Songs 1998

This was the first song that my now long-time collaborator Ember and I wrote together.   During the summer of 1998 we stumbled upon each other while I was living in Pueblo, CO with a girlfriend.  She was itching to write a song, as I always was, and so we agreed to meet on the front porch of Ember's sister's house that evening.  We discovered our musical compatibility in the forty-five minutes it took to write Unrequited as well as the roots of what would become a grand friendship.  With my broken heart and Ember's minor guitar chords, we had the makings of one great song...but could we make another?  We would surely try.  Dedicated to Shea.

Butterfly's Lullaby (excerpt from my Journal dated 25 June 1998):   Butterfly's Origin...Camping in San Isabel National Forest with Ember and her dog, Bear.  I'm sitting upon a large rock outcropping overlooking a field of green on the forest floor.  The wind is blowing, sending the aspen leaves into a gentle rustle above my head.  Looking up, their willowy spines sway slightly, waving to the sun.   I'm surrounded by beauty--defined as pure, raw nature left to crawl on while civilization speeds by miles away.  This is tranquility...all that is missing is a bit of water....  But I invade their space, break the solitude of their ecosystem.   Could it be that this pen on the page makes enough noise to induce chaos somewhere?   Not only the sound of my script, my thoughts, or my words but the actual roller-ball caressing the page, a tree in its former life?  Do the aspens know that I write on the remains of several dead brothers?  Can they feel the spirit it still possesses though I etch permanently my own personality there?  And for myself, how many other poets have been seated upon this very stone, adding their energy to it so that I might recover a bit of it, leaving some of my own behind?  I may never know, but I do feel it here... 

In our escapades in songwriting together, Ember and I had discovered that we used the "folk" in our folky-rock sound too much.  We wanted to rock!  So one afternoon we experimented with power chords and distortion and came up with the chord work for Goddess.  The lyrics for the song were a little slow in coming on my end; I wanted them to be powerful and rhythmic, but I didn't think that with my classical vocal training that I could manage to make them "tough" enough.  We happened to make a rough recording of this (in true garage band style) with a full band and it was pretty good.  This is not meant to be a religious song, but however one interprets it is how it stands.  I was thinking more along the lines of the re-invention of woman, the sacrifice of false pretenses for the improvement of self.  Every one else seems to think of sex though.   

This song came from a story Ember related to me, a horribly true story.  She had spoken to me a bit about the circumstances surrounding her sister's death, and I felt a deep lyrical pull there.  How could a life so loved be taken by such violence as abuse?  The pain and anger Ember's family had reaped because of this senseless tragedy was beyond belief.  Joyce needed a song. But not only was it a story I had to tell for Ember and her family, but also for myself and other survivors of abuse.   Their loss does not go unfelt, unshared, or unrecognized.  Abused's Song is for us.  And Ember cried...

Ember and I were on a roll.  We had found a method that seemed to work well for us: Ember would put together a rough chord structure and play it a few times for me to get a feel, then I would ask her to tell me a story, something she felt from the song, or a theme.  I would then take notes from her story, interpreting it in a strange code of rhythm and poetry, fitting it somehow into the loose structure we had agreed on, sometimes adding here and there.  Then I would write the verses, chorus and bridge as appropriate, sing it back and tweak it up, then re-write a copy for Ember to keep.  Many of the tragedies in Ember's life had occurred in August, so I wrote this song for her.

Written as a birthday present for Marisa.  Somehow our friendship went Wrong and this was to be an offering of peace, an apology.  I chickened out, and it remains still, unsent.  Maybe it means more unrecieved.  To her I think it would be just another song, another half-assed apology.  I think I'll keep it.  It is easier to mend fences in person anyway ;)

Familiar was supposed to be something completely different than it turned out to be.  We were trying to write the definitive bar song, something we had dealt with more than once and should be able to whittle down to a few verses.  But the song we ended up with had somehow become Ember's song for her ex-husband, Caleb.  The words seemed to fit their situation well, and who am I to argue with the Muse? 

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