Are You Happy Now?

Wow, it has been a long time since I have blogged and so much has happened, but we will get to that in another blog. I wanted to share the story of my latest song, Happy Now. I started work on Happy Now back in July when I was sitting at work and I heard a line come to my head. "Whispers in the wind catches my mind as I set sail into the night". I liked how I kept the same cadence for it and wondered how I would put music too it. I started thinking about it in my head and then matched up some chords on my notepad (which were completely wrong) so that when I got home I could figure them out. I wrote down a few more lines and then the chorus before jetting out the door and home.

I picked up the kids from daycare and hurried home, kissed the wife and asked if she minded that I went downstairs to flesh out an idea. Thankfully she didn't mind at all, and I ran downstairs, closed the door and grabbed the guitar. The first thing I noticed is that the song in my head didn't match the chords I wrote down on my notepad. With my guitar in hand it was much easier to figure out what those chords should have been. I finally had my chord progression down and started thinking about a chorus change. I had been noticing lately that a lot of songs that I been listening to lately either used the same chords for verses and choruses, or just switched the order of one or two of them (the classic Taylor Swift chord progression). That got me to thinking that maybe I could do the same thing and by simply changing my verse progression of Am - C - F - G to C - F - G - Am for the chorus gave me the exact effect that I wanted without completely changing the sound of the song. I quickly put a rough recording together and even a horrendous guitar solo (which was the basis for the eventual guitar solo) while my kids decided to raid my office. My work for the day was done.

It was a day or two later that I went back and started looking through the lyrics I had compiled and fleshed out the ideas a little more. The line "I never thought you'd leave me for some asshole from your work but where is he now" was one I was contemplating. I liked the line, but was it too harsh? I was asked to think about using something like jerk or moron instead, but in the end I felt that the feeling I had when this occurred in real life was more in line with the word asshole, so it stayed. The song was a reflection of what happened to me years ago at the end of a relationship, and I felt that I would be cheating the song if I didn't let the raw emotion of the incident come out. When she told me that she was considering going out with another guy I was heart broken, crushed, and genuinely ticked off. This guy whom I had never met was an asshole because he was hitting on my girl. She was wearing my promise ring wasn't she? He should have known she was dating someone else. Those are the thoughts that ran through my head when I first heard those words coming from my girlfriend's mouth.

For verse two, I moved on to the aftermath. In real life, the relationship ended very shortly after this occurred. The girl in question would constantly talk about this other guy and what they did at work that day to the point where my heart was basically crumbling and falling to the ground. I didn't understand, and to this day still don't understand, why she was doing this to me. Why would anyone blatantly tell their boyfriend that they were hanging out and enjoying the company of another guy? There were signs that this relationship was going sour long before this occurred, but it took this incident to finally give up. As heartbroken as I was, it was time to move on. I burned up the notes I had (which weren't that many in reality), threw away the picture I had sitting next to my bed for the last year plus, and spent many nights trying to figure it all out; figure her out. On the recommendation of my good buddy Jay, I changed the repeat line at the end of verse two from "I figured it out" to "I figured you out". He was right when he made that suggestion. I figured it and her out, so why not call a spade a spade?

I now had a finished song in my hands. It was full of emotion and self healing. These were words that needed to come out for a long time, and now I had completed the circle in my mind. I call this song the sequel to Rejection because it deals with the end of the same relationship. Where Rejection deals with all of the crap I put up with during the relationship (including the incident that spawn Happy Now), this song zeroed in on the final days of that relationship, and really the reason it ended entirely. The only thing I had to do now was record the song, and that was no easy task.

I must have done 100 takes of the song, with most of them being the lead guitar work. I wanted the guitar to tell the sadness of the song, while the words conveyed the message of the song. I also had a hard time getting the vocals to sound just right. I would get through a take and learn that my voice cracked during this chorus, or I held this part too long. I wanted it to be just right because I felt this was such a strong song. I spent over a month getting the song to where I felt it was finally right, and I am happy to share the song with all of you. I hope you take the opportunity to feel the emotion of the song, and I hope you enjoy the song.

Happy Now
Words & Music: Brian Bartholow
Guitars/Vocals: Brian Bartholow
Drums programmed by: Brian Bartholow



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A Trip Down Memory Lane

I never intended to write a song about my life as a young child living on 1st street in Delano, MN. Considering that I was a month shy of turning ten years old when we moved out to the country side, it's understandable that I may have forgotten a lot about life on 1st street. Truth is, I have a lot of memories from the nearly ten years I lived in town on that half a mile stretch of road. I made some great friends, had some great times, and was truly happy with life in those days. I guess it should come as no surprise that a song about those memories would come out at some point in my song writing process.

It all began about a year ago when I was just fiddling around on guitar and came up with this melody. It had a very Edwin McCain feel to it, which I loved. I played it many times trying to decide where to take it, what direction to go with it, and what kind of song I wanted it to be. About three months ago, I was once again playing through the chords when the words "Skippin' rocks on the railroad tracks" came out. I liked how it sounded, but wasn't sure where to take it next. A couple of days later, I was discussing the tune with my buddy Jay when I finished the line with "like we did when we were kids." I liked how it flowed, and truth is that I grew up near the railroad tracks on 1st street. I recorded a rough version of the guitar parts and sent it to Jay for a listen. Jay liked where I was going, so I asked him to see if he could put down some lyrics for it because I was still unsure what to do with it.

Over the course of talking to Jay I started to think up some other lyrics and a theme; I was going to write about my life on 1st street and relive some fond memories. First of all, while I do remember going up to the railroad tracks as kids, I do not recall skipping rocks on them or even playing near them. In fact, they scared the shit out of me as a kid. Needless to say, the opening line is an embellishment and not a memory, but the rest of the song is pure memories of my childhood days.

I was off and running now, and Jay never even had a chance to put down a single line for this bad boy because I took it back with a vengeance. Within a matter of thirty minutes I had the first verse completed. "Taking a walk through the back field path to the Peppermint Twist" relives the many journeys I would take with my pal Nate, my brother, and sometimes a few other people along a path that cut through the field behind our house. We would walk through this field almost daily in the summer catching frogs, butterflies, caterpillars, or just walking to the Peppermint Twist (then called the Delano Drive In) to get free ice cream from the owners (they loved us back then!). "Making wishes on a wishing well" refers to the toy well that was behind the Peppermint Twist. I remember back in the day when a Perkins would have a well filled with cheap toys that kids could take on their way out after a meal. Well, the Peppermint Twist had one of these as well outside. I can't remember if it had the same cheap toys or not, but I want to say it was used to store all of the toys they had for kids to play with in the back while parents ate delicious burgers and fries. Either way, we were always poking and prodding into that well. "Playin' ball until the sun goes down" refers to events that happen in every neighborhood (or at least they did back in my day) where a group of kids get together to play basketball at the home of the one neighbor that had a hoop on their garage, or football in the backyard of a friends place in the fall, or catch during the summer. Originally I wrote this line as "Playin' tag until the sun went down", but decided to change it because, let's be honest, we would keep playing after the sun went down anyway. The final line "We were so innocent" sums everything up. Back then we didn't worry about playing in the neighborhood unsupervised because we didn't need too. It was all about having fun with great friends.

With one verse down, my mind started thinking about all sorts of memories from my days on 1st street and I immediately contacted a long time friend and neighbor asking permission to use her nickname in my song. It's funny because I am the only one who still calls her by her nickname, but she will always be Punky to me. After getting her permission I started the second verse with "Me and Angie driving Punky wild in a closet in her room. We would laugh until we'd both fall down, over what we never knew". This line refers to a little fun that my neighbor Angie and I had at her sister Punky's expense. Angie is what you would call my first puppy love. Back when you are only eight or nine you have no clue what those feelings are, but it was definitely a crush in its earliest stages. One of the things we would do is go into Angie's closet and sit in there. Punky would be outside the closet getting livid wanting to know what was going on in there. Honestly, nothing was really going on in there, but Angie and I got a kick out of how riled up Punky would get. Thinking back today, I often wonder why she didn't just open the door and look for herself.

The next line refers to the giant (at least to use kids) drop-off like hill that existed behind our neighbors houses across the street. "And when the snow'd come falling down, we would race across the street" is exactly how it happened. With slides in hand, the neighborhood gang would race across the street and spend hours just sliding down a pretty dangerous hill. We would jump off cliffs, run into trees, and just have a blast. It's amazing that nobody ever got majorly injured during these little sledding trips, but man those were fun. I close out the second verse with "And in the summer we would bike through town" because that is what we did. Whether it was to the high school or the ball parks where the fourth of July carnival is held to shoot hoops, to the video store to rent a movie, or to Motzko's General Store to buy a stick of gum for one penny (you read that right) we biked everywhere. Biking to town is something I would continue to do after moving four miles outside of it to the farm.

So there I was with two verses in hand and no chorus. I had already written the bridge melody on my guitar, so I knew where I wanted to go musically. As I sat and thought about what do do lyrically for the chorus and came up with a melody and just began using it in place of words. Turns out that I liked how that sounded more than I liked trying to think of words, so that is how the chorus of "oooooo" came to be. As I went to do a rough demo record I only had the bridge to tackle. I decided to record the vocals I currently had written onto the demo before coming up with the bridge and closing vocals. As often happens, I laid down the vocals for verse one and two and just ad-libbed the bridge and outro. What I came up with was a soft whisper of four simple words that would overlay the music and two lines for the outro. "This is my 1st street serenade. Thanking you for all the love you gave" seemed a nice and appropriate way to end the song because this was my tribute to all of my friends from that short stretch of road that produced so many great memories for me.

I know had a song written and the next thing I needed to do was record a better version of the song. I am going to be honest when I say that the intro and outro parts kill me. It isn't that they are particularly hard (because they are easy), but I have a hard time not missing a note when I do the pick runs. I don't know how many times I would get to the end and then miss a note or three and have to start all over. It was a tedious process to say the least, but I got it down (not once but twice as I overdubbed a second guitar for each part) and was able to put together a decent final product. So there you have the story behind 1st Street Serenade. I hope you will enjoy the song as much as I hope you enjoyed the blog.

1st Street Serenade
Words & Music: Brian Bartholow
Vocals/Guitars: Brian Bartholow



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Collaborations Are A Lot of Fun

It was a cold day in December, the day I received an email from my good buddy Jay asking me to check out a little ditty he had been working on and let him know what I thought. I sat down at the computer and downloaded a video file that he had sent. As the video started I planted myself firmly in my chair and listened intently. After giving one full listen, I immediately played it again and fired off an email to Jay letting him know how much potential I thought the riff and lyrics he put together had. Fast forward a few months and I asked Jay how the tune was coming. To my surprise he told me he hadn't done anything with it and asked if I wanted to give a try at finishing it out. That is how Let It Shine came to be my latest project.

Jay had handed me a great riff, a first verse and a chorus to play with. He told me I had free reign to change anything up, but I honestly loved the lyrics he put together and felt there was no need for a change in that department. Instead I focused on the musical side of things and how to go about playing the guitar parts. I made a few minor adjustments and then took on the lyrical side of things. In order to complete the song, I needed to know more about what Jay was thinking when he wrote it.

Jay had been talking to a long time friend he lost touch with until recently. They threw around the idea of writing a song about how much things had changed since their high school days, and about how different kids are today. Jay came up with the riff on guitar and the words just came out for the first verse.

Armed with this knowledge and my interpretations of the words Jay had written, I set out to write up a second verse. My inspiration was based on the idea of what it would be like to walk the halls of my high school again one last time. What kind of things would I see? What kind of emotions would I feel? What kind of feelings did I have in when I was walking these halls as a teenager? All of those questions were in my head as I started jotting down the words that would make up the second verse.

After the second verse was complete, I created a video for Jay to hear the progress of the song. While playing and singing it, I got to the end of the second chorus and just went into a new bridge that I hadn't planned. What I played actually seemed to work out with the song and suddenly we had the bridge music written; all we needed were lyrics. Jay came up with some lyrics for the bridge, and after I changed a little of the phrasing, shortened the bridge section, and took out some of the words, we had a complete bridge and song.

I began laying down the song on the Tascam shortly after and soon had a demo version ready for guitar solos. I once again enlisted my good buddy Matt Graunke to provide the lead for the song. After a couple of attempts we had a solid sounding song and solo. The demo was unfortunately full of poor timing and terrible audio levels that caused a lot of distortion in the speakers, so I decided the best course was to re-track the song. With the help of a drum machine beat, I recorded a new version that was in time and had guitar, bass and new vocals. I sent off the raw recording to Matt and he recorded another take of his solo. It all came together well; it was time to put the finishing touches on it.

Abasa, a friend from work, suggested adding backing vocals to the song for the chorus. Up until that point I hadn't really thought about backing vocals, but what he said made perfect sense. With that suggestion, I went home and loaded up the song on the Tascam to record some backing vocals. I layered in two backing tracks to the song during the chorus sections. Abasa was right! The song seemed to come to life with those backing vocals in there.

With vocals and instrument tracking complete it was time to produce the song. I found some sweet free plug-ins on the internet and added a nice Fuzz Box to the guitar track that gave the song a nice pop. For Matt's solo I added a small amount of flanger to smooth out the high ends and give it a killer new wave of British heavy metal sound. A little chorus on the vocals rounded out the production side of things and after a couple of weeks of hard work, Let It Shine was complete.

I am very excited to share this song with you. Not only is it my first real collaboration on a song in many years, but I truly believe it is a great song. I hope you as the listener will agree with me on that. So without further ado, I present to you Let It Shine.

Let It Shine
Words & Music: Brian Bartholow & Jay Skipworth
Vocals/Guitars/Bass: Brian Bartholow
Guitar Solo: Matt Graunke



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Songs From The Past (Part Four)

Time for another installment of Songs From the Past. This time I will be looking at the only other song I was able to get recorded in a studio from the band days. The song title is Rage, and it was written in late 1996 and recorded in January of 1997 by the same guy that recorded The Day. Rage was the final hurrah for my musical journey back in the day. After this song, I wouldn't write another song for over a decade.

The song was written for the latest incarnation of our garage band. We called ourselves Drop Box and featured my cousin Jimmy on drums, Dan Matter on vocals, Nate Wick on bass and Jaymz Braith and myself on guitars. We played mostly heavy metal music, so the song has the heavy metal vibe. The tuning is drop D and it is by far the heaviest thing I have ever written. I wrote the chorus riff first and then built the verse and bridge riffs after that. It all came together pretty quickly from what I remember. Everything but the vocals that is. While I knew the song needed to be hard hitting and heavy, I needed to figure out where I wanted it to go. One day I just sat down with a pen and paper and started writing.

I wrote both of the verses first. The song was about a deranged man that can't handle the fact that his girl being rejected by his girlfriend and goes crazy because of it. I imply that he kills her with the lyrics, but that is open for interpretation as I don't come out and say it. The hardest part of the song is also the simplest part... the chorus. It took me a long time and many rewrites to finally get what I wanted out of the chorus. It had to be short and simple, but how would I tie it all together? I remember it was myself and Jimmy sitting at the farm brainstorming what to do for the chorus, and I don't even remember who came up with it. I believe I came up with "Unshattered dream scape" to start off the chorus. After that it may have been myself or Jimmy who finished it off, but no matter who it was it tied both verses together perfectly. Lyrically and musically the song is very dark, but to this day I consider it one of my masterpieces. I love how it turned out from the music to the lyrics and I hope you enjoy it too.

Rage - Written by Brian Bartholow in December 1996. Recorded by John in January 1997.

Listen to Rage:



Vocals: Dan Matter
Lead Guitar: Brian Bartholow
Rhythm Guitar: Jaymz Braith
Bass Guitar: Nate Wick
Drums: James Armstrong III

Part Five will be coming soon. I hope you enjoy this short series of blogs.

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Live at the 318 Cafe

A coworker came to work last month excited to tell me about this great place that sits in downtown Excelsior called the 318 Cafe. He had been there the night before for their monthly open mic night and got up and played. I had told him about my trip to Cy's back in December and it inspired him to go ahead and give it a try. We made a pact that we would hit the 318 in March together.

Well, March has come and yesterday (March 2nd) was the date we had been waiting for. I showed up at about 7pm to sign in, but my buddy was nowhere to be found. For a bit I thought he had ditched me even though he confirmed he would be there early that day. Thankfully, he showed up at about 7:18pm which was three minutes past the cut off time to sign up. The host was nice enough to put him at the end of the list anyway, so we sat down for a night of free entertainment.

I didn't see the order of performances before the night began, so I had no clue when I would be going onstage. Turns out I was third to last in the order, so I just stayed the whole night. It was fun to see the wide range of talents that graced the small stage that night. From blues players, to rockers, to alternative music lovers... every one seemed to be represented. I was in awe watching many of these guys and gals play their guitars. These were talented players who can sing as they played. I felt a bit out of place as I consider myself a songwriter more than a great guitar player, but I was there to perform.

I got onstage around 9:50pm and only planned to do two songs, Rejection and a cover of the Beatles classic Norwegian Wood. I started with Rejection, and aside from some vocal issues on the chorus it went pretty well. I got a decent reception from the audience after I finished. I then went right into Norwegian Wood which got some of the audience's attention. The Beatles are well liked and in the video you can hear some of the crowd singing along (very cool!!). After I completed Norwegian Wood, I decided to go ahead and close out with Brother. After screwing up the intro four times, I just went with it and played the song. The rest of it went smooth enough, and after it was over I was pleased with my performance.

I stuck around to watch my buddy, Abasa, do his set and he blew the lid off the place. Abasa is very humble, but the dude can play and sing amazingly. He finished his second song and the crowd wouldn't let him leave until he did a third (each artist is allowed three songs). It was a cool thing to see.

After the show was done I was able to talk to a few of the other acts. They were all very humble and nice, and you could tell many of them were just like me. Play music in our bedroom, but don't really go out and play for others. I talked for a bit with one of the performers, a gentleman named Mikel Arson who goes by Super Villain Slim. He drove all the way from Coon Rapids and was overwhelmed by the response he got from the audience. He let me have a copy of his homemade CD which I gladly played on the ride home that night.

Overall, this was a great experience. I enjoyed the music, the atmosphere was welcoming, and the people were awesome. If you ever get a chance to check out open mic night at the 318 Cafe, either as a listener or a player, I recommend it. Here are videos from my performances on March 2nd at the 318 Cafe.

Song 1: Rejection - Brian Bartholow Original



Song 2: Norwegian Wood - The Beatles



Song 3: Brother - Brian Bartholow Original

It's Been 14 Years of Silence...

To say I was surprised when I received an email from my cousin showing me photos of his remodeled drum kit would be an understatement. Anyone who knows how the last 10 years have been would understand why. Jimmy and I were best friends growing up. Our families spent a lot of time together, and when we both showed an interest in music it was only logical that we would form a band together. But life happens and there was a major falling out between us right before my wedding. Since then, we only kept in touch sparingly. It is something that has caused a lot of heartbreak for me over the last 10 years, so when I got the email I couldn't help but smile and reflect on all the fun we had back in the day.

I first learned how to play guitar when I was about 7 or 8 years old. My dad bought an acoustic and tried to teach us all how to play. I took to it more so than my brother and sister, but even I gave up for a few years. About the time I turned 12 or 13 I decided to pick it back up. I retaught myself the chords I knew and started writing silly little songs.

In ninth grade at a school dance I ran into Matt Graunke. Matt and I got to talking, because neither of us was dancing, and Matt told me he also played guitar. It was a little fib, but at least he had a guitar. He had this old pile of crap Harmony guitar that hurt the hell out of your fingers when you tried to play it. Even so Matt showed great drive in wanting to learn how to play, so I started teaching him the basics. Shortly after picking up the basic chords and learning to change them quickly, Matt's mom asked if my dad and I would go with them to look at guitars for Matt. We piled in our van and headed for Guitar Center, and that night Matt went home with a brand new guitar and a promise that he would stick with it. Boy did he ever... In a matter of weeks Matt had not only learned how to play guitar, but he had surpassed me in knowledge of how to play. There was no doubt that if we formed a band, Matt was the lead guy. And that was cool with me because I never bothered to learn scales and stuff like that.

Matt and I started jamming with another guy from school named James Braith. James decided he wanted to play too and he and I went out to Minnetonka music one day to buy a bass guitar. James picked out a hot pink BC Rich bass that day and a small crate amp (which I still have to this day). James was a natural and quickly picked up the instrument. We found a guy at school who played drums named Justin, but he was unable to commit to playing on a schedule that we wanted. I had mentioned that my cousin was a drummer and just needed a drum set. Once again my dad and I piled into the van with my aunt Pattie and cousin Jimmy and this time headed to a small outfit in Minneapolis called B-Sharp Music. We found a kit there for a reasonable price and made the purchase. We had our band, or at least the musicians for it. James Braith on bass, Jimmy Armstrong on drums, and Matt Graunke and myself on guitars.

As would be the case throughout the years in our garage band, we didn't have a singer. That meant I did the honors, since I could play and sing at the same time. Having me singing was not ideal at all, but we had no other options. That was until I ran into James Smola at school in 1994. James was a senior and I was a sophomore, but we were introduced by a friend when I was told he liked to play guitar. James and I started hanging out and playing together. He could also sing pretty well, so we invited him into the band as a third guitar/singer. James jammed with us for about a year, but there was a bit of a falling out when the band got mad that James and I would write acoustic stuff instead of the metal stuff we liked to play as a band. It was silly really, but we were kids. James was "out" of the band, but he and I continued to play on the side because we had similar musical interests and just had a good time jamming. James Smola was replaced in 1996 by Dan Matter and Matt was eventually replaced by James Braith on guitar and Nate Wick joined on bass. Matt had moved on and was playing in a local metal band doing shows and recording demos. It was pretty cool, but I have to admit that I just enjoyed jamming in the barn and wasn't sure about doing shows. Anyway, the band itself lasted until about January of 1997 when we recorded the song Rage. After that we all went our separate ways. Jimmy and I continued jamming together as time permitted, but I was in college now and it was too much to haul all the gear back and forth. By 1997 we were no longer playing together at all.

Each of us took different journeys, but we all still shared a passion for music. Matt Graunke has been a mainstay in local bands around the Buffalo area in MN. He plays with Menace often as well as a few other bands from time to time. James Smola went on to form a band with Minnesota veteran singer Debra G called Copasetic. They put out an EP and a full length CD and played many shows in the Minneapolis music scene. Jimmy and I went on to have families and just played music on our own time.

Here we are 14 years later. I received an email stating that Matt was going to come out and play with Jimmmy for fun, asking if I would like to join. I didn't even have to think about it because the answer was hell yes! A couple of days later I received an email that James Smola was going to come and play as well. It was a partial reunion of the old band. I was nervous because I hadn't played most of the songs we did as a band in years. I have been playing more acoustic stuff these days and focusing on writing songs. Matt and I came up with a list of songs to brush up on, so I focused on those.

So along came Thursday, February 24 and I went home to pack up my gear for the jam. I was pretty pumped and way over packed my car. I brought four guitars, my amp, my mic and stand, cables and my HD video camera. I arrived at about 5:15pm and was greeted by my cousin with a hug. Years of pain melted away at that very instant. It felt great, it felt natural, it felt like old times. We set up my gear and James Smola soon arrived. Matt was going to be another hour or so, so the three of us busted out some old school Poison, Guns and a few other bits. We talked, had a beer, and just basked in the moment. Matt arrived just before 7pm and we unloaded his car and set up his gear and PA. We had a set list in our heads, but funny thing is that when we started playing it was whatever came to mind instead. We played for three hours, jamming, talking, reminiscing. I felt like a kid again, mentally anyway.

At about 10:15pm it was time for me to head out. I had the most enjoyable night musically that I have had in years. We left with hugs and a promise to do it again soon. I look forward to the next jam and hope that James Braith will be able to join us again too. It would be nice to have the full band from 1994 together again. Until then, here is a video I put together to commemorate the evening.

Songs From The Past (Part Three)

Time for another installment of Songs From the Past. One of the songs I will be digging up is from way back. It is one of the first songs I wrote, and was actually recorded in a studio (basement studio, but still a studio) a year or so later. I hope you enjoy this installment of Songs From the Past.

The Day

I wrote The Day back in 1993, and it was one of those songs that do not come from personal experience. Let's face it, in 1993 I was 15 years old and very limited on experiences with the ladies. And by that I mean, I had basically no experience. As I sit here now, I can't even remember the basis for this song, or why I even wrote it. It's a sad story of a guy whose girl left him and he is having a hard time coping with it. How I was able to put down these feelings having not experienced them I don't know, but the song turned out to be the gem of my early writings.

About a year or so after writing the song, my cousin and I went over to a neighbor of his house to record the song in his basement studio. Jimmy set up his drums in a room adjacent to the room I would record guitars, bass and vocals in and we laid down the basic tracks to the song. It was a truly amazing experience recording my music in a studio, and one that I would only ever have one more time in my life. The one thing I remember clearly is the coda of the song. I couldn't hit the key I normally used to sing the final "who oh, who now" part so we had to layer a low key and high key together to make it sound decent. Overall, aside from the obvious key change issue between the verse/chorus and the bridge (It just doesn't go together well) the song turned out great and I am still proud of that recording to this day. I hope you enjoy the lyrics for The Day.

Listen to The Day



Your Life In Mine

I wrote Your Life In Mine after breaking up with what was my first high school girlfriend. We only dated for about two or three months total, and by date I mean hung out and watched movies. She was my first real kiss too, and shortly after that the relationship ended. This is a song I wrote shortly after that, and while the song isn't directly about that relationship it does show the mood I was in at the time. Your Life In Mine

Part Four will be coming soon. I hope you enjoy this short series of blogs.

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