Making ROOTS AND BRANCHES: “Lucky’s Cafe”
“Lucky’s Café” is a barroom lament about looking for love in all the wrong places.
Category: Blog
Making ROOTS AND BRANCHES: “The Illustrated Man”
“The Illustrated Man” was written across decades. I think I wrote the lyrics in the late 70s. At the time I tried repeatedly to write the music for it but nothing clicked, so I just set it aside, neatly typed, for nearly 30 years. Finally, in the early-aughts, it came…
Making ROOTS AND BRANCHES: “Anybody’s Girl”
True crime, outlaws and antiheroes. You can’t get much more American than that. Some of my songs arrive in the form of a first-person narrative by an unexpected character. An outlaw or antihero works for me. I like the grittiness of Steve Earle’s “Copperhead Road.” I like a TV series…
Making ROOTS AND BRANCHES: “Mack the Knife”
When Bobby Darin’s version of “Mack the Knife” hit the charts in August 1959 I had just turned six and was on the cusp of first grade. It’s fair to say that “Mack the Knife” owned the charts that fall and winter, charting for 26 weeks and spending nine of them…
Making ROOTS AND BRANCHES: “Till There Was You”
My parents’ record collection was slim pickings when I was a kid. My dad mostly chose the records. He had Al Hirt, Pete Fountain, Mitch (“I hate rock and roll”) Miller, The Harmonicats, 101 Strings, and, although my parents never attended the theater, Carousel, Oklahoma!, Hello Dolly! (so many exclamation points), West…
Making ROOTS AND BRANCHES: “Life in the Fifties”
Ihttps://open.spotify.com/track/4VCneRupMEMbaQGlU7CTnM?si=62bd945b60cf4c60 I wrote this song with my friend and bandmate John Kargacos around 1978 in San Diego where we were playing in the band Streetlife. I can’t exactly remember who wrote what but we called it a 50-50 composition. John sang it. It was many years later, when the song…