FEBRUARY 7

Kind of planned to take the weekend off, but not really.
Totally rewrote LAZY MAN’S LOAD, and I’m much happier with it now, and I reached out to some of the musicians I want to use on the recordings. With The Stools proper so busy trying to put together 30 odd songs for the live show, I’m not sure how much time they’ll all have for this project; plus there are various horns and woodwinds I’d like to use as well.

I was working on some of the new songs (15 of them) we’re introducing to the live set on February 11th, when I started fooling with this chord pattern. The new and improved LAZY MAN’S LOAD lyrics just seemed to follow:

LAZY MAN’S LOAD

IT CERTAINLY WASN’T MY INTENTION

FOR THINGS TO TURN OUT THIS WAY

MY NATURE CAN WORK AS BIRTH PREVENTION

I’M HALF AS BORING AS MODERN BALLET

THAT’S NOT TO SAY I DON’T DANCING

HELL, I USED TO TAP LIKE MARK MORSE CODE

BUT YOU SHOULD KNOW WHO YOU’RE ROMANCING

AND YOU’RE HOEING A LAZY MAN’S LOAD




I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU STAYED THROUGH INTERMISSION

EVEN THOUGH I’M REALLY JUST A ONE-ACT PLAY

AN APPREHENSIVE APPARITION

FADING LIKE A PASSIVE MATRIX DISPLAY

I DIDN’T THINK I’D HAVE A GHOST OF A CHANCE

OF SCARING UP YOUR SA NODE

I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW IN ADVANCE

THAT YOUR HOEING A LAZY MAN’S LOAD


PLEASE DON’T THINK I’M OVER-STATING

THE PROBLEMS WE ARE BOUND TO FACE

OVER TIME I’VE DEVELOPED AN AMOUR PLATING

TO DEAR JOHN’S IN THE POSSESSIVE CASE

I REALLY SHOULD, BUT I WON’T BOTHER

JUST LIKE THE NINE DIGIT ZIP CODE

WE ALL HAVE OUR SUNDRIES WE’D PREFER

BUT YOU’RE HOEING A LAZY MAN’S LOAD

Written by Lance Norris @2010 Dutchco Music (BMI)

A definite improvement over what I had and I still have about three weeks to tighten them up, but more importantly; salads and pizza for lunch today.


Also, my old friend Sally Sisson said she would lend her flute to the project, which is really cool because she doesn’t know this, but over 30 years ago I wrote a song for her to play on with my band at the time, loosely based on Henry Mancini’s FLUTERS’ BALL, but never got around to asking her to do it. There are a couple of songs in this batch that lend themselves to the flute, so this will be some kind of nice closure for me… Or maybe I’ve just been stalking Sally for 30 years and I’ll end up in jail. But hey, that’s art.

FEBRUARY 6

Might have a line on a trumpet player I want to use, but he might be a little light in the loafers (and not in a good way) so I don’t know that sound would be worth the drama. How-some-ever, it looks like I have a contrabassoon on-board, which is a much cooler sound that the Bari-sax.


GREAT NEWS: Everyone that becomes a member of the Untraditionally Handsome Facebook Page:


http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=288934592050&ref=ts

before March 1, 2010 will be included in the CD liner notes of the Special Edition booklet, and not just a ‘Special Thanks To’ credit either. They will make up a phony baloney job for each of you that’ll sit proudly on your permanent record. Didn’t you always want to be an A&R Coordinator or Balance Mixer?


So do me a favor and invite your cool friends to join too, because I want to make this list as long as humanly possible… But only your cool friends, ok? How do you know if your friend is cool or not? Well, if they ever order the spaghetti at Denny’s, I’m guessing they are not cool. Got it?

BAD NEWS: I’m starting hate one of the song and may have to go with a total rewrite.

EVEN WORST NEWS: My wife wasn’t home, so I had to make my own lunch. I did kind of a bagel sandwich thing that didn’t really cut it and I’m not proud at all.


We’re having company for lunch today and then tomorrow is The Super Bowl, so I might just have to take the weekend off.

FEBRUARY 5

Day Four, I didn’t get a whole of work done. I was working on one of the songs, and I kept hearing a Bari-sax in the mix. We used to have a Bari-sax player in the band but he got old and had to be put down.



Actually, I couldn’t face taking him to the vet like some Nazi train conductor, so I just drove him deep into the woods, tossed his favorite tennis ball for him to chase down and ran back to the car and beat it before he got back.

I had contemplated leaving him on an ice flow, like a proud and ancient Eskimo, but I wasn’t sure where to find an ice flow in Duxbury bay and really, are the Eskimo that proud to begin with?


None of this solved my sound problem, so I emailed an Contrabassoon I knew about. We’ll have to see what he says. After a fine, fine lunch of beef stew and Saltines, which my wife whipped up in the kitchen while I looked up how to spell ‘Contrabassoon’, I designed a t-shirt for the CD. Hey what’s the use of doing something if you’re not going to promote the hell out of it, right?

BUY IT HERE

I’ll do some real work tomorrow, I swear.

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.

FEBRUARY 2

Well, Day One got off to a good start. I knocked out five of the ten songs I wanted to write and designed a mock-up for the CD front and back covers, but I still haven’t heard from Paul about the studio.

I did the GOOD ENUF song in the morning and then jacked around with album cover for a little while. During lunch HER FLOWERS ARE MY WEEDS came to me (a lovely lunch, by the way, prepared by my wife, of a baloney sandwich and pretzels with a diet coke; just for the records), and as I was working out those chords I also got THE JUKEBOX LIED AGAIN and LAZY MAN’S LOAD too.

I played a little poker on Facebook, tried to commit a few crimes on Mob Wars and then finally tackled that talking blues, now called THE TOO RICH TO BITCH BLUES, in honor of that blue’s great, Ernie Boch, Jr.

I sent off some emails apologizing for a mix up over a drum set from our gig over the weekend with The Fools, watched the Celtic’s game and called it day. Who says I’m a good for nothing, lay-about? Oh that’s right, everyone.

Well, if I can get into a studio and get these pigs on their feet, we’ll just see if I’ve been wasting my time or not. Five more songs to go. Maybe I can get a few of them today… or at least one…I still my have to redo the CD cover. My wife says it looks like an Ah-ha video…

FEBRUARY 1

So, I’ve signed up for something called the RPM Challenge, which basically, I have 28 over the course of February to write and record a CD. Band across the world are doing it (this is the fourth year of the Challenge) but there is no prize; it’s done just for the music.

Their web-site is here: http://www.rpmchallenge.com/ if you want to check it our, or even sign-up.

I want to use The Stools for this project, but we are trying to learn a ton of new songs for our live set and I don’t want to confuse them with even more songs that I haven’t even written yet. I guess we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it, as they say. First things first: I gotta send an email out to my old friend Paul who’s got a funky little studio that would be perfect for this kind of project and see if he’d be interested.

Actually, first things first, maybe a should write some songs. It can’t be any of the old stuff. We’re on the honor system here and they’ve all gotta be fresh caught songs. Hmmmm….

I keep a list of titles for songs that I might want to write some day, so I’ll just go through it and pick the first 10 that appeal to me. Actually, I’m only going to pick 9 because I was talking with Dan Margarita on Facebook the other day about the history of the talking blues, and that got me in the mood to write a talking blues, so one tenth of my list is done.

TALKING BLUES

Ok, now for the other nine, in no particular order:

GOOD ENUF

HER FLOWERS ARE MY WEEDS

LAZY MAN’S LOAD

ONE EYED KING

ROOT HOG OR DIE

FLAVOR OF THE WEAK

SHOES BY THE HIGHWAY

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BLOND I MARRIED?

THE JUKEBOX LIED AGAIN
Now there’s an album worth of titles. I’m always confused when musicians take so long between albums. You just sit down and do it. Get it out of the way. Money where your mouth is time. Let’s knock the first song on the list, GOOD ENUF, off right now. Of course, the lyrics might get tweaked a little as it is recorded, but I just want to come up with a frame to start hanging the music on.
The Grammys were last night and I can’t imagine any of Lady Ga Ga’s songs took more than a half hour to write. So let’s jump in. Free associate. Lady “If I Lead with My Vagina Maybe They Won’t Notice I Have No Talent” Ga Ga.... Grammys… Award shows… Phonies… Here we go….

GOOD ENUF

(Norris)

IT’S AN HONOR JUST TO BE A NOMINEE
THAT’S GOOD ENUF FOR ME
GIVE THE AWARD LITTLE GEORGE CLOONEY
IT’S JUST A PLEASURE TO BE IN HIS COMPANY

I DIDN’T EVEN PREPARE A SPEECH
WINNING SEEMED SO OUT OF REACH
WHEN YOU’RE UP AGAINST A BALDWIN AND THE KID WHO PLAYED SCREECH
HELL, THAT’S NO DAY AT THE BEACH

WHY DO I COME HERE, THE FOOD AIN’T THAT GREAT
MY SENSE OF IMPORTANCE IS STARTING TO DEFLATE

COULD THIS BE A METAPHOR
FOR YOU ACTING LIKE A WHORE
GIVING A PRIZE TO EVERY COMPETITOR
ABOUT AS SINCERE AS DREW BARRYMORE

2010 DUTCHCO MUSIC/BMI

Good enough for Government work. Like I said, just wanted something to hang the music on. I can tweak it later. I got the melody in my head, now I just have to figure out some chords…And then do it nine more times.

No problem.