Category: Demos

I have a certain ambivalence about this tune. It is So. Freaking. Happy.

And happy can easily be trite.

I will let you, dear listener, decide if this little bonbon of a tune is happy, trite, or both. (Or neither?)

That’s the thing about creativity. You need to stay open as ideas come to you. If you don’t you’ll find yourself writing the same song over and over again. (Yes, Keith Getty and Mumford & Sons, I’m looking at you!) Certainly, there are a lot of ideas that I don’t end up using or that die on the vine. But I’d rather develop three ideas and see which one produces good fruit than cut ideas off at the root because they don’t fit a particular agenda. Play the song a few times for an audience and it will sort itself out.

This tune has been reworked more times than it’s been played!

It is named “Sehnsucht” (German: longing) for the yearning motif that begins the tune. I knew I had something good, but was never quite able to bring the tune to a satisfying close. A few suggestions from Steve Talaga (playing piano in this recording) set me on a path that feels just right.

Ah! Longing has never felt this good!

This one’s a keeper. I’ve used it on a number of gigs since I wrote it back in October and each time it casts a special spell.

Indeed, that’s the magical thing about jazz: a perfectly good song may never catch fire and a simple song like this one might become more than the sum or its parts–a vehicle for the musicians to go to a place they haven’t been before.

This happy-go-lucky tune positively sparkles under Steve Talaga’s fingers.

Listening to this after a while away reminds of of something one of my composition teachers used to tell me, “When you’re young you have lots of ideas; when you’re old you know what to do with them.” Indeed, this song is almost entirely spun from the opening two-bar melodic motif. How’s that for economy of expression?!

I’ve written about this song previously, so I’ll let this newer, cleaner recording speak for itself.

For the record, I’m not entirely sold on my own voice. However, it is what I had available at the time.

It is unfortunate that we couldn’t record “8 Lives” with a full band. It is a jazz fusion tune that would really have benefited from drums. Indeed, we were prepared to play it with full band at an Outside Pocket concert in October, but we ran out of time.

The song doesn’t break new ground, but it unfolds in a way that offers new twists at a satisfying pace. For example, in the B section the chords move up to Eb and then down to C. This is not new musical territory, but it provides just the right amount of lift to sustain interest.

Why the name “8 Lives”? The angular melody is built on a series of fourths. 4+4=8. This not only gives the tune a bright, open, airy feel, but it suggested a pretty good song title.

“Slowly” (the song) has slowly (the adverb) been making its way into Outside Pocket gigs. I thought it was time I made a clean recording of it–though this is by no means anything fancy.

This is a love song, but a cautious one. We all know the hesitancy to jump back into a relationship after being hurt by a previous one.

Some things I like about this song musically: The bold leaps down a 6th are striking and give the song a unique musical fingerprint. Those leaps are answered by quick runs that, I can say firsthand, are quite difficult to sing. Finally, the shift back and forth between the Ebmaj7 (sweet) and Abm/maj7 (spicy) sets up a nice tension that keeps things from getting too syrupy.

“Mode Blue” was one of a few songs in which I played with the minor blues form. A minor jazz blues tune invariably moves from the minor i chord to the minor iv chord, i.e. Am to Dm. (Read more here.) I started to wonder, “Would it still feel like a minor blues if it moved from Am to Gm?” I know, I’m a pretty interesting guy with a riveting thought life.

The answer, of course, is, I’ll let you decide.

Before 2023 ends, I wanted to return to the recordings I made with Steve Talaga. As you may remember, these were a dozen or so jazz tunes that he and I recorded one afternoon in September. Nothing fancy, just playing through the tunes and recording them in one or two takes.

Americana was written in a hotel room in Detroit, where I played bass during the day while my wife trained for a new job. I thought it would be fun to have a song intended specifically for the bass. True, there are iconic bass lines like “So What” and “All Blues,” but I was thinking something that allowed the bass to come to the foreground.

What I came up with is “Americana.” It is a simple tune that uses the open strings of the bass to create a sweeping melody. It has overtones of pentatonic melodies like “Shenandoah,” hence the title, “Americana.”

I have a certain ambivalence about Christmas music. On the one hand, I like a bit of schmalz as much as the next guy. On the other hand, do we really need to listen to Mariah Carey from the day after Halloween until shortly before the new year?!

Having said that, I was playing around at the piano the other day, and out popped an idea just begging to be a Christmas song. At first, I was thinking it would be a miss-you-at-Christmas song, a la “Blue Christmas.” But then I thought of how beautiful Michigan is in the winter and what a lovely place it is for family to gather on the holidays. So I wrote an ode to our fair state from the perspective of someone hoping to bring far-flung loved ones back for Christmas.

1. Arizona sounds great
on a winter day,
but I’d miss all the
magic of a snowflake.

Warm and sunny every day
has its charms, I guess,
but I still love the way
the seasons change.

2. As the fire of autumn leaves
begins to freeze
and the sun shines so bright
upon the city’s streets;

Oh, the air may be brisk–
I don’t mind a bit
when I think of the warm home
waiting for me.

Don’t you miss it
in the Mitten?
You know your home
will always be here.

Don’t you miss it
in the Mitten?
Come back for
Christmas in Michigan.