Free Songs
6.15.08
Better As A Memory
my ex-boyfriend Kenny Chesney wrote this song
shortly after we broke up
3.21.08
When You Go Out
recorded in the final hours of good friday,
as friends from Michigan were trying to find my
new place in the city
3.20.08
Independence Day
3.19.08
Speaking In Tongues
my band thought this was a very dirty song.
I thought it was about the spirit of the Lord.
My suspicion is that we're both right.
3.18.08
All Night Long
wrote the music to this song just before I left Michigan
and the lyrics just after I got to New York
3.17.08
Palm Sunday
in the cab on the way to church yesterday I saw a group of people standing in the rain outside some church, waving palm fronds and cheering on command. Thought then as I have before that the Christian celebration of Christ's triumphal entry to Jerusalem is a little strange, since it ended less than week later with his death. The major lesson I've always taken from Palm Sunday is that a cheering crowd can not be trusted.
End of The World Waltz
wrote both of these songs on the train to Princeton this Saturday. After working out Palm Sunday in my head, I looked out the window to see the beautiful glass face of an abandoned factory, and suddenly imagined a whole life in it, miles from anywhere any train would have a reason to stop.
3.16.08
This Is My Father's World
sung by Lauren Garfield
a guest appearance with a Sunday hymn
from my favorite singer
3.15.08
Imagination
by Johnny Burke and Jimmy van Heusen
standards on saturdays continues with my other favorite
song by my favorite songwriting team
3.14.08
Mockingbird Lullaby (demo)
last year, my parents played a "jazzy brunch" with my dad on trombone and my mom on piano at a local restaurant.
wrote this as my attempt at an "old standard"
3.13.08
New Lullaby (demo)
recorded in the dim warmth that still haunts a place for a few moments after everyone goes
3.12.08
Elvis On The Telephone (demo)
wrote this song about a strip-club bouncer who had ambitions of being the mayor of Detroit.
the intervals are stolen straight from 'centerfold'
but that wasn't cleverness on my part,
just blind theft.
3.11.08
Treasure To Me (demo)
wrote this walking from the plane to the train at JFK
for all my friends who can't believe
their precious hearts are worth something
(bonus points to anyone who recognizes the telltale interval I stole from Evie's 1977 smash hit "Pass It On.")
3.10.08
Big Love (demo)
fifties throwback with a line lifted straight from
Yevgeny Yevtushenko:
no, I'll not take the half of anything
give me the whole sky, the far flung earth
3.9.08
Be Still My Soul
When I went looking for this hymn in my mother's hymnbook, the page fell open on its own.
3.8.08
But Beautiful
by Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen
I have always wanted to cover this song in concert, but my brother maintains that it is humanly impossible to play on guitar.
My favorite of the old standards.
3.7.08
I'm Not Coming Home (demo)
I hope I'm wrong about this.
3.6.08
Dream For Me (piano demo)
At a time when I no longer had the wherewithal to dream,
I met my friend William Garrett, who was still
full of hopes and schemes.
I still say he saved my life.
3.5.08
Argentina Waltz (demo)
my love for the imaginary argentinas of borges and cortazar is so deep that I'm afraid to visit the real one
3.4.08
All The World Is Waiting For The Sunrise (demo)
my great grandmother was a singer who traveled tens of thousands of miles each year from the age of 16 to 23. The only record we have of her voice is a wax cylinder labeled with two songs. One of them is "All the World Is Waiting For The Sunrise" which was apparently a song about hope for the end of World War I. Since you can barely make out her voice or the tune on the tape we have of the cylinder, my brother and I wrote two new songs from the same titles as the ones she sang. We tried to make them songs that would make sense to her if she were here to sing them.
This new song is about our own war.
3.3.08
Double-Hearted Night Duet (demo)
being hit on by married guys is perhaps
my least favorite thing in the world.
3.2.08
Football Players (demo)
when I was eighteen, one of my friends wrote a poem called "why football players should be afraid of carey"
to the effect that I would read them like a book,
then tear the last page out and walk away.
3.1.08
Old Friend Waltz (demo)
whenever I see someone tap on a window in a movie, I'm grateful that this really was my life one summer
2.29.08
Wishing Star Waltz (demo)
woke up two days ago with a cold medicine hangover and the memory of a dream in which a waiter in a tuxedo had wheeled my grandfather up to a table at an imaginary snackbar at a college where my parents used to teach. I bent over to kiss my grandfather on the cheek. His whole face lit up, and I couldn't keep from crying. The waiter was bellowing a line from this song:
"holding hands with a wishing star"
filled in all the pieces of the melody the dream didn't give me that morning and wrote the lyrics last night on the train.