No one tells you

About the hungry ghost
That lingers when the pain
Has left the body
Oh you can still find it
In hard to read books
Secretly located art shows
Songs minimized in the shuffle

We used to spend a lot of time
Searching for things
Behind old wooden sheds
And upturned flower pots
Librarians on horse back
Jokes wrapped inside
Wrapped inside television commercials
Wrapped inside sports events
Wrapped in side tortillas

Rock Paper Scissors
The Declaration of Independence
Two for one coupon
Expires ten four nineteen
Four ten for Europe

This track was inspired by the autobiography of Dolly Parton. Many years ago, while I was still living in New York, I took part in a very ambitious singer-songwriter night that is put on by my friend Susan Hwang, called the Bushwick Book Club. It’s still going on, as far as I know. Basically, you read a book and then you write a song about it. The book was Dolly Parton’s: My Life and Other Unfinished Business. I was having a hard time tracking down a copy of the book and luckily my friend Diane Cluck just so happened to have it on tape. It was an actual cassette tape. So, yeah turns out Dolly Parton had a pretty amazing life. It was great to hear her voice telling her own story. There were several points where I felt very moved and even connected to her story. I tried to…

Instead of going out last night, I decided to indulge one of my favorite guilty pleasures which is cruising public domain video footage sites. I put together this video for a demo recording of a new song entitled Some Skies Are Blue. The song was inspired by a prompt that was given at the Rino, Monday night, open mic in North Kansas City. The prompt was: New Beginnings.

The song is meant to be a little tongue in cheek. Most of my life I have been uncomfortable with blatant spiritual references in art. In my opinion, only a handful of my favorite artists have managed to pull it off (Lou Reed, Nina Simone, Bhagvan Das come to mind). It is the “preachy” proselytizing aspect of some religions that I find most off-putting. This was the first song that I wrote after breaking up with my long term partner and…

Thanks to Brenton from Haymaker Records for capturing this special moment of rock ‘n roll poetry.