new track: 'When I Dream'

Recently, I had a project for my songwriting class in which we had to do a "produced song."  That is to say a song that is of presentable, produced quality - whether recorded or performed live - such that you would feel comfortable presenting it in that way to a panel of publishers.  I was at a loss as to what to do for the project, so I took my go-to method and decided to dig through my old stuff.

To make a large understatement, my average song has always had a fairly long gestation period. My standard protocol was to come up with an idea, record it, develop it a little bit, then forget about it and move on to some other new idea. As a result, my hard drive is full of tons of old ideas, which is kinda bad, but also pretty good.  My album I released last year is almost entirely composed of songs that were 2-3 years old by the time I finished them up and got them album-ready.

So anyway, I took a song I had started during the summer of 2005 and worked it up to demo quality.  It was originally a Sting-ish pop track, but now has almost a Postal Service kind of electronic vibe to it.

Just two more things.  First, now that I have a vocal mic that fits my specific voice really well, and now that I have my mixer back and can use its preamps instead of the cheesy digital ones built into my audio card, it is a million times easier to capture a nice sounding vocal track.  You'll see what I mean when you listen to the track.  Secondly, I play a "bass solo" on this and be forwarned: I AM NOT A BASSIST.

Lyrics:

Verse 1:

When I dream I dream of you,

When I sleep, you're in my dreams,

I just wish you felt it too,

You've gone away or so it seems.

As I go throughout my day,

your voice echoes in my thoughts,

Nothing keeps my mind at bay,

I can't let go my heart is caught.

Chorus:

Yesterday and yesteryear

fade aimlessly away

and the words that tell our history

lay graying on the page.

My weary heart grows still,

and I bide my time until

I find there's something I can do

but in the meantime,

when I dream I dream of you.

Verse Two:

When I look, you're all I see,

Who you are is what I need,

You mean everything to me,

but if you leave I won't impede.

[Chorus]

When I dream I dream of you,

When I sleep, you're in my dreams,

I just wish you felt it too,

You've gone away or so it seems.

jazz brings out the worst in my face

I've been playing with the MFJQ for a while now, and I've realized something that's gotten worse with age: my drumming grimace.  I mean, I'm straight-up butt-ugly when I play drums in general, but especially when I play jazz.  There's something about improvizing and paying attention to what other players are doing that gives me the ol' bitter beer face.  I mean look at this one from last night's gig:

Yikes. I look like some sort of grumpy polemarch or something. It's sad to say that in the last year, this is the most flattering picture taken of me while playing the drums:

Hey, at least the drums look cool, right?