My buddy Jeremy Dion and I have a songwriting group called "The Writer's Block" and this was one of the most recent assignments: "the words I wish I had said"  Here's my demo of what the song may someday become...

Sticks & Stones

I wrote this on my broken baritone ukulele, which both my daughters stepped on and cracked at different times.  It only had 3 strings and the neck slides when you play it.  Of course I had to record it on a nicer non-broken uke, but old broken instrument lend to songwriting for me...

Smell the Rose

This one came to me in the shower.  I had to hop out and in my towel frantically try to write down as many words as I could remember.  Then I grabbed the guitar had tried to find the melody I was hearing, which isn't always easy.  It's easy to get lead to a different melody by choosing different chords than what i was hearing.  Why doesn'y my head just have a speaker...

County Fair Rodeo

One of the first assignments I did. I lived by the street Tanglewood, and obviously that's a darn cool name so I wove it into the story of a miserable life.  In hindsight I had been listening to the 2nd Raconteurs album a lot around when this was written.  I believe that Carolina Drama had to been in my subconscious when this song was penned.

Tanglewood

A folky ballad about staying in relationship far longer than you should.  Sometimes one person really wants to make it work and the other doesn't....

A garage recording late at night...

John Malsberger