This is the first rough mix of a song I wrote just a few weeks ago, and the first song I've written on the banjo.

Lyrics 

Gray those eyes, are they gray those eyes,
Or are they just shades of blue?
Could I stare for a moment or two?
Just a question, though either will do.

Maybe eyes, just like ocean skies,
Color the image below.
Oh how I am longing to know,
Just how this weather will go.



May those eyes never leave my sight,
For I would be lost just to know,
That the girl who possessed them, no longer
Rests in my arms, for warmth from the cold.

She goes and throws my heart,
Into the sea.
Don't go, keep those eyes on me.

Ocean Waltz

Simple. Heartfelt. I just want to be free.

Leaving Winter

Here's a demo of a little tune written by the gifted Mark McLemore and myself (March 2013). 

@amandatkunz
@macmarklemore

End of Our Love Affair

Six months, it seems like such a long time. 
But is it enough for me to move on?
It's not as long as why you're not mine.
There's fifteen years between our hearts.

I still think one time in the middle of the night,
When you're sleeping with someone at your side,
You'll wake up and regret to find it's not me.

I wish you'd stop thinking about
All the reasons why it wouldn't work forever.
Why does it matter?
But you just keep telling me I deserve better.

But I bet once I'm in someone else's arms,
And I'm trying to let him swoon me with his charms,
I'll just think of you, see your shadows in the dark,
Wanna run right back to what we had in the start.
But I'll regret when I find that it's still not me.

This time I swear that I'll be strong.
You'll stay away from.
You'll let me move on.

Well I still think one time in the middle of the night,
You'll be sleeping with someone at your side,
You'll wake up and regret to find it's not me.

It's Not Me

Recorded by Antonio Fernandez, in his room/studio, on his awesome mic. This is a lullaby from the moon to the waves; at least that's what I pictured while I wrote it.

Tidal

Sick

Here is a super rough version of an original setting of another J. R. R. Tolkien poem someone asked me to do. Like Kortirion Among the Trees, it's incredibly long and wordy and the number of lines in each stanza changes, so it sort of stumbles in places- sorry!

'Twas in the Land of Willows where the grass is long and green—
I was fingering my harp-strings, for a wind had crept unseen
And was speaking in the tree-tops, while the voices of the reeds
Were whispering reedy whispers as the sunset touched the meads
Inland musics subtly magic that those reeds alone could weave
'Twas in the Land of Willows that once Ylmir came at eve.

In the twilight by the river on a hollow thing of shell
He made immortal music, till my heart beneath his spell
Was broken in the twilight, and the meadows faded dim
To great grey waters heaving round the rocks where sea-birds swim.

I heard them wailing round me where the black cliffs towered high
And the old primeval starlight flickered palely in the sky.
In that dim and perilous region in whose great tempestuous ways
I heard no sound of men's voices, in those eldest of the days,
I sat on the ruined margin of the deep-voiced echoing sea
Whose roaring foaming music crashed in endless cadency
On the land besieged for ever in an aeon of assaults
And torn in towers and pinnacles and caverned in great vaults;
And its arches shook with thunder and its feet were piled with shapes
Riven in old sea-warfare from those crags and sable capes.

Lo! I heard the embattled tempest roaring up behind the tide
When the trumpet of the first winds sounded, and the grey sea sang and cried
As a new white wrath woke in him, and his armies rose to war
And swept in billowed cavalry toward the walled and moveless shore.
There the windy-bannered fortress of those high and virgin coasts
Flung back the first thin feelers of the elder tidal hosts;
Flung back the restless streamers that like arms of a tentacled thing
Coiling and creeping onward did rustle and suck and cling.
Then a sigh arose and a murmuring in that stealthy-whispering van,
While, behind, the torrents gathered and the leaping billows ran,
Till the foam-haired water-horses in green rolling volumes came—-
A mad tide trampling landward—and their war-song burst to flame.

Huge heads were tossed in anger and their crests were towers of froth
And the song of the great seas were singing was a song of unplumbed wrath,
For through that giant welter Ossë's trumpets fiercely blew,
That the voices of the flood yet deeper and the High Wind louder grew;
Deep hollows hummed and fluted as they suck the sea-winds in;
Spumes and great white spoutings yelled shrilly o'er the din;
Gales blew the bitter tresses of the sea in the land's dark face
And wild airs thick with spindrift fled on a whirling race
From battle unto battle, till the power of all the seas
Gathered like one mountain about Ossë's awful knees,
And a dome of shouting water smote those dripping black facades
And its catastrophic fountains smashed in deafening cascades.

Then the immeasurable hymn of Ocean I heard as it rose and fell
To its organ whose stops were the piping of gulls and the thunderous swell;
Heard the burden of the waters and the singing of the waves
Whose voices came on for ever and went rolling to the caves,
Where an endless fugue of echoes splashed against wet stone
And arose and mingled in unison into a murmuring drone—-
'Twas a music of uttermost deepness that stirred in the profound,
And all the voices of all oceans were gathered to that sound;
'Twas Ylmir, Lord of Waters, with all-stilling hand that made
Unconquerable harmonies, that the roaring sea obeyed,
That its waters poured off and Earth heaved her glistening shoulders again
Naked up into the airs and cloudrifts and sea-going rain,
Till the suck and suck of green eddies and the slap of ripples was all
That reached to mine isléd stone, save the old unearthly call
Of sea-birds long-forgotten and the grating of ancieng wings.

Thus murmurous slumber took me mid those far-off eldest things
(In a lonely twilit region down whose old chaotic ways
I heard no sound of men's voices, in those eldest of the days
When the world reeled in the tumult as the Great Gods tore the Earth
In the darkness, in the tempest of the cycles ere our birth),
Till the tides went out, and the Wind died, and did all sea music's cease
And I woke to silent caverns and empty sands and peace.
Then the magic drifted from me and that music loosed its bands—
Far, far-off, conches calling—lo! I stood in the sweet lands,
And the meadows were about me where the weeping willows grew,
Where the long grass stirred beside me, and my feet were drenched with dew.
Only the reeds were rustling, but a mist lay on the streams
Like a sea-roke drawn far inland, like a shred of salt sea-dreams.
'Twas in the Land of Willows that I heard th' unfathomed breath
Of the Horns of Ylmir calling—and shall hear them till my death.

The Horns of Ylmir

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EPISODE #463 (X-MAS SPECTACULAR #7)

This is a song I wrote a while ago when  I had a broken hand and could only play with two fingers... Here's a better rendition of the song from my previous recording. Enjoy!

Sick

Matt Usher

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