New recordings in the works

On Wednesday February 12 we’ll begin work on 5 more songs to
add to our collection. Don’t want to talk titles yet as we really never know
what songs work best for us until we get into them, but this batch will include
a couple of original songs. People often ask why we don’t do our own music and
there are many answers.

I’ve been writing songs for at least 40 years. I’ve written in groups, I’ve written in publishers’ rooms (Nashville daily sessions-pick a catchy phrase and throw it against the wall- maybe it’ll stick), I’ve written for hire (any occasion-send me the lyrics you get a song-for a price) and even a few about things that moved me (the best kind).  Songwriters tend to write about their own experiences, usually about a hard life or heartbreak. Sometimes they’ll write about their observations. The best are able to witness everyday life and find meaningful metaphors that coupled with a great melody can touch millions. These
are the people a guy like me judges himself against. I don’t want to sully the
goodwill we’ve engendered with F and F by exposing our great fans to all my old
crummy songs. But I do have a couple I’d like to share. The first one I’ll release (hopefully in a couple of weeks) deals with an issue that has haunted me (and many others) for years:  homelessness. 

I’m a big Braves fan and had season tickets for years at Turner Field. I loved the games, but getting to the stadium meant walking under the I-75-85 bridge and past dozens of homeless people, many of them amputees. What do you do? Most people avoid eye contact and just keep walking. Then last year the wife and I took a trip on a train from Seattle to L.A. with a stop in Portland. The underpass in Atlanta was nothing compared to this. There were hundreds if not thousands of homeless people all over the downtown areas of those cities. It was nearly incomprehensible. As often happens (at least to me) a song started to play in
my head.  Last spring, Darwin came by the studio and we finished writing it together.

The next one will be on a much happier note. It is a tribute
to my late parents and their life-long love affair. More as it gets closer to
release.