The White Dove Sailed (2008)

The trumpet sequence in the chorus of The White Dove Sailed was pulled from a license-free copy of a sample of the Indiana Jones movie theme. I grabbed four notes that I thought would fit and dropped them into the chorus expecting to have to play around with the pitch and speed of the sample. To my amazement, the trumpet blast happened to be in exactly the right key and even fit the pacing of the song. More serendipity. It’s not my favorite song but I love the trumpets, the sliding bass and the distorted voicing and the lyrics are strange, but they have meaning for me. Almost all of this string of words came out while driving. (Hey, I’m worried about my sanity too so you’re not alone.)

That's The Way It Goes (2009)

That's The Way It Goes (2009)

That’s the way it goes.
We pinwheel down
And then we eat the dirt.
How was I to know?
They were dreaming up / A new kind of hurt.
That’s the way it goes.
Feeling small
And standing even smaller
That’s the way it feels.
Standing tall / But always evil’s taller.

I’m a sound hoarder. The good thing is that sound doesn’t crowd the hallways and stack up in the sink. My hoarding is almost invisible. A one terrabyte hard drive times two for security is all I need. The sound bite at the end of Unevolved CD was my mom calling down to the basement for supper in 1969 when we lived in Selkirk. Toivi does the same thing today. If someone didn’t remind me I might just go for days without eating. How I play around with songs now is quite unique (I think) from the sit-on-the-bed with pen and paper style most people are familiar with. I call it backwards writing because the flow of the process is exactly the opposite of the conventional ways a song might be written. First I record some sound snippets. Nothing purposeful, whatever sounds interesting.Then if they survive a few days on my hard drive, they get reorganized into longer strings. This becomes a much more computer-centric process of cutting and pasting sections of notes and drum beats together with the goal of stretching out the likeable stuff into a two to three minute piece. One good example of this is Spring. The musical bed is based on four different recordings. Then I took the parts I liked the best and stitched them all together. Then I added more percussion. Then I cut up the track again. I had no idea how this would turn out in the end. It was like throwing paint on a canvas. But then, I didn’t care about the end result and had no real expectation of a final result. It just so happens I love editing music too. I love the surprises you get. Then I record the piece onto a CD and listen to it in the car going to and from work. I sing along with the music. It’s intentionally a very distracted process. I’m looking for subconscious help. I have sung along with an instrumental for days, dozens and dozens of times, with no real results. Then suddenly, usually when I am focused on something else, like a lane change or a red light, a line or a phrase bubbles to the surface. I grab it. Write it down later. Yeah, I look like a fool in the traffic. And it hasn’t improved my voice either. Come to think of it, all of the lyrics I’ve used for the past five years on these projects were written while driving. I guess I could have called this project On The Road. I also thought of Writing Backwards as another possible title. (You may have noticed I also love titles.)

She Carries Rocks (1971)

She Carries Rocks

My sister
She works by the docks
She’s a good kid
She carries rocks
She’s a mover
She never stops
My God, that girl is a son of a gun

And oh yes you know
She mails home the checks to the family
She never forgets
She is charity
And she’s such a pride to own.
But she never ever comes home.

My sister
She lives by the sea
She’s a Buddhist
Doesn’t own a TV
She is centered
But she never writes me
My God, we haven’t spoken since ‘73