Once I made a lemonade stand. I painted the signs and my mom helped me make the lemonade. As will happen, I pretty much drank it all myself. When I set up shop out at the curb it was dead as a door nail; no foot traffic, no cars coming to a screeching halt. My mom came out and bought a glass. That was my only sale. This prepared me for the folk business.
It was fun anyway. Painting the signs. Making the product with Mom. Doing commerce with my one loyal customer. Watching the cars go by... drinkin’... and that was enough. So I’ll never be Minutemaid.
Today I’m opening a new lemonade stand. It’s called setting free the songs dot com. The only difference is this time I’m not trying to sell anything. It’s more like a lemonade soup kitchen for parched ears.
These days I’m writing my little tunes while living in Singapore. My wife Sabrina took a job here and I tagged along as full time Cabana Boy. There’s no question of doing any music business here. It’s pretty much pop only. There are no venues for the kind of folksy, lyric-heavy, story-driven stuff I do. They'd look at me like Farmer John just stepped out of his time machine.
But oddly enough, that’s been very freeing. I get to woodshed and work on craft. My Cabana Boy workload is a actually quite light. So my mind is off-leash, taking the long walk in the tropical heat. I'm thinking of new stuff to say, so I'm building a place to say it.
Consequently I’ve had sort of a Jedi mind shift regarding this website stuff. My old website was a dead letter office. I avoided it like the plague, because the pretense of doing business and the charade of sounding professional didn't resonate with me. It felt inauthentic. . Now that I'm in a situation where business isn't an option, a website becomes something I wanna make. Like painting the signs and squeezing the lemons, just building it has been fun. And I'm exited about building a home to put my stuff in, instead of just pouring it down the Facebook hole.
So here's what I plan to do here. First, I'm giving away the tunes from my first two records. You can freely download them from these links (Sweet River Grace, Gravedigger's Boy). Having lived with these songs for a while, I used them as jumping off points for blogging, so there is a short blog attached to each of the songs (if you're into this reading thing.) From here I plan to post once or twice a week with quick sketches of new tunes and lots of older unreleased stuff as well. Any music will be available for download, no strings attached. I am removing my major stumbling block -- the burden of perfection. I just wanna share this stuff warts-and-all, with the understanding that I may record a better "definitive version" down the road. If you want to know when I post stuff, sign up here. If you hear anything you like, help yourself. If it's not your cup 'o tea, no problem. There's a 24 hour Jiffy Mart right up the street. Go buy yourself some Minutemaid.
