To Be Free: I am the Storm

I Am the Storm

Here the song here. My last week at Undulata, I was in charge of the day-campers, which meant that I didn't have to sleep with any campers.  So I was all alone at night.  I'm pretty sure I wrote this one night while listening to a thunderstorm.  I can't say that I'm the best judge of my own music, but it kills me that at fifteen (and as early as fourteen), I was writing songs that are as good as any I've written since. I remember playing "With the Wind" with Dan for the Showcase auditions, and some cool senior sat next to me and asked if I had any other songs.  I played her this, and she was impressed.  In no other way would I ever be considered "cool,"  but I could make songs that were cool.

There's a weird darkness to the song, and you wouldn't be crazy for thinking that I had a real dark side, but I don't.  Only when I'm being creative do I create things that are really dark.  Still, the song is true if only on a fantasy level.  The song is inhabited with all sorts of villains: torturers, killers, but as bad as they are, I am the worst.  I am pure evil.  At least in the song I am.  I think a part of me felt like I was more likely to be attacked by villains.  I often felt defenseless, and I would often take meaningless slights very seriously.  Not that anyone else would know it.  By the time I reached high-school my tactic had been to create the facade of someone who can't be fazed by the actions of others.  I pretended to be impervious to harm, but really I just buried the pain deep below.  Of course, it would always come back up in zombie form, and music was a great way to turn anger in hurt into something that wouldn't hurt other people.

Downpour later played this song.  I mean, between this song and "Four in the Morning", you'd think we were a theme band, but actually the name has nothing to do with these songs. At any rate, it was one of our go-to songs from the beginning.  I'm pretty sure we played it at every show, so if you saw us play live, you heard it.  It was one of the songs that I brought to the band already finished that everyone liked.  Most of my other songs got rejected.  They were a tough audience.  I first tried recording it my junior year in high school, with a synth-string background, and a lead acoustic on top with a storm in the background (obviously had to wait for a storm).  I know, the synth strings sound very 80s, but to me they sounded like Dire Straits- the coolest 80s band at that time.

I kept the song briefly in my next band, Blue Fuse, and then the song went into hiding for a while. I resurrected it years later in a log cabin in St. Matthews.  It was just me and a four-track.  And then the song disappeared again until now. While there is a distorted electric guitar, the song wouldn't have fit on this album if I had recorded it the way Downpour would have played it.  We definitely wouldn't have had backing vocals, which is crazy because Bill Greene is a phenomenal singer.

Some are creepers,

Some are leapers,

Some are people sleeping in their mind,

Some are changers,

Most are strangers,

Chained in pain- I've met all kinds,

But me, I'm not like all the rest,

I won't say that I'm the best,

But one like me, I know you’ll never find

I am the storm,

I am the storm,

Watch out here I come,

I am the storm,

Ready to swarm,

There'll be nothing left when I'm done.

He's a swinger,

She's a stinger,

See the fling a thing of such misuse,

Now the dawn,

Has come and gone,

I hear the song of wrong and much abuse,

I am the storm,

I am the storm,

Things won't be the same,

I am the storm,

I am the storm,

The bringer of the blue eternal flame

He's the scorcher she's the torture,

They'll try to thwart you if there's anyway,

He's the gamer, 

She's the tamer,

They kill and main with no thought of yesterday,

I am the storm,

I am the hurricane,

I know when you've been bad,

I am the storm,

I am the torment,

I'm all the nightmares that you've ever had,

I am the storm,

I am the storm ,

I am the firelight,

I am the storm,

I am the storm,

It's time to say goodnight.

To Be Free: Song To You

So if, "Come On" was the beginning of the mini-rock opera, this was the closer.  This was also the only song that Dan Patterson ever played outside of Undulata.  Somewhere there is a recording of Dan and I playing this with our first attempt at a band- The Confused (a rare instance in truth in advertising). In the earliest recording, I played the lead guitar in the recording (albeit, with less finesse).

 If you listen closely, you can really hear the campfire on this one.  The song was our good night song for the rest of the summer.  I resurrected the song years later when I became a father.  It's a nice lullaby.  It's fitting that it ends the album.

                          Song to You

This is my song to you,

This is what I'll do for you,

I hope you like it when it's through.

Some people call it a sad song,

But don't get me wrong,

Just close your eyes and it won't be long.

This is your song from me,

I've tried my best to set you free,

Now you must be what you are going to be.

The stars are moving rapidly,

You are you and I am me,

I hope that you have learned to see.

To Be Free: Come On

Come On

Okay, so "Come On" was another song written with Dan Patterson at Undulata.  Dan and I played guitar, and we played many nights at Vespers.  The kids loved it.  We tried to play songs that kids would like, and we would like.  Donovon's "Mellow Yellow" is a perfect example.  Dylan would not fly in this environment.  At any rate, from week to week, different counselors would host different Vespers.  One week Dan and I were supposed to host Thursday night Vespers, and we were supposed to do something special.  We decided to write a mini-rock opera.  I mean, after you've written a dozen or so songs, you're ready, right?

The songs weren't really part of a theme or anything, but they were originally intended to go together.  This is the song that opens up the whole thing.  We wrote it pretty quickly.  I think we thought we might add a bridge at some point, but I think the statute of limitations has expired on that. There was another song called "The Meaning of Life," and Dan and I were very excited about it, but it failed miserably.  Maybe a little too ambitious.  We tried to play this with Downpour, but they were very picky about what songs to play.

To Be Free: Four in the Morning

Four in the Morning

Dan Patterson and I began writing a lot of songs together.  We began one summer at Camp Undulata. We usually had time in the morning to create, while the campers were with the counselors who taught them how to ride.  This was one of the first songs.  I don't really remember.  I know that I was inspired by having written a letter to a girl that I had a crush on before the summer.  She finally wrote back, and it wasn't reciprocal.  Still, instead of being crushed, I was strangely happy. I had been so nervous, and scared, and the worst had happened, and the world hadn't ended.

At any rate, Dan and I sat in a Cabin and we began to turn the chords into a song.  I think the rain idea was influenced by the fact that in the cabin protected only from the elements by screens, you could literally feel the rain.  So if you were sad, and it was raining, you felt the rain and the sadness as one.

This song really has a rich history, because Dan and I played it with John Weiss when at showcase for my junior year.  By that point we were in a band (Downpour, see above).  I think this is what the song might have sounded like if we'd practiced more than once a week for an hour and a half.  In addition to not practicing, we didn't always agree on the direction of the band.  This was the song that kind of started our band.  See, Dan and I recorded us playing this song, and played it for John, and he really liked it, which was a bit peculiar, because John was into hardcore.

While there's nothing particularly brilliant about this song, there's something about it that resonates decades later.  I don't think it's nostalgia, but that may play a part.  The first time I rediscovered the song was when I was living with my band Satori.  It had been a challenging year.  I was living in a log cabin addition with no heat.  I remember sleeping with a wool cap on my head.  My relationship with my girlfriend at the time was tumultuous, and I had discovered that the other guys in the band were going back to school, and no one had bothered to tell me.

Well, I had a four track, and I began recording a bunch of songs, and this ended up being one of them.  Something about the rediscovery brought me back to that point when I was 15.  The song always finds me in moments, where I need to move from a sad place to a happy place.  It found me again this Summer as I rediscovered it.  Something about the last chorus lifts me out of the rain.  I hope it brings as much joy to you as it has to me.

Four In the Morning (C) by Dewey Kincade and Dan Patterson

It's four o'clock in the morning,

As the rain falls down,

I can see it gently falling,

As I look across the town,

The rain is gently tapping,

Against my window pain,

I can here her quietly calling,

Calling out my name

Rain on me,

Let the rain fall on me,

Rain on me,

Let the rain fall on me.

My mind begins to meander,

On days gone by,

Laying upon my bed,

No strength to even try,

I wonder why I failed,

To make the right choice,

It pains me to think,

Of the sound of her voice

Rain on me,

Let the rain fall on me,

Rain on me,

Let the rain fall on me.

The rain is waning and the clouds begin to lift,

My thoughts of yesterday,

Begin to drift,

As I look outside my window,

The clouds are gone,

The sun beckons me,

To search on

Shine on me,

Let the sun shine on me,

Shine on me,

Let the sun shine on me.

To Be Free: Same Old Thing

Up until this point in my songwriting career, all my songs had one thing in common: they were all very serious.  When I sat down to write me a song, I tended to be serious about it.  And yet, I wasn't all that serious as a person.  "Same Old Thing" was when I decided to change that. I started with a melody, and the melody sounded fun. So the lyrics were fun.  This was my idea of a pop song satire.

If I hadn't already, I think I had just turned 15 when I wrote this.  It was later that summer that I began playing the song over and over, that I thought something like, "Hey, this is the single."  Well, as the years passed, I kind of forgot about this song.  I honestly don't know how I unearthed it, but I remember recording it and thinking it should be included, and then the more I worked on it, the more I had fun with it.  And now I agree with my 15 year old self: this should be the single.  Listen to it twice in a row and see if I'm not wright about that.

I'm sitting in the same old place
Starin' at my TV set
Lookin' at the same old face
And baby you can bet
It's the same old thing
Like it was from the start
Some say it is different
But I can't tell 'em apart.

Starin' out my window at a bird
He's been singin' the same old song
And even if it is absurd
I begin to sing along
It's the same old thing
Anyway you look
That's the same old criminal
Writing the same old book.

A man in his car has had enough
He takes his gun and begins to shoot away
And even though the penalty is too rough
I've driven that freeway every day
And it's the same old thing
Any way you go
You're trying to get somewhere
but traffic's movin' way too slow.

Starin' out into outer space
Lookin' as far as the eye can see
There appears a familiar face
It looks an awful lot like me
It's the same old thing
The universe around
The same state the same city
And the same home town

It's the same old chorus
that we sang before
And since we like it so much
We're gonna sing it some more.

To Be Free: With the Wind

            I'm going to tell you a few things about this song.  The first is about the writing, and the second is about the recording. Here's the version on Spotify.

The Writing

            Freshman year in high-school was an opportunity to remake myself.  I remember the weekend before school started I had finally succumbed to Bob Dylan.  It was the song "Tangled Up in Blue" and though I had no idea what Dylan was doing I finally learned to take it in.  My brother had been listening to Dylan for a couple of years and I thought he was the funniest sounding thing I had ever heard.  It was a far cry from the perfect harmonies of Simon & Garfunkel.  But succumb, I did and a mix tape that I had made became the soundtrack to my first day of high-school.

Nobody really knew me and I could decide who it was that they would see.  And I took full advantage of this.  I had the advantage of nothing to lose.  I also started classes at an after-school theatre company called Walden Theatre. It was here that I met many of my life-long friends.  Walden put on about four productions a year and held classes for movement, improvisation and playwriting.  My brother and sister had both participated in this program and I was always jealous. 

            My involvement in this program started gradually.  For the first half of my freshman year I only participated on weekends.  This left me free during the week and so I spent a lot of time practicing piano and guitar as well as writing songs.  Having written "To Be Free", I knew that I had the ability to write a good song, but to tell you the truth, I wasn't exactly sure how I did it.  So there was a lot of trial and error.  I would like to think that every song I wrote has some spark of interest in it, I would only venture forth with a precious few.  

            I also was writing stories, poems and I was working on a full-length play.  In retrospect, I see that what I was doing was learning how to write by making every mistake very quickly, but I am glad I did not see it as that at the time, because I know that I would only have been discouraged.  I wanted to believe that everything that I was writing was brilliant.

            I had a very close friend named Dan, whom I had known since I was four and whom I used to pal around with all the time growing up.  He had moved away but was still living in Louisville, but because we were too young to do anything about it, we didn't see each other.  Well, he went to Ballard High with me and we became friends again.  That Christmas, his parents gave him a guitar and he was playing the rudiments quite comfortably by the end of the year. He had soul and the fact that he was such a good friend made playing music that much better. Plus, I got him into Dylan.

            Bob Dylan was a revelation to me.  Like the Monkees, listening to Bob Dylan felt like a secret no one else knew about.  I dressed up as Dylan for Spirit Week.  The more I listened to his music, the more I was in awe. I had written some good songs, I thought, but nothing like Bob Dylan.  How did he do it? Getting two lines to rhyme seemed impossible at times, and Dylan would tell impressionistic stories while weaving words together in all sorts of unusual ways.  

            By the Spring of my freshman year, I had written a long epic poem called, “The Road.”  I showed it to my friend Dan, and he was very impressed.  He liked my songs, and I remember trying to teach him “What we Both Know,” but he had never seemed all that impressed with any of my songs.  I had played them for Eric, and I had gotten a similar reaction. But Dan liked my epic poem, and I showed it to some other kids, and they liked it too. It made me feel like I could be a writer.

            That Spring break, I visited my brother and my sister at Yale.  It had made a real impression on me.  There was something about New England that made an impression on me. Perhaps it was the line in “Tangle Up in Blue” where Dylan sings about heading to the east coast that made me think that this was a place that I belonged.  There was something transformational about the area for me.   

            One day, I was in rehearsals for Much Ado About Nothing.I was talking to my friend Gabe (a fellow actor), and we talked about writing a song together. It was a very creative place. In the play, I was a musician, and so I got to bring my guitar to rehearsals all the time.  I remember trying to write a song that began, “I’m a traveling man, that’s what they call me/I don’t stay in one place, but I stay happy.”  My friend Amy got a good chuckle out of that line.  Probably because I didn’t really fit the persona I was trying to create.  I was trying to find another line to the song, but I couldn’t find one.  Probably because it sucked, but I didn’t know that yet.  I started talking to Gabe about a good story for a song, and we came up with the idea of a guy who falls in love with a girl who kills herself. 

I said I would start the song, and he could finish it, but I ended up writing the whole song in about an hour when I got home that night.  When I saw him next he didn’t seem to mind.  Here’s what I wrote:

Oh, what a summer,

Oh, what a season of wonder,

Saw the light felt the thunder,

Oh, just like the wind.

We all drove to New England

The way up we were all singin'

Road down my ears were just ringin'

Things change with the wind.

When I saw her face my heart stood still

She said that her life had been unfulfilled

And that every flower made will always be killed

Seasons change and move with the wind.

You can run so far and run so fast

You can do what you want but it won't ever last

You run from yourself and you run from the past

But you know things change with the wind.

She asked me what was the point of it all

"We were made to stand up only to fall,"

I said, "You've got to teach yourself to stand tall,"

You gotta teach yourself to stand with the wind.

The next part was just like a dream

I don’t remember much, I remember the scream

She told me that things they aren't what they seem

The illusions fade with the wind.

Oh, what a summer, 

Oh, what a season of wonder

Saw the light felt the thunder

Oh, with the wind

The wind dies down and the wind grows strong

She knew just what she was doing all along

Her voice sounds out like the song

The times will change with the wind.

            Unlike the other songs that I had been struggling with throughout this period, this one came easily.  I wrote it in one sitting.  I could pick out details and say where they came from.  For example, when I was talking about New England, I was picturing New Haven where my sister and brother where in school. And the woman in the song has a tragic quality that I associated with this girl at Walden.  But  I wasn't really trying to make any kind of statement or anything.  I know that it was heavily influenced by Dylan. Unlike most pop songs it has a folk structure.   

The Recording

When I started playing this song in front of other people, it was as close as I could get to a "hit".  People really liked the song, which was really weird, because it's not a pop-song, and wasn't intended to be.  When I finally got around to recording it (13 years after I wrote it), I recorded it for Lost and Found. That's a great album, and you can find it on Spotify, iTunes, etc.  Check it out. We went over every song on that album with a fine-toothed comb.

For a while I thought about putting out that same version on this album.  But I couldn't do it.  I wasn't ready to recycle material for a new album.  This is not a greatest hits, or anything where you expect to hear the same material.  So I decided to re-record it.  At first, it was just going to be me and my acoustic guitar, but I love to tinker in the studio.  Hopefully it's not overdone.  That was not the intention.  The intention was to make a camp-fire version of the song.  Enjoy!

To Be Free: Questions of the Heart

The key (for me) to writing a good song is that it must be true.  It doesn't have to be literally true.  For me, it was often the feelings that were true.  I mention this, because this song has pop song content- love, right?  But it is in a folk song structure- AAAA.  There's no chorus here.  That usually tells me that I wrote this, because I had to.

Is it rain falling or tears?
Is it thunder or your fears?
Is that smile a hiding place
To hide your soul from your face?
Got your back against a wall?
I'll be there through anything at all.

Tell me where does the time go?
Oh, will we ever know?
And it seems like I've been here before,
And I know that I'll be here some more,
I know my wish won't ever come true
But that's all I'm left to do.

I've been lost so many years
The answer's never been quite clear
I've been lost without a sign
Someday I'm gonna make you mine.

It it rain falling or tears?
Is it thunder or your fears?
It's been so long that I can't tell
Oh, I guess it's just as well.

This song is interesting to me, because I tried to cultivate the persona of someone who knew some things.  I used to like to think that I was pretty smart.  But it was a persona.  I wrote this, because of my crush that I couldn't do anything about.  I was too scared.  Nothing made me more nervous than feeling something for someone else.  I was a late bloomer, so I didn't have any experience with how to talk to girls.  In my mind, I had this idea that they would somehow find me. And yet, I knew that would never happen.  So I simply carried this weight around with me, and the song ends on a note of resignation.

When I produced this song, I wanted to capture that feeling of a crush.  The song soars to a climax in the third stanza.  That's the moment where you imagine the possibilities.  There's a person, and they're so close. You see them every day, and yet with one touch you enter a whole new world.  But the song doesn't ever get there.  It's just a promise, and the promise falls short.

On a side note, there is a through-line in these songs.  A side plot of sorts.  There's something about the rain that captivated me.  In fact, when I think back to when I was writing these songs, I wanted to call my first album Something About the Rain. I still think it's a great title. I just didn't have any pictures that fit.

To Be Free: Smile on Me

A few years ago I discovered that I was an HSP.  That stands for a Highly Sensitive Person.  It's a thing, honest.  About 15% of the population are on the spectrum.  A sensitive is someone for whom normal sensory input is amplified.  On the plus side, they can be particularly responsive to art, and music.  On the other hand, they can be overwhelmed easily.  A crowded room, a particularly shrill person, even bad lighting can disturb a sensitive.  I used to get head-aches all the time, but I never new why.  In hind-sight I see that it was because I had maxed out on sensory input for the day.

I couldn't tell you exactly why I wrote "Smile on Me."  I imagine it has something to do with HSP. Sensitives aren't just sensitive to their own emotions.  They can feel other people's emotions. I was easily influenced by other people's emotions.  High school was a departure from a sadness that haunted me in middle school.  I felt a kind of liberation.  I was finally someone that mattered.  I don't know why I felt that then, and not before, but I did.  But it seemed like some people were just so depressed about everything.  It bothered me.  Some days more than others.\

Smile on Me

How come nobody ever smiles any more

Smile to light up your face

How come no one even tries any more

Tries to make sense of this place,

It's this life-long journey that seems surreal

Nobody seems to know the rules

That ones who stand and the ones who feel

Are the people we label as fools

You can't be trapped by what’s on top,

There are better things buried inside,

You have to swim below the surface,

And pull it open wide.

Smile on me,

Smile on me,

Smile on me,

Can't you see?

That's what I really need.

How close can I get?

Before you turn away,

I can't stand a mouthful of regret,

So I guess I'll make my mistakes today,

I remember when I didn't look,

I always knew myself for sure,

But then I felt that desperate stare,

I never could endure.

I've been running- is it to or from?

I know I've been running so far,

You have to run to the ends of the earth,

To find your shining star

How come you don't smile anymore?

Was it that hard?

How come you don't try anymore?

It just tears me apart,

Cut off just to see your face,

Surrounded by these walls,

In a lost and lonely place,

In long and empty halls

I want to be the one that finds you,

And I hope that you find me,

I'm looking for that distant shore,

To set our spirits free

Smile on me,

Smile on me,

Smile on me,

Can't you see?

We need to set each other free.

To Be Free: Who's Next to Die/Things Will be the Same

I interrupt this blog to remind you that the original purpose of this album was to raise money.  I was tempted to simply beg for money, but I went this route instead.  If you like the music, great! But the purpose is not a song, or an album, but a pipeline.  In the next couple of weeks, you'll be able to purchase the album.  So do. At any rate, back to the spiel:

I wrote these two songs my Freshman year at Ballard.  "Who's Next to Die" was from a nightmare I had.  People were dying one by one, and everyone left behind was finding ways to cope with this scenario.  "Things Will Be the Same" sounds like a less victorious echo of "To Be Free."  My friend Jed really liked this one, so it became a favorite of mine.  When I first tried to record these two songs, I recorded them back to back. I have since always heard them that way.  In my mind, the "Things Will be the Same" answers to the dread of "Who's Next to Die."

This particular recording of "Things Will be the Same" began in NYC at Wombat studios.  Two weeks earlier I had been on tour. The tour went from NYC to Wyoming.  It was a long trek.  When I got back, my friend Dan Patterson met me in NYC and we laid down some tracks together ("Things will be the same", "Song To You" and "Smile on Me."  It was going to be the genesis of volume 1, but didn't have the tools I wanted to make the album that I heard, so I left it at the time.  When I began to rerecord some of the songs, I remember listening to "Things Will be the Same" and thinking that I would never be able to get that road-weary sound in my home studio.   That sound belongs to a time and place that has come and gone. And I can't unhear it.  That's the soul of the song.

                       Who's Next to Die?

I hear the clock slowly ticking away,

But still I have to wait another day,

We all sit back and slowly sigh,

But still we're left to wonder who's next to die.

Just when you think you've made it to the end,

You feel your mind slowly begin to bend,

Just when you think everything is fine,

Then they make you drink the devil's wine.

I had a dream the other night,

And I awoke bathed in cold moon-light,

I looked around and I saw that my dream was true,

Someday it's gonna be me, and someday it's gonna be you.

So still we wait day after day,

And all the while the clock ticks just the same,

We try to forget we try hard to deny,

But still we're left to wonder, who's next to die.

Things Will Be the Same

I can't cry,

I don't know why,

When I try,

I just sigh.

It's been this way,

For too many days,

If we don't stop now,

It will always be the same.

I don't care,

If you're not there,

If you're not here than maybe,

You're not anywhere.

I can't understand,

All your demands,

For all our dreams,

We're left with empty hands.

And I wonder, still I wonder,

Where are we going to?

I can't give,

And I can't live,

And your news falls through my mind,

Like water through a sieve,

And it still stays,

Day after day,

And we close our eyes,

And hope it goes away.

And I wonder, still I wonder,

How long can this go on?

I can't fly,

Don't know why,

When I try,

I just sigh.

Life goes on,

Duck 'til dawn,

Things will be the same,

When we're gone

To Be Free: What We Both Know

So I decided to write a little something about the songs on my new album: Volume 1: To Be Free.  I decided to go in chronological order- which is not the order of the actual album.  This post is about the song "What We Both Know."  You can listen to the song here. 

This was one of the songs that I wrote in the fall of my freshman year at Ballard.  They say write what you know, but I knew nothing about bars and failed relationships.  And yet, there's a lot of truth to the song. This may be the first song where I created a persona to say what I wanted to say, without the song being about me.  While I was a very loud 14 year old boy at the time, I was very shy about who I really was.  I didn't want anyone to know.  When I wrote songs, I always felt like I was a wide-open book.  So I unconsciously created a persona to express something that I needed to express- not fitting in, and being unable to connect.

In this case, the disconnection was with someone that I love, or loved.  Now, I had never kissed a girl at this point in my life, which seems ironic, because I'd had a crush on someone for as long as I can remember.  I can go all the way to pre-school, and find someone that I was interested in.  It usually meant that there was someone that I would watch.  I don't think that I could even get close to the person that I had a crush on.  Not until middle school.  By then I could be in the same room, and even talk to them, but I would pretty much act like a goofball.

I pined away for these different crushes, and I would feel the butterflies in my stomach even when I was home alone.  I would have dreams in which the two of use would be together, and I would wake up and I would feel just how far away I was from that reality.  Like a dream in which I could fly, I would wake up and be so very disappointed with myself. It's interesting looking back at this moment in my life, because so much of my creative expression was fueled by this sense of disconnection.

Writing songs was still hard for me, and whenever played music, I couldn't help but feel how far away I was from what I wanted to be creatively.  I LOVED music, but I wasn't making the music I loved.  The music I was making was therapy.  It helped me cope with distances in my life, just as it had when I was 7 and singing to myself over my friend Ryan who had moved away.  I played this song a lot, but I never played it for anybody.

The song never felt finished.  For a while it was just the last verse.  I couldn't tell you when I settled on the last two lines.  But this song has a dynamic early on that made me have to record it in order to complete it.  "What We Both Know" has a descending guitar part that is introduced in the second verse.  That was part of the arrangement for as long as I remember.  I had a microphone and I remember that I could overdub by playing something I had recorded and playing it back, and recording along with myself.  I could only do two tracks this way, but one of the first things I recorded was this song so I could add the descending guitar part.

Years later when I was sixteen, I rented a four track recorder that would record on cassettes.  This was the first song that I recorded.  I finally was able to record the two guitars, and then I came up with a third guitar part (which comes in before the third verse).  Then I recorded a bunch of voices singing along (which you can hear on the third verse).  I think it was the very next day that I played what I had recorded for my friend Amy Richardson.  I have added to the arrangement since then, but I have never changed those fundamental parts.

Every song has its own soul.  It knows what it wants to be, even if you don't.  Some songs are like giant slabs of rock, and thy are already fully-formed.  You simply have to chip away at the right places until they reveal themselves.  Even now as I write this, I think, "Maybe I should have faded that song out, because it still feels unfinished."

What we Both Know

I won't say I don't see you there,

I won't lie and say that I don't care,

Tonight is movin' kind of slow,

I won't say what we both know.

Sometimes its hard to understand,

We're both right from where we stand,

And we've got nothin' left to say,

Our eyes collide then drift away.

Sometimes I wonder where I fit in,

It seems like a game that I can't win.

I reach out to shadows I once knew,

I wake in the night and I think of you.

I see you there across the bar,

You're so close and you're so far,

I'd like to say I'm feelin' low,

But I won't say what we both know.

To Be Free: To Be Free (The Song)

So I decided to write a little something about the songs on my new album: Volume 1: To Be Free.  I decided to go in chronological order- which is not the order of the actual album.  "To Be Free" is not the first song that I wrote, but it's the first song that I kept.  You can listen to the song here.

           I could tell you a lot about my childhood. And some of it would be pertinent. But there's a line drawn in my memory and when I cross it I lose a sense of certainty regarding my own history. For example, in my family it is common knowledge that I fell out of my second story bedroom window when I was about two.  I landed in some bushes.  I don't remember this incident at all.  But because I've heard the story so many times, I can visualize it perfectly. So someday, I imagine, I will tell people this story and I will remember it- though, all I am remembering is the visualization. 

            That being said I'll start in the middle because the search for the beginning can be maddening.  Every time I think I have found the beginning I look back and realize that in fact there is an event that precedes it that could very well be considered the beginning were it not for the fact that there is yet another event that could very well be looked upon as the beginning.  So to avoid all this nonsense, I start in the middle- which is where we all start. 

            The earliest songwriting memory I have is of me singing and crying to myself.  I think I was six years old.  My best friend had moved away, and I had never felt so sad.  I wanted to sing a song that expressed my sadness, but there wasn’t one.  So I just sang what I was thinking as I cried.  I don’t know if I ever did that again, but I still remember that moment.  

            I was in my brother’s room- which is where I would go to listen to music.  He had a turntable, and I would play his records.  I mostly listened to The Beatles’ Revolver, Lou Reed’s Transformer, and occasionally I would listen to The Police and The Cars. I think I would spend an hour every day, when I was young doing that.  I liked to sing, but I couldn’t really play an instrument yet. 

            Years later, I was sitting a the neighborhood pool after swim practice, and I began making up a silly song.  I remember being impressed with myself, though not impressed enough to actually write any of it down. I still didn’t have any idea that people wrote songs.  By now I could play a little piano, but I wasn’t very good.  I did try making up a song, and I played it in the third grade in music class, but my best friend at the time thought I had stolen someone else’s song.  I didn’t think I had, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t right.  

            I was about twelve years old when I had written my first song.  I couldn't tell you the name of it, but I still remember the melody.  I played it for the talent show at my school in seventh grade and people were impressed.  Not because the song was any good (it wasn't) but because I was not even thirteen and writing songs.  I had played with melodies for years, but I hadn't taken pen to paper until now.  

            I played the song to an amphitheatre of people, and I didn't have a microphone, so no one could hear me.  So really, no one could tell how bad the song was, fortunately.  So I escaped with my credibility in tact.  I didn't play the song much after that, choosing instead to entertain people with other peoples songs- mainly "Let it Be" by the Beatles and "Daydream Believer" by the Monkees.  

            The performance took place at the end of the school-year and it wasn't long before I was off to camp Hayo-Went-Ha for the summer.  Camp was always a good time for me and it influenced my music considerably.  It was an all-boys camp and a lot of the counselors were life-long hippies and they all played guitar.  They would play "I know you Rider" by the Grateful Dead and "Four Strong Winds" by Neil Young and Cat Stevens and Woody Guthrie like it was going out of style.  

            There was something about the woods in Michigan that reminded me of some paradise lost.  Something about the tall pines and the cool summer nights that made me feel like I had escaped into some parallel universe where God was watching all the time.  It was here that I remember sneaking off to the Bombright Lodge where I could find a piano and would play in the middle of the day after rest-period until Dinner.  There was something about the quiet there.  My chords would resonate into that quiet. 

            I always loved to go to camp.  It was here that I was looked upon by my peers as someone worth knowing. Someone cool.  Except that cool ceased to exist in the woods.  It was more a sense of trust.  There was a degree of trust among us and even if somebody was picked on for whatever reason, there was a line drawn in each of our minds that we did not cross.  

            We would go on trips down the Two Hearted River and to Pictured Rocks and I learned to sail, and I would get up and jump into the cold waters for the polar bear club.  That summer I took an astronomy class.  I remember spending one night on the docks and looking up at the stars as our counselor (who was an astronomy major at college) would point out all the constellations.  And he would talk about physics, which we only superficially understood. There was something about that place that for all my years of schooling taught me what it meant to be human being- and not one that separates itself from the natural world, but one that is a part of this amazing web.

            The camp was a YMCA camp- and we would have church in an outdoor chapel listening to the waves crash against the shore. We weren't allowed to talk the entire hike out to the point.  And so we arrived at this chapel with quiet open spirits.  The sermons were never all that Christian. More often than not, they were stories about lessons learned in the wilderness or about the importance of being able to count on a friend.  And church just seemed an extension of the daily ritual wherein each counselor would take his turn giving a thought for the day.  

            So as the Summer came to a close, I found myself heading back to Louisville very much at peace.  This was a good thing, because school was such a difficult place for me.  I seemed to do okay academically, but I was getting into trouble a lot and really didn't feel any kind of acceptance among my peers.  My close friend, Eric, was my saving grace.  We would get together just about every weekend.  Often times we would spend our time at my house eating pizza and listening to Simon & Garfunkel. My friend Kevin Lott would come by, and we would chill and talk about life.  

            For some reason, I had a habit of being out of control in large groups, so intimate settings were very good for me. But still I always longed to "fit in".  I could come up with a dozen reasons as to why I didn't.  Perhaps it was because I came into this particular school late.  Everyone had already started to get to know each other, when I came.  Or perhaps it was that every close friend I had had up until I was about 12 had moved away.  Or perhaps it was that I was the youngest by five years in my family and I always had a sense of being left out for "adult activities". Who knows? But I always had a sense of not fitting in coupled with a strong desire to fit in. 

            I took piano lessons, but I didn't really enjoy them.  I would sit and stare at my piano book and just not practice what I was supposed to practice.  I preferred to tinker on the piano. I wrote songs gradually.  I would just keep trying different things until I found something that worked.  I don't know how else to do it.  But the more I did it, the more I had to do it.  Oddly enough, I did learn some music theory, but it was entirely by accident.  

            I didn't worry too much about words. Words, were just sounds for me at that point.  I was really into the music more than anything.  And I wrote many instrumental pieces without any words.  I liked to sing.  In fact, I was pretty good.  I sang in the choir at church and we did a Benjamin Britten piece at church called, "Noyye's Fludde," where I was a main character, and had some solo parts to sing.  I had a lot more confidence at that point of singing other people's stuff at that point than my own.  In retrospect, I see it was for good reason.

            The choirmaster, Mr. Rightmeyer, was a fun guy to work with.  I don't think I remember him getting angry or yelling at anyone.  And everyone who stayed in the choir, did so because of him, I'm certain.  He had a way of getting us to learn the songs that was not forceful.  We would work on a bunch of songs at rehearsal, rather than working on the song we would sing at the offertory the upcoming Sunday.  This was a fabulous way to work, because we would gradually learn a song over a six week period. Also, I got along with the people in choir.  Something about coming together to sing that makes people more open-minded.  We all made bad noises from time to time, but we trusted each other because we saw that trust pay off time and time again.

            My eighth grade year was problematical. My brother had gone off to college and I was alone in the house with the parents.  But more often than not, I was alone.  I didn't have a ton of friends in the neighborhood, and so I spent a lot time playing by myself.  This was actually a good thing, because growing up their was never a dull moment in my house.  With my time to my self, I spent a lot of time going on wild flights of fancy. And I felt very comfortable with who I was. But then I would return to school and feel like a complete dork.

            Eric, my best-friend, was also a dork. But he was kind of cool, in a way I would never be.  We got along very well and we used to go on wild flights of fancy together and talk comic books and make videos and what not.  Eric had a great sense of humor, though he reserved it for special occasions.  Me, I joked all the time, which meant that I missed as much as I hit. When we hung together I felt like I was an okay guy.  It wasn't all that different from when I was by myself.  Eric liked me the way I was.  And I liked him too.

            I think the only time I felt comfortable in front of people, was when I was singing a song.  I was good at it.  And so I found myself spending a lot of time in front of people behind a piano.  I built a steady repertoire of songs I learned by ear.  Reading sheet music was a slow process for me, so I would play by trial and error.  Sooner or later I'd get it. And if I didn't, I would learn another song.  I was a big Monkee's fan, so I learned a lot of those songs, and it branded me a dork by many. 

            I read comic books voraciously.  Eric turned me on them.  I actually wanted to be a super-hero, but I lacked their courage.  Plus, I could never beat someone up.  In every fight I had been in, I got my ass kicked.  But that didn't stop my imagination.  Comics were great fuel for my imagination. And I would write my own and come up with my own super-heroes.  In addition to comics, I was deep into occult stuff. I had a tarot deck and I read about psychics and E.S.P. and ghosts and all things out of the ordinary.  I read dream dictionaries and was interested in the hidden world.  The invisible world.

            All this actually made me cool at times. I can remember the few instances when I wasn't playing piano, and my peers listened to me like I had something important to say was when I was talking about all this occult phenomena. Actually, I discovered that a lot of the kids at school thought about these weird things.  I just would get the ball rolling.  And when we talk about ghosts and strange phenomenon, all of a sudden I wasn't a dork.  People listened to me.

            That seems to be a recurring theme. Listening.  Being the youngest in a five person nuclear family meant that I got told a lot.  I sat and listened to a lot.  And I overheard so many things in that house.  But it was rare that I got an opportunity to talk.  My brother and sister were so much older than I was and prone to arguing with each other, and my mother and father would argue too. Don't get me wrong- I don't know if we were unusually argumentative or not.  But the arguments were more interesting.  So I paid more attention.  The other "adult-type" discussions, were not really of interest to me, or were not intended to include me.  But I found clever ways of getting attention.  I was often the comedian of the family.  I would say something really outrageous and people would laugh and listen for a moment.  

            My parents tried to get me into soccer, but it was not my element.  I just wasn’t very aggressive on the field.  I preferred working on the plays we put on.  Yup.  Put me on stage and everything will be just fine.  I was a bit of a ham, truth be told. But again, I liked the notion of working in groups to create something.  There was a great deal of trust when you act with people on stage.  One person screws up, it's up to everyone else to get the play on track.  So being in plays wasn't just about being on stage. Though, that was a great part of it.  

            I used to get head-aches a lot. Actually, a whole lot.  I was taken to the doctor's and they couldn't find anything wrong with me.  Just tension head-aches, they said.  Great. Never knew how to get rid of them.  But when they'd come on, I'd be out of commission. Maybe it was the tension of being a dork.  Or maybe I was just hypersensitive.  I certainly was a bit high-strung.  I mean, sometimes the littlest thing would set me to crying.  I was a cry-baby.  And I was embarrassed because of that.

            I tried to write more songs, but I could never figure out how to do it.  I wrote poems pretty easily, but songs were more structured.  I couldn't just be creative.  Eric and I worked on a song together for the talent show.  Eric was playing bass now and we got up and performed something that can only be thought of as really weird.  I still have no idea what we were thinking.  Nobody liked it, but we didn't care.  We were wrapping things up in our little school. School was coming to and end we both were looking at high-school next year.  

            The song was called, “Crazy.”  I remember the line, “Crazy is just a state of mind,” but not much else.  Everyone asked why I had ripped off Pink Floyd.  I didn’t listen to Pink Floyd, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t heard their song.  It had never occurred to me that I could unconsciously plagiarize anything. But I was still trying to write songs the right way, and not my way.  

            Here things get fuzzy.  I know that it was around this time that I wrote the song "To Be Free". I'll throw the lyrics out at you and we can break off into discussion groups in a second.

            Everybody listen to me

            I've got words to set you free

            It's nothin' nothin' at all

            You can go hide or you can stand tall

            But you need to be freee like the eagle in the sky

            Who never wonders why can't I find my state of mind.

            Oh, tell me why.

            

            You are you and must be that

            But I am none the worse for that

            Seeing only with eyes blinds us

            Hearing only with ears deafens us

            And feeling with our fingertips

            And not our hearts tears us apart.

            You need to be free like the eagle in the sky

            Who never wonders why can't I find my state of mind.

            Oh, tell me why.

            Sooner or later this and that creaps back to the hole from which it came

            Not being known to man- better off all the same

            Everybody's worried, worried 'bout paying the price

            But a wise man once said, "God doesn't play with dice."

            And you need to be free like the eagle in the sky

            Who never wonders why can't I find my state of mind

            Oh, tell me why.

            Yeah, that was my statement to the world. And I was saying don't get caught up in petty things, I guess.  Don't judge someone for what they wear- as I had been judged.  Be yourself- advice I didn't always take, but when I did, I found I was all-right.  And finally in the last verse, a belief that all things come to and end, but regardless there is a purpose. We may never know what it is, but there is a reason and it's no accident that the world exists.  Not bad for a fourteen year old.  Looking back at the lyrics, I see that the song is colored by a peace found in the woods of Michigan, where I was allowed to be myself and I learned how to function in a group.  A place in nature where the goal is not to learn how to read and write, but how to relate and show respect.  Where the rituals are founded in a deep spiritual understanding of the union of man and nature.

            I did it.  I wrote a song that wasn't bad.  I didn't play it for anyone right away, but I knew deep inside, that I had done it and that was the greatest reward.  I'm sure I was still basking in the glow of this as I packed my suitcase for camp, for my final foray into the wilderness before returning home to take on the fresh wilderness of High School.  And this time I had a little something special to take with me.  

            See, Eric had a habit of leaving things at my house.  We used to joke that he didn't need to bring a change of clothes when he spent the night, because he'd probably left a whole outfit somewhere.  We found this to be one of Eric's endearing eccentricities. This time, he left me something special- intended or not, he said I could hold onto it for the summer. It was a Harmony Acoustic Guitar.