Name: ROCK & ROLL TYKE by Charley Neises
Duration: 3 min 2 s
Description: This song is dedicated to my sisters Sue Connon, Diane Pugh, and Karen Austin, who contributed to my initial music education simply by having the radio on all day long throughout my formative years. Apologies to little sister Nancy Gamble . . . but hey, you’re in the cover art, so that’s something.

Have a Blues-birthday with Charley "Li'l Harv" Nice; featuring Kenny Blow on harmonica.

Birthday-Man Blues

Found poetry from my mother’s 2020 Covid-quarantine notebook. As I was growing up, Mom tolerated and sometimes even encouraged my music- (and other-noise-) making. I never imagined that we would collaborate until I set her jottings to this soundscape. // Further explanation (and a TRIGGER WARNING): Some of this track might be upsetting to anyone with loved ones suffering from dementia. My mother knew she had dementia, and she was keenly aware of her fading mental function. But she wrote notes like these in an apparent effort to sort out her thoughts and to piece together scattered memories. I see this as a testament to her strength and determination to “rage against the dying of the light” in her very own way. **Gail E. Neises 1928-2020.** (I love you, Mom.)

TWILIGHT NOTEBOOK

Trying out my new guitar with the very first thing I learned almost 50 years ago: a tune by Kurt A. Eberhardt. (Fifty years? You'd think I'd be better by now, right?)

GREEN TENNIS SHOE

This song is dedicated to my sisters Sue Connon, Diane Pugh, and Karen Austin, who contributed to my initial music education simply by having the radio on all day long throughout my formative years. Apologies to little sister Nancy Gamble . . . but hey, you’re in the cover art, so that’s something.

ROCK & ROLL TYKE

Another birthday song for all occasions* from CHARLEY NICE.  (*Okay . . . mostly birthdays.) Feel free to SHARE this with your friends on their birthdays.

HappyHappyHappy (B-Day Punk)

At last . .  a belated birthday SONG! Send this new song by CHARLEY NICE instead of a belated card when you miss your friends' birthdays.

DOOF (Belated B-Day Song)

Valentine's Day. February 14, 2018. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

BULLET VALENTINE

Another true story: I stole that riff, although it's actually me playing a stolen riff wrong because I'm not very good. (And for the record, I know that ‘tchotchke’ and ‘Trotsky’ don’t really rhyme.) Sometimes closet space is just a metaphor for bigger issues. / I sang it the way I heard it in my head, but this voice doesn’t sound like me. Guest backing vocal (on the word ‘NO!’) by Julie.

ROOM

I was watching a documentary about Phil Ochs, a noted folk and protest singer from the 1960s. He suffered from depression in his later years and committed suicide in 1976. The film highlighted an episode where a friend asked how he was doing during one of his low points. His response — I’m mostly paraphrasing here — was along the lines of “on a scale of one to ten, I’m minus 20.” I dedicate this song to everyone who struggles with the darkness.

MINUS 20 (Last Words of Phil Ochs)

When my wife was teaching high school, there was a boy that was hit and killed by a train. The story — possibly apocryphal — that some of the students told was that he was playing a game called “Touch the Train,” in which you . . . touch your hand to a speeding train. I don’t know if it’s true, but that was the story. The melody for the refrain was birthed when I read an article about the prevalence of the C-G-Am-F chord progression in popular music, so I figured I’d give that a try, as musical invention has rarely been by strong suit. / The drums on this song (as on the album as a whole) are a combination of drum machine presets (I’m not smart enough to do programming) and an electronic drum pad played with sticks.

ROCK & ROLL TYKE

Charley Neises

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