It’s a long weekend so here’s a bonus throwback! This is the furthest back we’ve gone. As a kid I learned to write pop songs by setting classic poetry to music. I think I was barely fifteen when I put this one together. Plus, as followers of this blog already know, I have a thing... Continue Reading →
Wayback Weekend #5
My high school's production of Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" was a bittersweet allegory for all the folderol going on with me at the time (not to mention that our theater department opted for an interpretation that was a veritable pastiche of Bowie's Jareth, Peter Pan's Lost Boys, Robert Smith, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and the... Continue Reading →
Wayback Weekend #4
This week’s selection is also from high school times, and it’s just a good old song about le desir. By the way, I just decided tonight to call these things “Wayback Weekends,” so I had to go back to all the other ones and update them to look like they’d been called that all along.... Continue Reading →
Wayback Weekend #3
In 1999 I was 17 and a senior in high school, and I liked to write, uh, moralistic saloon music - ? https://youtu.be/tnIBQp7MHbQ GatesShe with the lipsAnd the prodigal flameWho curses the heavensFrom which she cameMixes her pain And her faith all togetherAnd grinds them to dustOr wraps them in leatherShe who draws heatLike a... Continue Reading →
Wayback Weekend #2
https://youtu.be/QlRoMf7ITKw Down for GoodYou call me from some transient addressTo sew some tears and patch some holes and maybe confessYou say you wanna see me, I comply Cos I’ve wrongs of my own that I’d like to redressWe ride with winter sunlight in our eyesYour anger still reminds me of a blood orange skyI push... Continue Reading →
Wayback Weekend #1
Everything old is...eh, you know. This past weekend was the start of a thing: I’m going to relearn some of my old songs (including some juvenilia) and present them in YouTube vids. The first was a song called “Cake” which I wrote when I was in grad school in 2005. You can check it out... Continue Reading →
“Wise Up” Demo
Consider this an epilogue to the last entry. Been listening to a lot of Aimee Mann this weekend; to me she's always been the sound of stiffly picking yourself up after a fall. (Photo: My new and improved jars - see yesterday's entry to get what I'm on about. Note: I usually have a distaste... Continue Reading →
We Need to Talk about Tori Amos.
Let’s face it: for better or worse, humans compare things to other things. And even though my music has changed a lot since my debut as Alexandra Rising, I still think it’s most likely to be compared (by those of a certain age, anyway) to the music of one Ellen "Tori" Amos. These days, I’m... Continue Reading →
And, Scene.
I moved to Charlottesville from my rural, south-central-VA county in December 2008, to take a job I'd just landed. In my head, I'd defied odds. I saw myself as a cripplingly cerebral but practically useless pseudo-adult. I felt my brain, in its small-town country stupor-cum-recluse's atrophy, couldn't process fast enough for my survival. I doubted... Continue Reading →
The Sold Kingdom 