This week is song number six which means I’m halfway through this songwriting challenge. The song was recorded in the Bow River valley in southern Alberta near a small town called Rolling Hills. I spent my days working on my brother’s farm last week and spent most my time either in the tractor or in bed sleeping. By Sunday morning I still had not had a chance to sit down and do any writing so I decided to revisit some lyrics I’d written a few weeks earlier. Sunday turned out to be a relaxing day with little work so I finished the song, and just before sunset we drove down to the river valley to record it.

This week I am writing all the way from the open prairies of Southern Alberta.  For the next two weeks I will be spending my days here working to get the crops in the ground on my Brothers' farm. Today the hard work began right away as we started seeding potatoes, already I am enjoying the satisfaction of a days hard work and the memories that it brings.  It has been years since i've spent any significant time in what my childhood mostly consisted of, and there is this peace and serenity to the large open spaces and the void of city traffic and busy streets.  These places are always great for allowing all my thoughts to decompress, and always end with good inspiration, hopefully it will lead to some good songwriting. 
On saturday night I took the flight from Victoria to Calgary, and had a song already written earlier that week.  But I was not really happy with it, nor was it quite finished.  So on the plane I decided it would be a great time to write...  There was a bit of self consciousness to get over because of the close proximity of newly acquired travel companions sitting to either side of me. (yes, i got stuck in the middle seat).  But regardless I decided to ignore the thought that they could be looking over my shoulder reading my every thought, and pulled out my notepad to start writing.  Anything that came to mind.  That night I stayed with a friend and just hung out to catch up on each others lives, and on sunday morning I had the chance to pull out the guitar and work on some melodies.  Things quickly pulled together and some of the words from previous nights writing fit into place.  Later that afternoon I had a short visit with my good friend Nicolai Drost, who just so happens to be a great drummer and percussionist.  When I asked him if he wanted to play my new song with me somewhere on a street in downtown Calgary, he did as I expected and was super excited about it, so to the streets we went.  Just in time my brother came to the city (to pick me up) and he filled the role of camera-man.  This week's song is called "Dance Like Fools", as always enjoy and let me know what you think!
(PS; forgive me for not remembering the words, I had just written them the night before and didn't quite rehearse enough..)

Last week I had the wonderful pleasure of spending another week out on one of the SALTS ships and enjoying some sailing.  For those of you who don't know my wife is a skipper on the schooner called the 'Pacific Swift'.  And SALTS is a sail training program that takes on 27-30 new teens each week (per boat), kind of like a summer camp.  So I had the chance to come out and be a watch officer, kind of like a camp leader, and just hang out with kids while doing cool things like sailing and climbing the rigging.  Being a musician though, I soon ended up resorting to being a minstrel during the day and singing camp fire songs at night (without the fire...).  So long as it wasn't raining and my fingers were capable of moving the despite the freezing wind, i'd be up on deck with my guitar just playing and singing whatever comes to mind.  So... this created the perfect oppertunity to do some writing.  Ironically though, last week I had a real hard time getting some good inspiration and really felt that I was forcing anything that was coming out.  whether it'd be a melody or a rhyme.  But finally, basically the friday morning before heading back to Victoria's main harbour, I pulled together this tune,and performed it right then and there for the week's trainees.  Who by the way, ended up being great supporters and inspiration to me.  As always, I want to know what you think!

Hey everyone.  Here is a song that takes me back a bit to living life on the farm.  I've always wanted to have a song with a year as a title so here it is.  This one in particular kind of started as I was doing some gardening the weekend before last, and digging my hands in the dirt really got the memories going.  During the course of last week different ideas and words and melodies were floating around in my head.  It was not until yesterday (sunday) that it all sort of fell together and I was happy with how the words and melodies worked and just the whole flow of the song.  There are a lot of arrangement ideas for this song in my head and i'd love to get working on playing it with a band.  For now this is the very basic of it, hope you like it!

This song has been in the making for the past week and a half or so.  I'm not really sure where the inspiration for this song one from, but the melody and the words of the chorus just came to me as I was playing around on my guitar. The lyrics for the verses were borrowed from some journaling written a few days earlier.  I'm finding it very helpful to write without the intention of being poetic or it being song lyrics, rather it's just journaling to get ideas out on paper.  I can later look back and look for ideas and fragments that can be incorporated into some lyrics.  Anyway, here is the result, the second song in my writing challenge: "Today".  By the way, I'm not really set on the song title, ideas???

This past week I started the challenge of writing a song per week and today will be my first post.  This particular song I wrote over this easter weekend and was inspired by an old english poem by Alexander Pope.  The poem speaks of the peace and simplicity of a simple country lifestyle and it kind of struck me how familiar it sounded to me, but at the same time there was a distant feeling of 'a life I once used to know'.  It was the inspiration of this song, a sense of longing for that kind of peace.  Have a listen, enjoy, and let me know your thoughts!