The Musical Diary of Greg ScheerColin Gordon-Farleigh has his fingers in many musical pies. His latest venture is a country project with my old friend Charlotte Kerce. And what’s a country project without country songs? Nothing! So, my faithful RSS feed friend, Colin wrote a four new lyrics and I set them to music and recorded them. You can download the MP3 demos or PDF leadsheets below:
I’m always inspired by a challenge. My latest compositional challenge has come in the form of my good friend’s wife’s cousin, Morgan Bracy. (It’s all about who you know…) Morgan is a fantastic singer working in Nashville who I met a few months back. We decided to write some songs together, and the first fruit of our labor is “Tight Rope.” She wrote the lyrics a while back and I wrote the first draft of the music while in Singapore. Last week I recorded a rough demo of the song. The demo is ugly, but the melody is catchy.
Update: For sheet music or to adopt this tune, head over to gregscheer.com.
My friend David Landegent has written many hymn texts, most recently concentrating on scripture-based texts. One of his recent texts, “Sufferings of Jesus” is based on 2 Cor. 1:3-11. He wrote it with the tune ASSURANCE (Blessed Assurance) in mind, but I felt that tune was too sprightly to encompass the themes of suffering and consolation found in his text. And you know what Greg does when he thinks a tune is too this or that for a given text, right? He composes a new one. Here’s an MP3 of the new tune, appropriately–if obscurely–named GESCHICHTE.
In a past post you read the story and heard a solo version of my 1986 song “55 Feet.” I recently entered a fuller version of the song in the National Speleological Society Cave Ballad contest. (Yes, there is such a society, and such a contest.) I just got word that I won 3rd place. The judges felt it was “good but grimness detracts from appeal.” You can listen to it in all its grimness here.
I think of this as a work in progress. In this particular case, the progress started over 20 years ago. (Yikes. Am I really that old? No wonder I’m having a mid-life crisis.) This is just a rough mix. Stay tuned for a full CD of this and other musical tales of the depraved human nature–including my own.
By the way, special note to the judges and my wife–I know that one’s sweat can’t drop to the floor when one is 55 feet underwater. That’s because the narrator is no longer underwater when he’s telling the story. However, I don’t feel at liberty to say where the narrator is or what he’s about to do, because that would be far too grim.