I’m playing a hip wedding in the middle of October, and they’ve asked me to play an hour of solo jazz guitar. Usually, I’d just pull my guitar out of the case and play, but I’m being paid VERY well, so I don’t mind doing a little homework. I’m arranging all of the songs I’ll be playing on this gig and plan to post scans on this blog.

Keep in mind that these are minimal arrangements and not reflective of how I’ll actually play them. I’ll be adding fills, passing chords, bass lines, et cetera.

Bluesette Chord Melody (pdf)

I’ve been reading way too much Lovecraft.

When the Stars are Right (128kbps mp3)

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I’ve written songs about murder, and I’ve written songs about the Devil. This is the first song I’ve ever written about both.

A Murder of Crows (128kbps mp3)

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This is the first demo for my upcoming album.  I wrote it for my friend Julia Ellingboe who wrote an amazing story game by the same name. Her game is named for an imaginary gospel song. The song is imaginary no more.

The narrative alluded to in my lyrics are based on the legend of the vengeful slave who decapitated his master, Penn Young, at Spring Villa, about ten miles from where I grew up and currently live. If you believe in the paranormal (and honestly, what kind of world would we live in without ghosts?), Spring Villa is supposed to be as haunted as hell.

What do I mean by Demo

This is a rough recording done soon after writing the song. It’s usually a first or second take with little arranging or production. If this song makes it onto the final album, it will have quite a bit more polish, and likely a guitar (or banjo or mandolin) solo.

Steal Away Jordan (128kbps mp3)

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It’s been a long time since I’ve written or recorded any new music, and some of my more vocal fans have been pressuring me to remedy that. I’ve decided to attempt to record an album over the summer, and perhaps even try to produce it and market it for real. Additionally, I’m going to make the process of writing, recording, producing and marketing the album very public by documenting every step of the way on my blog.

Time, Energy and Priorities

I’m a husband and a father, and over the past two years I’ve noticed a shift from primarily self-identifying as an artist to self-identifying as a family man and provider. I enjoy spending time with my wife and son, it’s one of the most important aspects of my life and one I’m not willing to sacrifice. I have to  make time for creativity without attenuating the quality time I spend with my family.

If it were only a question of time, that would be an easy fix: I’d just stay up late the way I used to before Parker was born. However, I no longer have the energy and focus I possessed pre-fatherhood. I’m not sure how I’m going to solve this problem, but when I have some ideas, I’ll let you know.

After this month, I’m losing two students that I really loved teaching. Dongwook Kim is moving back to Korea, and Griffin Limerick has landed a newspaper internship in Rome, Georgia, just a stone’s throw from Howard Finster’s Paradise Gardens. Both of these guys have huge futures ahead of them.

Dongwook, at age 14, is one of the most diligent students of music theory and technique I’ve ever had. A couple of weeks ago I laughed when another teacher tried to show him the blues scale. Dongwook can already recite the 7 modes of the major scale in every key and knows quite a bit about harmony. At today’s lesson we worked on superimposing the ascending melodic minor scale over chords with different roots, and thinking in terms of its modes.

Griffin is an aesthetic polymath, and is a man after my own heart. We talk as much about literature and philosophy as about guitar. I maintain that the guitar is an artistic medium just like any other, and to truly master it, you must be familiar with all forms of art. It’s great to be able to share much of the wisdom I learned from Steve Giordano, and from my explorations into various cultures of knowledge.

You guys will be greatly missed.

I’m pondering the idea of awarding experience points to my younger students. If they show up to their lessons at their regular time, they get xp. If they can play their assignment from the previous week, they get xp. If they learn something on their own, they get xp. Ask a good question? Xp.

The idea is to make is a positive motivation only. They don’t lose xp for any reason. After they get 1000xp, they level up. The xp requirement doubles for every level. I’m thinking of putting a leader board up in the lesson room.

I talked to a nine-year-old about this and he understood it immediately and dug it.

Watching Skins a couple of weeks ago, and Cook was running down the road singing Ace of Spades. Somehow it got into my head that I should do a blues version of the song, and it haunted me until I finally got around to doing it.

The first time I heard this song was when The Young Ones was in syndication on MTV back in the early 80s. I must’ve been around 9 or so.

Hopefully Grover will add some on top of my recording and I can post an updated version.

Ace of Spades (blues cover of classic Motorhead single from 1980).

My biggest influences as a songwriter are Johnny Cash, Merle Travis, Serge Gainsbourg, Paolo Conte, Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, Tom Waits, and Flannery O’Connor.

Lately (meaning in the past 10 years), I’ve been listening to a lot of old, dark blues; stuff that goes back hundreds of years and has become more twisted as it evolved. Blind Willie McTell, for instance. Dying Crapshooter’s Blues is a masterpiece, and it’s antecedent, St. James Infirmary is a favorite in my repertoire.

I never listened to Nick Cave until I got sick of people assuming I was a huge fan. We have exactly the same influences. I like the idea of Nick Cave more than I like his music. Too bad Lydia Lunch never asked me to do a duet.

Here’s a sampler of what a friend once referred to as my Southern Gothic Nihilistic Beatnik music:

Time to Die – I wrote this one when I was around 19 (1994), and working as a security guard in a bank parking lot. One day, I just took out my pad of paper and wrote the lyrics to around 10 songs.

It’s a Long Road – I wrote this on a Greyhound bus from Philadelphia to Alabama in 2003. It’s what I call a revenge song: one of my friends or relatives does something really stupid and I exorcise my frustration by writing and recording a song about them with the serial numbers filed off.

Broken Little Town – I wrote this in a motel room on a trip down to Alabama after leaving my girlfriend of 6 years. The imagery in the song was inspired the crappy truckstops that I make a habit of frequenting on road trips.

Black Marie – I wrote this when I was 21, and about to move up to Pittsburgh to have my heart broken by the girl who invited me to move up there to live with her. It’s meant to be an homage to Marty Robbins.

Demons Gotta Feed, Woke Up Dead, and Poison in My Blood were all written one day and recorded the next. 2008 was a particularly productive year for me, and my blues and voodoo influences started rising to the surface.

The lyrics to August Night in Georgia were written to a vamp that my friend Anthony Willingham and I were messing around with. That’s him on mandolin and creepy laugh. Recorded just weeks before Parker was born in 2009. I regret that Anthony and I weren’t able to record more music before he moved away, but life intervenes…

The Night I Murdered Evonne was written for my friend Julia Ellingboe, because she’s working on a game called Murder Ballad Black Jack, and needed some murder ballads recorded. 2009.

Devil, Get Out of My Head was written after a particularly bad week for my mental health, in which I considered giving up music altogether.

One day, I’d like to re-record these songs with folks like Jason McPhillips and Marshall Burns as my backup band.