BDSWorks newsletter categories.
Dear family, friends, and fellow travelers,
Here in Downeast Maine the season has finally turned toward summer, warmer days and nights bringing a surge of life. Sunrise is before 5 AM and a little after four, as night dissolves, bird song rises near and far. The song this cycle is So Much Can Be Observed, which I wrote last year at this time joining in as one of those voices. I hope you enjoy.
Here's a playlist of all the songs from the newsletters.
Dear family, friends, and fellow travelers,
The song this cycle is Love Will Show You the Way. Written in the early nineties and recorded by Joyful Noise - Joel Mann on bass, Bruce Cassaday on trumpet, Leonore Hidebrandt on percussion and me on guitar.
Here's a playlist of all the songs from the newsletters.
Dear family, friends, and fellow travelers,
The song this cycle is Spring Returns. Here in the eastern corner of Maine, spring is slow to release winter's grip - but now, just now, it's beginning to pop in all its glory. Here's a song to celebrate Spring and the seasons turning.
Here's a playlist of all the songs from the newsletters.
The song this cycle is Alone, written last summer at Catie Curtis' songwriters' retreat. Our prompt was to take one of several poems and put it to music. I chose Maya Angelou's Alone and worked out the music. The recording was a draft made that morning with guitar and vocal and a piano side. The lyric seems so apt for this time when we need each other more than ever and yet are so isolated by the pandemic and our social divisions.
The song this cycle is Who Can Deny the Spring, written for the wedding of my son Jesse and his wife Lisa Sandoval. It was a co-write with Lisa who provided a lot of the insight into the themes and images.
The song this cycle is One of These Days, co-written last June with May Lily Lee, a musician and videographer in Virginia. It has been a year when the deep, festering wounds of racism and inequality have been too painful and raw to turn away from, though such turning is the long habit of White culture. The eruption of anger, rage, solidarity, sorrow, suffering has so many voices they knock on the doors of our hearts and demand an audience with our nation, a reckoning and commitment to change.
My mom died a year ago on March 10th, 2020 just as the pandemic shut things down. We were fortunate to be able to be with her in her last weeks and days - memories and music were such a part of those visits. I've been thinking quite a lot lately of how our ancestors are here with us, how we are the growing point of all who came before us. I wrote I'll See You Again this week and recorded it yesterday. May all of those we have loved and lost stay near to us.
The song this cycle is When I Was Young, written a number of years ago when we lived on Mount Desert Island. Leonore Hildebrandt and I recorded it in 2014 for our cd Something Else. She is on percussion and vocals.
The song this cycle is Round and Round, which I wrote in 2018 after the release of John Prine's The Tree of Forgiveness, his first album of original tunes since 2005. John Prine is one of my favorite song writers and Round and Round came to me as a sort of JP look-alike; it brings something of his spirit to me. John died April 7th last year - we miss him. Leonore Hildebrandt and I recorded it in 2018. She is on percussion and vocals.
The song this cycle is Into Starlight, which I wrote a few years ago. Leonore Hildebrandt and I recorded it in 2018. She is on percussion and vocals.
