I have been recently working on gathering and recording a collection of original old songs that I’m very proud of.
After I retired, I realized I had written BOOKS of original songs. Some of the best ones I shared with folks earlier in my life. But when I started going through the whole collection, I realized there were MANY that I just never got around to recording. Not because they were necessarily bad … but they just never “fit” my past projects (Messenger, etc).
Songwriting for me is kinda like journal keeping. I can read the words and remember exactly where I was … what I was going through at the time … who surrounded me, etc. And sometimes what I wrote had nothing to do with my life at all. I just heard a great phrase, or saw someone do something outstanding.
It’s also like cooking. You can create a hundred cakes before you end up with a true masterpiece. I laughed out loud at some of the stuff I had written. There were many wadded up pages in my trash can when I got finished. And I’m certain my face turned red with embarrassment as I read some of them. But it was enjoyable to see how many actually okay songs I wrote over the years. It’s been really fun for me to pick out some of the more stable ones to include in this project. I’ve never put another collection together that I like as much as this one!
Typically don’t like my own end-products, but this one is special to me somehow. Probably because it’s a country collection.
Look for “Calling all Crows” to be released on Spotify on February 12th. I hope folks enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed collecting and recording these!