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New batch of songs from 2022

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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

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