1989 What You Think it Should
I owned a house in a resort area, had a successful TV production company with my brother Chris (www.baughan.com), and worked with celebrities. So I wrote about getting what you ask for.

1989 Beautiful
This song is not about one woman, but the many who would catch my eye. A few times, I would look and get. This taught me to mostly look for inner beauty.

1989 Blond Hair Brown Eyed Becky
True story. Becky and I were both young, busy and traveled a lot, but in different directions. We never had a real date, but kept planning until we drifted apart. I did get a song.

1990 Night Train
My girlfriend Shelly worked at the local hospital where she rotated in and out of night shifts. It exposed me to the many essential jobs that must be done everyday, around the clock. Support was supplied by being the best boyfriend.

1990 Coyote
Native American stories call coyotes “tricksters”. This song is about why they howl. Originally picked with three fingers and a thumb like Shawn Colvins “Shotgun Down the Avalanche”. I couldn’t record it without mistakes, so instead used a pick. It actually sounds better as bass notes hit harder. Bob Winsett on percussion.

1990 Game of Love
As a self-proclaimed relationship expert, vast dating knowledge is conveyed unto these lyrics. It’s recorded but demands Led Zeplike intensity.

1990 Go for a Ride
The “Moosejaw” in Frisco, CO was filled beyond capacity. An entourage squeezed in, parting the crowd for a tall beautiful model. She floated through the room as they all went straight out the back door. Obviously, wrong bar.

1990 Put Her on a River
My girl Shelly is a West-by-God-Virginia white water river rat from Ohio. She is happiest on the water.

1990 It’s Great
I wondered if competing religions alone caused conflicts. I found that clans attack villages, countries attack continents, and religion is a popular excuse for a land grab. We “evolved monkeys” have always fought over land and resources. There will always be war.

1991 Never Say Good Bye
Family and friends had died. My last words to them were most likely “goodbye”. Not wanting to have these be my last words to someone, I started stopping to say “goodbye”, say anything else, or just smile and hug.

1992 The Tallest Mountains
A love song using an old tired phrase. Knowing true love turns that eye rolling chestnut into “true that”.

1992 Board of Life
I’m restless, easily bored, and always planning my next move. This song is a play on words and is rarely performed the same way twice. It’s ideal for long jams.

1992 Fishing at the Alford Brook Club
My grandparents, their three children and nine grand kids (I’m #7) would spend too few days fishing and playing at this private sportsman’s club. It’s a brick former schoolhouse in a right sized field where a dam creates a lake stocked with trout. It’s still there!

1992 Time to Love
My dad was a pro singer and amateur actor with a full time day job, so family time was short. Inspired by Harry Chapins “Cat’s in the Cradle” and the similarities of me becoming too busy, this song happened. It was beyond cool to have my Dad sing backup vocals.

Years later when my Dad was 69, I noticed that his voice was declining. We booked studio time with a pianist, and at a church with a pipe organist. He sang his favorite songs with introductions by my Mom and Dad. He was a one take wonder. This extended to his golf game where he took no practice shots.

1992 Silly Girlfriend
Shelly is 100% nurse. I was an extreme skier with no health insurance. She questioned my safety. This caused me pause at critical moments of daring do.

1992 I’m Alive
Shelly told me too many tales of trauma (before and thank you HIPA!) and how reckless behavior effects others, like your mother. This is not pro life , it’s a pro choice statement about not dying or becoming permanently disabled while your parents are still alive.

1993 Dream Girl
This is a song where I had been with, broken up, or given up several women at this point of my life. Mental images piled up of women who used to sit next to me. It was time to commit.

1993 Dancing without Tunes
Yeah, she does that.

1994 Beer Heaven
Alcohol abuse begins by opening a new beer because you misplaced the old one. Poor beer!

1994 Father John
I married Shelly in Breckenridge, CO at Father Dyer Church, but first read his book “The Snow-shoe Itinerant. He may have said “God fearing up front, sinners in the rear”, as it was a common saying back then and a nice hook. Clint Eastwood’s character in the movie “Pale Rider” was inspired by John Dyer and includes “Easter eggs” about Breckenridge’s gold rush days.

1994 Dust on my Lazy Boy
Working long hours results in skipping many chores like cleaning, food shopping, and reduces social life.

1995 I Will Float
Conveying my love of skiing through music and the first adventure into backup harmony.

1995 Thunder Calling
I lived in Frisco, CO, 10 miles west of the Continental Divide, at the base of the Ten Mile Range. It attracts intense electrical storms. This one hovered over my house for an eternity while I wrote happy thoughts.

One storm almost fried my young son Benjamin. Seconds after calling him in, a bolt splashed the puddle where he was playing in his new duck boots! Another storm fried my van’s wiring and split the Father Dyer Church steeple in Breckenridge. Viewed once from the highway, the Ten Mile Range and Frisco were hit like an artillery barrage.

1996 Beats Feet
Riding bikes is a thing with me, be it human, electric or gas powered.

1996 Ice Cold Beer
A party song. The bongo player liked the song except for the drinking part.

1997 Walk in the Night
The baseline for happiness is contentment. Content with my life, I wrote this song using open bar chords, or as one musician snickered, “pretty chords”.

1997 Hale-Bopp
This comet was visible for months. It drew me outside for inspiration many times while writing this song. The comet’s interval or swing around the sun was predicted to be near 4,000 years. It’s since been refined to 2,399. The song is about civilization the last time it swung through and what we’ll be the next time.

1998 Brand New Start
This is a song about addiction turning good people into sad losers. A few I knew died young because they could not find their off switch.

1998 Time of Your Life
I was on a Salt River whitewater trip in Arizona with 2 young ladies who got stuck in a class 5 hole. I could not rescue them as they were just out of reach. Heather fell out of the boat after an eternity of violent turbulence. She was sucked in and flushed out of more holes until out of sight. That experience and then almost drowning myself in the same section became this song. We found her later shivering on shore. The other lady Jackie got the raft out by accidently deflating the floor with her foot.

1999 Vicarious Cowboy
The Rolling Stones released a country song! It was pretty good, so I wrote one. Leon Russel, Neil Young, The Eagles and now Darius Rucker and Beyonce doing country? There are so many genres now with thousands of subgenres. “Americana” describes many of my songs as a fusion of rock, blues, folk, and country, defined as “featuring storytelling lyrics”.

2011 Backyard Swing
The “Charlie Brown” tree from my childhood had grown into a massive white pine. I climbed it and hung a rope for a swing. My dad watched me swinging high with a few dive bomber twists and started singing ‘The daring young man in the flying trapeze”.

2012 Benny and Celide
True story. Celide would come over in the morning and wait for Benny so they could walk to school together. Their friendship was so innocent, this had to be written. Not choking up while playing it is a challenge.

2012 It’s Going to be Better
A vivid dream of escaping a bad situation with my children through tight tunnels with creeper carts woke me up. A lot like the movie “The Great Escape”. The kids were so young, but many people helped us along the way, as they were on the run too. The song is about why people move from their hometowns, but the dream was about unraveling a marraige with kids.

2014 Boy Meets Girl
Berklee School of Music in Boston offered a free online song writing class. The price was right and it reminded me of visiting Berklee one afternoon and watching high school guitar hero Kevin Keehnle’s band work on their rock opera. The final involved writing and recording a song that would be critiqued by classmates. One comment suggested that I had a future in songwriting!

2014 I Have Ten Minutes
A divorce song. My ex joked that someday one of us would leave for 10 minutes to buy cigs and never come back. Neither one of us smoked. This song may end up as a jingle for Chevy; “If I ever find a woman with the same reliability, I’ll stay with her, like my Chevrolet”.

2014 Looking For A Girl
Life’s a journey that includes looking for someone. When you find someone will you keep looking because they’re not perfect? Maybe there is no perfect mate and BTW, you’re not perfect.

2015 Long, Long Time
One lifes journey had come to end and I went back to the nest to reset. My next journey involved dating a crush I had in high school. This turned into a long distance relationship and a lifetime of sweet memories.

2016 Happiness -In Your Dreams
Harvesting apples from my brothers backyard reminded me of the dreamers in my life. Those dreams had come true for some, and for me too. I wrote this song, and then after reading so many self-help tomes, wrote a memorable guide to Happiness:

2016 Hey You
Long distance relationships involve long phone calls. A variation of a recent chord progression (Happiness- In your dreams) happened by starting up the scales instead of going down. Lyrics flowed out, starting with “Hey you, it’s me”. I played until phrases came too fast to remember, got a beer and wrote them down. So many verses were condensed down to three. Two equally good choruses exist, but to make a song memorable, there should only be one. I could provide an example, but I don’t remember any.

2016 Next First Kiss
Jedidah wrote the words and I put them to music, where I tweaked a few lines. She was not happy. The words “could not be changed”. I recorded and archived what was done, originally thinking it was a co-write.

2016 Hey Jody
True story. There are many verses that were recorded but edited out to make this song shorter. She gets the full version when I play it for her. Jody was the girl next door when something stirred in us. We both hadn’t even started kindergarten!

2018 Elizabeth
Elizabeth is the daughter of childhood friends. She developed mental health issues as a teenager, so I wrote this song. It was rewritten years later because we discovered that our high school friend Fred Pitko’s drowning was no accident. He simply did not want to be gay like his father, brother and sister. Now it’s a song about recognizing when someone is considering suicide and initiating a “real conversation”.

2018 Eventual Circle
This sleepy new age song revolves through dawn, sunshine, sunset and the night sky. Inspired by a George Benson-like musical journey.

2018 Be There For You
My parents marraige displayed a true example of a lasting love. It was not perfect, but they were always there for each other. Summed up by Dan Aykryd’s exchange in “Exit to Eden” with Rosie O’Donnell. “How do I show you love?”. “Go paint my house.” He did.
I’ve followed Ms. O’Donnells career since I directed her with Micheal Bolton and Kenny G for VH1 intros to music video’s in Crested Butte, CO. I’ve been a cheerleader for all three since working with them.

2019 Day I Die
Skiing with fast friends on a powder day got me thinking about my aged parents who didn’t get dressed some days. The beat came from skiing down, but I was thinking about skinning up. The idea being that if getting dressed is your mountain, then just do it.

2020 Black Dog in the Desert
George brought his old black dog on a river trip. This dog had been on so many trips and was over it. Too hot, too much pain in her joints and just looking to lay down in the shade. She disappeared one day and came back after sunset. George’s wife Nancy played this song for him months later without telling him it was mine. He said, “That could be about my dog”.

2020 Deep Breaths
Living at 9,100 feet above sea level for almost four decades resulted in troubled breathing. Many have to move to lower altitudes because their body stops responding to the thin air. Some don’t even last a day, so I had a good run. Written with the help of my new baritone guitar that resonated through my chest like a flem loosening shock wave.

2020 What My Dad Would Say
My Dad was poor during the 1930’s depression. His Mom kicked his Dad out for losing their grocery store because he extended credit to hungry customers. Sometimes he went to bed hungry. His mother was above work, so the city placed him with cousins for a year. He handed over all his paychecks to her until married, then an allowance. He had no words, kind or otherwise for his mother. For his dad? “I never knew my father”, though he was at his bedside when he died. My Mom filled in the blanks. These hardships strengthened , drove, and taught him to enjoy life, no matter the circumstances.

2021 Historical Yesterday
My older brother was helping my mom age in place. He dropped dead at 66. Now she had to move. While cleaning out her house, I found a poem written by my ex Jayne. She had modified the phrase, “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift. That’s why we call it the present”, attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt. The phrase is also in Kung Foo Panda! I wrote this song about no more tomorrows with my brother and played it at his memorial.

2022 Bad Boy
I wasn’t so bad, maybe just driven. Then I met someone like me. I didn’t realize how challenging driven can be!

2022 Motorcycle
I wrote about riding my motorcycle and came up with some fun chords. I enjoyed playing and singing it. No one liked it so it was tucked away. I rewrote it in 2022 and added another fun chord. I discovered it again in 2025 because it’s on this list, added another fun chord and recorded it. It’s a keeper!

2022 Bill Strong
There was a man who lived on Washington mountain in a cabin, past the farm at the end of my street. He worked on that farm for generations. We usually saw headlights going up to that cabin and stories about wild parties. I worked with him on that farm when I was 12, bailing hay and picking corn while he drove the tractor. He didn’t talk much, yelled when he did, usually showed up late and one time sent home as he was drunk. I wondered about him years later, put some pieces together and concluded that he drank a bit. James Taylor lives on one side of that mountain with Arlo Guthrie on the other. That mountain has stories.

2022 Change
“The only thing that doesn’t change is change itself”. I was preparing my parents house for sale, with mine next in line. Sifting through decades of memories and too much stuff, I was welcoming change.

2022 Moving On
My home in the mountains of 37.5 years was almost ready to sell. Paula and I had just done the same thing with my parents house which they owned for 70 years. I was feeling glad and sad, so wrote what I felt.

2022 In a State of Colorado
There’s a catchy tune with the line ”Get high like Colorado”. I didn’t care for the drug reference so decided to write my own Colorado song. It took months, as I couldn’t get that other one out of my head. One day out of frustration, I banged out an intro starting on the 14^th fret and moved on down the neck.

2023 American Dream
No middle class, no American dream. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Then the majority of American voters make it worse. This song was inspired by a middle east dad stating that his son “wouldn’t be a terrorist if a job kept him busy”. The system worked for dad, but times change.

2023 Big Oak Tree
Several times a year I visited my Parents in my childhood home. Selling it brought back memories that could be time stamped by the size of that front yard tree. During our last walk around the house, my Mom pointed out a bush that was a wedding present from her parents. Each of the trees on this 1/4 acre drove the lyrics. The music was inspired by Leon Russels “Song for You” with climbs and drops between notes and chords.

2023 Christmas Puppy
If I wrote one more song, I would have one for every month of 2023! It came quickly as there was little pressure to write a great song, just write a song. I imagined a young girl singing it and Paula stepped up. We also had a puppy. 12 songs in a year helps to make up for no songs completed between 2000-2010. Having twins does that!

2023 Dancing in Our Romance
This song started with place holder lyrics from other songs. I thought it would be cool for people to recognize a line. But I found that even though chord progressions and harmonies are common compositional elements, lyrics are not. So I wrote my own.

2023 I’m Walking
Exercise! When a mountain is too big to climb and a stream to wide to swim, there will always be walking. When there is no more walking then, you die.

2023 Meditation
My dog Mildred Amelia Milicent May. She stares at me from the couch while I play in my open-space house. The acoustics are perfect for recording where the adjoining office is treated with sound panels for mixing and sweetening. I was slowly going between two open guitar chords and harmonizing with the harmonica, as one does. During this trance I looked up and caught Milly May’s stare. This flooded me with love hormones. She kept staring, which meant it was time for a snack and a walk. We did both, then wrote the lyrics.

2023 Sisyphus Waltz
I had just retired, with the next challenge of purpose. Sisyphus is damned for eternity (still doing it!) to push a rock up a mountain. It rolls down every-single-time, like the postal service where the-mail-never-stops. This could be his plight or his purpose. Growing old is our rock. Keep it rolling!

2023 Fork In the Road
I was riding my bicycle in the desert and saw a picnic fork laying on the side of the trail. I kept riding and thought about my son and his fork in the road. I had given him fatherly advice and was waiting for his choice. But in the mean time, I could move that fork…

2023 Get Out of Bed
I’m an early bird. She is not.

2023 Take Care of the Little Things
My Mom had to check most boxes in the “Activities of Daily Living” list for her long term care insurance. Some ADL’s are listed in this song; comb hair, tie shoes, with the addition of “smile”. The music began by standing at my piano and playing three notes. A blues riff!

2023 Together in Sweet Harmony
My drum machine is easy to program with just two fingers. Sometimes it slips into a swing or a waltz because I kinda sorta didn’t know what the heck I wanted. It surprises and inspires me. This time a song was birthed from a beat and a feel.

2023 Both Ends Against the Middle
A girlfriend said this to me and I didn’t know what it meant, so I looked it up. It means two people playing one to come to an agreement. In her case, it was her mother and I trying to get her to slow her roll.

2024 Goodbye Sweetheart
A good friend was considering cheating on his wife as they had drifted. I asked if it was worth half of his wealth. “Absolutely”. His wife found out because he told her. Their love life came back but she never forgave him. After a year of her torment, he left. I wrote this to help him move on, and take the high road.

2024 I’m In Heaven
My dad sang some duets with several talented women. All of his recordings have been digitized, mastered, and archived. The accordian lady in the pic and I tried to combine Americana and South Tyrolian. Fun, but no.

2024 Sun on the Beach
Colorado has long winters where the beach gets reached mid-season. Frozen bones thaw under the sun, persistent coughs fade away, and motivation is renewed to learn more Spanish. This song had one objective; be a fun dance tune. It began with a bouncy bass riff. The lyrics were mostly done before realizing that saying “Sun on the beach” quickly, sounds like something else.

2024 Blue Guitar
An acoustic guitar is my main instrument and use electric mostly for spreading pixie dust. In the middle are arch tops and I wanted one, but with a smaller body. The local family owned music store had a used blue PRS hollow body archtop, so I bought it. It’s the only song I ever wrote on an electric guitar.

2024 Keep Your Ass Alive
It’s amazing that most of us survive to live a full life. This was written during my Mom’s final year. Combined with tales of trauma by medical friends, kids I knew dying fom overdose/ suicide, and my own close calls, I wrote about mortality. But in a fun way.

2024 There Was a Time M71ZT9
A flight connection was missed because of delays. The last flight out that night was oversold. It reminded me of a relationship that ended because of a postponed rendevous. We did not reschedule.

2024 Best Friends
Most everyone has a best friend. The movie “Thelma and Louise” is an extreme example of the relationship between my girlfriend and her besty. The line “I will die for you” is what kids say while what if-ing life and death scenarios. When an adult says that, it’s real, like driving off a cliff. “…and we’re not going home”.

2024 Keeping It Real
Making Angry Guys Angry. Right wingers prompt real conversations from me. They are angry because they “work hard” and all their tax dollars go to lazy cheats. They love to repeat rare, slanted, or fake stories. Rich and powerful white men promote emasculating issues to anger them. Base line, they are sexist, racist, under/ misinformed, and know they are. They are not stupid. “I’ll never vote for a camel toe”.

2024 How’s This for a Happy Ending
It’s not what you think! This song is about calming a busy mind and going to sleep. There was a russian ending. The final pixie dust was just recorded. I placed that blue PRS hollowbody electric in its stand, stood up, and knocked it to the floor in a sickening head snapping crunch. That last take was the best, but didn’t require a sacrifice!

2024 Where Ever
Traveling more than I cared to because of family obligations prompted this song. Yes, it’s a hassle to change routines, but some routines stay the same, like eating, sleeping and staying safe. No matter where you go, bring your positive self and leave grumpy at home.

2024 What Ever
Telling your own story is considered boring by some writers. As a device that’s not about me, I present a young lady pretending not to care. Like a Wednesday Adams, Teen Titans Raven, or this AI picture, a twin of a teenager I saw days later. Research revealed that there are people in this world who truly do not care, because their brains don’t release those hormones. This is either from willful suppression, depression, or a born abnormality. In this song it’s from a broken heart.

2025 Lucky Ones
Lucky to be where, what, who, and who I’m with, the question was why? AI informed me that being lucky is an attitude. Feeling lucky when things go right and unlucky when they go wrong is nonsense. It’s not personal or luck, just life.

2025 Her Story:
https://youtu.be/XVN-DKDKIxc
The working title “February 28^th” broke up an empty page. A music bed was composed. I then used REM’s Michael Stipe’s technique of writing to the music. It evolved to be about my recently passed Mom. Paula cried when I first played it and said it sounded like “her history”. My Mom’s Dad filmed his family with a kodak 16mm box camera. (That camera motivated my career) His footage is used for this music video. The song was performed graveside and was lightened up with nephew Jake on kazoo. Tears and laughter!

2025 Good Ones
I wrote this song after one son said “All the good ones are taken”. My other son had just ended an on-line relationship between Colorado and New Zealand where they had spent one month together. On-line dating casts a wider net but may involve moving or wondering what might have been.

2025 Tell Me a Story
My parents read to my brother and I as children. Reading to my own kids was a full circle experience. My Dad was a singer and actor who read each book as a performance. Dad got us excited, Mom read to calm us down. Reading to my children and being read to as a child are some of my life’s highlights. Green Eggs and Ham and Goodnight Moon!

2025 Be Useful
I was told I was driven. I laughed and said I felt drove. Song idea! While contemplating the chorus ending, I focused on my pencil. Something was written on it. “Be nice, be useful, bring wine. Being useful by bringing wine is a nice compliment. Forgetting to bring the wine, well that’s another song.

2025 No Kings All Good
I watched “A Complete Unknown” where Bob Dylan meets Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. This inspired me to write a political song. The upbeat chord progression did not match the negative lyrics so they were rewritten. It evolved into how to stay positive and plan for good returns while democracy burns. Besides, who wants to listen to a bitchy song with no answers? The answer is not just blowing wind.

2025 Old Man Died Once Young
I found my usually carefree neighbor crying in the street. A memory had overtaken him from cleaning up massacred villages in China after World War II. He fought in Guam and Okinawa with the 6th Marine Division. Yeah, that one. He also witnessed the official Japenese surrender in Tsingtao/ Qingdao, China. I researched why he was sent to China, watched “The Pacific” series, and read “Stay off the Skyline”. His daughter said he never spoke about the war. He did not hold back with me.

2025 Cowboy
Procrastination created this song. No-Kings-All Good” was recorded the night before and ready to mix in the morning. I got up, made coffee, and sat down with my guitar. This song poured out. I was a little annoyed because I had a dozen other songs to mix. Inspiration is welcome but damn!

2025 Reflection
A heard a classic style of a Celtic/Gaelic/ Irish type song played in the credits of “The Witcher” (S3, E7*) where “CirI’ transports herself into a desert and goes on a “Hero’s Journey”. I picked up a guitar, plugged it in, hit record and started playing a similiar groove. The music bed evolved over a few days until it was time to write the lyrics. I thought about kings, knights, maybe witchers, but went with a common and relatable theme; The declaration of true love after soul searching reflection.
*”A Little Sacrifice” sung by Freya Allan, who plays Ciri. This ballad is based on a story from Andrzej Sapkowski’s “Witcher” books.

2025 Query
When I was in college, a Vietnam vet told me that his default response to any request was “No”. He was a troubled man. When I was a ski instructor, a few kids would say “I could NEVER do that”. I had them repeat “There’s a strong possibility that I may not be able to perform this task to a satisfactory level”. They could finish the statement with “I respectfully decline” or “But I’ll do my best”. This statement gave them time to think before answering and it always made them laugh.
This song was written to remind myself to say “yes” to the monumental task of turning my “songs into records” -John Fogerty.

2025 XWhyZ
There are many techniques for writing songs. John Fogerty of “Proud Mary”, etc, fame usually starts with a title and a lick. This one started because I had no songs that started with the letters R, Q, X, Y, and Z. (See the previous 2 song titles). The basic title “XYZ” allowed me to move on to the lick, or in this case a descending chord progression. Inspiration for the lyrics came from my niece’s wedding a few days before. 50 people I didn’t know, about 20 of my own family and several friends. A few of these friends I’ve known most of my life. This encouraged me to write about all the types of people I’ve observed, met, never saw again, see again and again, to those who I consider family.
This song went through so many revisions that when I found the first draft while looking for paper to write a new song, I did not recognize it. Did I write a song and forget about it? I played it the next day and remembered that it was the seeds of XwhyZ. Whew!

2025 It’s No Trouble Loving Women
This song began while unloading from a raft trip with a fellow songwriter who laughed when I told him the title “I Hate Loving Women”. We had performed our songs for the group the nights before where he performed several popular sing-along songs where I had few. This inspired me to write a song with an easy and fun refrain, and yes, I do need to learn some classic songs, like “I Can See Clearly Now”.

2025 Ten into Five
This started as a quick collaboration with Chris Coady after we played guitar and sang until dark on the banks of the Colorado River in Horsethief Canyon. He came up with a title and I started playing an upbeat chord progression. His words kept coming until I could not find a transition to the chorus or bridge or whatever comes next. I found one, but the magic and/ or the beer wore out.
I wrote the chords down the next day on the back of another song I was working on, but accidently threw it away. A few days later, I wondered where it was, went throught the trash and found it. I wrote my own lyrics after the music bed had gone through three rewrites. It was nothing like the original, except it’s in the key of D and his idea of “I got Ten Pounds of Dreams”. I came up with “A Five Pound Bucket” so it would be about checking off an extensive and unrealistic bucket list. The introduction/ instrumental happened because it needed one. And there it was. Which gets me thinking:
If you build a boat for the first time, it’s difficult. By the 100^th boat, it becomes effortless. This is in part because after 100 boats, you should have moved into administration and delegated the actual work. Compared to songwriting, this is where collaboration can evolve up to it’s not your song anymore. For me, I’m happy building the boat. I appreciate the help, as it goes faster, and ensures it doesn’t sink.

2025 Love Song Blues
Waking up at night with a great idea and writing it down never worked for me. Reading it the next morning proved that I should have just rolled over and gone back to sleep. Some dreams now include fully produced original music where I’m content to simply enjoy the serenade. Sometimes they wake me up as I’m afraid of being possessed. These are all original songs with incredible orchestration, and so complicated that it would be pointless to even attempt to write them down. It’s like seeing a beautiful sunset and scrambling to take a picture, when its better to simply stop and enjoy the moment.
This song came to me before fully falling asleep, and because it came with a title, got me out of bed. The next few days brought many rewrites. Some say that their phrases came from above, but these came from letting the words flow, honest review, and fearless editing. If this sounds like hard work, then it’s the best kind.
One challenge was to make the song fun with the serious subject of heartbreak. I had been listening to some great bluegrass that day (Del McCoury on E-town) and thought that after writing a complicated song (XWhyZ), wanted a simple song, easy to embellise with some fine picking. I was also influenced by growing up with the TV show Hee-Haw (1969-1993), and wanted my own “Gloom, Despair, and Agony on Me”.

2025 The Road Called
I was reading a book by Neil Peart, the drummer for the band “Rush” about riding his motorcycle across North and Central America to deal with loss. I have a road bike and driving it for 500 miles a day for months was not appealing. Getting up and leaving did. When I realized several house projects were complete, my brain said “go”. I drove my quiet, comfortable and turbo charged Volvo XC60 to the Musical Instrument Museum, 500 miles away in Phoenix, AZ. While there, I saw a custom “Zildgian” cymbal “Made for Neil Peart, 1952- 2020”. I didn’t know that he had died.
I wrote this song in a hotel room in Flagstaff, AZ with my guitar, being very quiet, where I could not sing beyond a whisper until being back home. Then I wrote another song before this one was complete.

2025 Kiss The Sky
For years, I heard Jimmy Hendrix singing “Kiss this guy”, Stevie Nicks singing “Like the ones we love” and the classic “Inna gotta davida”. So I pronunciate in my songs. This one came after days of listening through many music genres during my road trip, critiquing my songs, reading Neil Pearts book and starting Bob Dylan’s book expounding on classic tunes. This left me wanting to write something simple and fun as my brain was overloaded with song analysis. My direction? “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother” meets “White Rabbit”.

There are many songwriters, including myself, that have the luxury of writing and producing our own tunes, and not depending on it for our next meal. What we get is the pure joy of creating something from nothing. Each song places milestones in our life, distills our thoughts to a backbeat, and usually includes some spin and shine.