FEBURARY 4

Most of Day Three’s morning was spent filling out paperwork for BMI on the ten songs for this pig. I’m not sure I understand all the ins-and-outs of it; but as long as I keep my track record of not making a dime off my songs intact, I think I should be ok.

It was interesting to see that someone on XM Radio had been playing one of my Christmas songs, so I should be seeing check worth well over three dollars in about a year. I got that going for me.


After a fine lunch, prepared by my career woman wife, of some sort of vegetable, noodle and what might have been chicken (or at least some winged thing) soup; I put the finishing touches on ROOT HOG OR DIE. Of course, Julie Brummer must be thanked for the song, but not given so much credit that she gets to beat me out of any BMI money….

ROOT HOG OR DIE

THE GROUNDHOG SAW HIS SHADOW TODAY

BUT HE NEVER SAW ME COMING

I INTERRUPTED HIS LITTLE MORALITY PLAY

AND MIGHT HAVE WRECKED HIS PLUMBING

THERE WASN’T MUCH LEFT TO FILLET

BUT HELP YOURSELF ANYWAY


ANDIE MACDOWELL SAW HER SHADOW TODAY

SHE HADN’T BEEN OUTSIDE IN WEEKS

I HADN’T SEEN HER SINCE MUPPETS FROM SPACE

BUT I’M A BIG FAN OF ANTIQUES

I THINK OF HER WHENEVER GLENN CLOSE SPEAKS

JUST ANOTHER FLAVOR OF THE WEAK


(SOLO)

MY WIFE MADE ME A SANDWICH TODAY

SOMETHING THAT TASTED LIKE CHICKEN

I TRIED TO EAT IT EVERY WHICH WAY

BUT IT WAS LESS SANDWICH THAN WICCAN

SEZ JEAN BAPTISTE PIERRE ANTOINE DE MONET

WE ALL GET EATEN AWAY


The song has that droning feel to it, so I contacted a guy down in R.I. about playing some English Medieval bagpipe in G on it, but he was the kind of a dink that referred to himself as ’a Master of The Dance’ and wanted too much money. Like there’s a huge demand for bagpipers. I’ll probably just end up doing it on keyboards. Friggin ‘musicians’.


I agreed to tape an interview with The Notty Wood Show, on March 1st, which should coincide with the finished CD’s release and I did a quick, new mock-up for the CD front and back covers, but couldn’t remember where I got the photo from, so I’ll probably have to scrap that one.

 

And I managed to run through most of the songs for the Feb. 11th show with the band at night. Barring any Sr. moments, at least they have a passing familiarity with them when we try to video tape them. I wonder what my wife has planned for lunch today?…

FEBRUARY 3

Well, Day Two went swimmingly. Paul said he was in, so we have a studio in which to record, only it won’t be available until next week. This delay actually works out well because that gives me time to tweak the songs, the song which are all written, by the way, and none of which contain a run ponderous run-on sentence like this one.



SHOES BY THE HIGHWAY actually came to me late on Day One and is a keeper. Now that I think of it, the theme might have been floating around in my head for almost 25 years, after driving from Washington State to Colorado one Thanksgiving and getting stuck in a blizzard in Evanston, Wyoming.


Yesterday was also Ground Hog’s Day and my friend Julie pointed out that there were no good Ground Hog’s Day songs. That was a theme that fit perfectly with my title, ROOT HOG OR DIE, so I worked up a little ditty that asks the musical question, ‘if Andie MacDowell sees her shadow today, does that mean six more weeks of obscurity?’


Actually, Julie’s idea was for something called GRINDING THE HOG, as she said, ‘I'm envisioning it as a song about seasonal affective disorder.. being sick of winter.. the rodent pops out and sees his shadow, and it makes you hog-i-cidal. "When he pops out of his log.. it'll be time to grind the hog." Work in the phrase, "tastes like chicken" and I think it will be an epic winter anthem. "I dream of hitting him with a trowel. I've never been a fan of Andie MacDowell.." This songwriting stuff is cake.’ Truer word, Julie, truer words…


My wife was kind enough to point out, every day for the past 13 years, that I’ve never written a song about her. I asked her, ‘Do you listen to the kind of songs I write? Do you really want one written about you?’, but she said ‘yes’, so I finally came up with WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BLOND I MARRIED? before lunch (which was a fine tuna salad the aforementioned songless wife made, at my request, with catsup, mayonnaise and pickle relish. Any woman that would do that for you deserves a song, I guess).


ONE EYED KING might be the weakest of the bunch, but I have some time to whip it into shape or walk away from it completely. Which is what I did to FLAVOR OF THE WEAK. I’ll still write that song some day, but while I was futzing around with the chords I came up with the song DRINK UNTIL YOU WANT ME, which help removed the taste of ONE EYED KING from my ears and won a place in my heart.

That’s ten by my count. I’ll play around with them some more today, but I really need to get to work on the 30 songs The Stools are doing on Feb. 11th. The band only knows about 15 of them and I’m not that strong on 5 or 6 myself. The award winning video director Michael Pelosi is supposed to be shooting some tape that night, so it’d be nice to actually know all the words at least.