Written by Tim & KB Marie

Jerry called Julie
From a San Fran Hotel
After the deal fell through
Her report card read B minus
He said I expected better from you

One step backward
Once again
She said you don’t see the good I do

Don’t you know you teach people
How to treat you.

Hotel bar, he wants a drink
Dial tone ringing in his ear
He sees a waitress smiling at her tables
He says what’s it take to get a bud round here?

One step backward
Once again
She says You don’t have to be rude

Don’t you know you teach people
How to teach you

It’s nothing new
It’s a simple thing
Like going home
It’s comforting

Jerry found a pay phone
Dropped a quarter in
Woke Julie up to say I love you.

Don’t know you teach people
How to treat you.

New York’s ignoring me
With her bright lights shining I’m in shadows
That don’t even turn to see
New New York’s Ignoring me

New York’s Ignoring me
When she smiles you know she’s not faking
Except when she’s paid to get taken
But New York’s ignoring me

She’s in love with these men who’ve never got time
Never got time
They scream and they yell
And they curse her to hell
But she loves them
Like she loves a good time

And New York’s ignoring me
The cabbies drive by with their fares full
And the beggars go mute if they see me
Yes New York’s ignoring me.

May 10th and I’m officially four songs in. 27 songs to go in… 21 days. Here’s what strikes me about this go ‘round so far. Sometimes its easy to let my censor have the last word or to just not ‘feel like’ it. I still fully expect to have 31 songs written by the end of May 31st, and this time I find there’s a lot more fear that’s going along with the whole experience. All told I feel like I had a really productive February. I’ve been playing some of the songs out and getting good feedback on some of them too. What if I’m out of ideas? What if I don’t have any more good songs left in me? Why am I even worried about this when so much of my experience says commit to the writing and the songs will follow. And all the same, I do worry about it. I worry about what people will think of my songs. I worry about what people will thing of my demos that aren’t all pretty and polished. And in the end, I’m dedicated to working through all that as well. The general guidelines still apply. Forget what I think I know, lighten up, have fun. Here’s to having fun!

Sharp as the point of a Derby
Light like the weight of a Dead man

I don’t like to talk about these things
I don’t like to talk about these things

Honest like the hair of a shaggy dog
Brave like the bark on a fallen log

I don’t like to talk about these things
I don’t like to talk about these things

Proud as a secret in your bedroom
Humble as a salesman at a show
Reliable like venom in a bee sting
Gracious like… I don’t know

Subtle like popcorn at a movie
Spry like grandma in a fog
Permanent like soda advertisements
The government of the land I love

I don’t like to talk about these things
I don’t like to talk about these things

Stick to me
-Like two oppositely charged Ions
-Like 2 fingers and easy glue
-like co-joined twins who really like each other

And I will stick to you

Stick to me
-Like the smell of BBQ smoke in your clothes
-like the way things that go up always come back down
-like the gum you accidentally got stuck in your hair in first grade

And I will stick to you

But you want to keep your distance
-like maybe with a ten foot pole
or a lion trainer with a chair
And you’ve said I don’t have a fools chance
But frankly, I don’t care.

Stick to me
-like your supposed to do in Kindergarten in lines but never really do
-like something really really sticky does
-like darkness does in Alaska in the middle of the winter and nights are really really long (and maybe we should go there, what do you think?)

And I will stick to you.

There’s a clear view
There’s a clear view
There’s a clear view of the fog out the window
It’s a grey stew
A grew Stew
A grey stew that fog out the window

The Houses hide like trinkets of the past
And I wonder how long this fog will last
Will it last?

And I rush through
I rush through
I rush through this cloud of the morning

Cause I miss you
I miss you
I miss you ‘cause you left with the morning

Through the fog without a shadow to be cast
And I wonder how long this fog will last
Will it last?

Mysteries and Ghosts live in harbours by the coast
That wash both the sailors and the ships at break of day

Could it be true
Could it be true?
Could it be true
This vision that I see through the window
When I come to
When I come to
When I come to
In the morning to the fog out the window

And she’s standing there with blues eyes as clear as glass
And I wonder how long this fog with last.
Will it last?

Here's my song 1 of 31 to be written in May.  

She’s pretty but she’s way too hot for you
And you like but you’re not sure you like her shoes
And you think maybe you’ll ask her out

It’s the same thing over again
Over the same thing
Again, Again, Again…

And the phone rings and Oh God, it’s your mom
And you’ve Dad’s ok but you’re sister really gone (over compensating?)
And Aunt Marie never shuts up

And three years ago you were done wit this job
That you’re so done with now that you might just walk out
And you don’t deserve to be treated this way

And you want to move away
But there’s so much to think about
There’s So much to think about
‘cause all your friends are here
but then you have some good friend in Portland too
and your thinking of going back to college
but you don’t know if you can quit your job
and what are you going to have for lunch
not Chinese, You ate Chinese yesterday

It's a little past noon on Apr 30th. 

Tomorrow I'm starting Song a Day in May Journey.   I'm a bit nervous at this point.   You could catch me in a cavelier moment where I know I can write the songs but there's a lot of worry there too.  What if none of the songs are good?   What if I used up all my ideas in February?   Hell, what if I used up all my ideas sometime last fall?   Then again, that's why I do this thing in the first place, to see what happens.   So to borrow a cliche, it's time to dive in.  

For me diving in is about commitment.  In this case I'm committing to writing 31 songs over the course of the next 31 days.   I'm also commiting to letting go of the outcome aside from writing those 31 songs.  Will they be good?  Doesn't matter.  Will they be bad?  Doesn't matter.   I'm writing 31 songs and that's that. 

There's a lot I can talk about in the creative process but these are the most important tools I have in the end.   Committing to doing it, and letting go of the outcome.  This doesn't mean that I don't judge the result at some point.   It just means I create a safe place for the music to come into the world in the first place, the same way a mother bird creates a nest for her eggs to hatch in. 

Well, I've made another decision. Impulsive person that I am. I'm posting the last three songs from February all at once. I'd like to move into the next month with a clean slate so to speak. So here they are...

The Bells

Time is almost up
I’m shaking at my desk
The clock is moving backwards I swear
It’s almost there

To the Bells
To the bells
To the bells
Time to go home
Time to go home

Afternoons I used to go out and play
My best friend and I made up games
We lost track of time until …

I imagine
Some day I’ll lay
Waiting to know
My times coming soon
I think it will be a little like waiting for the end class
A little like playtime gone to soon

And then the bells
The bells
The bells
Time to go home.

Find Love

Love is a small child
Love is a small thought
Love is a tempest
Love is a cot
A place to lie down
While trying to our way home

Love is an embrace
Love is a kiss
Love is music
Love never misses
It’s mark
Though sometimes that’s when it hits

Could I find love
Could you find love
Can anyone find love

Love is a power
Love is a bitch
Love is a slipper
Love is a twitch
That we feel
The stronger it is the more it is real

Love is a sofa
Love is a squeeze
Love is a candle
Love is an easy
Way thing to say
But hard to practice every day

Could I find love
Could you find love
Can anyone here find love?

Orion's Belt

It seems
We’re blinded by ourselves
In our cities on our hills
The lights that keep us safe
Keep us blind

So we can’t see our way?
Could we guide ourselves home?
If they weren’t that bright.

I want to go out where I can see the stars
Where I can see the stars

There’s so many of them
When you get out alone
You don’t feel so alone anymore

The stars in the night
Make orion’s belt
Breathing steam in the air

The city night sky
So black like a chalk board
Waiting for somebodies thoughts

But there’s nothing to say
‘cept I want to get away
Where I can see the stars

       A quick note, I'll be taking the weekend off from blogging.  I'll be back on Tuesday through Thrusday with the last three songs from February!  Now, onward.

       To be a real folk singer there are a couple of songs you have to write.  
       One of them is the drinking song or a song about alcohol in general.  It's best if in this song the drinking has left the protagonist of the song in utter ruin.  The person's drinking should be like a crack that runs across a person's soul.  However if you want to just write about a good night out that's, well, ok.   But your not a folk singer if you don't sing about drinking at some point.  Preferrably whiskey.   Rum drinks don't count, unless you're singing about pirates, and then you're likely singing a sea shanty which is a different kind of thing.  
       Another song you have to write is the murder ballad.  People have to die in your songs occasionally if your a folk singer.   If you can kill more than one person in a song even better.   Is the murder based on historical fact?   Great!  The unintentional death of a friend by an ironic misfortune is a fine substitute for murder as well.  But murder is really the way to go.
      Finally, you have to sing about trains at some point which I'm not sure I'd ever done in a song of mine.  However I've covered both drinking and murder and two out of three ain't bad**.  So here's the train song I wrote last month.   I'm not sure it's folk.   I'll let y'all decide.  It occurrs to me though, I should really try to write a song with all three in there.  It would the folk trifecta.

**Meat Loaf will never be a folk singer.   It doesn't matter how much drinking and killing and riding on trains he does. 

Anyway, here's the notebook page I started with for this one.



And here's what i finished with:

Maybe we’re all hobos
Looking for our way
Running down that track
Trying to jump the freight

And maybe we’re all conductors
Calling out the names
Of the towns at the depot
That We’ll never see again

Sometimes I think things are connected
Like a train
Like a train
Sometimes I think my days are connected
Like a train
Like a train
Rolling down the track

Maybe we’re all riders
With our tickets in our hands
Looking out the windows
Wondering at what station we’ll land

And maybe we’re all steam men
shoveling in more coal
working hard to stoke the fire
And make the damn thing go

I think writing a song about drinking was our assingment for the song writing group I go to about once a month.   I've written drinking songs before.   Named my first EP 'Pick ME UP' after one even.  In way this song is an update on that song.
'Pick Me up' was a story song that I wrote because I wanted to write a song about drinking.   This songs reflects a lot more of my ambivalence towards booze these days.   These days booze mostly seems to make me headachy and sleepy.  In it's defense, it still tastes good and can be fun but mostly it makes me feel kind of stupid.   
So I stole the personification from the original song I wrote about drinking and made the person talking in the song me, or mostly me at least.  

Here's the first page I scrawled out on drinking from my notebook.



And here are the lyrics I had in front of my when I sat down, pressed record and started inventing a melody. 

I met out last night with my friends
I met out last night
We seemed to keep It on the mend

And I don’t know if I like how you talk to me
And I don’t know if I like how you make me feel
Yet here I am again with you

I never had a problem that’s I’d admit
I never had to give you up
No not for a bit

And I don’t know if I like how you talk to me
And I don’t know if I like how you make me feel
Yet here I am again with you

But when it’s bad it’s really bad
And when It hurts it really hurts
And when the mornings they sneak up on me
That’s the worst.

I’ve seen you leave people looking dog faced and old
And I’ve seen you leaving people
Face down in the cold

And I don’t know if I like how you talk through me
And I don’t know if I like the ways you make me feel
Yet here I am again with you

      It's 1:21 AM on March 25th right now.  Four weeks and a few hours ago I was just finishing up my song a day experiment for the month of February.  As those of you who were following along closely will recall.  I'd written the first 22 songs or so without missing a beat.  And then, I slipped... faultered, and missed a day.  I was tired.  The next day I went to a beer tasting and then followed that up by a viewing of "Milk."   Walking home I was filled with that sense of transport that I feel so often after a good movie.   The sense that the world is different somehow.  I was also filled with the sense that right then I had to finish writing all my songs for the month.   Grabbing onto the first things I saw and thought of I started to make a list of song subjects.   Train, Bell, Orion's Belt.  'Love' is something I never write about I thought.  Swimming Away, Drinking.   I sat down and sketch out my song ideas in my notebook, then wrote the songs over the course of the next twenty-four hours.  And then when I woke the morning after, my internet connection was gone.  In the words of a wise, wise man; D'oh!
     Now, four weeks latter the internet is finally back.  ('America's most reliable network' indeed).
     The last six songs give a more honest look into my usual song a day process than the songs I'd been posting the rest of the month.   I'd gotten frustrated through the latter half of the month with the way I started to censor my thoughts and the way I got tangled up with writing 'good' songs.  Scrawling out six songs in the course of two writing and recording sessions didn't allow for any of that.  And neither did my wanting to just be done.   Originally, I planned on rerecording all these songs... maybe polishing them up a bit for show.   But I think it serves the idea of this blog more to post them 'as is,' at least for now.  Warts and blemishes, awkward pauses and mumbled words.  Everything.   Because the process isn't so much about creating something beautiful, although it's nice if you can manage to.  It's about creating something.  Period.   
 
Here's the notebook page from my first writing on the idea "Swimming Away"



Swimming Away.  Stroke for Stroke/ splash for splash/ I learned before I knew/ how to ask.  Swimming pools/ fresh water ponds/  Ocean's edge &/ Devil's nods.  Nightswimming/ We never even kissed/ just friends/ just good times.  There's a swell of/ life in me when/ I remember/  The night air, the/ cool moon/ clouds moving.  We moved through the woods w/o a light.  Took our clothes off by a/ tree close the Thoureau's house.  We never even kiss.  Just did things like this.   The road was its/ own pool when I/ left.  A dark and moving/ slide of quiet/ & depth.  The summer's ends/ & we'd go back/ to school.  We never even kissed.  I brought another/ girl w/ me/ who I'd shown the/ road & and I wanted/ to see me/ An awkward kind/ of silence w/o/ you.  That night I kissed/ her & I/ never did kiss you.

Here's what it became when I came back to it the next day:

We walk through the woods
Took our clothes off by the shore
Swam by the moonlight
But but we never did kiss

Those nights I’d drive home alone
The summer came to an end
We went back to school
But we never did kiss

One time I brought another girl
It was silent without you
That night I kissed her
But I never did kiss you

So interesting things happen when I have no internet.  You go for walks.  Discover libraries near your house.  You get interviewed for an internet radio show.  Fellow FAWMer Charlie Cheney found my music and my blog and liked it enough to have me on his show for an entire half hour.  It was a blast.  Here's the link!

www.blogtalkradio.com/charliecheney/2009/03/11/Charlie-Cheneys-Music-Exam-wTim-Riordan

So here I am at the library because my home internet seems to have disappeared.  Having roommates sometimes means having no idea why things have gone awry.  I'm hoping the internet thing will be sorted out in a day or two... Less would be nice.
So it's Thursday now, the last time I posted was late Sunday evening perhaps?  Maybe Monday morning?   What has happened in the interum?   Well, Monday I let slip by.  My triplet neice and nephews turned ten on Monday.   I drove down to celebrate with them on Monday, came back to Cambridge to do an Open Mike, and then... it was Tuesday.
I had grand plans for two songs on Tuesday, but by then end of the day I had revised that, I was going to finish the whole thing.  Six songs.  
Something I had not really counted on why doing the month of writing songs everyday was the way that it would take over my life.   I've been thinking about songs or songwriting almost 24/7 for the past three and a half weeks.  By Tuesday evening I was done.  But I still had six songs to finish.
On the way home from "Milk" I started developing my plan.  I would write the last six songs as quickly as possible.  I would pick my subject and just go.  I passed some train tracks, so train was one subject.  The bells by the railroad crossing gave me a second subject.  I never really write about love... everyone else seems to.  Subject no. three.  "Swimming Away" was already jotted down in my notebook I found at the subway station.  Subject no four.   I looked up into the sky at and saw the constellation Orion.  "Orion's Belt" became no. five.  Drinking, tried and true as a song subject and our assignment for next months songwriting group was no. six. 
I sat down in the Diesel Cafe when I got back to Davis Sq. to sketch my ideas out a bit.  Then went home and slept.  Eight hours of sleep is a nice thing.   Yesterday afternoon I sat down and put the songs together.   Lyrics, melody, recorded.  Truth be told.  They aren't quite in a place recording-wise where I would post them just yet.  Assuming I get my internet back at home in the next day or two though, they will all be up and posted on Saturday.   I may put up a couple of the intitial recordings too so you can get a sense of what that process looks like.  

There's a definite feeling of relief getting into the last week of this.  It feels familiar.   I've written seven songs in seven days before.   No problem.   The lyrics for this song were actually generated about halfway through last week but I wasn't quite sure how to put them all together.  Necessity being the mother of invention, when I was feeling completely dry last night and tired of writing meta songs about the process of writing 28 songs in 28 days, I dug this out. 
Remembering Elizabeth Gilbert's talk on inspiration last night--I posted it here Saturday evening on--had me smiling last night as I worked through the process.  Maybe my genius is just kind of lame today.  I even ventured to mention to my muse that I was doing my best to show up so if she didn't feel like it I wasn't taking full responsibility for whatever came out.   

Vagabonds and troubadors
Nerds and geeks and worlds or war
Crossword puzzlers and scrabble Scores
We are the Ghosts in the Cafes

Sunday papers magazines
Savage loves and train-scenes
Outcasts as well as beauty queens
We are the Ghosts in the Cafes

A moan of lonlieness
or sketch of love
We write our words in notebooks
Look for thoughts up above

Nannies, moms and scarey men
Critics with their poison pens
Folks like us and lots of them
We are the Ghosts in the Cafes

A moan of lonlieness
or sketch of love
We write our words in notebooks
Look for thoughts up above

Quiet men and bashful girls
Pastries filled with cream chese swirls
Every table it’s own world
We are the Ghosts in the Cafes

Rather than wax profound at 3:30 in the morning I think I'll let this song do it's own talking mostly.   This one was definitely a bit of a game in places.   How many times can I get away with using the words old and new?  How about Black and Blue?  I guess we sort of found out.

He wrote in black ink
About his old loves
And blue about the ones
That weren’t old yet
It was old joke
That made him chuckle a bit
Every Time love left him a wreck

Black and blue, Blue and blue
Loves aim is always true
And love always leaves him
Black and blue

He met a new girl
At a new bar
In a part of town that
He’d never been
But when her friend
Told her husband
He found himself
In that old shape once again

But there a smile looking down when he came too
And the waitress with the ice blacked out all his blues

He wrote in blue ink
About his new girl
But she never left him
Bruised or in pain
So he bought a black suit
And some blue shoes
And put ‘em on to ask
If she’d take his name

I found this on Christine Kane's Blog after finishing "Mix Tape."
Enjoy.

A general rule of thumb in my songwriting is that if it's written in the first person, it's not about me.  However, if it's written about someone else there's a good chance it is about me.  But like most rules in the English language, this isn't always true. 
The next song is both in 1st person and actually about me.   Somehow or another the word tape kept coming up as I was trying to generate ideas to write about.  I finally just followed it and found myself in the summers of say '96 - '98, though I think the stuff from this song was pretty much all '98.   It was just one of those summers that you get to have when you're younger when everything happens.  And I got all nostalgic so I tried to find something that kind of encapsulated the whole thing.   Nothing could of course but the mix tape comes pretty close.   

I was home from college
When I got it in the mail
We’d been talking music over AIM
Cat Stevens, Joni Mitchell

And you made me a mix tape
You made me a mix tape

I went hiking with a friend
That morning we won tickets to the show
We camped up in the state Park
Got our sleeping bags stole

And we listened to that mix tape.
We listened to your mix tape.

You came out from Lake Erie
To visit Boston, Ma
I bought you flowers and met you at the gate
Next night you were my first kiss, in the dark and on the grass

And we listened to that mix tape.
We listened to your mix tape.