MP3 Audio Tracks

Solo Tracks

Here's a brand new track I put together while trying out what looks to be a very nice, new, inexpensive piece of recording software called "Reaper". The song features almost all recordings of road trips. Dave Reid plays guitar by a riverbank outside Saratoga, WY, Jagoe Reid and Jeffrey Mince play shakers (and dog Lewis barks) in a cave in Nevada and coyotes howl in Yellowstone. It also features a couple of keyboard tracks, and my Grandmother talking about her childhood. A short, simple song, but I like the feel of it. Of course it brings back a lot of memories for me! Silver Engagement Ring [2.3 mb].

These are two of my most recent solo tracks, featuring my dubious vocal stylings. I played all the instruments you hear, including the suzuki-classroom-quality fiddling. Song For Summer [3.7 mb] was written from a dream I had this spring about a co-conspirator from way back, Jill Sobule. The music was still cranking when I woke up, and the dream itself is pretty much as described in the lyric. I've got another dream song in the pipeline right now, Aurora Borealis Glow. Seems like I'm doing my best work asleep these days.

The chorus to No Superman [3.6 mb] was written way back in the late 80's in Nashville. I wrote the verses walking around the lake in downtown Austin one night last summer. Sometimes it takes a while to finish a song, especially for me.

Nine Horse Johnson

Nine Horse Johnson is myself and David Reid (see photo page) When the Rains Came [4.7 mb] was my first foray into vaguely folk-influenced songwriting, inspired by Dave's fingerpicking and the voice of Pam Foster at jams we would do when I was visiting Wyoming from LA. I constructed the guitar part entirely from a performance Dave did of Man in a Long Black Coat by Bob Dylan. This song almost belongs in Gospel except that it's not at all silly.

Long Time Coming [5.8 mb] is just a jam Dave and I did, sitting in the driveway at his house, which I recorded onto mini-disk. He played slide guitar, and I played a hand-drum I brought back from Nepal. You can hear the wind on the microphones in some places. Then I went back and processed it through a bunch of computer effects, and added a bass part.

With Sarah Kelton

Here are two tracks I produced for a marvelous singer/songwriter/guitarist named Sarah Kelton, Ode to My Love of Leaving [3.2 mb] and Don't Cry the River's Tears [3.2 mb], the latter of which features a couple of samples recorded in Europe during the last Nina Hagen tour. One is of a barrel organ in front of the cathedral in Vienna, and the other is an from attempt to tune a mandolin to an ancient, ailing upright piano at a rehearsal space in East Berlin.

Sons of Igor

Here are a couple of humorous songs from Sons of Igor, a collaboration between myself and Gary Bragg. I don't know if copies are still available, but I could find out, if anybody is interested.

I got my MBA [5.9 mb] is a parody on three levels. Gary's lyric is a lampoon of a certain demographic we all know too well--we have a sterling example in the whitehouse right now. When he first played it for me, the song had a honky-tonk feel, but I felt it deserved something more pretentious, so I rewrote the song in the style of Steely Dan. Gary fronted the tribute Band Kid Charlemagne for years, so I knew his Donald Fagenisms were sufficient to the task. When it came time to produce the song, I lacked the multi-million dollar recording budget required to faithfully recreate that Steely Dan sound, so I orchestrated it as a parody of the lounge-revival-sample-packed dance remixes which were sweeping LA at the time. Does it all work? Probably not without an elaborate introduction like this....

You Got What it Takes, Roy [4.1 mb] is just plain fun. This song contains one of my favorite Bass parts, and features a ridiculous lyric Gary spawned through some sort of audience participation game he ran at a show once. Gary rewrote the lyrics for this song, and it was performed in his show off Broadway this past fall.

Ambient

Lastly, here's an ambient track for those of us who like music we can listen to while staring vacantly (or mindfully!) into space. Umber, Ochre, Azure [15.4 mb] runs about 33 minutes, so it's a hefty download. It's also a WMA file, all apologies to Macophiles.

Gospel

By popular demand, here's the Gospel Section. Folks who know me well, know I have a penchant for gospel music and an active spiritual life, against which I have to balance my deep-rooted distrust of the institutions of religious belief (right along with the other major institutions, business and government--I'm an equal-opportunity skeptic....) These songs highlight a number of approaches to this dichotomy, mostly (hopefully) humorous in nature. Let the pious be warned!

The first track, So Sorry [6.6 mb], is another song from the Album Sons of Igor. The vocal on this track is by Robin Eaton, with ambient guitar work by former Thomas Dolby cohort Larry Treadwell and crunchy guitars by John Rasmussen. Gary sang the backup vocals. The album cut of this is, sadly, mono, due to a mastering problem, but this version is stereo, and also includes a live drum overdub by yours truly. My religious convictions can be pretty well summed up with these lines, spoken by the Almighty:

I know you all set your sights so high
Talking 'bout a paradise way up in the sky
Would it have helped if I'd got through to you
This was the best that I could do...

Stylistically, it ain't gospel. But we're getting there.....

The song Heaven [3.5 mb] features my favorite bass sound ever, and one of the lyrics of which I am most proud, a classic hard-luck bluegrass stanza:

You can trust your father in Heaven
He's not like the one you have down here
No one beats you up in Heaven
When it's late, and they've run out of beer

Jesus Too [4.0 mb] is a dark number, and a shameless tribute to Tom Waits. No, I did not injure my voice recording this, although I'd hate to do it every night. It features the Lowjo, a banjo I strung with bass strings, and a percussion part played on an ancient metal canteen picked up on the slopes of Mt. San Jacinto.

And for those irreverent enough to absorb the full frontal impact of my gospel lyric cynicism, I present Suffer the Children [4.2 mb]. Inspired by the appearance of no less than three songs featuring dead children on a Dolly Parton/Porter Wagner best-of CD, it is notable in that it was the fledgling engineering effort of Dave Reid (you go, girl!) who also mixed it and played guitar and tearjerker mandolin. It also features the delightful vocal harmonies of Nicole Thorpe, and a narrative courtesy of Steve Bechtel.

There. Now you can stop complaining you don't have any of my music!