This is a collection of original jams and improvisations from the ConeflowerBasementBand studio.

Instrumental and Electronica-Orchestral Originals

Bikers get a bad rap in this country. 
For decades, bikers were deemed "bad to the bone", 
A breed of outlaw unto themselves, 
20th century Boot Hill gang determined to see you and me
As nothing more than broken lines in the pavement.

But after some careful observance, I have changed my tune.
Bikers are by and large what is great and wonderful about America.
They are not young punks...those are out driving the SUV's 
Their suburban rich daddies bought for them to bribe them
To finish High School.

The average biker I encounter is between 50 and 60
Every one of them sports an American flag, either on their hog
Or on their denim or leather...or more likely both. 
They are not the ones texting at the red lights, 
Or sporting noise-cancelling Boze phones
And jutting their fat suburban butts straight into the intersection
Where an EMR is frantically trying to get to another fallen biker.

The bikers are first at the fires, first at the floods
They are the first to defend your faith, even if they don't share it
Or defend your guns, even if they don't own one.
For years we saw bikers as rebels, outlaws and miscreants.
But they indeed are the truest of patriots.

They will defend your right to speak your peace
Even if it's to badmouth their beloved country
But know this if you do, while one hand is raised to defend your rights
The other is squarely in your face. By the millions. 


The Two Million Biker Ride To D.C.

About the funnest thing I've ever done musically.  

September Harvest Rain

Like a garden hummingbird, hence the name.

Garden Hummingbird

Men cried like little children, the little children asked why, thousands died...but America got the final say...the ears of the world cocked to listen...  heard two words..."Let's Roll!".

9/11/01 - The Remembering

It was June, and after the winter that refused to quit, we suddenly found ourselves in pre-summer triple digit heat again. What little escaped the sub-zero freezes and blizzards of April was blighted in drought and heat. Suddenly, like the return of a bad penny, an all-to-familiar plume of grayish-black smoke rose to once again diffuse in the air that chest-stinging smell Coloradans know so well. "O Lord, send rain!", the voices raised to Heaven. The drought had reached stage 4, and the city council bickered over whether to restrict watering California-style lawns that shouldn't even be here to either two or three days a week. Suddenly, on June 28th, the rains came. And July rolled in and the welcome southwestern monsoon with it. And the vegetation flourished, and the lawns brightened, and the local utilities breathed a sigh of relief. And August arrived and the rains still came. And came. And came. Until on August 9th, having dodged the bullet the better part of the summer, the rain became sinister, and the burn scars began to hunker down to the serious business of making good on their threats to punish the people who mistreated their forests. And the rains still came, and boulders and mud with them, and suddenly, people died, multiplied millions of dollars in damage to small businesses were lost to the flood caused by the flames. And the rain came, and came, and the monsoon lingered until early September, when she began her annual ebb south and west, and the dry heat returned to the Colorado front range. And the triple-digit heat of June returned again. And the monsoon looked back, and was not pleased...and decided to vanquish the summer heat once and for all, and with it every man whose home and fortunes lay in the mouth of the canyons. And still the rains came...only this time they mustered all the ferocity of an east coast hurricane. For seven days it rained, some rainfall amounts exceeding 20". Thousands, no tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of lives were upended, some were lost. The rain had won at last. When I saw the torrent that fell in eastern Colorado on Sunday, this was all I could do. And the rains still came.


And Still The Rains Came

Weekend almost over, a couple more workdays, then zoom!  Jeff boards the big white bird to SeaTac, and his honey's arms.

Happy 'Cause We'll Be Together

Four Scores And Seven Years To Go

Thirty Hours, 1900 miles...and it all began today. 

2-10,11-09...The Final Journey

Sunday Morning

Too many songs claim, "True Love Will Never Die"...not so. There is a treachery that will murder the truest of loves.  By the power of God, true love may be resurrected from death, but it is not true that true love can never die.  Sometimes, dying is exactly what the Doctor ordered. 

The Night Love Died

Step 1 - We admitted we were powerless over our addiction - that our lives had become unmanageable  
Step 2 - Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity  
Step 3 - Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God  
Step 4 - Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves  
Step 5 - Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs  
Step 6 - Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character  
Step 7 - Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings  
Step 8 - Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all  
Step 9 - Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others  
Step 10 - Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it  
Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out  
Step 12 - Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs  

12 Step Bolero

Baoji in A

Recovery from addictions, whatever they be, require one in Heaven and two on Earth  To truly win the race, one must turn one's will and life over to the care of God.  That being done, God turns the race over to one coach at the starting gate, and one at the finish line.  It is vital to start right and finish well, and for that we must have one ever urging us away from whence we came, and the other reminding us of what awaits at the finish line. Though they be repeated over the course of hundreds and hundreds of miles, there are but 12 steps to this race,  and they must be dispatched in full measure, for the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.  It is the mind made intentional by the will turned over to the care of God that will finish in the end.  Thanks to Matt and Ken for their place in the marathon of recovery, and for my beautiful Pauline, who is the wind beneath my feet.  This is written for you all.

The Sponsor And His Sponsee

Melodia Per Una Notte Triste

"Words are all I have, to take your heart away"...until you find yourself caught in...The Blackout. 

The Blackout

Écoutez et frissonner. Ce est l'épée de l'hiver qui perce l'âme à son noyau. Ce est l'obscurité stygian éclipsant le vol de chaleur. Ce est la nuit de toutes les nuits les plus froides et stériles.

Sailor's Walk

Russell's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day‎

John Takes The Fifth

Regardez, voyez, ma belle épouse, la belle Pauline. Qui connaît son coeur, qui peut regarder dans les yeux et sonder les profondeurs de ses passions? Qui sait tel amour somptueux et le soin? Qui peut demander à cette beauté intérieure et extérieure? Certes, Dieu s'est surpassé avec sa fille, la belle Pauline.

Somewhere back in college I fell in love with the French Impressionist Composers.  Debussy, Ravel, Satie, Faure.   This short piece is patterned somewhat after the fabulous French Four, and dedicated to my wonderful wife Pauline, who suffers with me hours in the basement experimenting with all kinds of styles of music.  

Fantaisie Pour Ma Chérie Belle Pauline

We sat on our buns
When they took our funds
Like marauding Huns
They took our guns

And now our sons
All dress like nuns
And spout off puns
Their fathers spun

America stunned
Because she shunned
The evil ones
Who took our guns.

In piles of tons
They took our guns
New season begun
Are now reruns
 


Mae Liz - Great American Gun Confiscation Resistance - 2013

A. Symposium o covers and originals in coneflower variety style

Instrumental and Electronica-Orchestral Originals

Coneflower Basement Band