Blinded By The Light

I have more "favorite" albums than I can count. Some are my favorite because of the lyrical content, some are my favorite because of the cohesive mood they create, some are my favorite because they represent a certain time in my life of which I'm fond. There are two albums that I can remember as being my first "favorites" at the young age of 7: Beach Boys Greatest Hits (Vol. 1) and The Beatles 1962-1966 (red album). I loved listening to these albums in the backseat of my Dad's truck as we drove to visit my grandparents. What I love about these albums is the vocal harmonies that the groups created. To this day, my favorite bands are ones that incorporate the voice as an instrument and create layers of harmonies. I try to use 3 and 4 part harmony whenever I can in my own songs, almost to a fault.

This is a song I recorded in late 2006 using a Tascam DP01 digital 8 track and an Audix i5 instrument microphone. I did one take on everything and it's a little extremely embarrassing to hear my voice searching for the notes in the harmony. I was fascinated by dreams at the time and wrote a collection of 10 or 12 songs, called Waking Life Is, related to dreams I'd experienced.




"Suppose They Close The Door" by Sloan inspired me to use different tempos for the verse and the chorus. Of course, they composed a much better song, as is their habit.

In a Happy Home

I've heard it said that if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life. What this expression tells me is I don't love what I do.

There are things that I love to do. There are things I spend hours doing in my free time. In the past couple of years I've begun learning how to record music. I've spent money to get professional equipment, learned techniques from people who do it, and devoted time to practice and execute the trade. I love talking to friends about music and discovering new bands. I love writing the entries to this blog about bad music I've made so that 4 people can have something to read for a few minutes. These are things I would gladly spend my days doing. However, monetizing this passion is something I think will never happen, partly because of my current geographical location, but mostly because of my current inexperience.

I've made a lot of mistakes in my life that I've been pondering recently. Bad decisions, mainly. Things that I decided years and years ago that I can look to as a contributing cause to my current economic state. Things that a 2010 Randall would punch a 2005 Randall in the face for doing, if given the opportunity to time travel. But that, I suppose, is the nature of growing older: learning from your mistakes.

As I beat myself up over the mistakes I've made in my life, I thought this would be a good song to think about. I bought a mandolin from Casey P. with the change in my pocket and wrote this song that very night. My son, Jonah, was about 3 months old at the time and he was certainly on my mind. I tend to avoid writing love songs or happy songs, simply because every time I try to they turn out incredibly cheesy. This one, somehow, made it through my embarrassment filter intact.



This was on the first Ghostbeard EP, Heard It on the Mountain. I double-tracked the vocals I did on it simply because I needed the vocals to be louder but was too inept to manipulate the single track without distorting it. Also, Lindsey sang on almost all the songs on this EP. It marks the first and last time she let me record her voice.