Ed Makes Things

Lotta things happening today. Easter Monday. Dyngus Day. Also: BASEBALL’S OPENING DAY! Naturally, today’s post is about the latter of those three things. This was written while watching a Cubs game in April of 2006. To me, the long-suffering teams (like, say, the Cubs and Indians) are great fodder for songs like this early in a season. There’s no irony here – this tune is unabashed optimism, placed in the poppiest setting possible. Key of C Major, lotta piano, (bad) guitar solo in place of the third verse, double chorus at the end… you name the cliche, it’s probably in here. Enjoy!

Production, mixing, all instruments by me. From The Baseball Project 2. Recorded in April 2006.

Maybe This Year

It’s almost spring! The sun is out! The snow is… still on the ground here in Rochester. But it’s ok because there’s spring training baseball on TV! To celebrate the really nice weather and the great American summer sport, I present the first track from the first Baseball Project. I had visited my brother who was living in Austin at the beginning of April 2005, then found a game being played in Houston on TV a few weeks later. Well, what better place to start the project? I guess my goal was to make this “three acoustic guitars and a shaker” tune nice and relaxing enough that it overrides the fact that it’s in 5/4 time. I’d like to think I pulled that off.

Instruments, production, mixing by me. From The Baseball Project. Recorded in 2005.

Springtime in Texas

Today’s entry is a fairly recent addition to my personal catalog. Initially intended for a punk band that never got off the ground, this is a song that further cements the fact that I like using fiction in my lyrics. The story goes like this: Some kid named Kyle was in Captain Hook’s army. The other kids didn’t like him, so one night they glued Hook’s claw onto his head. When it wouldn’t come off, he left the army and became a “famous for the sake of famous” star, earning the nickname of “Rhino Boy.” What happens after that is another song (that hasn’t been written yet). Enjoy the demo!

All things by me. Recorded in 2009.

Rhino Boy

Since spring training is underway, I suppose it’s time to delve into the baseball-themed archives. The Baseball Projects took place once a month during the season (April through October), with two extra tunes (All-Star Break, World Series) to bring up the track count to nine (highly appropriate for baseball). This tune – written when it was really nice out in May, which can be a bit of an anomaly for Rochester, New York – allowed me to experiment with two new things. Those things were a guitar toy (the melody/solo is played with a slide) and a common tuning that I had never tried before (Open-D tuning. Low to high: D A D F# A D). The results were better than I initially expected and I’m happy to share them.

Guitars, production by me. From The Baseball Project 2. Recorded in 2006.

Who Cares About The Game? It’s Nice Out!

Spring training is here! Finally! If you don’t follow baseball, pitchers and catchers report starting today to get ready for the upcoming season. So to celebrate, here’s a tune from one of my baseball projects… that just happens to be about a catcher! A little backstory: The catcher in question has a glorious fu manchu mustache and he was playing in Philadelphia a few years ago. That season, he was traded to New York, meaning the ‘stache had to go (mustache aficionados may or may not have been weeping openly). The next season, my buddy Mike and I were talking about that at a minor-league game when we realized… “Hey! There he is!” He was playing for Toronto’s top farm team and the ‘stache was back! The chorus was written when I returned home from the game and the rest of the song was written the next day.

Me on everything. From The Baseball Project 3. Recorded in 2007.

The Man With The ‘Stache

A musician joke:

Q: What’s the last thing a drummer says before he gets kicked out of a band?

A: “Hey, how about trying one of my songs?”

What does that joke have to do with today’s post? Simple – I survived it! I pitched this song to the guys in Smock… and they accepted it! Not only that, but we routinely play it live AND it made the cut for the band’s full length album! What you find here is the demo I made for the rest of the band. It’s slightly on the rough side, but that’s to be expected, really. The subject matter is simple – the first verse is about having a sugar high, the rest of the song is about having a sugar hangover. When I play the song by myself, I change the holiday in the bridge, depending on where we are in the calendar.

blah blah everything by me

Overload! Overload!!

Back to the metal. Today’s selection is a hearty little number from the ITH project. The tune’s odd title has a fairly simple story behind it. One song written for the album just wasn’t coming together, but I still wanted a certain track number. So, to fill that newly made gap, I wrote this tune in a matter of hours and worked it into the track list. After that, the title of “Suitable Replacement” seemed only appropriate. The riff at the end of the song is one of my favorites from the whole project, too… The voice is weird ’cause I was still trying to do a Max Cavalera sorta thing. I abandoned that idea a few years later.

Production, mixing, all instruments by me. Recorded in 2005.

Suitable Replacement

We’ll call this one “Overtime” from Football Week. Early on in the first Football Project, I recorded a track called “Six and Five” (which I imagine I’ll post soon). Six and Five, naturally, were the time signatures used in the tune, but the instrumentation was more noteworthy: Three basses and a shaker. I really liked how the idea turned out the first time, so I’ve tried it a few times since then. This track, found near the end of the second Football Project, was my second attempt.

Production, mixing, instruments by me. From The Football Project 2. Recorded in 2005.

Last Week Of What Has Been A Fun Season