If Only

Anyone

Charlton Heston

Better Things

Big Buildings

Goner (Home Demo)

8/27/15
Today would have been my Dad's 71st birthday. 

This past Father's Day, I caught a spark of a song idea about me, him and some of the unresolved stuff buried with him a few months prior. A song seemed like a good opportunity to speak to him again. Around the same time, I became aware of an old recording someone had once made of my grandpa, my Dad's dad, playing his fiddle. Grandpa was a great, self-taught musician. My dad would say it skipped a generation. 

I was blown away hearing my Grandpa play for the first time in 20 years. I began thinking of a way to make use of these recordings in my own music. I couldn't believe it when, right out of the gate, the first 5 minutes of that recording was Grandpa ripping on his fiddle in the same key and tempo as the song I was working on about me and my Dad. As I jammed along with Grandpa for the first time, it occurred to me how much he and my Dad had left similarly unresolved when he died too.

Stretching the limit of my exceptionally amateur home recording abilities, I set about the generational mashup of McDonnell men. The result is my small tribute and "fuck you" to the beautifully complicated existence of Fathers and Sons. It probably sounds like a chaotic mess. Maybe it should. I'm prouder of the process than I am of the product. But it felt good and felt like an apt way to say it ... Happy Birthday, Dad.

Of The Father (Home Demo)

George Jones

An hour to kill

A Start

Guitarist, singer, songwriter, noisemaker. Formerly of Gold Coast Refuse, Twilight Revival and The Meanwhile. Currently looking for collaborators to bring life to new songs whether on tape, on stage or in the basement.

Brian McDonnell

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