Song of 2011

I did a look back through my song list to see where I am at for song written in 2011.  Here's the list:

• Ballad of Billy McNaughtin
• Barely Hangin' On
• Ginger, Ginger, Ginger
• Green Valley Monsters (co-written with Don and Brian)
• Noon Train
• Road to Nowhere
• Two Feet in the Water
• Two Roses
• Walkin' in the City
• Jimmy's Idiom Song
• Standin' at the Airport (Collaboration with Izzy)
• All My Dreams (Collaboration with Rolland)

Collaboration

This is a music only clip for a song that Izzy wrote the lyrics for and I came up with the music.   Somewhere there is a recording of Izzy singing this, and when I get a copy, I will share with you.   The song is called "Standing at the Airport"

1000 Hits - Amazing

Sometime today, my blog should have 1,000 hits since I launched in mid-March of this year.  Amazing.   I figured maybe I'd get 50 a month, which would be about 175 hits so far.  1,000 hits is way beyond what my ego let me imagine. 


I can only thank those people who read my blog and keep coming back.   Your interest in what I am doing is inspiration to keep writing and to meet my goal. 

Hits come from across the globe

- Canada
- United States
-  Denmark
-  France
-  United Kingdom
-  Chile
-  Germany
-  Italy
-  Malaysia
-  Thailand
-  India
-  South Africa
-  Belarus

Walking In the City - A Recording & Video

I got home tonight, intending to work on putting together the music for our show on Saturday.  Instead, I picked up my guitar and started playing around with Walking In the City.  Then I got out the Zoom,  played it several times and here's the result.  It still needs some work on the vocals, but once I do this with Don and Brian, I'm sure it will come together, and probably with a whole new and interesting sound.  Anyway,  you'll get the idea from this. 

Walkin' In the City

Since we have been practicing and playing quite a lot over the past few weeks, and with the prep work for the 'show' at Expressionz Cafe next Saturday, song writing has taken a back seat.   Until this morning. 

I had this piece of music that I've been playing around with for about a month now.  just a little kind of poppy up-beat tempo thing.  I figured if I kept playing around with it something would come out of the air.   Friday night I was playing around with it and a simple phrase came to me  "Walkin' In the City".   That not only became the core thought for the song, but also its' title.  

I was still blank on the rest of the song, so early yesterday morning I got in my car, drove downtown and walked around.  I took my camera and got some great city shots.  My favourite photo from yesterday is a shot I took through a restaurant window.  I called it 8865 - 97th Street. 

 

I then wandered down to the farmers market on 104th street and took in the sights and sounds of the morning.  Among the music and the vendors, it is a great place to people watch, which by the way is one of my favourite passtimes.  

After exhausting myself walking around, I decided to go over to my favourite coffee and gelato shop in Edmonton - the Beuno Vista.  I got a large latte, took a few more photos, then headed home.

All through this Walk in the City,  I wrote down some notes and ideas that I could work into this new song.  When I got home, I wrote down the first verse:

Walkin' in the City, this Saturday morn

The street is gritty, and the concrete is worn

All the lost souls, look sad and alone

Waitin' at the Carot Cafe

For the rest of the day, I went blank.  Had the ideas, but it just wasn't fitting together.   Sunday morning, I got up waaaaaay too early.   For some reason, quiet Sunday mornings seem to be a good time for me to write.  I picked up my guitar, played that first verse,  and a chorus line came to me, sort of like this:

Walkin' in the City  (then second voice comes in)  da da da da   day

Evenutually, I filled in some words for da da da da day.  

I then went to my notebook,  It didn't take long after that to write out the rest of the song.    lines like:

Yuppies on the corner, with a silver spoon

sippin their cup o' lattes

There's a line in the song that came from a chance meeting on the street with Dr. John on some previous walk around town.  

Saw Dr. John, I said how ya doin'. 

Another line in the song came from the notebook.  While walkin' around, I came by this fellow with long flowing hair, and wearing a long black coat with a cross belt buckle.  He mumbled something about salvation as he walked by.   The line is the song

Preacher in his collar, he's prayin' for more

It was a productive morning.  Another song in the song book.   I've lost count, but I think that's about 10 for the year so far.  so it's the 6th month, and I'm half way to my goal.  I'm sure it will get harder.  

Maybe my trip to Nashville in August will get t he creative juices flowing. 

Hey Expressionz Cafe Patrons

Welcome to my blog.  On the 18th of June, the Magpies will be playing our music at Expressionz between noon and 2 pm.  We'll be featuring our own original songs.  We do some cover songs, but not many. 

When we started playing about 4 or 5 years ago (time flies to quickly to remember exactly), we played cover songs with a few original songs.    Since then, we've penned somewhere around 60 original tunes, so our performances are now original songs with a few covers.  

I must admit, out of that 60 or so originals, there a a few tunes that aren't performance ready, and there's the odd one, that aren't Magpie songs.  For example,  we don't do "Two Roses".  Our friend Irene has been doing that song, and has become a bit of a hit where ever she does it.  (That's so cool!).  The first time Irene did the song in public was at Expressionz Cafe at the "Magpies Extravaganza". 

As for the 'Clever' description of our music.  We are quite proud of that description.  To us it meant that our music is a bit hard to put into the standard music categories.  at one time, we described our music as "roots'.   At that time, the instruments we played included acoustic guitars, mandolin, and bass.  If you were one of the fortunate people who caught our performance at the Heart of the City Festival, you would have seen 7 instruments, and a couple were still left at home.  The mix of instruments and the growth in our song writing has certainly taken us in a new and more interesting direction that can best be described as "clever". 

See you all at Expressionz Cafe 9938 70 Ave NW.  Check out Expressions at the link to the right of this page. 

Clever Songs

At the Heart of the City Audition, we were asked about our music style. Some wise man called it "clever".  Certainly Don's songs could be described that way.  I never really thought of my songs being clever, well unless you take into consideration what Don and Brian do with the music.  I wanted to write a song that lived up to that reputation. 

So one day a while back, I was listening to Bubba on CKUA, and he was talking about idioms.  It got me to thinking about writing a song using only idioms in the lyrics.  So I wrote the song.  It took me a lot longer to write it that most songs I do.  That was because I had to read up on idioms and do research.  I found a couple of lists that included several hundreds of idioms.  I knew I had a big task in front of me.  I had to find idioms that not only fit the music I had, but also had some relative meaning, and that would rhyme.  Sounds easy - right!.   OK, then you try it. 

So after a month and a bit, I finished off the song.  I was feeling quite clever, but ------.  I did a quick search on U-tube and there my cleverness was dashed.  The idiom song had been done at least twice before.  What to do? What to do?  I didn't want to waste my efforts, nor give up on the idea. Finally, another clever idea  - I called it "Jimmy's Idiom Song".   (maybe I should search that title - there's lots of Jimmy's out there). 

So here's an early basement recording of the song.  It was late at night and some spirits had been bottled up way too long and had to be let loose.  It is what it is, but you get the idea about how Jimmy's Idiom Song turned out.  This recording is just me and Don. Don is playing the harmonica. 

Magpies Performance

We have worked hard on getting our songs ready to perform at the Heart of the City Festival in Giovani Park (Edmonton).  We weren't able to practice for a couple of weeks because our regular lives sometimes get in the way, but we managed to get together on Friday night.  After a two week period of not playing, the rust had surely found its way in.  at our practice, our first run through the songs was pretty rough, but on the second run through, we got it back.  So on Friday night we were ready. 

Saturday I spent my day at the HOTC Festival volunteering.  It was frightfully cold for June. there were reports of snow on the ground west of the City.  After 8 hours, I went home very chilled. 

Sunday morning was a great warm sunny day in June.  I was jittery all morning.  ran thru the songs on my own, just to make sure my fingers worked.  Got to the HOTC about 2 pm - our set was at 5.   Boogie Patrol - a local blues band - was playing and really rocked the place.  I talked to a few friends that showed up to see us play, then met up with Brian and his daughter Kathryn.  Kathryn was our official photographer and did a superb job capturing the Magpies at the HOTC. 

Seemed as soon as we got up to play, a dark cloud slid over the park, the wind got up, and a bit of rain started to fall.  A few in the crowd started to scatter, but the die hards stayed on to give us a listen.  

At the Heart of the City, there is no time for sound checks, so you cross your fingers and hope the sound guys get it right.  Both previous years we've had issues with the first song. Year 1, the sound guy had the reverb/chorus cranked up so high, and when he finally noticed, he ran as fast as he could to the sound board to fix it.  You can hear that on the 2009 Youtube video that was put out by HOTC. 

Year 2, the sound guy didn't turn on the microphones until half way through the first song.  He must have been asleep because the audience was yelling to turn up the mike. 

I think this year, it was much better.  there were still some sound issues. My guitar apparently had a buzz going on that I didn't hear.  I know I had difficulty hearing my vocals on the monitor.   Over all, I think we did pretty well.  I definitely think it was our best performance of the 3 years.  Some of that has to do with our song writing is getting more interesting and because we are adding in more instruments.   It also has a lot to do with practice, practice, practice.   Can we do better? Absolutely.  You always strive to improve on your last performance.  

Speaking of instruments.  I think the sound guy on the acoustic stage we played got used to setting up one, or maybe two instruments for each performer over the two days.  The 3 of us showed up with a total of 7 instruments (8 if you include Don's shaker).  The look on his face was well worth the effort of hauling all that stuff down there.  (3 guitars, bouzouki, banjo, keyboard, bass guitar, and don played percussion with a shaker on the last song). 

We had instrument changes on every song, which made the sound folks earn their keep because they had to pay attention to the sound balance on every song.  You also have to remember the sound guys don't know our music, and they don't know what instrument should dominate through the song. 

All in all, I think our performance went over well.   I was watching the crowd out front (the ones who aren't our friends and family) and I think their was a positive reaction to what we were doing.  I stuck around after the last performer to help with tear down, and I got some good feed back from the organizers, so I left feeling pretty good. 

The song list (and song writer):

• Sitting Here (Jim)
• Earnest and Lucy (Don)
• Clouds of Alberta (Don)
• Melt Sugar (Don)
• Johnson Brown (Jim)
• Road to Nowhere (Jim et al)
• Green Valley Monsters (Jim, Don, Brian)
• Black Room (Jim)
• Two Feet in the Water (Jim)

Two feet in the water wasn't in the planned set, but for the 3rd year in a row, we were also asked to do another song. this year we were somewhat prepared, except we didn't practice that song on Friday. 

Writing Songs In Saskatoon

This past week, I was in Saskatoon at the SWANA Northern Lights Chapter Annual Conference.   We had started a tradition in my hotel room a few years back when we held the conference in Edmonton.  A few of us bring our guitars and jam.  Our good friends Izzy and Dick now bring their sound system and last year the annual informal jam was a big hit.  This year, several delegates kept asking where the jam was. 

Izzy set up her sound system in their hotel room on Sunday, so that's where we jammed.  Apparently some other guest in the hotel weren't entirely happy and the hotel security shut us down sometime after mid night.  On Monday, they let us play until 11 pm.   On Monday night we had about 4 guitar players and Dave was playing his accordion.  The room was jumping.  At one point I turned at looked around the room.  It was packed shoulder to shoulder.  Someone brought in 2 kegs of beer and the party was on.  a few got to dancing. 

Monday was banquet night and the organizers included us on the evening entertainment schedule.  Played on my own music.  There were a few folks there that wanted us to play top 40 covers.  I'm getting to the point in my music where I don't even know how to play cover songs any more.  Lately, I've only been playing the Magpies music, so that's what I played. 

Now, for the real important part of this story.  Izzy has been working on writing songs and since she doesn't play an instrument - her instrument is her beautiful voice - she hands me her lyrics, and sings a few lines.  Then somehow with her singing and me playing guitar, we work out the music.  Last November she had a song called "Scotch Flavoured Kiss" that we put music to.  On Sunday evening, she showed me a partly written song called "Waiting at the airport".  By the time the evening room party began, we had the music worked out and she finished the lyrics.  It is a great tune, as is Scotch Flavoured Kiss.  Of course, Izzy's great voice makes these tunes a hit with everyone who hears them.