Happy Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall… it just so happens that it is Spring here. Snow is melting then refreezing at night, forming some nice ice sheets, that I slip on if I am not paying attention. So I was sitting outside, the other day, a couple feet from this rabbit hiding in the rock garden, (social distancing) and both of us were soaking up the warm rays of the sun. That warmth felt good, after a long, dark winter, and it cheered me up for a second or two. Later, I planted a pot with some leek seed inside by the window, and laughed at myself as I was envisioning these beautiful, thick leeks, while dreaming of potato-leek soup. Usually, they don’t grow all that big, after I transplant them out in the garden, and I tend to let them go to seed, so I’ll have more seed to plant. Maybe this year though? Robins are back and staking out their territories in the yard. There are usually 5 or so Robin pairs nesting in the yard at any one time. I wonder if the pair who build a nest on the stop step of my step ladder will return, or the pair that builds a nest on top of a tire, on an old truck in my neighbor’s yard. That pair has nested under the truck for several years now. I am hoping to get outside more this year into the mountains, before I get too old to do so. I make it a habit to talk with as many old people as I can, to ask them about their lives and how aging is going for them. This one wiry old dude mentioned by the time he hit is mid seventies, hiking became a chore. He lives a solitary life like me, so I like talking with him, although he can only tolerate so much conversation at any one time, and heads off somewhere else. I laugh and realize he is more cranky than me. Well this is not really a song… more of a poetic story with some backing guitar. The lyrical phrases didn’t lend themselves to singing it. I created it after I had a powerful dream about my past and it centered on my relationship with a wild woman. This all happened about two and a half decades ago. When the woman, Sarah, (not her real name) and I went on a little journey, we passed by this cottage on a hillside in the country. I was in a dreamy state of mind (hee-hee) and mentioned to her: that looks exactly like the house we will live in one day. Some things are best kept to oneself no matter how one feels about it. She already adored me, and what I said, I meant, but didn’t quite grasp how she would take it. She was skipping along on her tippy toes for the rest of the day, and I felt like I may have overstepped, in stating my affection for her. Obviously, I still care for her, even though I haven’t seen or thought about her in a very long time. I hope she is well, as we both struggled with our own stuff way back when. I dream like an old dog now, mostly about my younger days. And the dreams are vivid in the sense of being enchanted with my experiences and how I felt about them, and they are also tinged with my present perspective. I write them down, whenever they are of significance and have about a hundred pages. If I can muster the time and energy, I will write another novel about all those dreams. But until then, I hope you enjoy this preview, in the form of a short poetic story. Thanks for dropping by, Mark

Lammbone's Album

Broken Winged Angels

Hey. The cloud line has dropped down into the valley here obscuring the mountains. It is raining. I am hanging out and listening to a new song of mine, well several, but this one has some decent slide playing on it, so decided to share it with you. I was surprised and happy my picking hand was willing to belt out some solos, as it had balked on me a week or so ago and I could barely hold a pick. The premise of the song is: Our fine planet as a merry-go-round, and the shenanigans of humans riding along, to include me searching for that perfect life. Ha. Luckily age has slowed me down some, and I get to be in the moment more, as I catch my breath. Just the other day, I was standing there in the yard looking around (catching my breath) and the Cooper’s Hawk that has been hunting the neighborhood flew within 10 yards of me, before noticing that I was standing there. It is springtime here and I have been outside nearly every day doing gardening chores. I see that allows me to let go of a lot of the weight of the world, as I dig in the dirt. Yesterday, I dug up and weeded several rock gardens. I replanted some Lupine, Columbine, Lillies and Irises, then scattered some saved seed, mostly poppies, on the cultivated beds and composted the weeds and whatnot. After dinner, I started messing around on slide guitar, and then did this song. Hope you like it and thanks for dropping by, Mark

Round & Round

Hey…. Glad you dropped by. Want some fresh baked pie? (I don’t have any) I haven’t been in the greatest of moods lately and as a result haven’t been playing any music for a while now. Wasn’t feeling it, and I was definitely feeling my age.  So this song is mainly about that. And also about picking up the guitar again. You might hear some bird chatter on this song. In other news, at the tail end of Spring here, with a foot of snow on May 22nd. I have been gardening every day, except for some brief snow shoveling, and notice the chores are piling up now. Replaced the inner tube on the flat tire of my old bicycle, so I’ve been bicycling down to the mailbox with the hopes of eventually bicycling to the juniper foothills across the highway and river several miles from here. There’s also a fun ride along the river, where you have to go just fast enough to outpace the mosquito swarms and horseflies chasing you. That’s when I noticed my tire was going flat, so that was a pile of fun. Hope all is well with you. Thanks for hanging for a while, Mark

Pie In The Sky

So, back before humans, war, pandemics, simple-minded political corruption, and insane dualistic hatred festering in the cosmos, I was in the middle of a deep philosophical conversation with a friend. We were at an outdoor cafe on a planet called Ursacenturias in a peaceful solar system not far from here. It was summertime. Just across the milky way, a busker was wailing on violin. Ever get distracted while in conversation and surreptitiously focus on the distraction not wanting to explain yourself to the person you are having the conversation with? This is how the song begins, as I glanced over at an adjacent table and saw ‘your nose’. I just realized this is now the second song I have done about noses, two different noses, two different situations. I’d rather not speculate about that right now, so I won’t. https://soundcloud.com/lammbone/just-one-more-thing All I remember was the alluring serendipity of the moment.……. So I was playing slide guitar the other night, and decided to record this song out of the blue, after reminiscing about the aforementioned experience. I pulled the lyrics from some prose I had written about the experience. The rhythm guitar has some percussion to it and sounds like an old, worn-out, juke joint harmonium, to me anyway. I am still working on that sound, as it is still somewhat ‘clunky’, but maybe I just need to learn how to play pump organ instead? Anyway, someone from the planet Albionia made a request that I play some slide guitar… so hope ya' all like it. Happy Spring or Autumn to you, depending on where you live on this peace-loving orb of ours and thanks for dropping by and hanging out. Mark

The Improbabilities Of Life

Hey…. Thanks for dropping by. It’s Spring here, and you’d figure I’d be in a better mood. Ha. I just came inside from a little walk as the wind kept getting stronger, with a new front blowing in. So this is a dark song for dark times. I played the acoustic parts on a tiny guitar-like instrument called a Puerto Rican Cuatro. An old friend got it as a gift, and then gave it to me. Since I play it, I am called a Cuatrista in certain circles. The slide parts of the song didn’t come out as well as I thought they would, so I played the recorder instead… c'est la vie. Hopefully this summer, I will sit down with the recorder and figure out the notes and scale structures b/c I just wing it now, making stuff up as I go. I hope you don’t mind. (Some do) I am just having fun, and laugh when my old fingers actually cover the finger holes, so I don’t sound like a frantic goose running from the axe. OK, that was pretty dark. Especially sad for the goose. My chores now in the garden entail digging up grass infested flowerbeds and moving large garden rocks around. Also preparing the vegetable garden for planting… That entails picking out small rocks, (there’s a lot of them and I filled in some pot holes in the road with them.), and digging up and transplanting self-seeded volunteers such as violas, feverfew, mother’s wort, valerian, mint, garlic, small rhubarbs, some stray lettuce seedlings, and parsley and replanting them elsewhere. I let most of those plants go to seed, so I can collect seed in the fall, but the birds often get there first and spread some seeds around. Then I prepare the beds for planting in a few weeks or so depending on the weather. I also have check and put up some more rabbit fence, which the rabbits laugh at and sneak in anyway. Hope you’re all doing OK out there in the world. Mark

A Dark Song For Dark Times

Just banjoing around (fiddling with a banjo). Realizing ( again and again ) lately how much tension and strife there is globally, and how I am really working to lessen that in myself and the world. This song is rough and once again, a simple freejam idea, tossed together quickly. That's OK. Pic is back when I was 18. Thanks for dropping by. 

Misty Mountain Rambler

Hey…. I sleep like an old dog now that I am old. Although I wonder if I move my feet when I run in my dreams. And I did bark at the neighbor’s dog the other night. She was being noisy, so I joined in. Ha. Starlings are up in the old cottonwood now serenading the world, as the heat of the day is not yet upon us. But by midday they are usually gone. The heat is too intense. I think they head to the river to ride out the day. Maybe I should join them, like in the old days. Hanging down by the river, swimming and cooling off. I told a neighbor the other day, if he finds his political bumper sticker is inappropriately graffitied, it will be me who did it. Ha. And here I thought we were all in this together… how naive of me. Hee-hee. So back to the dreamlife of dogs… as with night and day, a lot of life can become an either or premise don’t ya think? I was always one to explore a middle ground by melding various ideologies together. Then I decided to become free of that paradigm view of life, and maybe see things as they were. Fascinatingly sad how polarized our species is, on practically everything that matters, and how unwilling we are to budge. So I wondered about that insofar as extricating myself from such nonsense, without that becoming just another polarized pursuit. As if you can’t tell by now, I am a dreamer. That does have its downside as there is a darker essence to all this babbling, as the song lyrics suggest, when the light becomes the dark. OK… the starlings just left for the river en mass. Ha ha. I have pondered about the relevance of dreams in my life for many years. But I wonder how relevant the rhyming of ‘stream’ with ‘dream’ was in ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat… as possibly a revelation into the nature of life? Or in some songs, rhyming is just a convenience of circumstance. Ha…. Are we really rowing ourselves gently along through our lives, in a daydreamy way of how we’d like to see the world? Or frantically chasing a dream on a flooded river, as we lose control of our leaky boat? Or maybe a little bit of both? Or maybe jumping ship to swim to shore? Maybe there is no boat at all? Or maybe we're landlubbers? Hope you like the song. And thanks for dropping by, Mark

Dreamlife

Hey, really do hope you’re doing OK out there in the world as there is almost nothing funny about life now. Except maybe everything in my life. A dystopian comedy, as I try in jest to keep the plants from drying up and dying, and end up parched myself. Like today, for a moment there I found myself unconsciously heading for some shade, as stepping into the sun was intense. Now I know how Drăculea felt. Well maybe not. Although growing up we would always head to this strange woman’s house on Halloween night, to get a cup of ‘cat’s blood’. The old woman was dressed as a witch, and had a punchbowl filled with her concoction on the dining room table. Later that night, my mom freaked out when I told her I drank some cat’s blood at some old woman’s house. After a few frantic phone calls, she found out it was a blend of Hawaiian Punch (red) and cherry juice. My mom later befriended that old woman, who had a lifetime of performing in the theater. Anyway, so there I was standing in the shade and the idea for this song came to me. Why not try some recorder harmonies using 2 recorders? In all truth, about the only thing I know about the recorder is that finger placement over the holes is vital to avoid the tragedy of sounding like a frantic goose running away from the butcher. As is having calm breath, or wind, if you will. (Woodwind) So keeping it simple, I used one recorder for a single sustained note, and the other recorder for soloing. Eventually I would like to be able to create harmonized melodies using both recorders… ha. We’ll see about that. Lyrically, not much to say… but I am working on a harmonized backing vocal in a slightly higher vocal register. I also added some mandolin shmozz at the end of grins. OK, enough of that. Hope you enjoy the song, Mark

Naïveté  In The Time Of Butterflies

Hey Folks… just another little ditty… This time with some Country Slide Guitar, Oh Boy!!! And me howling away briefly about life in ‘these-there’ hills. Oh yeah and my go-too made-up strumming. Ha. All about the thumb. Plunk-plunk. I’ve been scribbling down lyrics here and there, but have found I am not really into penning out full songs right now. Songwriter’s block? Or maybe I got nothing to say. So instead, I have been working in the garden, digging up root crops, collecting seeds, and weeding, you know, autumn harvest, cleanup and planting. Plus I am doing home repairs as the weather has broke, with a little cooler days now. I was just up on the roof and backing up to climb down the ladder, and I almost kicked the ladder off the side of the house. Luckily, it fell back into place. And I haven’t lost all my winter weight, so I guess I can still bounce. All these ant and grasshopper chores leave little time for music. I do get to listen to a chorus of birdsong each day. The starlings have been great… they are good at mimicking, so some of the stuff they come up with is hilarious. There’s nary a mountain ash berry left on the trees, as the birds have gorged on them for the past couple weeks. I could hardly believe it because the branches were so heavily laden with berries. In other news, the bears have been down in town foraging on apples. There are quite a few apple trees that drop a ton of apples on the ground. We’re used to bears venturing out of the mountains ‘round’ here. They usually follow the creeks down. Although several bears each year are killed, some after busting into chicken coops, or cabins, and others, by hunters surprising them in the woods. Just down the road from here, way up in the mountains, is a ‘problem bear’ relocation site. The bears, called nuisance/problem bears, are trapped then relocated to the deep forest. Mostly bears from YNP who have taken a liking to picnic baskets. I have seen tracks, large claw scrapings on trees, and plenty of bear scat while hiking over the years. Gather I have seen quite a few bears in my day as well. In the avian realm, the geese are on the move too. Mostly Canada and Snow Geese. I hear the familiar honking, then look around in the sky for them. Snow Geese tend to fly at night, and it is so cool, like wind ghosts. The geese know they have to hightail it outta here before winter hits. When I am out and about, I see huge flocks of geese and ducks in the grain fields feeding. Another cool bird that migrates through here is the Sandhill Crane.  I hear their distinct rattling bugle calls and have to look way up in the sky for them. They can fly upwards of 10,000 feet in the sky. Huge flocks, with wingspans of 6ft across that look like tiny dots, like Jupiter and other celestials. Ha. Yes, I stumbled outside at midnight to take a gander to see if I could spot Jupiter in the Milky Way. Alright… I gotta head out and do some chores. Thanks for dropping by, Mark

Mountain Slider... A Little Ditty

Hey, glad you dropped by. The New Year is upon us. I wish you a happy year ahead. Yet wishes are as fickle as hopes and dreams, which often conjure up nothing more than a brief feel good moment. I hear people nearby celebrating, as if nothing is wrong in their world, while others are fighting for their very lives, at war, or surviving as best they can in extreme and difficult situations. Those disparities has always haunted me… All I need to do is reflect back to see my own trajectory, much like a shooting star burning through the night sky. So what will the new year bring? This will be my 67th new year, so as you might have guessed, I am somewhat jaded when it comes to the anticipation of living in a better world. What I do have is this simple notion that all of us are moving through time together. In a very real sense, we are time travelers. And yet as time leaps forward, say in a hundred years from now, nearly everyone alive in this moment will have ended their journey, save for a few centenarians. Those tough souls will linger on. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life for what it is, but also realize the its fragility. Maybe these maudlin thoughts have influenced this first song of the new year, maybe not. This song is a loosely woven lyrical tapestry of traveling, living in the moment, having a home, lost love, and stargazing. These days, I am not much of a traveler, as far as geography goes. I haven’t been out of the county here for quite some time. Some find that shocking. Others find it sad. I find it to be wonderfully grounding. There are places I’d like to go, but I find I can be wowed by the world right here in the now. In a sense, my daydreams of traveling contain a timeless place. Yet, places do change over time. I did not grow up in this place, and have struggled to make it my home. When I do venture out, I often find the last leg of the journey back home to be the most difficult. It is as if the journey to one place ends, and another journey back begins, even though in essence, it is the same journey. And no matter where I go, I always look up at the stars. They remind me of the places I have been, and the people I have known. Some have left an indelible mark on me. I sometimes want to travel back to see them, but then realize the improbabilities of doing so. Like places, those circumstances have changed. It is then, I take a deep breath, or sometimes sigh, and head back inside my home. Mark

Home

Hey… so what are Vintage Bone: B-Sides? They are older songs and little ditties that got lost in my growing pile of recordings. This winter, I have been going through my catalog, pulling out a couple songs, here and there, and creating a new pile called Vintage Bone. Most needed some remixing and production adjustments. Some are first take versions of songs I like to re-record often. Ever notice that sometimes first versions seem to be the best, even if a redo is compositionally better? With this song, ‘There You Are’ from 2015, I noticed the vocals were ruined by plosives, hissing and distortion. (Nope, I do not have a pop filter -yet-. Haha.) There was way too much compression and reverb, and I overdid the EQ… all of which seemed to dull the song's natural character, so I made some adjustments and rerecorded the guitar solos. Sure, it’s just GarageBand, so please, cut me some slack. Thanks. Yes, sometimes I’d rather live in my dreams, with all my favorite ice creams. Most of us spend a third of our lives sleeping and dreaming. I dream like an old dog now. The symbolism and metaphors are wildly revealing. The vast dream world, of the places I go, and people I meet, is filled with extraordinary things. Sometimes there are dangerous situations filled with scary moments. I can fly, sometimes I encounter supernatural beings, but often I have recurring dreams where the places and people are familiar to me. Once in April, I dreamt about a mentor I had as a kid, who died. I woke up crying. I did not know he had passed, and thought he was still alive so I sent him a letter. Months passed, and I forgot about it. Then I received a letter from his wife. She was gracious and said she received my letter in the same month that her husband, my mentor, had passed away years ago. She said April’s were always difficult for her, and the letter was a godsend. In the letter, I had mentioned to my mentor how thankful I was that he was a part of my life as a kid. A bright spot as it were. She said no one ever mentioned that to him before, and thanked me many times. It was that dream that convinced me to pay attention to dreams. I have written over a hundred pages of dream experiences, and hopefully one day before I go, hee-hee…. I will write a book about those dreams. But for now, I have some snow shoveling to do. Hope you’re all well. Thanks for dropping by, m

Vintage Bone: B-Sides... There You Are

Hey… thanks for dropping by. This is a simple Blues song. Songs, such as this, happen when I find myself in a songwriting slump. Lack of inspiration and ideas exacerbate the situation, pushing me back to the Blues. I grumpily relent then wallah, a song. And what better Blues theme than relationships? Seems I mine that gold often, which maybe says more about me than I’d like to reveal. But who cares? It’s the Blues. Here, Winter will not let go. Bitter, unrelenting winds, near horizontal snowfall, and minus 18F tonight. I looked outside this morning and a rabbit was waiting by the front door for me to put some carrots out. All the birds were hunkered down in thick pines, except for some ravens scavenging the neighborhood. There were some high flying geese as well, that flew by. They always seem to panic in the frigid weather. It almost sounds like they’re honking… ‘let’s get outta here.’ I don’t blame them. The deer are more wary now for some reason, and I only see their frozen tracks and fresh tree/sapling rubbings. I wrapped a couple trees to protect them, buried others in snow, but left 4 where they had scraped the bark bare. I will probably have to cut those trees down, but will wait to see if they survive. After getting some garden carrots for the rabbit, I decided to shovel some snow and work on my ice beard. It was cold enough today that condensation from my breath froze on my beard. They have an ice beard competition here and post pics of the best ones. There are some maniacs who stay out in the cold to ‘grow’ solid ice beards, and a chance at winning. Some have icicles hanging off their chin. No cheating with pouring water on your beard. Just having snow blowing into your beard along with some condensation from breathing. I let my face thaw out, when I came inside. Later in the afternoon… I walked down the the mailbox in the wind and there were tiny little horizontal icicles on the latch. I had to walk around a semi truck, completely blocking the road. The truck driver tried to turn onto our street and got stuck in a deep snowdrift. A neighbor came down and pulled the semi out with his tractor. I watched for a bit, then headed home. So now I am glad I am inside. Take care, Mark

Wrong Turn Blues

Hey… how’s it going on your end of SoundCloud? Winter’s been holding on tight here, with cold weather and plenty of snow on the ground. Nothing like what is happening right now in the mountains of CA though. With the cold weather, I got a chance to record a new song. It has a mythological theme, loosely based on the snaky haired Medusa. I am probably the only (male) musician to have gazed into her eyes and was not turned into stone. So I had to sing this tale. A little backstory… This ties into a teenage memory of my first crush, because she had a dark, powerful mystique. I called her a snake goddess. (That did not go well.) You can see where I am going with this….. haha. Freud had a field day in his psychological analysis of Medusa in Das Medusenhaupt… but this song is more of a romantic love song in its interpretations, as you will hear in the lyrics and by listening to my enchanted recorder playing as I charm the sacred snakes in Medusa’s hair. I believe that is a first: Haha.  And let’s not forget the poetically romantic implications of the first kiss… OK, hope you like this song. And glad you dropped by. Mark

Snakes In Her Hair

Hello… so have you ever noticed certain things about yourself that never change? This song, ‘Just Like I Always Do’ is about that very thing. I found myself  outside the other day, playing with rivulets of snow melt. Making channels with a rake, for the water to run down and I laughed… my feet were soaking wet and I was having a grand old time. Reminded me of a time in kindergarten, when I arrived late to school, soaked to the bone, as I was playing in the rain along the way. So that playful side of me has not changed at all. I also noticed, like flowing water, how vital it is for me to keep moving. A fluidity when it comes to living and learning about life. Recently, singing has been like that for me. Bear with me on this. A little backstory: As a kid, I had a brief stint in my middle school choir. I did not want to join the choir, that’s for sure. The music teacher had picked us out, after brief singing auditions. After our first performance, my mother, God rest her soul, told me I did not have to go back to choir anymore, if I did not want to. Out of the 50 kids on stage, I was the only one not singing. I just looked down so no one could see my mouth… except my eagle-eyed mom. Simple as that, I was done with it. There were other things I wanted to do as a precociously rebellious kid, running around the neighborhood, as it were. Now, half a century later, I have been learning to sing on my own. It has not been easy uncovering that latent voice of mine. Looking back, sometimes I wish I had stuck with it as a kid. So about a decade or so ago, this dude I worked with asked me if I’d show him some stuff on guitar. His mom was a musician and music teacher and he grew up with music in his life. He was always singing and playing guitar. As we hung out, he noticed I never sang and asked me why. After basically dodging his question, he told me the only thing stopping me from singing was me. Talk about a hard lesson to swallow. So now, bringing us up to speed, I had some fun exploring my nascent singing voice on this song. The image is of me and Garnet running the hills in early Spring. Hope you like it and thanks for listening. Take care, Mark

Just Like I Always Do

Hey Folks…. Hope all is well wherever you are. In that relative sense of the world being as it is right now. A cold Spring here so far. A little snow, freezing temps, but that will change soon with the new heat dome dropping down upon us from the north. So instead of composing songs, I have been outside quite a bit these past few weeks… I tilled and began planting the vegetable garden. Snow and sugar snap peas are germinating. I planted 3 varieties of lettuce plants from seed I grew and saved from the past few years. If you don’t know… Lettuce ‘goes to seed’ when the plant ‘bolts’ by sending up a 3 foot flower stalk, which looks pretty cool. I usually let some lettuce bolt each year. A while back, I used to market about 300 heads of lettuce a year, but now just grow 50 or so heads for salad. That’s a lot of salad…. I also planted leeks from seed plants I grew last year, after letting the leeks overwinter. I was dreaming about potato-leek soup, when I first planted leeks, and well, the dream was better than the soup. The garlic patch is up, from last autumn’s planting. I call the patch ‘The Garlic Monster’, as it has grown in size over the years, the unruly beast that it is. There were some overwintered Swiss chard plants that I dug up and transplanted to a side spot in the garden, hoping to get some seeds this year from those plants. Beets, carrots and rutabagas have not germinated yet. (It’s been cold.) I dug up 3 large rhubarb plants I grew from seed that I collected, and moved them to a new bed as the spot they were in was a spur of the moment decision that wasn’t working. I do harvest and prepare rhubarb each year, but it is definitely an acquired taste, so I tend to compost some of what I pick. (Most of it…haha.) I transplanted 2 aspens and a pie cherry sapling that grew up too close to the house. The main aspen and cherry trees are easily 10 yards away from where the saplings were. I am always amazed at how tree roots grow in search of water, this time for dripping water off the house. That phenomenon is called Hydrotropism. I moved the saplings to an open area of the yard where I hope they will sprout many more trees to create a mini grove. OK… that’s enough gardening stories for now…. Don’t you think? I need some for the next song… hahaha. So with the colder mornings, I have been recording songs every other day or so. I had 3 songs recorded and well and they were all sketchy/wonky in parts. One, a true story, was about this dude threatening me with a handgun. (That song was way too political)… another was a sobby, tear-jerker of a lament, OMG… sure I felt that way, but seriously dude? The third was a loud and dissonant slide song, which happens when I need to burn off some negative energy. I was bummed after listening to all of them, so I did this song, as a last ditch effort to salvage my musical dignity. Ha! So let me know what you think… Thanks. I am heading off SoundCloud for the Summer months. See you when the leaves begin to turn, or maybe when the snow flies. Gonna miss ya’ all… Thank you for the love and support, the insights and ideas, the camaraderie and fellowship. Have a great couple of months wherever you are. Mark

Tiptoeing Across Time... I am heading off SoundCloud for the Summer.

Hey…. I missed you guys, your music, art, and conversations! Thanks to those who left me messages (Truly appreciated.) I took a long summer break that spilt into Autumn. It was great. Rode my old bicycle down along the river a couple times, and had to keep pedaling faster than the mosquitoes. I did some hiking in the mountains, old man style, carefully watching where I was going. I had fallen several times on previous outings, on slippery river rocks these past few years. So now I stick mostly to the trails, which I don’t really like to do, but realize that is where my age has put me. Most days I could be found piddling around the yard like a old monk, gardening and keeping the bird water clean, while laughing at and talking to the animals. After a while they get used to my eccentricities. Chickadees and Kinglets follow me around when I am watering. I think the watering stirs up insects that they feed on. Did some needed house painting. A couple decades ago, I had a second job painting apartments. I would leave my job at the high school, in proper dress attire and paint in those same clothes and never get a drop of paint on them. My wife at the time thought I was having an affair. Haha. She told friends… He says he’s painting but he never has any paint on his clothes. I tried to reassure her and even told her that was silly. Apparently she didn’t think so, so now I am alone. Ha. I also patched the roof and got a leak at the house seam that I had been trying to patch for years. I had a good visit with an old high school friend who I hadn’t seen in 50 years. Back when we were teenagers, he was taller than me. Now, when I first saw him, I saw I am at least a foot taller than him now. He was and is always an inspiration for me in life. After much grumbling about getting older, I am finally OK with being 67 years old. Sadly, I grieved for several people in my life who died. Tended the vegetable garden, harvesting all sorts of veggies, and stored some for the long winter. Collected all sorts of seeds. I even created some wild garden recipes, spending some well needed time in the kitchen. Later in the summer, I picked vine-ripened tomatoes for lunch, and grazed on apples and plums from the trees while working outside. I always leave plenty for the animals. After procrastinating, I repotted a bunch of large, root bound house plants. And I slept late while wildly dreaming… as some of you know, I appreciate dreams for their surreal content that often finds its way into my song lyrics. I also took some time to play electric slide guitar and sing outside on the porch, while working the kinks out of the slide sound and howling like an old hound dog. A neighbor asked: Was that you? (In a good way.) Some other neighbors were not so pleased. (Haha.) Anyway, this new home recording is a song I worked on recently. I have been working with my vocals to render out the course gravel tone and just sing. Gravel makes for great sounding Blues, but it really isn’t me. I have also been working on my rhythm guitar. (It needs it… haha) I am still learning so much about the music process. Thanks for bearing with me as I explore and test out these new ideas. Other than that, thanks for dropping by for a visit/listen… Mark

Drifters

Hey…. I am sitting inside now, it is snowing, and quite cold for October. I noticed deer tracks in the snow and what looks like a gathering around the crab apple trees, as the deer munched down on apples. Later, I picked a bunch of apples from the higher branches and cleared off the foot of snow on the ground then piled up some apples for all who wants them. About 3 weeks ago, I went outside late at night to close up the garage. I had a strange feeling that there might be a bear in the yard. No sounds or sighting, just an intense hunch. The next day I went out to do some gardening and on the way back to the garden I spotted a huge pile of bear scat behind the spruce trees. It was full of half digested apples, a telltale sign of late season bear scat. That was a first. For me anyway. And maybe for the bear too. It reminded me of when I was a boy and a large group of us were camping in the wilderness. The dads told us to be careful about leaving food out. There was a heavy ‘bear box’ at the campsite where we stored the food. So what did us kids do? We threw a bunch of leftovers into the woods. Shortly thereafter we were visited by 3 bears. One dad, a huge man nicknamed Spike, confronted and chased the bears off. He was bigger than the bears and had a way worse growl. Then us kids got a good chewing out, and found ourselves on supervised cleanup duty, like a chain gang, getting all the food out of the woods. We deserved it, but were happy to see those bears. Anyway, I noticed the bear had eaten almost all the apples from under the trees. The bear was probably super happy to find all those apples. I was glad to help the bear get ready for winter and hibernation. The process of bears eating as much as they can before hibernation is called hyperphagia. I wish I could sleep all winter too, and wake up in the Spring. Anyway, this is a slide guitar Blues. I sing with a vocal personality that fits the song. Lyrics were about an experience of mine around 47 years ago, and from a different perspective of the same experience in an old song of mine called Blackbirds, where I sat under the same willow tree as thousands of migrating blackbirds passed by, at times landing in the willow, then swooping down in thirsty murmurations, to get a drink from the creek. I’d just sit there with blackbirds all around me. And of course both songs are about this particular woman I took a fancy to way back when. That never panned out like I thought it might. So it goes in this life for me. Hope you like the song, and thanks for dropping by, Mark

That Old Willow

So this song takes the idea of home and expands it outward beyond conventional ideological boundaries of what a home might be. Some of this may sound odd, in the sense of 4 walls, a floor, and a roof as home. So where might our home be? Out beyond our neighborhood perhaps, the region where we live, the continent we’re on, maybe our planet, or somewhere in the cosmos? If we settle on a suitable idea that is somewhat believable for us, it may be that our ‘home’ is, at the very least, the planet we live on. Our home planet. So wherever we go on Earth, we are home, as the song suggests. Please bear with me on this, as it may get a bit allegorical: I like that idea of this larger sense of home, as we might not dump trash, sewage, and all sorts of toxins inside our home, or pollute our home in other ways. We may begin to see what a large, incredible family we have at home. Don’t ya think? It may allow us to get along with each other a little better than we have been? (As an example, you should see me with me with my family at times, it can be frustrating… hee-hee.) We probably wouldn’t set off/drop so many bombs and blast the crap out of our home like we do now, if we saw the Earth as our home. Or ignorantly flood or burn down our home, in our stubborn refusal to appreciate the reality of what it takes to maintain a home like Earth. If we come back to the idea of a conventional home, well there’s all sorts of problems with that too. Here are some of them. Some of us have homes, some of us don’t. There are many reasons for that. Some of us have lost our homes. Some of us do not like our homes, some of us never leave our homes. Some of us despise each other for not having homes, or having too many homes, or having too large of a home, etc…. Where do we feel at home these days with the state of homeability or lack there of? My conventional home, allows me to live here, be that wherever it may be for any of us. Anyway, this song also gave me the opportunity to dust off my mandolin and recorder, as they pretty much sat there all summer with long faces wondering what I was up to. So now they’re happy and I hope this song shares some of their happiness with you….. m

Going Home

Hey… Happy December wherever you are. This is an early winter song, with a hint of cabin fever going on. Luckily, I still have my sense of humor, although not much to say right now, as… well you live on this planet too. Aren’t we having fun these days? Thanks for dropping by, Mark

What's This Song About Anyway?

So I am just gonna continue on with that previous John Lee Hooker Blues riff from my previous song. This time though it’s in a new version of one of the first songs I posted on Sound Cloud, Heading Back To Lina. That original is back in the Lammbone Vault now. I have done at least 4 new versions of this song in the past decade, not a one of them quite measured up to the original. I feel this version has now catapulted itself to the number one slot surpassing the originality and spunk of that first one. Which is reassuring as an artist because I have a bunch of originals that are cool in their own right, but I now see how musically flawed they were. In spite of that, they are dear to my heart, but I can’t seem to re-create the magic contained in them…. So this song is an encouraging nudge for me to attempt to re-record some of those old tunes of mine. I hope you enjoy listening to this one. In other news, I have been hunkered down as a polar arctic blast blew through here last week, with lows near -40F and never quite getting above -20F. I went out to do some snow shoveling as quick as I could and still had to melt icicles off my beard. Hope all is well with you, wherever you are, Mark

Heading Back To Lina

Hey… Thanks for dropping by. This new song is a melding of several ideas, maybe too many for one song: Second chances in life, idyllic places to live, regrets, dreams, satori, changes we experience in our lives that change us, and relationships. Years ago, a friend visited me after I had moved far away from the city to the mountains. It had been a while. He went back home and told everyone that I had really mellowed. Ha. For context: I do not live by the sea, although I have been to many different coastal places in my lifetime. Musically, I suspect this song will evolve into many different versions. I already have three versions, all recorded in the last couple weeks. I chose this one to post because while snow shoveling the other day, this version was stuck in my head, which surprised me, because I like the Blues version better. There is an enigmatic version where I sing a couple bars in another language… and no one recognizes me. I put that one on the back burner as I need to flesh it out some more. Hope you enjoy this version, Mark

Living By The Sea

Hey…. Snowing now, I went out to do a little snow shoveling and to check on an injured whitetail deer that was hiding along the fence line of my neighbor’s property yesterday. Looks like the deer waited until the cover of night to leave, and probably headed into the riparian brush along the creek down the road. I saw the deer yesterday, as I was outside. It had an injured front hoof, and was definitely limping. The deer was well camouflaged along the wooden fence and bedded down under some bushes. I laughed because the neighbor’s dog was none the wiser, as to the presence of the deer. I was hoping that deer would make it, and survive, as hiking in the spring, I have often found deer carcasses, picked clean by eagles, coyotes, magpies and others, as the winter took its toll on them. There have been plenty deer in the yard here all winter long. I usually shake the dried apples off the trees once a week, and they fall into the snow. Then it looks like an army came through, hoof prints everywhere and nary an apple to be found. Anyway, this song is about my childhood. A dark and cathartic song. A little rough around the edges too. Thanks for dropping by, Mark

What Did You Think Was Gonna Happen?

Hey… The angle of the sun is getting higher in the sky, and is also melting the snow. The rabbits, deer and various birds that frequent the yard are happy about that. I am as well. I was surprised to see several robins that had overwintered here. Usually they hightail it when the autumn chill sets in. That makes for some strange and sad truths about climate. I cleaned out the growing containers in the small greenhouse, and will plant them with all sorts of salad greens, from seed I grew and saved. This year’s planting will be a couple weeks earlier than usual. It is still too cold outside to do much beside snow shoveling, and there is over a foot of snow on the ground, from recent storms. It is almost mud season though, where the snow melts and mud abounds. In some places here, it is best not to travel along certain roads as the mud, known as ‘gumbo’ here, sticks to everything like glue. Once, I was walking and the mud built up on the soles of my boots, as I was uplifted off the ground by a couple inches. OK… this song. Not really a ‘song’. More of a moment of exploration. A lot of distorted overdrive. And some new ideas I stumbled upon on slide guitar, while recording. All of which is a great way to make peace with the world, as it is today. It seems I tend to make ‘noise’ in those sad moments of personal reckonings. And lucky for you and your ears you get to listen to it. Maybe not though, huh? Always a pleasure, having you drop by, Mark

The Satori Of A Noisy Slide Player

Hey… Yuppers, I am a supersonic cowboy. I live smack-dab in the middle of cowboy country. Rode my first horse here, who knew I was so green the cows would eat me, so the horse walked back to the stalls with me onboard and refused to move. Ha. Learned my first cowboy chords from my neighbor, who sang country ballads like no other. I have a friend who is a cattle rancher down the road a spell. He is a real cowboy. Outside a saloon in our small town, I watched a horse free itself from a hitching post in front of the saloon, and walk right into the joint. Musta been thirsty. In truth, I am a new fan-dangled kind of ‘cowboy’ in my own right. (A real cowboy can spot me coming from a mile away.) I grew up in the burbs. My horse was a Sting-Ray bicycle. Not that we didn’t share the same code of ethics though. Gather I have lost my East Coast accent, so I got that going for me too. So on this song, I toned down the overdriven slide, to a more natural sound. The mood of the song is a little lighter than some of my previous songs. (Hard to smile in a dying world, where a lot of us just can’t get along.) Seriously? Is this what we’re doing? Reckon so. Anyway, thanks for dropping by for a spell. Ya All take care now ya hear…. m

Supersonic Cowboy

Hey…. So I put down the slide guitar the other day, and picked up the mandolin after a slide solo wasn’t working. Then did this little song. A rather surreal look at the metaphysics of stars as they relate to us. Occasionally, we are at a loss to make sense of this life. I find perspective in observing the night sky, among other things, even if for only a brief moment. Hanging out with others helps too. So does playing music. I usually laugh at myself in those moments and realize just how fascinating life can be. I mentioned this story before, but in a different context. I have been ‘caretaking’ a fire ant colony for over twenty years. The common sense of today’s world would seek to destroy the colony, as labeling them as ‘nuisance pests’ comes with a dire consequence for the ants. Fire ants bite only to get a grip and then sting (from the abdomen) and inject a toxic alkaloid venom called solenopsin. Anyway, the colony had been in my neighbor’s yard decades ago, and I did my best to encourage him not to destroy the colony. But after seeing a friend of his riding over the colony with a riding lawn mower, I knew the colony was doomed if it stayed there. Then one day, while emptying the kitchen compost bucket into the compost pile, I saw a long trail of fire ants coming from my neighbor’s yard into mine. They had begun to build a mound near a brush pile in the back. So the ants have been here for 5 years or so. Sure, they may strip an aspen sapling bare, or try and sneak into my vegetable garden, but for the most part, they have been good neighbors. They have come out of their mound now that it is a little warmer. I was cleaning up the gardens in the back, and noticed hundreds of them working on their mound. I looked yesterday and I saw this one ant carrying a large twig, way bigger than him, on top of the mound. As he walked, the twig was waving back and forth like a sword raised in the air. I laughed (to myself) and realized it had been a while since I had done so. This song is about all those little things in life, like that, that bring us back…. Hope you like it. Thanks for dropping by, Mark

Walk In The Park

Well, let’s see…. Glad you dropped by because you get to listen to some dobro, on a new, very different version of ‘By The Sea’. https://soundcloud.com/lammbone/living-by-the-sea . When I first penned out the lyrics, there was so much going on thematically. ‘Alligator’ adds some of the original lyrics that were left out first time around as the saga continues. I had melded together experiences from my 67 years of living by cherry picking events and blending them into a singular situation, which would have make for a long song in its totality, that by nature, I shy away from, unless I am jamming. Haha. What does this all mean? First off, as an old man who finds himself reminiscing and daydreaming, there are some cathartic moments to be had in hindsight of one’s life. Looking back momentarily in the rearview is a prudent way to temper the trajectory of one’s life, especially if it has been a rocky road. Another facet of this is a personal extrication from a life one has been living, to find another way more suitable to one’s existence. In other words, the changes we make in our life to survive. There is also some grief and regret, that melt away over time. So maybe several more songs are on the horizon that elaborate on these experiences and what they mean to me. Hope you like this song. Thanks for hanging out, Mark

Smiling Alligator... A Reprise Of 'By The Sea'

Hey Ya' All... This is a very simple excursion, messing with new ideas, old man blues and of course, in the moment lyrics.... This is a self-challenge, whereby I just pick up an instrument and without much forethought play a new tune. (sounds like it) But when I do this, new things start to happen - like the 2 note slide pedaling on this. For those of you who braved a listen to 'The Five Days Of Christmas' Thanks. Happy holidays and peace, m

Smooth As Glass

Well If I Don't Catch Hell For This Song....Hee-hee. An old relationship. Old memories. And one really big nose. Hope you're all doing well and thanks for dropping in for a spell. Mark

Just One More Thing

Hey Ya All... This is just an excuse for me to play some guitar. Co-opted a few lyrics from a longer song I wrote... left out the part about my soul. Was that intentional? Maybe. Hope you're all doing OK. Thanks for dropping by, Mark

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Don't Shoot Me, I am The Guitar Player

Hello. I was working on a love song about a cloistered monk, but got stuck in the details of his relationship, so dropped it and worked on this song instead. It fits the mood I am in right now. Of course I might try and justify that with all sorts of rationalizations, but I won’t. I suppose you already know about such things. At least the music is upbeat… haha. I got out the other day and hiked the foothills again, that are only a couple miles from my home. Needed to clear my head of politics and worldly clamor, and also wanted to breathe some fresh mountain air. The south facing slopes are almost free of snow so it makes for easy hiking. I could see a 20 mile panorama of treed forests and snow-capped mountain peaks, and very few people, so far away driving along the highway. The main town here is 20 plus miles away to the east. It was quiet… except for some noisy magpies and me, stumbling over rock scree and muttering under my breath about losing my balance. I was also looking around for rocks for building rock gardens this summer. Years ago, I asked the farmer down the road, if I could take some rocks, as we looked at the vast multitude of glacial rock scattered on the hillsides. He laughed and said ‘take all ya want’. I move them all by hand, and am ecologically sensitive to anything I do. There are some beautiful rocks that I left because they had ant colonies, or spider nests, or small animals or other creatures, living under them. Or they were situated in a sensitive spot, where moving them might have caused damage. I usually go to a spot which has already been heavily machine-excavated by the farmer, and there are piles of large rocks everywhere. Anyway, while searching through those piles, I found a cool sandstone conglomerate that had some great, convoluted erosion patterns. I didn’t want to carry it back as I hiked upward, so I left it there, and sort of decided I most likely will forget about it by the time summer rolls around. We’ll see. So by writing this I may be able to remember it. How’s that for an ulterior motive? Later in the day, it took me longer than usual to climb up to the top of the foothills, through this rocky ravine and once up there on the plateau, I saw a large herd of mule deer grazing, forty or so animals, so I ducked back down along the ridge line, out of their line of sight, as to not scare or disturb them. I was getting tired so I hiked back down through the old Junipers again and noticed a huge tree had blown down in the recent wind storm, with some gusts close to 70mph. I was sad looking at that giant soul, but realized it may provide shelter now for a lot of birds and animals. On the way home I saw several bald eagles perched high up in the old cottonwoods along the river. They stop there as it is along their migration route. I was concerned because the water is way down in the river. Places where, in the spring I could not cross because the water was deep and swift, now I could skip across without hardly getting wet. A lot of my adventures now, are about me, making peace with, and accepting the fact that I live here amidst these rugged, arid mountains in relative solitude. I did not grow up here. I often daydream about living out the rest of my days now as an old man, in a small hamlet I was fond of, back where I grew up, while also being cognizant of the fact that this is most likely where I will die. So I make the best of it, not really dwelling on that truth too much. Thanks for dropping by, Mark

So Fearfully Human

Hey. I am a late bloomer musically. Initially I started on acoustic guitar, then within the last 4 years: Banjo, slide guitar, dobro, harmonica and singing.  Most of my songs are rough, unpolished, unpracticed, recordings made on an old laptop. Thank you for the love and support, the insights and ideas, the camaraderie and fellowship, Lammbone

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