It's been a while since I wrote a song for my honey! I decided it's time! With this one the first couple of lines were the starting point. Most of my songs start with music and then I decide what it's about, and then come the lyrics. In this case, since I already knew what the subject was, some lyrics came first. What actually came first was: First time that I saw you Walking through the door Second time I saw you You brought me to the floor And I knew I wanted the hook to end on "Be there when the sun goes down....." Having a fairly solid idea of what the music should sound like, one full verse, and an idea on the hook and chorus, I thought I'd go ahead and see what Suno would come up with for this. I asked for something in "Southern Rock". I got back a track that's a lot of fun to listen to, but since it only had the words I gave it at this point, it was around 60-70% guitar solo. I was able to download the "stems" and used Logic Pro to do some cut and paste work to get myself the verse and chorus spots including a second verse, a single solo, and a final chorus. Writing the second verse, I started including lyrics pretty specific to my own life with my own partner, but it's still pretty universal stuff. It's actually my honey that came up with the phrase "other side of ugly" after we had a bit of a cloud about 20 years ago. Now I decided what the cong really needed was 100% real instruments, and I went back to Aerugo Productions who I've used for a few songs over the last few years. I recorded my own vocals over what I had cut up from Suno and sent that as a demo. They sent back a fleshed out version with piano, organ, harmonica, bass and drums in addition to their own guitars and vocals. And, as is often the case with them, they took a bit of artistic liberty and changed the chorus to end with the one note at a time descending "Be.. there... when... the... sun goes down.......". This was actually a pretty big change from what I sent them, and it took some getting used to, it definitely adds something special. With all the songs I've done with them, what I get back always has some differences like this that I really appreciate. I've always thought the best songs I've been a part of are collaborations where there's input from people playing together and throwing out their own takes on a tune. I live up in a rural area of the Rockies now, and it's not easy to find folks to jam with, I really need to get back to being in a band. Once I got the stems back, I replaced their guitarts with my own, and added my own vocals while keeping one of their backups. Like with See the Light I sent this to The Online Recording Studio for mixing and mastering and I'm delighted with the final product. With See the Light I went ahead with getting some AI assistance to generate a Lyric Video, with this one I really wanted a real video. Of course I don't have a Hollywood level budget, so I did what any budget video producer does, I went to Fiverr. I did some searching along the lines of "AI Video Generation" thinking that was going to be to get the most "professional" looking video in late 2026. I say "late" because these days the technology changes so fast two months go by and we're living in a different world. ANYWAY... I reached out to Eli because he had a lot of really good reviews, and I asked for a price on generating something along the lines of a performance video with me singing and playing. The price came back pretty high with a lot of warnings about the unpredictable artifacts that come along with AI generated video. I've had pretty good luck with just removing the background from video of me performing at home, so I suggested sending him video of me singing and playing with no background, and he creates video around that. Eli says, that's great, then we don't need AI generated video really at all, we can just use stock footage! So I tell him it's a love song, I live in the mountains, and I'd like the performance stuff to include actually performing in front of a crowd. With just a couple of back and forths, we had something just about ready, in the end I used my own video editing software to adjust the timing on a couiple of things, and I decided what it really needed was... more Wippit. I shared the two different versions with a few people at the day job and they agreed, more Wippit was the better version. So now this one has an "Official Video" which you can enjoy right here!
For eight songs recorded straight to analog and mixed in a few hours, I think we did pretty well. In those days, you might be able to punch in a part, but there was certainly no "fixing" anything with digital magic.
So I have a new release featuring two heartfelt love ballads. The first track, "Never Again," is a song I wrote in the 90s, at the time I was shooting for a soulful R&B song with its raw emotion and smooth vocals. I'll be the first to admit that smooth vocals aren't my specialty.
The new EP is out on all the streaming platforms. Details on the songs are below the links.
I started writing the song For Everyone about ten years ago. Like most of the songs I write, it started with a chord progression followed by a vague idea of what the melody could be. One day I was driving and listening back to an acoustic strumming the chords, and the beginning of the chorus just came to me out of the blue: When do we get to the part where we stop hurting each other? How do we get to the place where we stop breaking each other down? It had been some time since I wrote a song with a "message" and this one seemed to be writing itself. Suddenly, I felt this one needed to be done in a hurry and rushed out. I already had a couple of new songs close to the finish line, Yup and Paying for Lessons. Now I felt like I was close to getting an EP worth of material , and I wanted to get it to the masses. It didn't take more than a couple of days to get the lyrics finished, now I had a song I could play on an acoustic, but I wasn't sure where it would go from here. I brought it to the studio where my stepsons worked on music and asked if they wouldn't mind learning it real quick and putting down bass and drums, I was still just strumming an acoustic. I think we wen't through the song all of three times and I brought home the acoustic, bass and drum tracks. In the big picture, I wanted this to have electric guitar instead, so I recorded a kind of funky electric riff over the drums and bass, put power chords over the chorus, and then another track of lead throughout the song. The final touch I figured it needed was female backups on the chorus. At the time I was in a cover band and I got the female vocalist from Tastes Like Chicken to sing a three part arrangement I put together, and I figured it was ready for prime time. Since this was the song with the message I made it the title track of my EP, and I rushed it out to CD Baby and all the streaming services. You can check out that version here:
So I found out Covid was "real" as I was in the office at my new job getting ready for a weekend of Frozen Dead Guy Days in 2020. The event was canceled 24 hours in advance and shut downs and work from home was happening immediately.
In the six days between the first two Covid shows, I decided the shows should have themes, I sure can't play the same songs every week right? The expectation was the same small handful of friends would show up and they deserve something better than a repeat.
For the third episode I stepped the sound up with a mixer so I have a stage mic and my guitar on separate channels and effects streaming with the video. I also started trying to pull off using a looper built into my guitar pedal. The looper pedal thing isn't my forte, just wanna play a solo here and there you know. I do think the set ends well. I played this full set with acoustic/electric but I already have my eyes set on electric.
That's right I opened the show streaming to the wrong page, the Tastes Like Chicken page. So nobody saw it as it happened, but there it is. The Dr Wippit page stream starts with Margaritaville, a better lock down song to be sure.
The first time I opened with a Pink Floyd reference. I’m starting to kind of feel like there’s regulars for these. Am I going through the trouble of putting on a shirt and hat for something? Yes.