Sunday, July 24, 2011

Let Her Go


It's been a bit of a mentally exhausting day, for no obvious reason.  I was up early for an observing run after staying up too late the night before, and I'm in the process of repeating the experience. Current events have been very disheartening.  So I picked up my guitar for a bit.  I recorded a version of "Love Is A Losing Game" as a weak tribute, but it felt self-indulgent so I'm going to bury it.  I've got a new song just about ready to be posted here, but it's too upbeat and bouncy to match my mood so I'm going to wait on it.

Instead, I'll post an old recording of an old song:  Let Her Go

This is an old one, as these things go for me.  It probably dates back to 1988 (certainly it was written by the middle of 1989) and is really simple.  You can tell I was learning to play guitar when I wrote it.  I wrote it for a female friend who was having trouble with her boyfriend, but changed the gender (in part so it wouldn't sound self-serving, like I was trying to encourage a breakup so I could pounce).  It was pretty popular as these things went, perhaps one of the most popular songs of mine that I never played in a band, if that makes sense, and a few other folks on the hall asked me to teach it to them.  This version was recorded on my old four-track, probably at Hawthorne House but plausibly at Cloverland. It's high on the list of rerecording possibilities for the next album, though the arrangement will probably stay as-is.

Anyway, this one kind of matches my mood reasonably well right now, though the specific message is pretty irrelevant to me right now.  So here it is. 


Sunday, July 3, 2011

Knight In Faded Denim


As usual, here's the song first: Knight In Faded Denim.

This one took a long time to write.  I first had title back in college, but mostly wrote it c. 1994.  I was messing around with it recently (after having spent a bit of time with the original college-era inspiration) and decided it was a bit too short, so I wrote an extra verse and a half.  Of course, now it's probably too repetitive...

I hadn't been thinking of it for inclusion on the next "album" (working title: Rhymes Against Humanity), but now that it's done I'm starting to consider it.  I'll certainly re-do the vocals and tweak the rhythm section bits.  I might lose the mandolin sample.