Sometimes, you just have a good night regardless. This is the raw file of that night. The songs below are excerpts from the same recording. I am raw in my expressions and sometimes talk into the mic as a form of therapy; so, if it makes you uncomfortable, the is not my intent…this is how “a” musician rotates through the life cycle, warts and all.
The first song (actually just riffing) was/is a Cassidy tease, the Bob Weir song…I need to learn this, especially sine it is about Neal Cassidy, Jack Kerouac’s buddy/mentor who also hooked up with the Pranksters and drove the bus for Ken Kesey. I don’t include it because it was just a few notes that did not go anywhere.
The second song is one of the first recordings of my own “I Am an Immigrant” complete with early (and easily discarded) lyrics…but the melody has been nailed down. This song is my newest for 2026 and the final or close to final version will show up in later pages.
“Sweet & Sour Blues”. My signature early piece on how to write-structure lyrics around a melody, or to be exact, a sequence of chords that would become a melody. In my style of play, there is no ‘melody line.’ I’m not a good voice for singing the notes that carry, I ‘sing’ as if I need to ‘talk the message out.’ Anyway, not is what it is. I have many versions of this song but this one on this night seemed to bust a bubble, for some unknown reason. [Lyrics for Sweet & Sour Blues].
Crafted….(is that a word that can be a verb…I craft, you craft, they craft…the beauty/horror of the English language)…I crafted this. little tune in the summer of 2025…busted out of the black and white as one of my “Inventions”…spontaneous and devoid of parameters except for the comfort I have in the F scale where I can slide down from a minor to a diminished and then have it all reconcile. June Bug Blues. [ Chords in a PDF].
Rounding out the evening with my standard go-to, the one traditional blues tune that is both a mystery and a religious sequence of chords. To me, the order of these three chords is elegant, exquisite and profound. It also has the honor of being recognized by Bob Dylan as tune worth ‘borrowing from.’ St. James Infirmary.