Songs on this page: 10

Acoustic Songs

"A Moment of Clarity" Version 2, 02/23/05. A solo acoustic instrumental. This piece is the musical representation of that moment in every person's life where they look in the mirror and suddenly see themselves as others see them. That epiphany of realization is what this song is about. A moment of reckoning. That moment when you look into the mirror and look deep into your own soul and see yourself for who you are. You see all your flaws. You see where you have failed. A dream not pursued. A problem not solved. A good deed left undone. An opportunity passed by. You see what you had planned for the future, and for a moment, you see that that future has drifted away. But then, on the other hand, you also see what you HAVE done. You look back and see how far you have come. You see the good, too. The wonderful surprises, and the help unlooked-for. And when you put the whole picture together, you realize that it was supposed to happen this way. You did the things you did because you were meant to. And the people in your life are there for a reason. In the midst of all the noise and confusion and smoke and distractions of the rush of our days, every once in a while, there is a moment. A moment of silence. A moment of truth. A moment of clarity.

"You Can See So Far From Up Here" Version 3, 02/21/05. A solo acoustic instrumental. Two friends climb a mountain. Each helping the other get to the top. There are chasms to leap, overhangs to navigate, log bridges to walk.. It takes considerable time. They camp out for the night half way up. In the morning they continue climbing up, but somewhat lighter because they are leaving their camping gear in place for the trip down. Their conversation evolves as they climb. In the lower levels, it's all about sports, and their daily activities. As they get to the mid-mountain levels, they do more thinking and less talking. Now when they speak, they speak of larger issues. Politics, the economy. On the second day, as they finally near the peak, and now they begin discussing the largest issues. The world, history, people, human nature, destiny, God, the universe. As they rise up, their vision expands. Finally they reach the very peak. From here, they can see forever.

"Thinking of Home" Version 1, 01/08/05. Sample only. This is a solo acoustic piece. It may sound like two guitars, but it's only one. Played once. No overdubs. I have simultaneously miked it, and connected it directly, so there are two feeds into two separate tracks. Then I pan them apart to create distance and space, and then add a touch of delay to create depth of field. This is the first piece recorded with this new guitar. This piece is a moment of reflection for a soldier far from home. Thinking about what his family and friends are doing right at that moment. He remembers some fun times and close moments. He remembers swimming one day last summer, and what it felt like to be immersed in clean, clear water. Cool and refreshing. He picks up his head, looks out at the dangerous night, feels the heat and feels a little homesick.

"Torch Dance" Version 2 02/14/05. A solo acoustic instrumental just in time for Valentine's day. I'm writing several of these acoustic pieces lately because I have an acoustic concert coming up and I need the material. Also, I want to complete an acoustic album. The mental picture behind this one is a rural community. Far from the bustle of modern cities. Remote and intimate. A world apart from the world. There are the young lovers as there are in every place and time. These two have been eyeing each other for the last several months and thinking about dancing with each other at the next village feast. Well the day has arrived. The people of the village are gathered in an old barn, there is food and drink and music and dancing. Finally, at midnight, it's time for The Torch Dance. Each teenage girl goes to the rack of torches and each takes a torch and lights it and brings it to the boy of her choice. She offers the torch to him, and he accepts it with a wink and a smile. He will now literally "carry a torch for her". He leads her out to the center, and all the couples form a circle with the girls forming an inner circle, and the boys the outer. The circles begin to spin and the boys weave through the girls' circle swinging their torches in dramatic sweeps up and over and through. The girls laugh as they are narrowly missed by the flames, They link arms and swing around each other and the torches draw arcs in the air as they swirl. The older folks sit and stand around the edges clapping their hands, and stomping their feet in time and cheering the dancers on, and privately thinking back to earlier years when they were young lovers and dancing the torch dance. But each has their time. Tonight, is the time for these young, bright, hopeful faces as they fly by, lit in torchlight. The circle spins on.

"Redd Coffee" Version 1 02/04/05. A solo acoustic instrumental, this one is called “Redd Coffee”. Yes, of course, there is a story behind that. Well, the song that came out has a kind of a bluegrass feel to it. I’m using an odd tuning that has a kind of a drone sound to it. This has a very different, interesting texture and tone. It sounds similar to something you might expect to hear up in the Appalachian mountains.

It reminds me of a time when I was 12 yrs old and my father took us on a driving vacation from Toronto to Orlando, Florida. It was fun! On the way back, we were going through Tennessee, we got off the highway a bit and got lost. We went up into the mountains - way up high in the backwoods of the Appalachians trying to find our way back to the highway and civilization. We were driving past some old beat-up shacks that looked like something out of "Deliverance"... or possibly Calcutta. Most of them were leaning over, and hadn’t seen paint… ever. They looked as if they had been built in the previous century sometime. As redneck as it is possible to be. You got the impression that these people didn’t connect too much with the outside world and lived an isolated little existence. A pocket of the past left behind by an oblivious world down the mountain in the lowlands.

At one point, we stopped at a little restaurant at the side of the road. We went in and it was a quaint little place. Not fancy, but very homey, and the lady was friendly. She asked where we were from. We said “Toronto” She looked puzzled. “Toronto? Huh. Toronto. Never heard of it. Where’s it at?” My father was amazed. His whole world has always revolved around Toronto. That was the BIG CITY. THE big city. Good ol’ T.O. In those days it was a little over 2 million people (today it’s around 6 million) He thought of it very much like many people think of New York City. When they say ‘The City” they, of course always mean New York. They know there are some people outside the city, but they don't think about them much. The city is their whole world. He was the same way but with Toronto. He spent his whole life there and to him it was the center of the universe. When he asked someone where they were from, he meant which part of Toronto. He measured the worth of all other places based on their distance from Toronto. His assumption was that the further you got from Toronto, the less intelligent and sophisticated people were. He just literally couldn’t imagine that someone had never heard of Toronto. How could it NOT be the most important place in the world to EVERYBODY!??

So he said, “You’ve never heard of Toronto? Toronto! Toronto, Canada!” And she looked puzzled again. She squinted into the upper corner of the room. “Canada. Canada. I might have heard of Canada before. Maybe. Let me think now. ….. Is that a long, thin state up by Ohio somewhere?”

We all stared and then laughed (but politely). “No Ma’am. It’s not a state at all. It’s a separate country. And it’s a big country – larger than the United States. And yes it’s north of Ohio.” We were all amazed that she knew so little about other places outside of that area. But she was friendly, and polite, and would say, “Y’all want some more hotbread?” And the hot bread was delicious. And to my parents she asked, “Y’all want some coffee? Do y’all want it red or white?” We looked at each other with puzzled faces. Red or White? She said “With milk or without?” Ohhhhhhhh! “Without, please” “Okay – red coffee it is…”

We tried to figure out why they called it “red coffee” instead of black coffee. We thought maybe because this was the deep south, they were highly sensitive about calling anything ‘black’ because of the whole racism/slavery issue. We thought maybe it wasn’t politically correct to call anything ‘black’ As if that was a bad word now. Then we thought, maybe they hate blacks so much that calling coffee “black” sounded bad to them. Then we thought, well, coffee *IS* kind of a red color with no milk or sugar. Maybe they had just never heard of "black coffee” way up here. Maybe they just thought it was reddish, so they called it red. We never did find out for sure. Later she would come back and keep asking, “Y’all want some more red coffee?” Just as sweet as could be.

We talked about that experience often over the years. It was an education for us to realize how unaware some people were about our very existence. How all the hundreds of years of history in a city like Toronto mean nothing to some people in some places. But it was also strangely comforting to know that there are always little pockets of the past in this modern word. A haven of calm from the onward rush of modern civilization. To go there is to step 50 years into the past. And now we had a phrase that summarized that whole experience, lessons and all, anytime in the following years after that, when we wanted to call to mind that mindset. We’d just say “red coffee” in a southern drawl, (like ‘rayed cawfee’) and everyone would know.

Fire In The Field - There are two stories to this one. The story of what it is about, and the story of how it came to be. First the story that it tells. Imagine a meadow at the edge of a forest. It is a quiet, peaceful afternoon, with butterfliesfloating on a soft breeze. There is a scurrying of small animals as they come running by. Then larger animals. Then very large animals come tearing out of the forest running from a blaze. It is a quicking running flame that devours the trees and quickly spreads out into the grasses an shoots across the field. all is bedlam as every living thing races to escape being consuming by thjis spreading and unthinking beast. Finally, the flame washes over this land and all it blackened and dead. Then, slowly, after a while, life begins to emerge again and the cycle of life begin anew. The other story about this piece is how it was written and performed. I was on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean Sea. We were on a long leg of the 2 week jurney and they arranged on-board activities for the passengers. One nit we had an amateur talent night. They looked for volunteers. I put my hand up. The guitar player from the band loaned me his Ovation, and I spent a couple hours in a janotor's closet behind the stage, creating this piece in an open tuning - which I had never used before but wanted to try. That night, when it came to be my turn, I walked up to the stage, and pulled out the stool. The place was full of hundreds of people all making noise and laughing and drinking as they had through all the other performances. This actually made me feel better. I thought maybe I could get through doing this, finish up and then go sit down without anyone noticing at all. I began to play lightly, softly, just harmonics. People stopped talking to take notice. They wanted to hear and so they had to be quiet to hear it. Then, as I moved into the piece, they became completely silent and listened intently.The room was hushed as the story progressed. It worked slowly from the slow, wuiet afternoon sound to the rushed, frantic running as the animals ran for their lives, and then when it ended and the last harmonics rangout into the rom. There was complete silence. You could hear a pin drop. I looked out at them. They all looked back at me. After a moment of this total silence, suddenly there was an explosion of applause. The place went crazy! I said thank you and went back to my table with my friends. They said they were mesmerized and couldn't believe it. They said they'd never seen anything like it before. After my bit, the show continued as before with everyone making noise through all the other performances. That was a special night for me. and this piece brings that special moment back to me.

Little Angel - This is a classical-sounding piece I wrote for my daughter. It was originally meant as a piece for her to play flute on, but she never got that chance. She's STILL too busy. Oh well - it works as it is. It is a single guitar working alone. Songbird (a Chet Atkins) strung with nylon strings.

The Dance of the Shakti - Shakti is the Goddess spouse of Shiva. She is a sex goddess. This song is a slow, sensual strip tease/dance by a woman who is imbued with the spirit of a sex goddess. From time to time, all women have been in this spirit. All women have it within them to be this sex goddess. To touch this immortal power, and to weild it.

"Yavanna Dreamed" Version 3, 01/05/05 - This song was previously titled "Pillow Full of Dreams", but since this is an instrumental, that meant that I had to give up the words I had written for PFoD, and so I decided to make that into a separate piece with vocals - yet to come. This piece is now re-titled to "Yavana Dreamed". In the universe of J.R.R. Tolkien, Yavanna was the goddess of living things and brought light to the early world by creating two trees. Laurelin (the golden light of day) and Telperion (The silver light of night) similar to the sun and moon which were created later to replace the original trees of light that were destroyed by Melkor and Ungoliant. These trees were the only source of light in the world and brought a time of happiness and the counting of the days. This tune represents the peaceful dream of Yavanna, the goddess that made it possible.

Greensleeves - A traditional classic Christmas song. It is unknown where it originated exactly, but the lyrics for it were written by King Henry VIII. I actually wrote this arrangement for it when I was about 15 years old. I kept it in my small repertoire ever since then - even through my 10 year hiatus from music. after that 10 years away, this was one of the very few pieces I could remember how to play.