Sunday, January 3, 2010

Everett, WA: House Concert

2009 was an awfully transitional year for this songwriter, and at some point in the spring I realized that I'd likely need a project into which to pour myself during choice stretches. Said project became By the Side of the Lake, a new album whose audio lies finished and perches just a couple of design/administrative steps from release. Indeed, I am thrilled to welcome 2010 with a house concert performance full of new tunes and old friends--a double-bill with Joe Jencks.

The cuts from Songs to Get You From Here to There were all tunes that I'd been playing quite a bit before hitting the studio (a process that limped mightily along itself), and thus even though I'd applied full-band treatment to several songs, I had solo arrangements secured prior to release. Kinda fun to work backward with this one: many of these tunes came together with the band, and I find as I toss them out there just-me that I'm still learning where some of the holes are and how they move. Plus, always interesting to see how (and to what specifically) people respond, and how it's never quite what I anticipate.

Joe was riffing between songs at one point about Woody Guthrie and "This Land is Your Land" contrasted with Irving Berlin's "God Bless America," which--as can happen 'in-the-round'--led me to introduce and play "Got Out Some," one of the new tunes (in which the bridge borrows from both aforementioned pieces). I know what I meant to say, and I don't know if I somehow swallowed a word or what, but what people heard was something regarding Irving Berlin's Woody. And a new bit is born...

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