would be many years before I felt like I could put it all into action.

Lesson one: It has to come from your thorax. However you can find it, in order for your being to be making this noise, it is not coming from your talk box. You take a breath, and as if you’re slowly letting the air out of a balloon, your voice box is that narrowing, but it is your whole chest that is making the noise. She would have me try to generate this sound and every now and then I’d do something and she would jump and say, “There it is!” And then I’d try to “sing”, and I guess I was “saying” the note, rather than singing the note, and she’d shake her head and say no, you’ve lost it. I now know that at times I was letting it out of my thorax, like those people in that commercial.

Lesson two: If you’re popping veins out of your neck, you’re inhibiting the flow of the air, and the voice box is trying to “say” the note, rather than letting the thorax do it. This “choking” of the note both quiets it, and flattens it. And everyone in the room knows it. That is all so important. You cannot strain, ever. Because if you do, those muscles fatigue, and when they fail, you embarrass yourself enough to question ever trying to do it again. She would look at my neck, and when the veins would pop out, she’d shake her head and turn away.

These both finally led to what becomes the MOST IMPORTANT lesson of them all, the thing called “getting” warmed up. When after perhaps 5 or 8 minutes of actually singing, the chest muscles and neck and voice box all get to know each other, and she said it was blood flow to the muscles, and that’s probably it. I mean, if you’re an athlete you see this. The legs and shoulders, and the circulatory system’s adjustment to these demands, and the nervous system’s input, all get, well, warmed up. She would say that when this happens, now the teeth and lips are just “chopping” off the sounds, the words, and so forth.

Heard of Josh Groban, hired gun singer? He’s totally figured it out. And I was reading something where he said his warm up routine was two different drills lasting something like 20 minutes, and then he would drink two drinks and go on stage. When I go to shows I’m always amazed, usually in the second song or so, the singer warms up, and it gets way good. I always thought Gregg Allman, one of the greatest singers of all time, screamed his way to a warm up. It usually took half a song. And lastly, the first time I saw Steely Dan, Donald Fagan wasn’t warmed up for thirst song, and I thought they’d lost it. And then bingo. He warmed up and killed it.

So for me the first time I warmed up myself was about a year and a half later. It was Friday night around 6 pm, and I was headed home to hit some bar and hopefully get lucky. So I opened a beer and set it on my speaker, and sat down for a song or two and with home an hour and a half away I could maybe make happy hour. Well, I must have hit a groove or something, but I just really thought I was singing for the first time, and I just stayed there and played on and on. Finally. What a relief! I was there until 12:30 and never got up. And I hadn’t had another sip of the beer I’d opened. Six straight hours. I knew something unusual was happening. But it was getting late, and I finally split out of there and tried to make a bar before closing time.

I hope you are seeing some key lessons in there. Here’s another one. It was about ten years later, and I wouldn’t over estimate my ability to sing. But I’d bought a sound system, and I decided to get up the nerve to go to a local pub in my town, and I said I’d set up and do a gig for free. Gulp. So I set up the rig and away we go. I remember some people from work came, and sat right in front of me, and immediately requested a song I didn’t know. Then I played one that had no magic at all, and I was a little flustered, and turned up my monitor a little bit. And about half way through the second song, I warmed up. I mean, that was the whole plan, to get set up and warmed up, and it was finally happening. By this time I’d learned a bunch of tunes, and it’s so weird, it was like the piano was playing itself. I played Billy Joel and Jackson Brown and The Eagles, and people were leaning out of their chairs and I just had a ball. I remember these two guys in their forties rolled in together and stood at the stand up bar about 20 feet away and watched the whole show, and barely said anything to each other. I never did take a break, and then quit at about one thirty. When I was done the guy who owned the bar up the street asked me if I’d play there. I thought ,gee this is fun, getting warmed up. We later started playing as a band, our basement players from the “Café Elite”, and the Friday nighters. And to this day, getting warmed up is all I can think about, starting with simple songs, where high hard notes are not required.

So this rambling description you have just been through, that’s my discovery of “singing”. It’s where, physically, a warmed up, blood supplied thorax slurps a in a big volume of breath, and lets out a steady flow of air through an unstrained voice box, the words themselves chopped off at the mouth and lips. And you can learn to do it, whether that’s by just working on note generation long enough to get warmed up, and to recognize when that warm up has occurred, and ride it. Or taking lessons where someone can guide you to making this noise happen. To do it well however, is yet another matter. So we move on to these important other details.

Sounds are largely vowel sounds. So, singing is a series of vowel sounds, long “A”s and “E”s or “I”s, those are embarrassing noises if you make them badly. They may be correct and totally painful. There are the “OHs” and ooohhs, like in the word “soup”, and so forth. Remember then in singing, you must learn to make these notes beautifully. With experience, you must learn to chop these notes beautifully, and believe your voice box is fancy enough to do this. You must be self aware enough, and allow this beautifulness to flow through these sounds. So when real singers sing, emotion is there in facial expression, and in being and in delivering right from their soul to your soul. So again, the beauty of singing is that once you learn to warm up, and generate these sounds properly from the center of your self, you can learn to make them beautiful.

Keep this in mind also. The sound is drastically different when your mouth is open, and with singing being basically a controlled scream, the mouth must open for the noise to come out. Open, and chop with the teeth and or lips. Try to see that.

For me, I remember Billy Joel on “Piano Man”, where he does the “Oooh, la, la la, dee dee dah” part, it’s so heartfelt and earnest. To be an effective singer, you must both make the sound properly, but it must be appropriately beautiful. It takes a lot of guts.

Isn’t this fun. It’s all so easy, and everyone must learn to do it. And there are still a few more points to be made.

Phrasing: When a singer has warmed up, the actual process of singing involves taking a good breath and singing tunes one phrase at a time. For example, in Roger Miller’s classic “King of the Road”, the first “phrase” of the song is obviously, “Trailers for sail or rent…”. When the delivery of this phrase is complete, another good breath is taken, and the singer proceeds to, “Rooms to let fifty cents”. So, as soon as any phrase is delivered, a breath is taken and the singer prepares to deliver the next phrase. Simple, right?

Nothing is simple, of course, but singing, at its most fundamental, is just that. After proper warm up has occurred, the concentration mainly involves remembering to take nice deep breaths and prepare for the next bit of whole-body bellowing we call “singing”. So, every break in the song is but another opportunity to fill the lungs again with air. And if you watch real singers, there is emotion on the face, and maybe the arms are extended, and the hands opened, and raising with the note and notes that are delivered. At the end of the phrase, especially at certain parts of the song, a “big note” is delivered, often held much longer and much more convincingly than the ones in the rest of the phrase.

But the magic of singing is in the phrasing. And not only is there a steady flow of air coming from the singer, but how much time is spent on each syllable of the phrase is what makes the singer sound like he is actually singing. I mean, how many ways can you phrase something? It depends on how many total syllables are in the phrase, and the possible amount of time available to spend on them. An extreme might be Willie Nelson, who sort of talks his way through songs, and then hits and holds a syllable and it reminds you why he’s so famous. It’s like those people in that commercial, they were just holding one syllable of one word in a very brief phrase, and of course this is the essence of singing.

I asked my brother, a drummer, who’d studied music in college, what the most important part of singing was, and he hesitated a moment and said “syncopation”, which I had to look up. In singing, syncopation is where the emphasis (by the singer) is placed on the “off” notes, or what you might consider the less important syllables of words. It is the holding of those notes that make it sound like you’re singing. (The word “syncopation” is used most by musicians when talking about beats, or syncopated rhythms. In that case there is emphasis on the beats you don’t usually think about, and this makes the drumming more colorful and interesting.)

So, syncopation in the Roger Miller song might be where you emphasize the “ers” part of “Trailers”, and by holding the second syllable of that song with your steady flow of air maybe twice as long as the “trail” part of the word, it’s more interesting and sounds like you’re singing. But remember this: it must all be done in rhythm. No matter what, at the end of any phrase, the some total number of notes, and time spent on the phrase is the same as that spent by the musicians playing the song. This is also called “singing within the beat”, but there is exactly the same amount of time elapsed. You must absolutely sing in rhythm, just like any other instrument must be done in rhythm. People mainly notice rhythm, and feel rhythm, and when there isn’t rhythm there can be no magic.

Back to vowel sounds: It has been said that singing is a matter of making a series of vowel sounds, and to a large extent this is true. And some are much easier to make than others, so singers might make a long “e” sound for anything from a long “a” or “i” sounds, because with these latter two you really have to open your mouth to let them out, and it’s hard to master that without making everyone in the room cringe and want to go home. So for sounds where you really have to open your mouth to let them out, like “i” and “a”, it’s harder than “o”, “u”, “e”, and that’s what makes great singers great, they can do those notes too.

But it is vowel sounds that, in singing, are the noises you make. And when you make them with your steady flow of air, you create a signal for the microphone and the sound guy to have something that they can send to the speakers. Most good singers make a lot of noise when they sing, and generate a good solid “signal”.

And then there’s the whole idea of doing all this into a microphone, a separate trick that you simply must practice. If you’re real close to the microphone, and maybe your lips are even touching it, you can have a good signal generated without that much air. But for big notes, the singer will generally pull away from the microphone a little, depending on how much of a scream he or she plans to make. You have probably seen the professional singer do this. It is something that can only be done with experience.

Of course, it’s one thing to sing in the shower, and another thing to have it recorded, and then be confronted with it. Most people who have heard themselves in a recorder of some kind will universally say, “Wow, I sound like that?” Well, yes, that’s what we’re all hearing. So with all this in mind, yours truly set out to do the hardest thing of them all: to not only compose songs that you yourself would like and want to sing, but to then get a band to learn them, book studio time, and sing so that others would want to hear you. I personally never thought it would happen for me. People don’t really like to tell you how your singing is, and that feedback is hard to come by. But we did it, and in 1996 went into a friend of mine’s studio and recorded “This Elite Band”. There is a litmus test where you give the CDs out, and see what happens. Now, I’m not a great singer, whatever that is, but we made the discs and gave them out, and what happened was astonishing, and still happens when I give the disc out to strangers now: they like it and listen to it repeatedly. Still. Now, if people put on your recording and listen to it repeatedly, or they tell you their kid “won’t stop listening to it”, you arrived as a singer. Like famously The Grateful Dead, who weren’t great singers, but sung together well. And plain and simply, Jerry Garcia sung those songs right into your heart. Ultimately that’s what all of these techniques and recommendations about singing must achieve: communicating music and tune to another soul. You can’t just hide behind technique and tricks. The final ingredient is this realness. And you can’t do it without the fundamentals.

OK?

There is no song on “Images” called “Images”, with the name simply pointing to the nature of the songs denoting images, of people, of course. I had been writing songs to try to finish compiling about 22 tunes that would constitute a rock opera, what I call a “snapshot” of this modern age we are living. There had not been such a plan until this past 4 or 5 years, when the idea for such a gargantuan musical project dawned on me. Until then there was no intention to specifically write a bunch of songs about people in this era of the human condition, but given my job description, I guess it happened naturally.

An album of songs is by itself quite a project. As opposed to “singles” that might stick in your head, an album is a collection that denotes a feel, a mood, and a time in history that it was laid down. Thus, “Images”. Let’s hope none of these images is you.

So Far Gone

I had this guitar that a friend of mine loaned me, a little Gibson sunburst, and he said that he’d lived in KC for several years and that Bob Weir and some Dead members had frequented the house. Bobby had played the guitar there and really liked it and took it and played it in concert once. And so when I’d told my friend that I was trying to be good enough on a guitar to be able to play around campfires, etc. and needed one, he lent this one to me. We used it in the basement parties for years, and it had a real sweet sound to it. Then somebody ripped it off out of the back of my truck. It was many years before I told the guy who’d lent me it that it was lifted. Whomever it was, I figure they brought terrible karma to their self, for sure.

So I’d bought one to replace it. I went in to a store in Covington, and hanging on the wall was a 1950s-era small acoustic called the Gibson Jubilee, and I bought it for $1000, not really knowing if it was any good or not. The first night I had it I literally said to the guitar, “Do you have any songs in you?” I started plucking a little rhythm in G, and in no time “So Far Gone” was born. It only possesses chords I can play on a guitar, G, C, D, E minor. (Actually there are several more chords I can play on a guitar).

It is a song without a “middle 6”, or refrain. Just a number of observations, and then a turnaround as if to allow the song-doer to pause after such exploration. I have played it on piano almost exclusively. I would say this is probably my favorite. So when we went in and recorded it in the fall of 2015, it turned out so good and really, it’s done and will probably be the first thing you hear on “Images”. And the life put into it by Tony, Buzz’s boy who is now our drummer, has reassured me we can record music even now that Buzz is gone.

Lyrically it explores a favorite theme of mine: people who are fools and have no idea. And now they’re “so far gone” they ain’t and won’t ever get it. See it as a “Modern Age” theme?

   (1)A poor man knows he gets to have his way

He don’t really have a lot to say

And it ain’t like he knows what he’s been missin’

He didn’t even hear he wasn’t listenin’

‘Cause he’s so far gone by now

(2) Need to ask you what you meant by that

       Did you really think it went like that?

       And wasn’t it you who never asked why?

       Were you afraid that you would just cry

       Because you’re so far gone by now

(B1) Never really mattered where the road had led

       Nobody remembered what was really said

       How they gonna hurt you with the fights you lose

     When there’s always one more trick for you to use

(3) Just another day come callin’

     And once again the sky hasn’t fallen

   You looked up and couldn’t believe your eyes

   The only thing the night had told you was lies

   ‘Cause you’re so far gone by now

(B2) When you lost your way and you hadn’t a clue

The end of something came and then you knew

Every other game you get to pick and choose

But now there’s just a little too much for you to lose

(4) Lookin’ back it never seemed so bad

In the end it never seemed so sad

But did you ever get to where you were goin’?

Did you ever figure out what you were doin’?

And you’re so far gone by now.

No Direction Home

This song was an attempt to write as simple of a “rock” song as you could. I’ve been a little self-conscious about too many lyrics in my songs (not really) but thought it would be a good exercise to keep things simple lyrically and musically. The song is in G (major) and the trick is the rapid jump from the tonic to the (subdominant) C, which ended up in the refrain. The rest just came from that riff or jump, followed by several “mixed” chords. Musically and lyrically, these all came together in, like, one sitting, and that is always a good sign for songwriting. I mean, they’re all different, but when they fall together fast, those songs are often popular and sound familiar.

The lyrics ended up chasing another favorite theme for me, which is people who are bailing out on something, like a job in this case, because the grass elsewhere must surely be greener, which it rarely is. He soon finds that the world is cruel and that he would be wise to find his way back “home”, wherever and whatever that is. Musically it has a bunch of “kicks’ in it, a challenge for any band. It is as solid and simple of a song as I can write. The shouting proclamations after the refrains seemed necessary, and I’ve even done the song without them, because they’re difficult. I’m hoping they can stay with some embellishments, like harmonies. Guess we’ll see. Again, many of these songs are demo level, as needed for the oera they are in, The Modern Age

Looks like I stayed around here too long

Nobody I’ll be missin’ when I’m gone

The sun was setting on the hill last night

Knew the time was getting’ close to right

But when I jumped back on the road, the feeling wasn’t quite the same

Just another pair of feet put back on the street

By the flash of a picture frame

(Ref) Well, even thought it’s just a mile away

It didn’t mean you’d make it there today

Turning back minutes passing time away

Looking for some new words to say

Ain’t no direction home

A long road that you walk alone

Like everyone that you’ve ever known

(2) You know, I might’ve missed a highway sign

But nobody wants to hear that same old line

But in a minute it was time to go

Already knew everything there was to know

But when I came to, I was standing at the foot of another day

When a door flew open I was standing there hopin’

That somebody could show me the way

(Ref) But, even though it’s just a mile away

It didn’t mean you’d make it there today

Turning back minutes passing time away

Looking for some new words to say

Ain’t no direction home

A long road that you walk alone

Like everyone that you’ve ever known

Another Time Around

Several years ago I was having trouble with a note on my Baldwin piano at my house, the C# in the treble clef. My piano tuner noted a missing pin in the action, and sent me about 4 small pins to replace it, and said one of them would fit it, which it did. See, you can loosen a few screws and slide out all the action on a grand piano as one unit, and there are several adjustments you can do, because banging on the instrument naturally knocks them out a little, and the hammer won’t strike the strings right, and it’s fun and easy to work on them. I replaced the pin and it was such a relief to have that note back after several years of it being soft and off.

So from then on I couldn’t keep my right ring finger off the thing, and two songs came from it, including this one. In the key of D major, the C# is the major seventh, a note from the jazz universe and I’ve always been curious about it in songs. It is an interesting counter to the “power” chords, a softer gentler note. So, once the note was fixed, I kept banging around using it, and the tunes wanted to be in D, a key I had not yet written a song in. The beat was established, and the riff on the piano was fun, so it quickly became a song.

Originally the tune had an additional middle part that was dropped, and what ended up was a song about a dude in the Modern Age trying to play its game, and of course he looks like a fool just the same as anyone attempting to navigate through this era in this way. Have the fun, sure, but at what peril? See it as a Modern Age theme. In the studio I played it once with the bass player Bruce at the end of a session, and it accomplished what it needs to and I’m wanting to leave it that way, real simple like that. And done in one pass. When I’ve tried to play it with a drummer I have found they struggle with it, so I’ve just left it the way it is, at least for now.

(1) With the night still runnin’ from the break of day

And a street light shimmerin’ the same old way

It’s the odd man out in the cold all night

With a line in doubt and a time too tight

(2) There’s a hand in the pocket ‘round a roll of green

And a flippin’ old top said it can’t be seen

From a crow’s nest beacon, it was hidin’ and seekin’

And a sail don’t know when a wind might blow.

(B) Kept on thinkin’ it was out of time

Like a wrong new poem and a tired old rhyme

But your ears keep ringin’ from a fat chick singin’

When the lights go out

On the twist and shout.

Can’t scream it any louder than that

Day trippin’ to the blue and black

It’s the same old story so don’t you worry

Just a post card note from the sad and sorry

(3) Night time echoes from the break of day

Where an all new piper found a note to play

And they’re linin’ ‘em up for the trip up town

Where the wheel go spin another time around

Consider it a modern day nursery rhyme. But really, it was that note on the piano, that’s all. Again, these are supposed to show you how songs are born, or discovered, or uncovered, or yanked from the ether, all part of the mission statement for the site. It usually starts with you and an instrument. A “feel”, or identifier is generated. From there it’s the same for all songs, journeys from the tonic, and back again.

A New Romance

A once-through version of this song exists and it is not a part of The Opera. It is, however, a song that fits “Images”. Again, the C# note. In this song it serves as the major seventh more than in “Another Time Around”, where it is more just part of the scale and the riff that starts the song. You’ll note the Dah, dah de dah de dah dah dah. Simple rhythm. Throw in a few G’s and A’s, a simple refrain, and simple bridge. Presto.

I haven’t thought that much of the tune because it’s so simple, but it’s a real song, all its own, and has imagery. You can’t throw away songs, just because they’re simple.

Lyrically, it seemed to want to be a kind and decent song, and the words “new romance” wouldn’t go away, and I just couldn’t find a way around it being a song about that. I’ve even tried to sing the song without that hook and can’t do it.

Anyway, I’ve always been struck by how hard it must be to be a girl and entertain thoughts of romance with a new person, or a stranger who might be Mr. Right, or perhaps a real smooth lunatic or even a serial killer. Girls have a big disadvantage in this way, and any reluctance is understandable. And this is not an unrequited love type of song. It’s more, Hey Babe, I can really make fun for you. May I have this dance?

Finding time it was just you and me

Happened on a kind reality

A way to feel it all we had to see.

Riding out again to climb the hill

‘Round about the way it’s better still

Ain’t hard to want to catch the thrill…

(Ref) Of a new romance

Some times you gotta take the chance

No one but you gonna make ya

But are you sure you wanna have this dance

No tellin’ where it’ll take ya

(2) Was a time when you’d know what to do

You were known to catch an eye or two

The inside of you was all you knew

No thinkin’ it’s the same old song

Could it be you never listened long

Look so hard to try and find something wrong

(Break) Can I see you in the full moon light

Babe you know it’s gonna be alright

All you gotta do is hold on tight

(3)(Instrumental half verse)

Reaching out across the great divide

Never knowin’ how hard you tried

To see where you could run and hide…

(ref) From a new romance

Some times you gotta take the chance

No one but you gonna make ya

But are you sure you wanna have this dance

No tellin’ where it’ll take ya.

I could not remember the beginning of the second verse and called home to see if Andrew could find the song, usually on a piece of printer paper. He couldn’t, so I made up what you see there about the “used to catch an eye or two” line. You know, there are so many romances that might have been great ones, but one or both didn’t make it happen. It’s a scary thing, a new romance. How hard would it be to bail without hurting someone, or other bad outcome scenarios? But there sure can be big fun, and sometimes you just gotta take a chance. Or sit at home alone.

Lost Causes

In the key of F major, for piano players, there is an entirely different set of fingerings to hit the traditional notes and chords in a scale, and the songs are just different or something. So for fun and relief, a song should be written in “the flats” every so often, and that’s what happened here. I love this song, and it’s been probably 10 years since I wrote it. It’s super simple, slow, and somber, and thus makes a point.

So I came up with this concept of a girl working at Waffle House or someplace like it, maybe night shift, but steady work, and she’s a rock of an employee. But she is happy to achieve only this high, where the responsibility is not very much. For so many of these folks of “lower socioeconomic status”, life is a struggle. Bills are hard to pay. The father of her young children is a dog and an underachiever. The people she works with are of similar ilk, and eventually frustration is the rule. And at some point, it dawns on her that she’s been party to a bunch of “lost causes”. Sad. And she’ll be right back, after her smoke break.

We recorded this on that night mentioned before, and it’s like the song’s already done. Fun to play and sing. See it as a Modern Age theme?

• For so long I’ve waited, in the back of this town

For a handful of happiness to turn me around

Through too many years of working too hard

Believing in luck, building bridges too far

(Ref 1) Seen my share of lost causes I know

Went to work in the dark, with nothing to show

Puttin’ up a good fight

When all that’s shinin’ is the light of the night

• The clock and the calendar, are playing their game

Been around so many times, nobody they blame

Breaking backs, and dreams when they can

And reminding the winners just where they stand

(Ref 2) They’ve seen their share of lost causes I know

All dressed up, and no place they go

To carry on their plight

When all that’s shinin’ is the light of the night

• The lasting impression of all that I’ve seen

The tracks in the path, couldn’t see what they mean

       Surrounded by fools I thought surely would be

     A help of some kind, oh, but alas, they were just like me

     (Ref 3) Just sharing lost causes I know

     Throwing seeds where nothing would grow

     And knowing something ain’t right

     When all that’s shined on me, was the light of the night

The song was originally called “The Light of the Night’, denoting the experience of the night shift employee, going to work under the shine of a street light. More images.

Say Goodbye to Yesterday

How about a song in A major? Again, for a piano player, it’s different from other keys, in this case a walk-down from A to G# minor, and F# minor, to E, then D, and how about a turnaround through B to get back to E, and then from there naturally back to the tonic, A. Then a pre-chorus slides in where there’s a little bit of a key change, and these are all music movements in a million rock songs. A minor, G, F, E, all majors. Then after a little hesitation on E, back to the tonic of A major and a real simple refrain. There’s a kick in the middle of the refrain, and that’s that. It’s a music composition that just sort of happened, again by just banging on the piano.

The refrain in songs like this has to be big, and that’s always such a challenge because the singer has to be big, not cute or nuanced. Big notes, like in rock songs. Lyrically, this tune says much of what people need to do and don’t, which is to move on from the trappings of the past and live in the moment. For many, the past is a terrible blot that many don’t ever get over. But the songs wants to say, or ask, could you possibly see that things sort of had to be this way? And “Had to Be This Way” was the song’s original name. And obviously, a Modern Age theme. With imagery.

(1) Up and down, and all around

Simple dreams so much abound

On their way to the lost and found

And maybe lost again

For so fast they run, and so far they’ve come

In the shadow of the morning sun

They’ll get an answer when it’s said and done

On the other side of now and then

But there are times when it’s all a big lie

And the world brings a tear to your eye

But then Monday, turns to Tuesday

Just like any day that goes on by

(Ref) Say goodbye to yesterday

Comes a time when there’s nothing left to say

Just the lines of some old song

Couldn’t see it, or believe it, had to be this way

(2) All the time, the words that rhymed

Had a meaning you had hoped to find

And the moment didn’t seem to mind

If it was true alright

You’d let me know, if letting go

Made it easier to say it ain’t so

When everything you didn’t need to know

Would get you through the night

No looking back, no hanging on

No more being where you don’t belong

No more waking in the middle of the night

No more being wrong instead of right

(Ref)

Vanity and Heartache

Musically at the time this song was written I was banging in C major, which is all white notes on a piano. There was a super simple movement, but the key for the song was to go to the bridge without finding the tonic first. Pretty simple. But I think it took a year to work out how the tune goes, because I kept hearing something in there that I guess didn’t want to be there. This continued well into the lyric writing of it, and it about wore me out. I thought maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t a song at all. Torture.

Then one morning I had just finished a night shift, and your mind gets into a beautiful completely ragged out feeling, and I was in one of those in January several years ago. It was super cold in our area, and all my thermometers were saying like minus 17. I had the house to myself, and as I sat in the kitchen looking out at the big chill, I got out a pen and paper and gave it a go. It started with, “In the cold and the darkness of night”, and I’m telling you from there I just wrote the whole thing, or at least the gist of it, in several minutes. And after all that time trying to figure out the song construction, wow, it was such a relief. There’s nothing cooler than that, and you can’t make it happen, just gotta plug along and see, if on any given day, that window of creation pops open.

I had wanted to do a song with the line “all I see” in it, and determined maybe this was it. It has that line in there, but it was a song about people who get in their own way, and at least in my job, and the people I see, this is a theme that is so common, and hence a Modern Age theme with imagery. I was embarrassed by it and honestly thought I’d never play it for anyone. And while the lyrics were mostly there, the phrasing took forever. I’ll say this, I can finally do it without a cheat sheet. I remember telling Sadie, the wife of one of our guitar players, that, “I think I’ve just written a song called ‘Vanity and Heartache’, is that too weird or what?” The band recorded it in like one session, and it has become a favorite of mine.

• In the cold and the darkness of night

       Sure that everything is gonna be alright

       Searching moments through and through

       Holding out as once before

       In another try at asking why, go through an open door

       But then a valley gives way to a rise

       As hidden hollows take their turns

       At throwing out the lies

       Secret messages again to speak their piece

       To no avail the stranger fights, emotion to release

       (Ref) Vanity and heartache all I see

       Taking on the shades of hard reality

       Looking for the truth to finally set you free

• Again before us now at a familiar place in time

       A paradise we gain a bit

       From rays of lost sunshine

       Asking for not much more

       Than we really need

       A fertile place to plant, the gift of sow and seed

       Some happy, some sad, do the best they may

       For them tomorrow waits for yet another day

       Never knowing for sure what it all could really mean

       To trip and fall so far back in the machine

       (Ref)

       (Then instrumental half verse)

       (3) Some they weep before the rights and wrongs of now

       Explaining to themselves it all makes sense somehow

       And so it goes like no one knows

       How paupers could be king

     If only they could find a way

     To let their soul to sing

     But.. (ref)

Far As You Can See

When I first came up with the idea of compiling these songs as an opera I kept thinking that these are all songs, not “conversation put to music” like I think of as an opera with characters in it. So I thought I’d write a number of such movements and call them “connectors”. I managed but one, “connector A” I called it. It opens the opera, with “the kid” singing this as if to say, “Wow, this Modern Age is a little scary”. I’m not sure why I haven’t written other “connectors”, except that maybe I just can’t and won’t or don’t need to.

As a connector, it’s not like a song so much as a musical reflection, and hangs on the end of the second phrase of the verse, and in the recording of it (exactly one) there is a discrepancy in this pattern, but I like the feel so much we’re keeping it. We might just put the studio version on the record, because you know the rules, to never over-produce. That “innocence lost” theme is a fun one, and that’s the theme here. And it’s so simple musically, like a “connector” should be.

Wasn’t just a simple walkin’ in the park

Next thing I knew it I was lost and in the dark

Don’t know how I got so blind

Guess I was looking for another way

Some other kind of game to play

And I had it in my mind

That life was so unkind

Then a voice whispered in my ear

I had no business being there

And I didn’t need to see no more

Funny how it has to work some time

Like a poem where the words don’t rhyme

And you can’t be sure, what you went there for

(Break) Sometimes with your eyes wide open it’s just too much t take

Hope that I don’t make some kind of big mistake

On a road that passes by this way

They come and go as if to say, “It’s not up to me”.

No surprises who’ll be on your side

For the hardest thing you ever tried to do or be

Or go as far as you can see.

The Long Gone Getaway

People write songs all the time, but they just don’t realize it. That’s what happened here. A friend of mine was telling us what a disaster his childhood was, and the scars of course are permanent. He’d talked about “getting away from everything”, and you know how that works. But people end up not hearing what I call “the sounds of the world”, because they’re too deafened by the bullshit echoing off the inside of their cranium. And running from things, well, it’s great song stuff. I recall at the time this really simple tune in G, that I could play on the guitar. So that means no B minors, no F# minors, just stuff I can play on the guitar.

This song is not on the opera. I ran through it on the piano one night at the end of a session, and that might be just the only version of it. It is a song that skeptically points out the futility of such running, when what is needed is to listen to… the sounds of the world. Not the sounds coming from within. And I truly know this is hard if not impossible to do for some people. And hence, more of the same has happened today, on this long-gone getaway.

So I see you walk the long road all alone

Headed on down to where you’d never known

Were you lookin’ to go to where somebody knew

What it was you were so sure was true

But when you stopped in the shade of a warm summer day

Could you hear at all what the world would say?

(Ref) What was it made you had to be leavin’

Never seein’, and never believin’

Well more of the same has happened today

On your long gone getaway

Times were hard, bad things plain in sight

It made you cry at your pillow all night

Nowhere to go in such a life of livin’

When it’s not you who needs to be forgiven

For the lies of the ones who never knew

There’s no love at all in these things you do

(Ref)

When you can lay your head back to sleep

No more bad dreams, no more secrets to keep

And light a candle or two along the way

A map and a treasure has waited day by day

Just as long as you hear the sounds of the world

Are they new to you, or had you really heard/

(Ref)

A few things. The “never seeing and never believing” line is in “Say Goodbye to yesterday” and I couldn’t get it out of there. But they’re different completely, with the other one being that you couldn’t believe things “had to be this way”, as opposed to the meaning in this song of giving up on the Good Lord when times are bad. Very different. That’s the ‘long road all alone” into line one.

Movin’ On

Perhaps the most difficult song I have ever manufactured is this one. And I still don’t think it’s right. There is a rif that starts the song, and I was stuck on what to do after that, for literally a few years. The rif was in D, and then I thought I’d try to be cute and leave the key, and even leave it again for the refrain. I had the beat and feel. But these other changes never seemed to work. Whenever I would try to throw in lyrics, they sounded dour and wrong.

I am haunted that you can try to make a song do what you want it to do, but what if it’s not what the song wants to do? Can you drag yourself down from that tree? It’s hard. You want to be creative and do new things. And when they don’t work you question your abilities. But I like to say there are no “throw-away” songs. So finally I dropped this idea of multiple key changes. When I did that it all went pretty fast.

The concept of “moving on” is a modern age theme, given the short and getting shorter attention span of today’s humans. If you’re being fun and keeping it real, people will stick, but they’re moving on when it’s not happening, and I don’t blame them.

Looking up to see the word all passin’ by

Maybe been missin’ out but baby don’t you cry

It’s complicated I know but don’t ask me why

Got to get where you belong

Just hope it doesn’t take too long

But how can everybody else be wrong

‘Bout another little trip to try

Light of day shinin’ through the blind again

Same old thing going through your mind again

It’s time to look for something to find again

And it’s a great big world out there

But you can find it if you dare

If it’s just me then I don’t care

But it looks like it’s time again

(Ref) Who slips down the right path anyway

Let the chips just fall out where they may

It’s come and gone, and it’s time for me

To be movin’on

(2) You know the best things in life you get for free

Close your eyes just hard enough to see

The game is on you got to play to win you see

Don’t you know I was only here a while

You know hangin’ ‘round’s not my style

But you could maybe go an extra mile

To get where you wanna be

A lucky penny never lost its shine

Another train always coning down the line

Get it right, there might not be a next time

Don’t wait on a twist of fate

What happens when it comes too late

Take it all in for Heaven’s sake

‘Cause it ain’t like the sun won’t shine

(Ref)

This next song is the latest addition to the opera, a song called “A Good Ship Aweigh”. Like Vanity and Heartache, this song was like, where did that come from? I had tried to write a song in 3-4 time, or “in 3”, on several occasions, none of them successful. Then one night, I tried again, turning to the flats to do it, this time B flat (major). Again, for piano players this is a comfortable place, so I started on the B flat with the left hand, the bass notes, just doing an octave in 3 beat. It seemed promising. But from there it got hard.

After a time, I decided on the arrangement of the few simple chords it had in it, and this song like Vanity and Heartache goes quickly to the refrain, starting on “the 4”, or the subdominant. I wonder if anyone will notice. When it became lyric time I opted for a metaphorical nautical theme, like you’re on a boat somewhere, and not sure where it’s headed.

My grandfather, an Italian, managed just such a journey here circa 1915 or so. The story goes that he and his mother agreed to walk to a certain street corner, on the way to the boat, and that they would embrace and walk away and not look back. They had to go several blocks past where they’d agreed upon, but eventually, they did embrace, he jumped on a boat, and they never saw each other again. (Actually I heard recently from a relative that he did make it back to see her but non one is sure if or when.) He ended up in New York somewhere, where the local Italians looked after him (age 16 or so), and he ended up in Cincinnati where he worked as a translator and elevator operator. He was shot up in WWI and clanged around with a metal brace on his lower leg. We later found he was awarded the Silver Star for his efforts in that war, which we never knew until he was near death for Lou Gehrig’s disease in his 70s.

I remember, when Ronnie Reagan was elected, there were some coat tails and momentum that a newscaster referred to as “The Good Ship Reagan”, and that stuck in my head. A good ship? Says who? And “aweigh”, like in the song “Anchors Aweigh”, is where you have loaded the anchor and are heading out, which they call “weighing” anchor.

Loaded up, The Good Ship Aweigh beckons, are you coming with us or not? Would I have jumped on that boat? Would you? Which way is Greece? But in this case, like so many of these songs, see the metaphor. The Modern Age is full of such enticements.

Off in the land of faraway places

Where the sun and the skies gets lost on the way

With the hope of tomorrow the look of our faces

We know in our hearts we can get there some way

So here we stand looking out at the water

As we wait for the boat that comes in with the tide

Then it’s off to wherever for little that matters

As much as the others who never have tried

(Ref) Oh the lines of the past disappearin’

With the clang of the bell that we’re hearin’

No time to borrow today from tomorrow

Alright and OK, for the good ship aweigh

Gone from the sands of a land long forgotten

To the new and the wonder of never before

Oh, they’ll welcome us there as if once begotten

Coming home once again from the waves to the shore

Now it’s the sun that’s slowly been risin’

The sails they catch at whatever goes by

To the new and uncertain on past the horizon

Adventures aplenty that never run dry

(Ref) Oh the lines of the past disappearin’

With the clang of the bell that we’re hearin’

No time ya borrow today from tomorrow

Alright and OK, for the good ship aweigh

(Outro) And we’ll see what it is that we’ll see

On a good ship aweigh

For you and for me

So there you go. Perhaps it will end up an album, but remember, these were songs mostly intended to be in the opera or “Rock Collection”, and to finish them as an album would be quite a project and take a long time. Guess we’ll see.

Making an album (recording a collection of songs) is example of “a project”. So, who’s project is it? And, why? Just feel the need to do it? Is there pressure on? Are there enough good songs here? Who’s the band? Where are you doing this? Is someone helping with vision of the thing (a “producer”)? Will you know when it’s done? What shall be the order of the songs? These are all great questions, and many are never posed, let alone answered.

And I can answer them here, at least how it went down for me. I had applied to medical school and was rejected, and they’d said since I’d never worked at a hospital, how do you know this is a profession you would want to do? So I quit my cool job as a waiter at a great restaurant and went to work full-time as an orderly. I took a biology class and signed up for “group piano”. I was 21. I bought a piano, then a little baby grand, and learned what music was all about. But how do you write songs? I mean, that’s the challenge, the biggest of all, and you’ve got to learn to sing, which is another real hard thing. I’d written lines and poetry, but I never could see how they turn into a song, even though I’d learned a bunch of them. But then finally, one night in my basement I read in a Billy Joel songbook that he wrote music first and then figured out the words later> POW! That’s it! I had it backward.

I literally turned around and wrote “Hey Baby”, in several minutes. Words and all. When I played it for my friends they thought they’d heard it before. Finally, I was onto it. On the same night I wrote most of an important tune “The Face of Someone Else”, one we refer to as “the Man in the Tune Song”. I was just taking music phrases from songs I’d learned and constructed my own progression, and out they came. And they all sounded unique, which surprised me because I was afraid I would write songs that sounded like something out there, but that never has been the case. But to be able to write songs that I like, I still can’t believe it.

After 2 or 3 years had passed, the songs were starting to amass to enough for a recording, say 10, and I began to think the unthinkable: can I make an album? I was 36, and it’s not like you can think, at that age, that you could be a rock star or something. But you can never give up on trying to do something that is hard and worthwhile and all that. But in fact there just might have been a project at hand. So one night I was working in the ER and this girl who was a family practice resident overheard me talking one night and said, “You ought to call my husband! He’s a musician and he can help you record an album.” It turns out another guy, an obstetrician on staff she’d met, had just built a studio in his basement and she introduced him to her husband, who was Greg Lee. We were to be the studio’s first project, and Greg Lee would produce it. It was our first album, the one with the dudes on the cover, This Elite Band. And judging by people’s reaction to it then and now, it was a great success.

So here’s an OB guy, a mediocre musician, with a real fine studio, just loving the idea of recording local musicians, which he did for cheap. With state of the art equipment. It’s among the reasons music is so fun to try to do, beautiful people everywhere. Turns out Greg was a real fine dude, with a lot of knowledge, and he produced and engineered the recording.

Starting at the beginning, you’ve got to have great players to make a great recording, and that’s all there is to it. I was very fortunate in that we had my brother Buzz, who was a great and recordable drummer, and he was a seasoned 43 at the time. We had our bass player Bruce, who told me he was playing gigs in jump suits at Holiday Inns when I was sh–ing yellow, and Raif, a career musician guitarist, all the same age, and bout 7 years older than me. And Greg would do much of the piano and engineered the recording. It took about 3 weeks.
What follows is a brief narrative of where the songs came from, both musically and lyrically, and a few points about them. The descriptions of chord ideas may be confusing to some, but they are common movements found in songs covering the many genres, like tinker toys or legos, pieces to make a something out of. So here we go.

Hey Baby

This was the first song I ever wrote. I closed that Billy Joel songbook, where he pointed out that he wrote music and put lyrics to it later, and turned around and banged out “Hey Baby”. It’s mainly a song in “E major”, and there are a lot of cool songs in this key for some reason. Anyway, I had always liked Jackson Brown’s song on the live album (Runnin’ on Empty) called “Rosie”, about the roadie who had the drummer swipe his babe from him, and “Rosie” is the guy’s palm, a chicken reference. Simple construction, with verse, pre-chorus, chorus. Pretty straightforward. I just grabbed a rhythm, and that was the set of movements I felt established a journey from the tonic, to the usual chords of the key, the A majors and the B majors. The F# minor and G# minor. These are standard rock song pieces.

So what was the song to be about? Well, there’s a saying that songs are about two things. Love, and unrequited love. I remember this night in Lexington at a bar back when I was in school there, where I was hitting on this girl that was way over my head, and when it went nowhere I said something like, “You know, you pretty girls, you just don’t know the cool dudes out there when you see them”, like me of course. And she really let me have it, saying something like, “Don’t you give me down the road, Red”, and said it several times, and really unloaded on me. And I was so wrong and so sorry and felt so stupid, and I thought, man, I should’ve stayed at home. So here we are 10 years later, how about this progression in E, and we’ll make it a song. And I wrote it up in one setting, a very good sign for a song, and called it “Should’ve Stayed at Home”. Then when I played it, everyone started referring to it as “Hey Baby”. Several of the tunes I have written have changed names like this.

When we recorded it, it was Buzz, Bruce, and Greg on Piano, and I sung it and it didn’t take long. This was the way we did much of it. Those three, and me singing, knowing it was a scratch. My own Karaoke outfit. The guitar riff at the beginning, the thing that starts the album off so surely, was a freak. They brought in Raif and turned his guitar amp up real high in the drum booth’s door for some reason, and it was real loud, and I remember he was flustered, and promptly laid down the signature lick on the whole album. But I recall it was originally Bruce’s bass lick, so they overlap a little bit. It sure worked.The harmonies on it are poor and were the coolest part of the times we played it live.

This Elite Band

Again a Billy Joel quote. He’d met Paul McCartney years ago and told him thanks, that he’d ripped off several chord progression ideas from Beatles songs. And McCartney replied that he’d said the same thing to so and so, which is where he’d gotten them to start with. That they’ve been around forever. It’s real simple. Music is “home”, at the tonic, or whatever the key is written in, like G for example. There are musical journeys from the tonic and back again, using these musical phrases, and that’s all there is to it. You can call this “music theory”, how chords and their accompaniments are strung together to make a “song”. You can learn these “tricks” from songs you like and learn. And there are an infinite number of combinations, and beats, and phrase lengths, and considerations like, is there a middle to this song like a refrain? Are you going to hit a big note in there? Bridges? Breaks? These combinations are “chord progressions”, the essence of song. Which ones you chose will determine if it’s a rock tune, or bluse or jazz or whatever.

(It’s worth a simple instruction on music theory here: In the major scale, you only use seven of the available 12 “pitch classes” on the scale, or the piano. And they are doe, ray, me, fol, la, sol, tee, and another doe, an octave away from the other “doe” in the scale. (And there are several scales.) We name these chords instead, as the 1, the 2,the 3,4,5,6,7, and then you’re back at “1” again. The “4” is called the “subdominant”, a very familiar place for a song to move to, and the “5” is the “dominant”, even more familiar. To follow this discussion at all, some of these basic concepts are worth knowing, and for most people very foreign, and I’m sorry about that.)

I was introduced to one by our guitarist Raiford. It’s the tonic, a diminished chord made a half step up, or the “1 sharp”, then the 2, which is a minor chord, and then the 5, the dominant. Then you go back to the tonic. And this progression is so versatile that versions of many songs and phrases can be sung with them. So I thought, hey, there’s an idea. And in a few minutes banged out what became the title track of the album

See, I’ve always wanted to bail on this medical profession, and sure enough I ended up doing a whole career of it anyway. And I’m Ok with that, and making it as a songwriter, as hard as I was willing to try which was only a little bit hard, it was a pipe dream. But I remember that Cincinnati, my home town (I’m a Northern Kentuckian though), was voted the “most live-able city” by some magazine that year, and I concocted a guy on the river bank, a bum really, with not a care in the world. No one to answer to, and a carefree spirit. How it morphed into a tribute to Buzz, Bruce and Raif and Joe, I don’t know. Hell, The Elite Band, we never rehearsed really, or played out, or were a band for that matter. But we sure jammed in the basement a lot, and to get these guys to go to a studio and record these songs for me, I was very grateful, for sure. And for sure, its number one fan, and for all I knew at the time I was begging and bugging them.

So lyrics like, “That’s the number one city in the lights up the hill”, and the metaphor of hoping to be like that bum, be a musician for a living, where you just did what you wanted and had so much cash that, not a care in the world right? Hey, it hasn’t happened yet, but we could get a spot on a lineup you never know.

To successfully quit a medical career is something a lot of us have dreamed of and not pulled off. Doctoring sure pays the bills and has a lot of incredibly groovy people in it, but it’s a “mountain of sorrow”, for sure. I know, after we recorded This Elite Band, Buzz and Bruce and the producer Greg worked long and hard on a recording of Greg’s tunes, and predicted they’d “be millionaires by summer”, and nope that didn’t fly either. So, that’s that song. One other thing, I was in San Francisco once and grabbed a trolley, and it occurred to me how if you weren’t careful you could be a casualty there, and it reminds one to be careful out there at all times, and hold on tight and be alert.

At the last minute when we were mixing the records, and remember, we didn’t have a long time to work on the project, and it was done in three weeks. You lose spirit the longer a project takes. But this song needed help. And I was outside at the time. But Greg suggested Raif play a lead with an old acrylic stringed classical guitar that belonged to the obstetrician’s wife, and it’d been in its case for years they said. But the “woodle a doop’ is among the record’s coolest work. And it came out of no where at the last minute. It’s like art: add add add, until it looks like something.

Broken Promises

To construct this song, I was in G, and came up with three different ways to go to the 4 and 5, C and D. One was down through the D with the F# bass, and E minor, and they all go to the walkdown from C, through G/B bass, A minor, to the 5 again, and back to G. Another, at the song’s “speed up”, G goes through B’s dominant 7^th, to E minor, then the walk from C like in the verse. Then for the song’s chorus, G goes through B minor (3 in the scale), to C and D. The big note then starts at the high G, of the tonic, to the E minor, to say “Who’ll care….”

So lyrically, the song is about a favorite theme of mine, that you get yourself into trouble by not being self-aware enough. By trusting people to do things they don’t want to do, especially for you maybe, and all that, we beg for trouble. The metaphor then is that “broken promises” are “dreams someone’s taken away”, it blames you, not the promise breaker. I mean, what’s a promise? Who promised what, and to whom? And do you have any proof of this? So in that way the song is a little confusing, and hey, it is what it is. So singing the last verse, “BP, don’t let no body take them away”, it reiterates that your dreams are your dreams, and not something someone treats you to. There’s no body there but you for that.

And of course, kids, a lot of them grow up bad and with bullshit, and though it’s natural for children to believe in angels, some rarely see anything that looks remotely like one. Perhaps later in their plight, but not too much later, they realize it’s their job to make things happen right.

I remember, the first time I played it in the basement for the dudes I’d gone outside for a minute, and possibly fertilizing the yard, and the moon was big maybe, and I thought about the bridge in the middle, where when we are at the 5 (D major), to drop back to C and start there for this bridge, and the rest was real natural. And right then I had to come up with a line quick, and it became one of my favorites, that “It can seem like no body understands, when you’re there with your face in your hands.”

We’d gone through the song I think a few times, maybe just me and Bruce, and when I came back in I told him about the bridge and he objected. “You can’t just throw something in there like that”. I doubt he’d remember this. The song would not be the same without it.

For years I couldn’t listen to the song, because it’s so corny. But as I listen to it, I think I sold it adequately, something at the time I just couldn’t be so sure of. But it became a popular one and that surprised me. And for years I couldn’t play Greg’s Piano lead-in, but I have fun with it now. And more in this world than ever, people are very focused on their “self’s”, for sure, and maybe realize this. The more comfortable you are with who you are and what you do for your “self”, it usually helps the rest of us, to carry less of you.

Lost Moments in Time

The “Old Lonely Road Song” is a deeply personal song for me. It wrote real easy musically. I’d written the above three on the piano, and for this one, I thought I could get an idea from a guitar. Especially then, I could only play G, C, D, E minor, and A minor, all in G, on the guitar, so I envisioned a box, with all these chords at the corners, and that to write this song, my 4th, I could just go around the box, simply rearranging the chord order to make phrases and a chorus. Strumming like that, you see it in the song. I figured mainly that the chorus would need to end on the 5. It was so cool of an idea, I thought, and I remember sitting on the porch one night and figuring it out, and this neighbor of mine walks up. And I barely knew him, and he worked at the hospital, but a real rough guy, and I’m pretty sure he was loaded, and I didn’t want to see him right then, I’ll tell you. And he starts telling me about his kid, a teenager, standing up to him, and how he’d muscled him or something. So I said to him, “Wait a minute, my kid’s crying I think..”, which he wasn’t, and I went in the house for a minute, and came out and said, “Man, I gotta attend to the kid here”, and he left, and I waited, and went outside and decided on which chords where, all real quick, it was great.

So, next, what’s the song about? How about making this one about the gang? The folks at the Fridaynighters and all that. I’d moved away for school and missed a lot of fun, and returning to the Northern Kentucky area meant a lot. And I could hear the Ohio river traffic from my house, the clanging and stuff, and the river boats, especially the occasional Calliope, it was great, so it’s all in the song.

It starts however with a reference to an adolescent freakout of mine, when I discovered that everything goes a while and then, Poof!, it’s over. It is something I took a while to get my head around, and I even got a little nuts over it, for months. OCD maybe? Maybe. I was so freaked out one night, at around 15 I think, and I snuck out and left the house one night during a snowstorm, and had to go and do something to get my mind off it. The coolest thing I could think of was to go to Johnny’s Toy Shop and buy something for my slot car set, big fun for us as kids. It was a long way, 6 or 7 miles. Nuts. So then, Kyle’s lane in Ft. Wright becomes the Old Lonely Road. Don’t underestimate how obsessed and freaked out I was. And that night I think I got over it, that, hey, you’re a little freaked out, but cool it, OK? Everybody know’s it’s just the same”

But there was no “old man”, only “Father Time”, and he “just goes on by”, and there’s no looking back, and we’re all playing by these same rules.

When we recorded it, Greg Lee informed me that I couldn’t sing the song in G very well, and we went down a step to F, which I can’t play much in on the guitar. And it sounds a little morbid in that key, which it is of course. And one more thing, where’s the guitar part? It’s notably missing in each of the instrumental verses. We play this song whenever we play out. In F, which I can play on the piano.

The Wild Western Fantasy

I love this anthem. It has an extremely weird story, which may illustrate where songs come from. Having written these first four I was certain I was onto it. I was clanging one night on my piano at the upper C on the piano, a sweet note on this particular piano. So I thought, let’s build a song from it. And it couldn’t be more simple. Nothing out of the key. And then I returned to the progression in the title track, the 1, 1# diminished, 2 minor, 5- progression and presto, song. Done. And so easy. When it came to putting it to lyrics I thought to myself, man, the Good Lord has been so good to me to let me be able to write songs, after so many years of not knowing how to. Maybe I’ll put him in it! But how? He’s not real poetic. But the tune sounded like an anthem, so I thought up the idea of the country of immigrants, like my grandpa, “braving the ocean’s hungry tide” and blah blah blah. But what about the Good Lord. Hey, rhyme “PRAYer and A-MER-ica, I’ll do that! Chords, song, lyrics, all in one night. Then at that moment I swear a huge lightning bolt went off and rattled the house. And I ran outside and it was totally clear, and there was no more thunder or lightning, or sprinkles. I just assumed it was, you know, The Good Lord winking at me. I even ran upstairs to my wife who was sleeping and woke her up and showed her the goosebumps on my arms. And naturally she rolled over to sleep.

When we recorded it, of course, Greg once again informs me that I cannot sing the song in C, so it went down a step to B flat, which is a much better place. And again at the last minute, my brother Joe, a guitar player, played that very rankled guitar part, which I just love. It’s like, yeah, it’s literally, a “wild, western, fantasy”. And to play here, you’ve got to make it happen, like in song 3. And there’s no place to do it but here, and we need it and need to take care of it, and be it.

I regret getting a little preachy in the second verse, and actually I had written additional lyrics for a third verse. But what can you do? It was just so clear to me at that point in my life how important your nurturers are, and how men especially are important. “Your brothers’ need him to come home too, to save him from those things he do”, I’ll let you figure that out.

Would these have been better?

From giant leaps for all mankind, to the little steps from the chains that bind

We’ll climb the hills before us now, to find happiness the fates allow

We’re there for all the world to see, what it is that life can be

When people live to find their way, in Freedom’s hand, at work and play.

Chorus

Me, I like this other verse.

I Don’t Want to Play the Fool No More

This is the order these songs were written in. “Fool No More” explores a song in F, with chords like B flat, and C and D minor, all fun chords to play on the piano. And the theme was so familiar: unrequited love. I mean, this is no a real expensive song, but it’s real and that’s all that matters. And hey, if you don’t want to play a fool, then don’t, OK? Just gonna go. Awful. Then Go.

Love is Runnin’

We used to play “She caught the Katy” at Friday Nighters all the time. How about ripping off a few chords from it for a song? The 1-5 relationship is the one. “Now I was standing, in the corner..” 1,5 right. And it went from there, and wrote very quickly. And again it returns to a bar, and man oh man, did I just make eye contact with this girl, or am I imagining it? Probably the latter, but hopeless romantics, they abound, I’m sure.

I like those “love references” though. That “crazy little thing” that hits you now and then. Can you handle it? Is it “running” for you too Wow, and if so, a special feeling. Like, dancing to the rhythm of a beat so strong…and bending over to go cheek to cheek, and breathe the same breath of a love so fine. A young person’s game, for sure, when passion and romance are.. flowin’. Beautiful. And frankly, I can barely listen to it. Still we bang it out from time to time. The bass player gets loose, which is good.

My Woman

Writing songs? How about one about your own babe? My Woman is this song. Musically it drones in the tonic, then goes to its major seventh, a stopping point leading to more movement, to 4, to 1 again. How about some minors for the prechorus? Then 1, 5, 4 for the chorus. Nothing to it. Man this is fun.

Only thing was, I couldn’t decide on a tempo, if you didn’t notice. Now back, then, I couldn’t always keep the rhythm real perfect, and in a studio this is so essential. But on this one, me Buzz and Bruce played it through just that once, and there are three different tempos. I really think it’s OK in this song. I’ve played it straight, all in the same tempo, and it’s weird for me, so I do it “the way it goes”. Hey, there’s no rule against changing it up, as far as I knew anyway at the time. I didn’t even think about it. But they called it “Red meter” at the time, and this was derisive. From then on in my life I’ve tried to keep moving and in rhythm at all times in all songs, and to stamp out Red meter wherever possible.

There were supposed to be 6 phrases for the chorus to end the song. And we’d agreed on this, but sure enough, Buzz ends it after the 5^th one, and I could hear him doing it, and you know, the song will go how the drummer plays it, and it was a good steady recording. So I came up to him afterward, and asked him, What’s up? I thought we were doing 6 of the 1-5-4s at the end, and he laughed and said, “I guess there were only 5.” And that was that. And again, at the last minute Joe played that Fender Stratocaster of Tom’s, the OB guy who owned the joint, very good I thought. I have always told him that he’s a better lead player than he thinks. I mean you’re born to play leads or not. It’s funny, just in these past 5 years or so Joe’s jumped in as a songwriter, and he’s really got it.

A Glimpse of Sadness

When our guitarist Raif told me he thought I was “a country music writer”, this song was to come next, to get on to key changes, and weird chord progressions. And this is a weird musical journey for me. I mean, can a song do that? But alas, they are but journeys from the 1, and back again. The progression does have some sense to it, but it’s an example of something a piano player writes. E flat. B flat major seventh. C minor. Guitarists will usually be thinking, What? It didn’t take long to write it.

But it was a sad song. How about unrequited love? I remember there was this girl I was hoping on, and as usual I was pretty sure I was hoping too high, and guess what, it didn’t happen, so I treated her to this song. Years later I remember her telling us (she is a friend of my wife’s) that she had a date and she opened the door and “there was this little old guy standing there”. That’s hard. But when you’re trying to date as an older person, these are the perils. But there was a little glimpse of sadness in there. And I don’t care how pretty you are, a glimpse of sadness ruins it. I could have made her happy, right? You had me, long ago… yeah, right. But romance is something you feel, not something on paper or that you can construct. A lot of people fall there I think. Just let it down and feel it. Or, despite that “moonlit night, and the stars in your face, and a lover who disappears without a trace”. Next thing you know there’s a little old man at your door.

The Face of Someone Else

This was the first song I ever wrote. With “Hey Baby”, that first night, the relationship of A minor, and then these same notes with an F in the bass, makes the F-based chord the F major seventh. It is a very comfortable place to go on the piano, and in many songs. So I utilized it. The other movements in the song, I don’t know why I went there, but the song with the chorus came together more slowly than most of the tunes. And it’s a colorful and cute song. But down-beat somewhat.

I remember how I still wasn’t sure I could sing good enough to do all this. How do you sing? I knew that somehow, you needed to recreate yourself, to assume the role of the song do-er. But be careful, because if you’re too thespian, people will see through that. So if you hope to be in this highly enviable position of singing the song, doing it without sucking somehow is the goal, for sure. So the song becomes a shot at anyone thinking to exploit their position, as the song do-er, being disingenuous some how. But just who is it you deceive? Just what is it you believe? How about good tone and consistent signal generation, and not too much gyrations, or dancing with your hair. And if you’re going to talk to us, don’t preach, don’t drop F bombs, and don’t say anything Gregg Allman wouldn’t say, which was usually nothing other than introducing the band.

On the album, the singing could have sure been better, but by the end of the song, I was better. But I remember, Greg kept saying, “Give it more umph”, and I was just not good. Probably, I wasn’t warmed up or something, but it was a struggle. And early on you can really tell it. But in that first chorus, especially. “I busted out laughing at what I thought was a bad performance, and you can hear that. “Just to be the wuh…”, and then I laughed, and he yells out, “That’s it, that’s it”. I was trying to be the man in the tune, but he was recommending I be someone else. We should have re-done it, but that’s the way it was recorded.

But that song, as my first one, makes that critical point. To be “up in the lights for all the word to see”, is this opportunity to make a moment mean so much. But not for you, the song do-er, it’s for everyone else. And you, well you’re no more than the man in the tune (the original name of the song), and what you do, is you’re hiding behind the face of someone else. You’re the man in the tune, someone different from the you yourself is. According to me anyway.

 
Postscript

Like the liner notes on the second making of the disc say, even now when I give this album to people the same thing happens. They listen to it again and again. I mean not everybody, but imagine after all this that people would report, “My kid won’t stop listening to it”, and “I put it one when I clean the house”, or, “My sister won’t give it back”, or, “I wore it out, do you have any more?” I was and remain so proud of the effort, and would put it up against anything out there that no one has heard before ,a s a competition.

When we would go on a few years later to make “Songs for The Modern Age”, the spirit was different, the songs were cleaner, but the recording was less popular. I like it much better, but as a band it just was much lees together. It’s hard, it really is. Most musicians are nuts. And this is hard stuff to do, or everybody’d be doing it. I have a similar blurb about the songs and some of the recordings of that second album here on the site.

What’s much more interesting about “Songs For the Modern Age” is that I consider it a major step to the writing of my rock opera, of the same name. Of course this opera is here on the site. The concept features a “kid”, coming of age in this modern age and all its encroachments and intrusions, and tribulations and general wackiness. Other players in the opera are the “cohorts” (friends of similar age and circumstance to the kid), and the counter star, a somewhat older cat, “the muse”, who takes moments to point out to the kid and his cohorts and the audience, “Hey, did you see that? Do you see this?”

So when a young girl (11 I think) who’d just loved the first record didn’t like the second, I told her, if I’m on the right track, I didn’t think you’d like it. Whatever I meant by that, Songs for TMA is much more contentious than the feel-good themes of the first recording.

I remain a firm believer that you write songs with the instrument. So, learn new songs and play them, and see if you start plying a feel, of a unique “tune”. Expand it into a song with considerations like, what’s a verse, is there a pre-chorus, is there a chorus, and is there a break, or a bridge. But it all starts with a feel, on a rhythm instrument. Then try to figure what the song is about, and gradually, over several writings, eke out the lyrics you like.

After 10 songs were done for This Elite Band, the theme of songwriting seemed to change to being more about you than me. There was no conscious effort to do this, and maybe my job had something to do with it, or I’d used up personal themes of triumph over the bullshit in your head and unrequited love. But “The Modern Age” was my eleventh song, and whatever the modern age is, or was, or wants to be, these became “songs for” the modern age. The double entendre for me is, they are songs for the world to gander at, and see where they lie within it all, and the other meaning is that these are songs for my most grandiose project yet, which I mentioned at the end of the discussion at the end of This Elite Band, they are songs for the rock opera, The Modern Age.

If I’m being honest, Bruce, Buzz, and Raif were not real interested in this project at first, but all they had to do was show up, eat pizza and play music. I wrote up profoundly humorous pamphlets to stoke them up, that were ostensibly from something called the “Elite Band Advocacy Group”, imploring the members to do their best to make a credible recording for “posterity”. Not for me, you know. Posterity, which is everyone who ever is to come. And they did it.

Here’s where the songs came from.

The Modern Age

In writing this tune, I had actually parts of what I considered would be two tunes, and they came together as this one. They were “The Modern Age”, and one called “Arrows in the Sand”. They were similar tempo movements in two different keys, and it dawned on me one night that maybe they were the same song, and that’s why they didn’t seem to expand. I was so happy that all of a sudden a song had come together, and not sure why it dawned on me. It’s one of my favorites.

My overriding attraction to this “modern age” thing is how many people are hounded by the pressures of the overwhelming nature of the world we live in. Human hardwiring is better off when things are simple, The more they expose themselves to each other’s weirdness, the deeper the catalogue for these apian species to imitate, or want to. Or feel the need to. You can turn up zombie real quick.

So it’s as if there is more than one person in the song, reflecting its origin. One observes the belittling nature of it all, saying it “won’t matter anyway”, the other striking a more, frank interpretation of the idiocy that abounds, chalking it all up to Arriving, then surviving, and then living, in, The Modern Age.

A few sources of the lyrics. I remember this war movie, where a column of the army was headed the wrong way in Europe somewhere, and they were following a road sign, deliberately changed by the enemy to lead them wrong. A general, Patton maybe, rolls up in his jeep with his compass, redirecting the forces properly, and saying, “Doesn’t anybody use a compass anymore?”

So, arrows in the sand. Are you following them? What if I just swoosh the arrow with my foot, then where are you? From ads to diet recommendations to the outcomes and circumstances of everyday living that maybe you’re noticing and maybe you’re not, arrows in the sand in the modern age, specially for you. And as we get more oblivious and mentally obtunded, we eventually barely know how to give a shit at all. So, who’s to save us from the pantomime, when we don’t even want to know the lines? Just a pill to chase the blues away, will set the stage for, surviving in the modern age. What, one in five of us takes an antidepressant?

So, there’s a sign ahead, for all of us in our own lives, to ignore or follow, as we deal with the modern age and the hustle and bustle, and get out of it what we can. As the time ticks, you know? In medical school, wanting so hard to write a song and thinking it started with lyrics, I’d written a long poem called “The Price That’s Paid”, real rhythmic, real wordy, and real unlikely to ever be a song. When it never turned into a tune, I finally lost it, but it ended with that line about “the price you paid”, for living in a world you couldn’t figure out.

There had originally been a second part to “Arrows in the Sand”, but I could never warm up to any lyrics for it, and dropped it, then re-added one round of it as the guitar solo. I really liked the laughing sound as the song travels out of the key of C to include a B flat chord, then re-modulates to G, the dominant of the C there. Going out of key can sometimes introduce that “crazy element” that songs can often use somewhere in the middle to liven it up.

Notice that the song is a march. I had no idea, and at the first studio session Buzz starts the song off with the march, and really the song needs even more of that beat. We kept that song on its first take, along with the second one on the album, “Is This the Real Thing”. That was Buzz, steady, good. One night, two keepers? Of course, they told me they were keepers, I had no idea. See, on that first night I was so glad that they came to work on the project, because essentially none of them wanted to. So from 7 pm until almost 1:30m a.m., we played all ten songs just so I could have a recording of them, because I wasn’t so sure they’d be back. From a practical standpoint, you might hope on the odd keeper from working on maybe three songs, playing a bunch of takes, listen to them all back a bunch of times, and then see in a series of weeks they stand up to workable “beds”. Eventually we did more organized work, usually weeks apart.

Is This the Real Thing

While we were recording the first record, this one was already written, along with the halves of the title track. It is a big personal favorite. I play it to my imaginary farmhouse audience all the time. Musically it was a one night wonder. And it couldn’t be simpler. Simple is better in songwriting, and so hard to do.

I have been fooled a lot, and I guess we all have, but if there is a solid theme for the world we live in, it’s that there’s a lot of bullshit out there masquerading as some sort of bona fide, honest to God something-or-other. But phony, or shallow, and here today and then gone away. So, can I believe what I’m seeing? If so, I stick around until we all see it run its course, and bring us all around to the “other way”.

The second verse explores romance, and how, maybe, the more I’ve gotten to know you, babe, the less it’s happening. Just a cross between a star of mine, and whatever was on your mind, when I caught you on a line.

In the last verse, the scientist in me cannot ignore how tenets of my curriculum in the 70s and 80s did not stand the test of time, and were not the real things I’d been taught they were (entropy, the miracle of meiosis, the rise of Chaos and string theory). But that’s science. We are forever gathering more data, and formulating more hypotheses to explain them. So, the lyrics. An instant all it takes to “shed some light on this insanity”. To uncover a better reality. But you do the best you can, and don’t worry if it sets you back just a step or two, when it all comes clear to you.

Like It Used to Be

I remember this girl when I was in school, she lived in apartment across the parking lot from me, and I fell hard and….crowded her a little bit, and soon realized she thought I was one of those guys, and it was done. I vowed to never ever crowd a girl again. But she told me that one night she was snooping at my basement window where I was banging at the piano, and I’m pretty humble, and she was studying TV and was interning with a local station, and had this real husky voice. And all I needed to do was blow her off and she’d have loved me! But I had yet to learn that.

There was no climbing out of the tree. It would never be like it used to be. So, it ended up in a song, and I never heard from the girl again after that. But like in “Hey Baby”, and others, I had to say it at the end, “I’ll find my way back to the sun”. Hey, in unrequited love, there is a terrible darkness that sets in for a while, and as long as you’re not too nuts, the sun comes back out eventually, and there are so many fish in that sea, right? But this girl was smokin’, really. Absolutely adorable. I wonder what ever happened to her. She probably forgot me pretty quick.

At our second whole-band session our guitarist had figured it out musically, and I myself, the piano player, insisted on playing an acoustic guitar on the track, but he’d decided on this lead-in, and wanted everyone to wait and let him start it, and we recorded it in one time through, which never happens.

A point about Sadie, Raif’s wife. She “asked” me one night if she could sing harmonies on the record, a record I was still not sure anyone would do, and she can really play and sing. You first hear of her on the well-placed “oohs” on “Real Thing”, and she sings on this third tune also, and on the rest of the record.

Proverbs

I love this song. When our kids were little, and my wife, a nurse, was still working weekends, I had to decide on whether to take them to church or not on Sunday. I enjoyed going for the most part, and here in the country a lot of the teenagers sang along with the tunes and it did my heart good. But if we didn’t go I felt compelled to do something religious or otherwise nurturing, and occasionally I’d get out the bible and leaf through it, but it wasn’t a “holy roller” household, that’s for sure. I was thinking nurture.

Anyway, one Sunday I’d gotten it out and ended up in the section called “Proverbs”, and it was neat to me how, according to proverbs, there was a generally specific “result” for people who’d violate a proverb, like if you do this, then “that” happens, as opposed to some random and general “fee”. I don’t know why I found that so interesting, or if that was even what proverbs were all about. But it was an idea for a song, especially since by now I’d written several with that theme. How about a song regarding ”modern age” proverbs?

Well, at the time as I recall there was a tune in the key of “C”, about as simple as you can get. To me, songs are reliably better the simpler they are, and obviously at some point you’ve got to try to get fancy with chords and progressions, and verse/chorus dynamics, etc. Not this one. It was so simple and came together quickly, and now I’m reading proverbs. Bingo.

So if you follow the lyrics, they are all mildly reworked sayings you’ve heard. And I love to pick on anybody who appears to have been swallowed by The Modern Age, made a zombie, had their genuine character assaulted, and so forth, and that’s what the song accomplishes. “They put the message in your head, and you found it all easy to believe…” and so forth. A few of the “proverbs” in the song may not be obvious to you, but most are. “It was fun until the start, you said, when a fool sees what he sees, in the dark cloud hiding what’s up ahead, in a forest without trees.” See that?

The chorus is a take on the old saying that you are best off believing “half of what you see, and none of what you hear”, reworded. Then, a pick on the general hustle and bustle of this world we live in is the second verse, of people trying to “catch up to what’s behind you, some trick that would save you nine”. The bridge in the middle is the one about how a bird in hand is worth two in the bush, and how, unless you have something in your hand, how can you count on it?

The last verse involves a proverb of my own, the one where I want to point out to people that “life’s hard, not easy”. There is an essay called this in that book I wrote (Understanding Humans, AuthorHouse). You pay a price for ignorance in the modern age, and you pay a price for trying to cut corners and deny hard work that you’re better off doing. So don’t take too long to “learn to play”. Was it over, before it had begun, by taking the easy way? Well of course it was.

In life, the map’s the treasure. Doing things the “right” way or “the hard way”, the mysteries of the universe will be on display for you with this behavior.

Hard to Find

If I’m being honest, the band didn’t get the message I was looking for on this song, and maybe I’m wrong about that. But it’s way more somber and down than I’d envisioned. It was supposed to be a song that bounced and rolled and almost laughed, and even horns could have been in it. Bap badda dadd a bop da dad a da, I don’t know if you can follow that. But they played it the way it went, and that’s that, but I think it drags a little.

Musically, the song was born of the relationship between the G major 7^th, where the F# is added, and of course this is the note present in B minor, and really, you see these together in songs setting that comfortable, pleasant feel that the major seventh brings you, in things like Jazz and so forth. When the chorus comes along, you can just go between the C and the D and, so simply, have gone from the gentleness of the major 7^th to the stark messaging of the chorus. Pretty simple.

Major sevenths also lend themselves, according to me, to invention of characters, like in Steely Dan music. In this case, the lyrics paint a picture of “a dude” who thinks he’s a dude but isn’t for some reason. A favorite theme of mine in general is people who think they’re fooling somebody and all they’re fooling is themselves, and essentially always to their own detriment. The fact that “a good man is hard to find” in fact did not dawn on me until the song was written and named. A hero of mine, Jackson Browne, said that, in songwriting, when serendipitous and coincidental things happen in songs, that’s when you know you’re on it.

Lyrically, it was pretty simple. “There’s such a thing as one in a million we all know, because they tell us so”, well, says who, right? When confronted with his relative realness and motivations, he just say, “Hey, wouldn’t you?” And yet we all need heroes and for them to perform admirably. The flash of light, in a sea of drab, and we hope that he’s doing it right for more than the minute so necessary to be a zillionaire all of a sudden, whereupon we lose touch with whatever got us there. And of course, the people got it in their mind, there’s that something they need and it’s so hard to find. Not that a good man is hard to find, but that “that something they need” is so hard to find. That something they need he, of course, a hero of some kind. Mainly, this is a shot a musicians, who make a good record and find a repeat very difficult.

In the second verse there is a mention of “the old man”, and we men can never forget the profound influence of such creatures in our lives. And “the village” it takes to raise us ain’t what it once was, probably. “Maybe he won’t know no more, don’t you see he’s heard it all before?” And surely, to fizzle out from high performance is “a long way to fall”, even if he doesn’t see it that way.

The last verse attempts to point out the relative difference of women. Women have improved largely in the past generation of two, and men have fallen. Their isms and roles and expectations are undermined, outlawed (many needed to be), their testosterone is dropping, their sperm counts are dropping, and with women being the default anyway in the human “condition”, I see the threat here to realness, to fun, to excitement and color of life, something men bring. So with a “lady friend now to carry the load, it’s just fine with him. Is she gonna sink or swim?” Yeah, she’s “givin’ it a try”, but let’s be real, men need to be men and women need to be women. We’re very different. And if she were to cry, in the face of something? Can you ask her what she’s crying for? I know this is sexist and all that, but, such a paradigm shift is a big deal to me that I see a lot in the modern age, and I suggest that “it’s not hard to expect a lot from what it might mean, when she makes the scene”. Hence, a modern age theme. And for sure, men had their chance to run things, and you make the call as to where it’s brought us.

The Games We Play (The Gospel Song)

Now, by the later 90s when these songs were coming together, I’d already done 15 years in the ER and seen people go to such lengths to hurt or destroy themselves, and by then I was preaching these songs to people. So, whenever I would hear their “misfortune”, I figured they’d created it themselves, and yet they couldn’t see it, or understand why these tears “keep finding their way to your face”. Alas, it’s the games we play. The simple things that we cannot say and will not say. The simple dreams we let slip away. And by the end of the song, you just want to say, to thine own self be true. Shine on! Your light is strong! If you will just shine it for you.

The guitar in the song was too much, right? Well, that’s what the guitar does in rock. It yells at you in the same key as the singer yells at you with, albeit in a much more dramatic fashion. In a rock opera, the main interplay is between the singer and the guitar wails.

The Still of Night

On “Songs for The Modern Age”, this song was among the cleanest and best done, and a favorite of mine. Quite simply, it’s a song about a cheating heart, which is only tangentially a Modern Age theme. It was a song in the key of “D”, which is not a key I have much written in, though recently I have for some reason. But Jackson Browne did a song on his first album (Saturate Before Using) called “Looking Into You”, a song in D. I was so enamored with that tune as a teenager, and I always said that if I could only learn to play the piano enough to be able to play this song, it would all be worth it no matter how long it took, which it turns out was years. But I still play it every so often.

The chords are standard, and the song moves along rather quickly, and that was all there was to writing the music. A bridge in the middle. Simple.

Back then as I recall, I think it was Frank Gifford, the old QB and MNF commentator, someone caught on tape during a romance with a girl that was not named Kathy Lee, his wife, who was at the time especially a pretty big TV personality. That poor girl had to suffer such humiliation when it all went public, and such a neat and beautiful girl. She sure resented it. Sound like a song? Right.

So the song becomes about a cheating heart. One of my brothers pointed out to me that it is a song of mixed metaphors, which of course I had no idea was the case. Maybe love is some kind of mixed metaphor or something. Love is hard. Romance is harder. But lyrically, I really enjoy this tune.

Consider the opening: “A long way from tomorrow, lies a list of something borrowed from the light of a neon sky”. Romance is a tempting thing, and temptation and suggestion abound, especially in the modern age. But if your heart gets broken, many look for the relief in romance with another, like Frank did. And like a lot of men do and did, and it still takes two to tango.

So, laying awake in the middle of the night, the cheat ponders his position and strategizes, and hopes his real local girl doesn’t perceive this “sigh” when they again face another day of their duet together. But she knows, right? For the rest of the lyric, despite his dwellings and denials and rumination, the fact is that when your heart is elsewhere, your explanations all go with you. So, the peek of the mind’s eye, “over the wall to the other side, where the grass grows a better green”, and so forth. In the middle he even breaks existential, decrying the sad reality that, once a moment’s passed, it’s suddenly “the past”, and no shadows will be left, and no trace remains. And by the end, he even wants the world to know that, hey, it don’t matter where you’ve been once the hourglass has run out of sand, I mean, especially “if nobody’s listening , to the sound of two lovers kissing, in the dark of a nowhere land.” A nowhere land indeed. But a nowhere land that exists in the fantasy of a lot of people.

Can’t Possibly Be

This “song of disclaimers” was born musically as an intended chug rhythm that guitarists enjoy so much, and it could be funkier. The essential rhythm is that of the “dotted quarter note”. Musically, a dot after a note says to play an additional half of whatever is dotted. When it’s the quarter note, it provides a “kick” that, no less, defines “rock” to me. Bump, bump-bump, dah de ladda bump, bump-bump. It’s hard to describe of course, but a choppy chug was the identifier for it according to me. So the song does this in a verse, and then for another movement does a straight rhythm, as if an answer to the choppy, aloof groove of the verses. Key of G, no weird chords really. Super simple.

Remember, people say poetic stuff all the time without meaning to. In this case, it was our bassist, Bruce. There was a long story I won’t tell here, but he was accused of something he didn’t do, and for which he was later exonerated. We were all relieved, and it wasn’t much of an infraction really, and it isn’t like the police were involved. But when he was exonerated, he’d come to the Café Elite (my basement), and was so exuberant and relieved, he just spewed out all these lines that literally I wrote them down, and paraphrased them into the lyrics of this tune. Originally I wanted to call the song “Curiously”, which increasingly wouldn’t work, but the bottom line was that he was accused of something that someone else did out of convenience for the accuser, and the song suggests this ulterior motivation that often underlies such soap operatic dysfortunes. So, despite the “don’t look at me” inferences, we were anyway. In the end, it was helpful for all to “listen carefully to those things, you see, that can’t possibly be.” Note the carefully placed commas.

We’ve never played the song in a live setting, but a rock band with any chops at all could really kill it. The version on the record is a good one, but please note the drumming. I am certain that my brother Buzz believed this was a throw-away take of the thing, and just went nuts with rolls and smacks, and I remember just belly laughing all the way through it, and I don’t know if anyone else even noticed. I got up and met him coming out of his booth, and told him how cool I thought it was and he completely blew it off. But it was really something, I thought, and I’m pretty sure that I then, as usual, again suggested he hang it up and sell all of his shit. It was my ritual. But the recorder is always running for this reason. The looser the players, the more likely they are to catch that butterfly they’re chasing.

Hear What I Say

A favorite theme of mine for Modern Agers is, whither men? Do you just want to outlaw and throw out all bawdy boy behavior? I mean, it’s often too messy and gross and bad for somebody, right? Well, some is for sure, but we’re outlawing a lot less girl behavior, that’s for sure. So, how about a song about men?

More than most songs, this intention drove what the song was musically. The idea was, men are simple, so how simple of a tune can you come up with? How about just three chords, the 1, the 4, and the 5, and we’ll just let them go in the same order, one after the next, for essentially the whole song. It hangs in the middle on a mixed/sustain chord, but still, bam bam bam, straight through. And in the key of B flat, a happy place for a piano player.

So picture a cave man, an enlightened one, and maybe he’s gone through a worm hole and ended up in the modern age. Outmoded and upstaged a little maybe, indignant and righteous, but sure of himself and his position and role. He implores that he and all he is will never be dispensed with, “long as they make us this way”, you know, anatomically. “I came around when the world was a real small place”. So he blows his horn some, and someone needs to. A simple and relevant question: Do they hear what I say?

“Fools in stupid screens”, are the people on their phones and computers, instead of traversing such complete realness that a real man is more accustomed to. And remember the song was written in 1998. “A castle looms, in a hill beyond” is a shot at politicians, on Capitol Hill maybe, but more that represented by “the man’, his employer. Most real men work for a living. You know, work. In the end he insists that he’ll “be back again when the world is a real small place”, and his services will always be needed. That “you’ll see it my way again, and feel like you’ve found your only friend. Standing big and strong, you could see me all along. But could you hear what I say? I won’t go away, long as they make us this way.”

Now know this: a real man has no use for the self-serving, narcissistic bullshit of girlymen and other impostors of men in the modern age. He is never needy, always carries his own weight, and wouldn’t want you to confuse energy for dramatics. That is, as long as he has a good hearted mom(!)

Buzz informed me that the song is a “dirge”, which he educated me is a very specific rhythm, and not just a set of random march/rolls. He was a very meticulous educated drummer, and went over the dirge for me. And it so fits the tune, even though I’m quite sure he didn’t know much of the lyrics, or what the song was really about. He got the feel, though. At the end, we all hit a “hum” and held it to the end of the dirge where the song ends.

Remember, these are songwriting lessons here.

Rescue Me

After we’d recorded that first record at The Stork, Tom and Greg wanted to do a Christmas record and have all the people who’d recorded there do a tune. I did Frosty The Snowman, rather forgetably. But when they called I thought, hey, I’m a songwriter, I’ll write a carol. Good luck writing a carol. But I tried. I thought, how about a song in three-four time? A lot of carols are in three, and just watch me. I started with A minor and G major as a dah dah dah de dah dah dah dad …I don’t know, but it went nowhere and I did Frosty. But it seemed like there was a song there, so I persisted. I beat on that rhythm… for a year. Nothing. Then it dawned on me, maybe the song isn’t in three four time after all. When I went to four four, out plopped “Rescue Me”. It’s my favorite, maybe my best, and most certainly the best song on “Songs for The Modern Age”. I have a big regret that I didn’t make it song number one.

That’s a point about “albums” They are collections of songs that go together, and order is critical. Best songs first? Can’t say. But anyway, it ended up last, another key song location to consider.

Lyrically, it fell to another favorite theme, a personally relevant one for me: freaked out kid needs someone to say something he desperately needs to hear. Ever ponder on a bad thought? Some people do it worse than others. In silence, these can occupy some pretty desperate moments. I mean, how many suicides per year? Forty-five thousand or more? And in the ER, big ERs anyway, you’d never believe how many people are in this dire of a mental state. The “ideation”, the planning, the discovery of this madness by loved ones, and the role of substances and booze. Hard work. Can they be rescued, or could they have been by a key interaction a long time ago?

So, “when hours have faded to moments again”, the despair of loneliness and misdirection, and obsession, and “the answers that lie in the lowest of lows, in battles lost, that nobody knows”. Sad. Then day breaks. We see it so much, too, in everything from the lost souls joining ISIS to the mass killings followed by suicide that ruin our lives every so often. Freud referred to the trick of behavior of “turning against the self” as if it’s a foreign entity, or identity rather. Part of the trick is “looking out as if something to see, in the darkness itself, a something to be, something that’s so far away, from me”. So sad. And all they needed was a key input, someone to rescue them, from themselves. Is it that simple? Was for me.
By the way, that was guitarist Tom Beyer whosejust wow-wow guitar part identifies this song, and really seems to provide that sane alter ego to the ruminating, obsessed, lost desperation of a mind struggling.

So, Songs for The Modern Age. It took us three years to finish this record, and almost everyone liked the first album, This Elite Band, better, and made it a point to tell me so. But during that three years, I think I listened to the whole thing every day. Weird right? But I have to say it was a little discouraging, even though I like it worlds better than the first one. So as a result, I would not write songs for several years after that, and focused on the book that was done from 2001 to 2005. For some reason, after Buzz died on us in 2008, I started writing songs again, and in later 2015 we’d had keepable versions to be finished for the next album of songs, Images.