White Collar Blues

Plainfield Fest rages down the street.  Used to be such an anticipated weekend.  Now, it's as they say, meh.  I'm more interested in talking to the Carnies and learning who they are and where they came from, where they are going.  I'd like to buy you a drink sir/madam.

I have a great job, I do, but ideally I would be a full-time musician/songwriter, that's the most I have to offer to the world. So sometimes ya get to feeling bummed out at and/or about work, that's the way these things go. The other day I got to feeling thata way (my eyes were on fire!) and happened to be listening to Chicago Farmer's "Assembly Line Blues." If you've never listened to Chicago Farmer, please do. As Clifton Roy says, he's the "Woody Guthrie of Illinois." Needless to say, I wrote "White Collar Blues," my version of Chicago Farmer's song.

*Chicago Farmer is playing with me at Finnegan's in Plainfield on Friday, July 31st. Both "Assembly Line" and "White Collar" will be played that night!*

www.chicagofarmer.com


White Collar Blues

Staring at a spreadsheet
Need a band-aide for my eyes
The walls the saddest shade of grey
I've seen in some time
No widows and my cube
Feels like a padded room
Lose another day
To white collar blues

Scrounging for some change
For to get my morning fix
Meet me in the break room
Don't invite no management
I should be at home
Writing something brand new
Not staring at the clock
With white collar blues

Meetings in the morning
Meetings in the afternoon
Meetings to discuss
What the hell we gonna do
Sales are down all over town
Morale is too
I'm doing all I can
But white collar blues

Now I'm dreaming of being
A country music star
When the boss man calls
And asks me for some kind of chart 
Downsize my mind
At least the parts that I don't use
Sure don't need the right side
With white collar blues

The clock is crawling slowly
Towards five o'clock p.m.
A collared shirt and pants
Surely isn't who I am
I'll go home and sing tonight
At the local saloon
Wake up in the morning
With white collar blues

A Ballad For

New song. What I call a "conduit" song, where the Universe uses me to channel something, in this case a scenario where lovers don't want to part, but know they have to. Taken from recent experience. Hung up the phone and felt like I had been told to get on my horse and go home; at least that's the line I started singing. Conduit songs are typically written, in their entirety, in one sitting. The music for this is soft and kinda minor, sung with a rasp in the voice.

Eros is the primordial Greek God of lust, beauty, love, and intercourse. Cupid is his Roman equivalent.

A Ballad For

Get on your horse and go home
You're not wanted here no more
Maybe we'll crash and burn down the road

Lay me down in the hole
Where the wasted water goes
It's your world and I can't have it

Why can't we just say no
It always ends up like this, though
One man crying, one man begging please

Just one more time, who will know
The ways that we lose control
It's happy, happy, happy all the time

Oh my God
Am I here all alone
Please don't let anybody know

Get on your horse and come back
At least tell me where you're at
Lord knows its far away from me

How does it mean more than words
And please tell me what you've heard
Hungry eyes are fixed on you and me

That's not where it's at, or you say
All this pressure to be great
Let's move to Colorado, disappear

And all these words just mean goodbye
I've been conditioned not to cry
Tell Eros he can take his arrows back

Oh my God
I am here all alone
How could you stand to let me go

The Best That I Can Do

No picture here besides the one painted in the lyrics.  This is a recently completed song about being far away from home, from where your heart is.  Though "The Best That I Can Do" involves a relationship, the idea reminds me a bit of Jason's situation.  I got to thinking how hard it would be to pick up and leave everything, the only things, you've ever known.  That's not to say I don't see the glorious upside, I am after all, very nomadic by nature, but no one ever said change was easy.  Part of what drives me now is wanting to make it so as to validate Jason's risk.  He is passionate (sometimes defensive!) about music and I deeply respect and appreciate that.  This is how I might feel if I picked up moved far away, leaving someone I care about far behind.

The Best That I Can Do

Susanna I woke up late again today

There just ain't nothing getting me out of bed

It hurts sometimes to open my eyes

As wide and bright as yours

The things I cannot face head on

I prefer through this blur

And thats the truth, Ma

Thats the best that I can do

Maybe you'll be there if I do come back

Maybe you won't though, I'll just count on that

I know it gets real hard

I know that weight ain't light

Believe me if I could I would

Be with you every night

And you've not been true

But thats the best that you can do

Lady her hair hangs down, her lips I long to touch

As lonesome as I have been, I need it just as much

In my heart our love is strong

In my mind it fades

Lady says that you're the one

Who brings to me this pain

And yes that sounds true

Or I'm the best that she can do

Farewell I wish you love, if you should care to find

Your face is but a picture babe, a memory fair and fine

I won't be coming home

You won't be losing sleep

There is no use to try no more

No secrets for to keep

And all thats good, Ma

That's the best that we can do

If a Blog Falls in the Woods...

For the past 7 years or so, I have longed for reason to think optimistically about the future of our country. What with losing the support of the entire world following 9/11, declaring "mission accomplished" as troops continued to fight and die, oil prices, Freedom Fries, Enron's, Katrina's, Halliburton's, NASA cutbacks and in the process of not leaving any child behind, I became slightly disheartened. "Power to the People" had become oxymoronic. America needed a shot in the arm.

Enter a Junior Senator from the Land of Lincoln, a man with a plan in his hand and a band, Overman. My uninterest has turned magically into hope and excitement. As George Michael says to his father, Michael, on Arrested Development, "it's happening, it's really happening..." Janruary 20th, 2009 will be a Norgian day in the history of the universe. I expect that sometime around that day, hopefully sooner, Evolution Rocks will be nearing ten thousand downloads and Overman will celebrate in grand fashion, ascertaining additional and comparable Norgian proportions.

Change is a-comin' and I can't wait
The future is gonna be great

Overman and Obama in '09!