the best songwriting you've never heard
number three.
the guts of this song – chords, melody, the phrase “it’s your birthday” – came to me a couple years ago on a family camping trip, playing it over and over by the campfire. i imagined paul mccartney singing it, solo, with an acoustic guitar, but as i fleshed out the lyrics and tackled the arrangement last week, things went in a different direction. Continue reading “monday song #3: birthday (part one)”
the second monday song.
when i was in junior high there was a girl named nadine in my wood shop class. at some point, the boys started taunting her: “nadine, nadine, the header machine.” i never discovered the background, but, though she disappeared before high school, she was forever etched into my brain. years later, she’d occasionally come to mind, and I’d wonder what happened to her. Continue reading “monday song #2: nadine”
the first installment of monday songs.
the descending/ascending piano line came first. it suggested to me a kind of hopeful melancholy.