"Rachel's Return"
©2015 Mark Simos/Devachan Music (BMI). All Rights Reserved.

For Rachel Siegel. Rachel is a former songwriting student of mine, just graduated from Berklee, who was recently in a serious accident. This tune goes out to her as an expression of the wide community of loving support she has from family, friends, and her fellow artists.

Rachel's Return

"Dilly's Waltz" ©2018 Mark Simos/Devachan Music (BMI). All rights reserved.

I composed this waltz in memory of the late Bill ("Dilly") Dillof, a good friend and esteemed musician of the old-time music community. It is dedicated to Bill and Paula Bradley, his wife.

This recording was made  Monday, 8/13/18, with myself (Mark Simos) on fiddle and Patrice Jackson-Tilghman on cello. The recording was made at Notable Productions, in Watertown MA, Dan Cantor engineer.

The tune came to mind the morning after I heard the sad news of Bill's passing. I wanted to add a second line, and drew on lessons I'd learned in my counterpoint studies over the summer, for which I thank my friend and mentor Allen LeVines.

Any musician friends of Bill and Paula who would like the "dots" to this piece are welcome to contact me at msimos@berklee.edu. Thanks for listening!

Dilly's Waltz

Hello, folks - my pal Brendan Doyle, banjoist of the Cliffhangers and fellow holder-forth on the Clifftop Notes records, has requested that I post a track or two from that erstwhile triptychal project. So - as our country faces the great Fiscal Cliffhanger, I can't think of a more appropriate tune to share than "Cliffhanger" itself - the final track on my (temporarily unavailable) Clifftop Notes Vol. 1 - a fiddle tune in the key of A in which an A chord is never played... Enjoy!

The Cliffhangers is: yours truly on fiddle and tunesmithery, Brendan Doyle on banjo, Jody Platt on mystery tenor-baritone-guitaruke (now the luthierically beautiful TenorTones), Karen Falkowski on bass, Rusty Neithammer on guitar; and special guest Edwin Wilson on uke. (The A chord comes on a secret track later.)

Cliffhanger

Written in 2005 at Clifftop, when we were working up all the material for the Clifftop Notes Trilogy. The title comes from Rich Hartness and refers to the sound of the birds when you realize that - once again - you have played till dawn. The discriminating listener will know how to replace the lexicographic stand-ins for expletives delivered with fond and bucolic irreverence tempered of course gentle regard for all avian songsters. (The photo is from 2015, when the Onlies finally met Rich Hartness - at midnight noon of course! In the photo is Rich Hartness, Sami Braman, and Brendan Doyle (banjo). Captured with the pre-dawn tweedleee-tweet filter.)

Tweedlee Tweet
©2005 Mark Simos/Devachan Music (BMI)
Written Summer 2005, Clifftop 

Oh as I watch the sun come up
Tweedlee tweet
Tweedlee tweedlee tweet
There’s no more whiskey in my coffee cup
Tweedlee (tweedlie)
Tweedlee tweedlee (**&^%^&%ing) tweet

There’s no more whiskey, that’s right
Because we drank it all last night

We drank it all and we played our tunes
Now my head’s the size of a balloon

A balloon that floats up to the sky
But stops and pops when it gets too high

And the little pieces they flutter down
But my mind keeps floating heaven bound

I’m heaven bound and I’m earthly shod
Now I’m underdone and I’m overawed

I’m odd and even, I’m leavin’, I’m gone
I stayed up again till dawn

Oh, I wish I’d look before I leap
Oh, I wish that I had got some sleep

Oh, I wish that I could find the words
But who can think with these god damn birds
Singing tweedlee tweedlee
Tweedlee tweedlee tweet

Tweedlee tweedlee
Tweedlee tweedlee tweet

Tweedlee Tweet

Fiddle tune composed at Clifftop in Summer 2007, recorded with the Cliffhangers at Babcock State Park by the late and sorely missed "Chubby Dragon" hisself, Ray Alden. One of three tunes written that summer in the unusual fiddle tuning: (low to high) ADGD, with the interval pattern 4th-4th-5th. This tune is a "Stealing Fire" homage to the traditional song "Handsome Molly." There are words.

©2007 Mark Simos/Devachan Music (BMI). All Rights Reserved.

Waiting for Molly

Fiddle tune composed at Clifftop in Summer 2007, recorded with the Cliffhangers at Babcock State Park by the late and sorely missed "Chubby Dragon" hisself, Ray Alden. One of three tunes written that summer in the unusual fiddle tuning: (low to high) ADGD, with the interval pattern 4th-4th-5th. This tune was titled at the suggestion of Adam Rose.

Evening Primrose

Story accompany a fiddle tune composed at Clifftop in Summer 2007, recorded with the Cliffhangers at Babcock State Park by the late and sorely missed "Chubby Dragon" hisself, Ray Alden. One of three tunes written that summer in the unusual fiddle tuning: (low to high) ADGD, with the interval pattern 4th-4th-5th. As the story makes clear, the title of this tune comes from John Herrmann.

©2007 Mark Simos/Devachan Music (BMI). All Rights Reserved.

Five Years Younger-Story

Five Years Younger

Abandon hope all ye who enter here!

Written 8 August 2007 upon my return from Clifftop and Augusta. I'd been listening to Spencer and Rain's Old Texas Fiddle Tunes Volume #2 and was very inspired. When I travel by plane I lower the tension on all the strings of my instrument - and sometimes upon arriving (or returning home) I challenge myself to write a tune in whatever is the nearest semitone approximation of that "airport" tuning. In this case I kept it microtonal. Also the winding was going on the A string which added another layer of Cage-ian aleatoric ambiguity to the undertaking. Hence the title "Weird Texas Dance Party #2." Believe it or not, this second take was done after transcribing my first attempt at the tune. This is #2 though, because there WAS a tune #1. I guarantee you you don't want to hear that one.

©2007 Mark Simos/Devachan Music (BMI). All Rights Reserved.

Weird Texas Dance Party Volume 2 - 2nd draft

Just finished a song this Mother's Day morning in memory of my mom, Bertha Simos, who passed away August 11, 1992 - almost 21 years ago now. The song describes an experience my sister and I shared a few weeks after her passing.

Bertha was a scarily organized person who also taught my sister and I great lessons about creativity. Naturally she was a bit nuts too (like us)!

I'm sharing the lyric here - but please treat it respectfully as copyrighted material. Happy Mother's Day all!

Yellow Manila Folder
©2013 Mark Simos / Devachan Music (BMI)

A few weeks after my mom died, it was August ‘92
A couple of lifetimes now and several careers ago
Looking out the window of my bedroom
In an old house shared with some friends
It sat across the Somerville Cambridge line

I’d been talking to my sister just that morning on the phone
She was back to work on her next book, out in San Francisco
I was sitting at my cluttered desk
With papers piled around
Trying to discern in that mess some grand design

When suddenly, it was like a brisk wind shook me
Pages falling into folders, folders into drawers
And an organizing fit of filing took me
Like a prisoner who finally hears the sound of opening doors

And at last each piece of scribbling found its proper place
And I found a place for every jumbled thing
And I’d swear that in the air there all around me
I could hear the rustling
Of yellow manila folder angel wings

INSTRUMENTAL 

A few days later my sister called me back
And to my surprise the same thing had just happened to her
As if some ghost amanuensis
Had taken census of our lives
To help us sift dream from drift
Great from grift, gold from manure

My sister said, I think that it’s Bertha’s soul
Come back to help like we’d never let her do when she was here
To split what must be separate
Unite what should be whole
And we both laughed, but afterward I saw it clear

And now on days when I feel buried in the details
‘Til the simple truth like a distant church-bell rings
I sit at this old oak desk with all its cubbyholes
And I can hear the rustling
Of yellow manila folder angel wings

©2013 Mark Simos / Devachan Music (BMI)

Composed in response to a "desperate" request for a waltz from Grace Forrest. I wrote her this:

I'm celebrating getting grading done
And since I promised Tatiana one
It's only fair that I write you one too
A waltz called "Forrest's Grace" writ just for you!
For it hits us chivalrous gentlemen in the gut
When we hear a gal like you say "desperate"...
So pick a key, three quality adjectives
Thou'w'lt have thy waltz as sure as Simos lives!

Grace asked for: Interesting, colorful, simple...

But before I saw that, I couldn't sleep so I wrote this one in D. It's willful, angular, and "surprisingly sure of itself as it does familiar things in slightly unfamiliar places and yet arrives where it needs to eventually". How do you like that last adjective?

Enjoy! PDF of the score is available upon request.

© 2013 Mark Simos / Devachan Music (BMI). All Rights Reserved.



Forrest's Grace (a waltz for Grace Forrest)

This SoundCloud account is for sharing the personal creative work of Mark Simos - songwriter, tunesmith, composer, accompanist, modal philosopher and currently Associate Professor (ahem ahem!) of Songwriting at Berklee College of Music. I will be setting up other SoundCloud accounts in future for various Berklee-related projects.

Mark Simos/Devachan Music

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