Written as part of a song-writer's timed contest called a "Skirmish" where we had to write record and publish online a full length song in 1 hour. The prompt was the title "We've only Just Begun".Being a student of astronomy and a biblical scholar, I chose to write a fanciful version of the Creation Story.  # Judeo-Christian # Biblical   #Creation

We've Only Just Begun

We live in a rustbelt steel-making town in Western Pennsylvania where there are lots of unemployed steel-workers and coal-miners. Theere lots of povert dilapidated housing stock, crime, drugs and wonderful people who love their town and will not leave. it. I wrote the lyrics and a version of tune written many years ago by an old coal miner. My label is securing me a cover liscense just in case and it will be released sometime in March

OldHenrysSantaClausWAV3

"Gaza" is a the silent lament of a homeless civilian in Gaza who has lost home and family members in the aftermath of the current war - hungry, thirsty, sick cold sleeping in the wreckage of burnt out abandonned buildings. A prayer for help to a silent God and a world which seems to have no mercy and seems to have lost it's moral compass

Gaza

Who are you, today?  In order to see your self clearly as others see you, you must check out your reflection in a mirror.  Everyday is different!  Sometimes we're happy and sometimes we're sad.  Sometimes we're grumpy and sometimes we're glad. Some days we look good, other days, BAD. Our best days are when we look happy, glad and good.  That's the way we want to look every day if possible.  Listen to this bouncy little song and learn.......

Lookin' in a Mirror

Life is like a chess game.  There are the initial moves, middle game and end game. Just as each move in a game of chess is important.  Each step, in the game of life has consequences.  The present moment is the culmination of a lot of past moments and will lead to a lot of future moments. The object is to live in the present but don't forget where you are coming from and where you hope to be going.  Each step is important...... Carpe Diem!

Chess Game of Life

Santa Claus has got a problem.  The ice at the North Pole is shrinking fast and will soon be gone.  If he has no workshop, how will his elves be able to build all the toys they must deliver every Christmas Eve.  Is Santa Claus gonna have to close up shop and slink away into our memories of Christmas' past.Maybe he'll have to move to the South Pole...or better yet mankind can wake up and do something to stop the climate from changing. We should put that on our wish list for Santa next year!  The Lyrics for this song  were written by me but the tune is familiar. My label is in the process of securing a cover license for the tune before it is released  sometime in March 2024

Santa's Problem

Our young family was a super-active  roly-poly, snuggaly-huggaly bunch.  The lyrics of this song  were written my wife, Joy,  when we only had three kids.Theo is not pictured here ,Vicky wasn't born yet and Gramma hadn't yet passed. I added the chorus and turned it into a song. We are hoping to turn much of Joy's poetry written at this time of our family life into song and perhaps even create an album of her work

Snuggaly Huggaly

This song was written as a Songwriters challenge . Took me on hour to write it.  I spent one year in Vietnam and 11 years in Canada.  In both places we made a lot of friends and gained much self knowledge.  This song is a "Thank You Note" to the people of these two wonderful countries who taught me so much about myself and their worlds..

Thank You Vietnam and Canada

Our song Theodore was adventurous. He had a rusty little bike on which he would occasionally venture forth in search of life. He had a lot of fun and usually came back dirty, and tired.  My wife Joy wrote a poem about Theo and his bike which I made into a song.

Theodore's Bike

When I was a kid I had an imaginary friend by the name of "Honker".  My son, Mike never had an imaginary friend but he sure liked bugs.  We got him a little t-shirt that said "I love bugs and hugs". He could sit and watch them for hours. He used all that knowledge which bugs taught him when he went on to study biology and become a physician who helped kids recover from  bug-borne-diseases. Long ago my wife, Joy, wrote a poem about this special relationship. I put it to music and voila:  a song  - "Bug and I"

Bug and I

We lived in Alberta, Canada for 11 years.  Made a lot of wonderful friends up there. After we returned to the States, my wife, Joy, was in culture shock grieving the loss of so many deep friendships, gorgeous pristine mountain wildernesses where we used to roam wild animals we see daily. She wrote a poem about her old home - Alberta - which I made into a song many years later.  This is her song.

Alberta's On My Mind

"Earth Without Man" is a FAWM 2024 collaboration with Carroll doing the lyrics).  It predicates one final war in which wipes the last vestiges of mankind off the earth.  After many centuries Earth is restored to it's original pristine state of beauty and health. This is not a hope but a fear if we cannot find an alternative to war for settling our differences

Earth Without Man (Lyrics Carroll)

THose 8 years we live in the Canadian Rockies near Banff, Alberta,
We would climb a mountain once a week during the hiking season taking the kids with us. We would head for the high meadows where profusions of delicate wild flowers grew. We would hike long distances sometimes carrying the kids on our backs some times making them walk while telling them stories. When we stoped for a rest, they would often fall asleep in our laps aamidst the flowers. Joy wrote this poem about that. I made it into a song

Mountain Meadow

This is a FAWM 2024 collaboration between myself and "Kahlo" who wrote the perfect lyric set. Kahlo is a super-productive and talented lyricist and I consider myself blessed to be able to perform one of her exquisite and quintessential lyric sets. The melody and harmony I created actually seems to fit these lyrics well although I'm sure the lyrics could accomodate many genres other than folk

Quintessential Quirkiness

This is a children's song.  When our kids wee little, my wif. Joy., did an Indepent suudy on Children's literature during which time she wrote most of this little poem. I added verse and turned it into a song As kids we chased lightening bugs around a big honeysuckle bus in the dark, and put them into jars with with air holes punched in their lids. . Our prents made us let them go before bedtime.  Country kids still do this,  studying the bugs carefully and wondering at their mysterious adaption

Twinkle Twinkle Lightening Bug

My wife,Joy wrote a lot of poems about my kids when they were young. I took her poem "Theodore Had A Transformer" added a couple of verses and made it into a song. Theo, pictured  here with his big brother Mike, is now the father of 4 beautiful kids to whom is modeling and teaching the fine art of improvisational inventing - solving problems by creating solutions often out of whatever happens to be available

Theodore Had a Transformer

The "old Man Riddle" song is based on a children's poem written by my wife, Joy, which was part of Wooster independent study on childrens literature.  Kids like riddles and I have written several riddel songs. The answer to this riddle is incorporated into the song itself

Old Man Riddle

"Bust Up Bad Luck" is the result a FAWM 2024  Skirmish using the Prompt "Luck". It was written ,recorded and published in approximately 1 hour. . There are many ways to understand and describe. "LUCK". There were over 30 songwriters who wrote a vast array of songs about luck. This was just onetake.  My take

It's My Lucky Day

This is my first attempt at  Singing the Blues. We have a lot of Dandylions on our lawn.  Every year I dig them at the roots but everyyear they come back. My wife. Joy wrote a poem about them that is very Zen. We have learned to respect them. They are just being themselves. They seem to be industructible. Maybe humanity on earth is the same?   Maybe not!  I am singing the blues

Dandylion Blues

"Dandilyon World" is a expanded version of my wife's dandylion poem wth a little harmonica added.There are a lot of different ways to put a lyric set to music

Dandylyon World

"The Mound" is a silly tongue twisting ever expanding childrens poem  which Joy wrote for Childrens Literature Independent Study. I converted it to a simple fun song which some children might like to learn(if they had nothing beter to do than master a long tongue twister). It s about the crazy adventures of a brother sister team having a wrastliong match with a gown she is trying to make.

The Mound

My wife and I were Scout leaders once.  Both did a lot of camping and both of us had adventures with our scouts in the fog. This little song based on a poem my wife wrote 4o years ago ois about adventures in the fog.  It was  created in one hour as part of a FAWM2024 skirmish. Therefore the track is a little rough.

This song, "To Old Canada" is a FAWM 2024 collaboration between talented lyricist, Cindy Prince and myself.  She wrote the lyrics, I wrote the music. My wife and I lived 12 years in Canada.  Doing graduate work in British Columbia and living on the prairees and in the mountains of Alberta. Our children were born there and we made many friends there.  Although we live in the USA we are very much at home in Canada. This song is a tribute to Canada and Canadians

To Old Canada

What would life be like after WWlll. Would humankind self-destruct? Would  there be any life lieft on Eart?  This song presents one scenario in answer to those questions. "Earth Without Man" is a FAWM2024 collaboration between lyricist Carroll and myself. The scenario he predicates is positive for earth but not for man. Wwhat do you think humankinds future will look like\?

Earth Without Man

This song is for the Christian Community - whether Roman Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant - to practice their faith as appropriate during the Easter Season.  It is also a teaching song for children about different traditions within the faith community, like coloring pysanki eggs, joining a cross-walk or attending mass

Must Be Easter Jesus

This is a song for the Christian Faith Community especially the children. Like other faith traditions, The Christian Faith is ancient and diverse. As there are are many roads to Rome, so also there are many ways to celebrate Easter. Some of them are listed in this little children's song

Easter Is The Season of Jesus

Easter comes at about the same time as spring.  In many ways it is a celebration of the new life that spring brings.  The long  dark cold days of winter are on their way out the back door as the sunny happy days of spring burst  through the front door with the rebirth of nature.  This song is all about that

Easter Day Will Soon Be Here

Our world is a very busy place. We humans are so busy building monuments to the gods of this age that we sometimes fail to simply relax and look around us at the man-made worlds we have created and the the world of nature in which our creations are slowly taking up more and more space. Sometimes it is good to look within ourselves and beyond ourselves at what was here before we arrived and ponder our purpose here.

Turn Your Eyes Toward God

The Christian concept of "resurrection" is implicit in the yin and yang of the seasons. As winter wanders off, spring  pops up and as the dark days recede, the sun's light reaches into more and more of the dark corners of our world. Everything is in a state of constant change. Summer becomes fall which inturn becomes winter and then it's SPRING again! This dynamic little  song captures the essence of that concept  

Resurrection

We lived in Alberta, Canada for 12 glorious years. The skies were fabulous - mostly perfectly blue and sunny, star-filled at night with gorgeous sunsets.  The air was clear and clean. The snow-covered mountains gleamed in the distance. It was a close to heaven as we had yet come.  This song was written then,  about what we found in alberta 

Sing a Song of Blue Skies

Our generation stands on the shoulders on countless numbers of generations of our ancestors who created and handed down to us the civilization we now enjoy.  It is our job to perfect it and to hand it down to the next generation. With God's help we will perfect this legacy until it leades us out into the stars and beyond. Only with God's help will we be enable to accomplish this daunting task. This song is about that. destiny

Carry That Load

Each of us are links in a chain that reaches farther back in the past than we can imagine and hopefully will continue far into the future. As parents we eagerly awaited the birth of each child, knowing that each would be special and unique.  We place great hopes in each of our children., trusting that they would keep the family chain strong and would provide  strong found ation for the generations which would follow them.  Jenny was one of our children.

Jenny, Jenny I See You

Our world is getting more complicated.  We need to get to know each other better and learn to work. Music is one way we can talk to each other and learn from each other. "Take My Hand" is a song about making that happen .

Take My Hand

I started writing songs after I returned from Vietnam.  I had played the piano earlier in my life and developed a clear ear for harmonics.  This was further refined when I studied music at Bowdoin College where I was a member of the glee club, chancel choir and a close harmony singing group called the Bachelors.  While in this group, I picked up the guitar, wrote some new arrangements of existing songs and did a little solo work.
After Vietnam with this same guitar, I began writing songs as a form of PTSD therapy. Got so active in the anti-war movement  while in theolgy school, that my wife and I fled  to Canada where we pastored among the farmers and native people of Alberta and British Columbia.  I continued writing songs about  my experiences in those worlds  while raising my family.   After protecting those songs under copyright at the Library of Congress, I made up some demos and caught a bus to NYC where I tried to peddle my music with some high-powered citified record agents.  I didn't get any bites and got discouraged  when they told me to go to Nashville.  I didn't have the time or the money back then to follow up on that advice, so I sat on those songs for years.   Now in retirement, I've finally gone to Nashville in the hopes of getting my music out into the ears, minds and hearts of a whole different generation of young people.  Remembering the advice of a close friend - "With God's help, all things are possible". I decided.....Why not?

Bill Thwing

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