This was thrown together pretty fast, as I wrote two songs on Sunday with similar themes, then combined them the next day.  My friend Patrick Gomlevsky is playing drums and is singing on the chorus with me. Patrick is a musician and electronica producer from Rio de Janeiro who was visiting over the holidays. This was great fun making this song. There was no time to refine, so it’s a little raw, but this song is probably better raw.

My sister heard this and said ” that’s nice, but where I live most women have skinny lips and a very fat booty”.  I guess that’s true, especially in the heartland.  I was thinking of strung out skinny white chicks when I wrote this, but maybe I’ll have to change “skinny” to “juicy” to broaden the coverage…

Vomit!

This is a song about one of my favorite people, Kendall Murphy, who passed away right around Thanksgiving. He’s the step father of one of my best friends and over the years I became really close to him. When my father died last year, he offered to be my surrogate dad. This guy was so full of wisdom, compassion and joy of living. A big 75th birthday party was held for him on August 1 and his lovely wife (I’m real close to her also) asked if I would write a song about him. It wasn’t easy, because he has lived a very full life. The video is from the birthday party. I was out of the country when he passed away – and it was a devastating shock. However, this guy had lived such a full life, he was so happy and he had long been preparing himself for what we all must face someday. He asked us not to be sad – and to have a party instead of a funeral. When I think of him, I have a tear in one eye and a twinkle in the other. Ken, we love you and we miss you every day.

The performance is more heartfelt than polished – I finished it on the day of the party and was working out the kinks in the car right before I played it. Yes I waited until the last minute even for Ken. Since I perform best under pressure, to do it any differently would have been disrespectful (-;. There are a lot of inside jokes, so I don’t expect you to get it all.

This song is called “All I Have Is What I Had”, which turned out to be sort of an up-tempo tragic comedy dealing with the pursuit of wealth during our last several economic booms and the lamenting that comes after you lose it all in the busts.  Although the topic is dark, it won’t leave you feeling bad.

Unfortunately, I did not declare any caveats for technical problems for the Song-A-Week Challenge.  And in the real world, results are what matters.  I spoke to the judge and  given the situation, she agreed to a lighter sentence.  Conveniently, we were discussing this at an “In & Out Burger” somewhere on the way to the desert this morning (Quality You Can Taste – For Breakfast), where Judge Pavi proceeded to to extract the slice of tomato from her Double-Double Burger and hand it to me, dispensing my punishment on the spot.   It was a most disgusting experience.  I got the gag reflex  - almost to the point of no return – and made some unsavory guttural noises that drew askance looks from nearby patrons.  I lost my appetite.  And this was just a slice.  

I’m back next week and will get this recorded and posted in the next couple of weeks.

The song is called “She’s Taking A Trip”.   Some years ago I met a girl at a concert across the country who was traveling around the world for an extended sojourn.  She said she would try to come visit me – and she did come to SF and stay with me for awhile.  We had fun, but she was on a trip and had a mission to stick to.  So she took off and I never saw her again.  We exchanged some emails and yes maybe I did get a postcard, jotted down while waiting at a station, as she drifts from town to town….

This was a good learning exercise for me, because this song has 32 tracks and it was very challenging to mix. Improving my mixing skills is one of the core reasons I’m doing this Where’s Carter Song Challenge. This is the second electronica song I’ve ever written. The first one was many years ago when a friend loaned me a vintage old synthesizer for the weekend. You created sounds by plugging cables into a switchboard and turning knobs, but you could only play one note at a time; however, you could get lots of expression by the way you played it. Back then I stayed up all night long and used two tape recorders to layer tracks over & over each other. When I was fooling around trying to come up with a song for this week, I found a sound in the Logic Studio software that reminded me of that old Korg synth I played with – including the one note limitation. Both the limitation and the expressiveness of the classic analog synth sound inspired the song and I quickly went about layering track after track – on the computer this time instead of the tape recorder.

Yes that’s me speaking the foreboding dialog. Hope you enjoy – and yes, I will do some rock n roll pretty soon.

After Pavi heard it she said this song should belong on a soundtrack in an eastern european russian spy love story movie. The funny thing is, I was thinking of the same story-line when I was writing it. Two people married to their countries; married to their all-consuming jobs; a career of avoiding love because you never know whom you can trust. Unlikely lovers on the wrong side of the cold war, separated by a thick, iron curtain. Someone will be betrayed. Will it be her, will it be him or will it be their governments? You must listen to find out.

I named it “Spionamor”, which is bastardized, corrupted Romanian for “spy love story” (thanks to our good friends who are in charge of the online version of the official Romanian dictionary).

I hope you enjoy it, but if not, don’t worry, I will be recording some head bangin rock n roll at some point (unless I get a job with the Estonian Film Commission).