recorded May 1973.  
The recording quality is poor.  I had previously only done some recording on a friends machine in late '60s which are all lost. 
Tend to think my best music sharings and harp playing was in the years 1970-71, when music often saved me, and I felt uninhibited, and one with it. 
That's My Baby, happened again after work, when I looked up a saw a picture of someone I loved above my bed.  Some tall grass was placed under the frame,  hence "on the grass".   She was not a baby, nor "mine", nor would I ever see her again.   She was far away in Paris, but you know, it was the joy of sensing one's connectedness.  

This is my oldest recorded tune still in possession.   
This new recording device at that time allowed me to play over myself once .... hence the harmonica, and a few guitar notes come in over the song.     You can hear the audio clicks, as I punch in and out... not yet knowing how it all worked.   

I was living, working hard in a shipping company in the U.S. Virgin Islands , Caribbean Sea Roads, sometimes 7 days a week, sometimes through the night, for $ 98 salary a week, no overtime.    But, I loved the work, the responsibility,  and the crews I worked with at the time.  I left college to work.   

One day a soul brother who worked in the only music store there said, "You look like a musician, would you want this reel to reel tape recorder?" I told him that music was a past life, but I thanked him and took it. 
I had nothing planned to record. I didn't really know songs.  I used instruments to meditate, to express feelings, to soothe or get out the emotion, never wrote things down nor thought of structure, nor words.   Before this, and since, very rarely recorded.   

I came home after work,  picked up the one and only guitar i've ever owned, given to me by Mrs. Vegas, bless her, and hit a button that said "play."   So, I did.  

That's My Baby was not "written".  It was just what came out,    I love playing harp to a guitar.   Wonderful at that moment to be able to play with someone.... myself!   

The day after, I recorded "Back in My Arms Again".  Yes, safe to say they are both "originals".

The recording device had a delay on it, so it gives a bit of an echo.... I did nothing to add reverb, did nothing at all to it.

 Both these songs I would not discover or listen to till long after. I didn't know how to on this machine. 
Did not record much else.   But I hope they relay a helpful human emotion you recognize.   This one of joy. 

Being often alone, traveling, working, living for these years, I would, from 1970,  make sounds with my voice for accompaniment, imagining different voices or instruments.     I've very little ever recorded of this type of sound making, But in this tune, you get a taste.   

I'm very blessed to have lived long enough to get through, to have had love to be joyous about, even if unrequited much of the time.
 And in my heart, to know the love that is forever.  I wish that for you.

(the photo is of my gift of a dog, Cosmic, living with me at this time. He will forever remain in my heart.)

Anthony Donovan, nyc
www.anthonydonovan.com

anthony , AAC

That's My Baby

Written, Recorded in 1986, sang with 5 dear friends.   Three of which are no longer on the earth.   Pastor Eddie Moore, Pastor James Moore, and Music Director Junior Drakeford.   

This is the first rehearsal of a song I wrote for a benefit for the Rock of Ages Church in Englewood, NJ, which was burnt down in the middle of the night that year.  
It was arson, and it seemed the city orchestrated it.  It was well known they needed parking space in the center of town where this sacred space lived and prayed.    Their fight was long and hard and impossible, for this very modest congregation didn't stand a chance for justice, nor any semblance of an investigation.  
Yes this is no song, rather an initial rehearsal only.   I never recorded a finished version, nor the benefit concert.    but I hear my three friends voices, and I hear a call that rings true.    

It was a vamp....   Junior Drakeford, one of the best organists I've ever known, was to get on and give a solo between these two sections, and fill out through the piece.   
Unfortunately, I just placed the small tape recorder on top of the piano, so my piano playing is loud and the voices don't get their balanced spot.   
It was recorded only so I could listen to the voices and arrange things further.   Not to be as is.  
A bit of nostalgia.    
I also put it up now, because once again, in my hood a church has been burnt down.   It seems because of negligence of a neighboring landlord to say the least.   The fire spread in her building, and took our most precious Middle Collegiate Church with it.   
Middle too has proven the Spirit is rising up!  
I had forgotten about this tune, but circumstances call .... 

"No. You Can't Burn Down Jesus, 
Yes, We're raising up with the Lord!" 
 
  or the Truth, the Bold Love as they call out.   

We were to walk around the concert hall singing this, taking our seats, organ full out....

The sweet refrain, "We have Faith through each other.  Let's believe."

(photo John Lewis with wife, the late Pastor Corrine Lewis of Rock of Ages Church)

Anthony Donovan
nyc
www.anthonydonovan.com

Can't Burn Down Jesus

Recorded in a friends apt. Second Avenue.  Spring 1994

It was rare to find a piano.   Never mind a good one.   
I've little training, do not read music, don't know songs, but since a child would go into a private world with the keys.  They would take me.  We liked listening to each other, playing together, I felt. 

The key word I like to support for others if asking me about music is one word.  Something we don't do enough of, or forget.    PLAY.  
 
Most my adult life, I've not had access to 88s.  I'd rent out practice rooms at the Y for a couple of years, after work, just to get my hands on them.   Even those in bad shape or out of tune would intrigue me.  

    Sad to say, it's been years since this recording that I've had access to a piano and played.    
Most friends know not that I play piano at all.  Not sure I do, but privately, for myself, it's been a good friend.  

Time to share a tiny portion?

My hat and honor is off to real musicians, who dedicate their lives to the discipline daily, and feed the muse and dare to earn a living at it.  Thank you!

    This is a 90 minute tape I made in 1994, brief selections from sometimes were hours of explorations.   Loads of imperfections and meanderings.    Some sections I love, some is too much scatter, but here is side A of that cassette tape, the first half of what was arising that Spring.   

I may try to improve the sound quality and re-release it someday with Side B.

gratitude,

www.anthonydonovan.com

(photo is of my niece, Lia, long ago)

anthony donovan's Album

Spring Piano 1994

Recorded February 1978,  in my apt.

This is actually the second half of the song, lucky you.  Perhaps Covid has some reflection of the past.    These are rather personal and emotional sharing.   such is life sometimes.  
No one has our soul, but us, and G-d.   
But this is obviously a time of emerging from great loss, and vulnerability.
   Working night shift, and going to school full time during the day... exhaustion, and having lost the love of my life, and... it was cold. 
  But we learn to find our soul (hopefully) and not give it away or lose it, but connect it with humanity and community.  
    
So, here I'm finally getting some strength to begin to ask for it back.  A step in the right direction.    
At the very end.... "Two is more than One.  But... One is what we are."   The Greater One.    
The good news is ten years after this song, the gift of beautiful friendship surprised me, and arrived with this same important person in my life.     Very fortunate and grateful.  

fyi:  No matter, but if you are wondering about me calling out "Jack" after give me my soul back, it just rhymes with Back so well, and oft Jack was a slang term you could call anyone for emphasis.   One of my best friends in the world, since childhood is Jack.... too.   Always like the idea of him being in a song... we played much music together in our lives.  

If you're feeling isolated and going through a hard time, suffering loss, please hang in there.  Gifts will come.    Love out and in.  

www.anthonydonovan.com

You Got My Soul

You will not hear this story anywhere else but here.  The Second Meeting of States Parties of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons just finished and VFP Member Anthony Donovan was there. He joins us to give his reflection on the meeting and his perspective on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  While the news is dominated by Israeli genocide in Gaza, the world does not stop and the efforts of so many countries to eliminate the threat of nuclear war continues.  That is why the activism of Anthony, VFP and so many other groups needs to be recognized.

Can't Burn Down Jesus

Bones42

Recent comments

Isabel Hayward

Related tracks