New batch of songs from 2022
In January of 2022 I started a songwriters group with 4 or 5 members and I ended up writing a handful of songs that I'm still playing. As the pandemic waned and and I noticed shows happening at the local venue, I booked my first gig in 20 moons, rewired and repurposed my pedal board and got on stage to showcase these new songs. I'd written this one about the discoveries of electricity through the lens of a lonely, unnamed inventor. Though it may sound like a self absorbed journal entry, it isn't. Halfway into it, an equalizer pedal I had borrowed failed and my guitar volume went up to 11. The crowd groaned, I made a self deprecating joke, a failed attempt at explaining the song and promptly deleted it when I got home. Thankfully, it was sitting on the studio hard drive all summer because I like it. Hope you do too. I purchased my upright bass this year and really like the combo of it, the simple snare and kick, piano lines and whatever else I can tool around with at the studio. The synth is so much fun, hope I’m not overdoing that. There are 7 or 8 songs in this batch, some from the writers group, some from life, love, summer. I'll mix them and get them up on bandcamp soon. A few more recording sessions to go too! Find my previously released material at bandcamp. JL
Down my four flights of stairs
It’s only where I sleep
The world grinds forward, no-one cares
I’m only make believe
The daily crier calls out “liar, it’s all a slight of hand”
And through the market, a disheveled man no-one understands
The impossible is not so far from here
It’s not a trick, I sear it
If there were a way to bring what’s dead to life again
I’d go there and back
The simple minds I leave behind
It’s how each day begins
Ideas and inspired thought flood me as I walk in
My escape, my sanctuary
Electrified and alive
A laboratory filled with men like me discovering the divine
My focus only, heart and mind, trial and observation
Colleagues fall and steer their fate to spectacle and fame
From the spinning glass I watch the static pass
From your hand to mine
In the etherial light they see immortal might
The fading gleam of faces
Back up my four flights of stairs all by candle light
The doubtful mass my shadow casts was never meant to last
If when I leave my name may find some passing mention
Oh, let it be known, my true love, the beauty of invention
I lie awake dreaming of what’s still to come
Events I’ll never live to see
Lightning strikes the hearts of men and it changes them
Phenomena forgotten in the race to get the patents
The debtors to the bankers
It arcs out into rhetoric
The wide eyed crowds agape
As the neighborhoods light up one by one
The cities shine like the sun