Crimson Sky Release Party, Part 2

I have always fiddled with putting poems to music. The very first homemade album I made back in 1972 had a version of the old poem “Lord Lovel,” which probably has a real melody out there somewhere but I found it in a poetry book. Come to think of it, I have a pretty funky song using Longfellow’s “Excelsior” that I have never recorded … hmmm.

So it’s not surprising that I might borrow some lyrics from Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I did commit the sacrilege of changing “thee” to “you” throughout my adaptation of the immortal Sonnet 43. 

I arranged the words into verses on Jan. 24, and then decided on a rather standard G-Em-C-D chord progression on Jan. 25. I recorded the song on Feb. 3 and tweaked it into this form six days later. If I say so myself, I’m getting better at crafting three-part harmony.

I experimented with song order a lot before settling on the track list that appears in the released album, but “When She Smiles” always came right after “How Do I Love You.” In fact, until the very last minute these two songs opened the album. I ultimately decided the set works best if the album title is the first words you hear.

I wrote “When She Smiles” Jan. 14 and 15, and the song is unabashedly about my sweetheart, Mary. I had the rhythm first even before the melody or the words — my mind was hearkening back to Jimmy Gilmer’s 1962 song “Sugar Shack” — “There’s a crazy little shack beyond the tracks, and everybody calls it the Sugar Shack” — when I wrote, “There’s a cute little mama living down the street, and let me tell you, buddy, she is kind of sweet.” 

(Yikes, now that I listen side-by-side, I wonder if I need to add K. McCormack and F. Voss to the writing credits. Is this how George Harrison felt when he gave another listen to “He’s So Fine”?)

This is not hyperbole: Sometimes when Mary smiles, my heart melts. She has that effect on me. I put “How Do I Love Thee” to music about a week after writing “When She Smiles” specifically thinking Browning’s poem would make a good introduction to my sweet little mama.

Here’s a link to clips from Crimson Sky on New Year’s Morn with further links to your favorite streaming services, or you can just go to Spotify or Apple Music or YouTube, or wherever you usually stream music, and do a search for “Bluhm Crimson Sky” — and thanks for listening! 

Find the Fun

Reaching into your heart and mind and pulling out art should not be a chore. If you are agonizing over it, you’re missing something — unless it’s a fun agony, like the agony of challenging your brain to pull out the answer in a trivia contest: “Oh, I know this one! I’m sure I do! It’s right at the tip of my brain.”

The other day I sat down and a poem spilled onto the page in a four-minute burst. That was fun! Over the past week or so, I have filled my journal with page after page of thoughts and random scenes — it has been fun, the words and I playing with each other.

I love how words can make you laugh, cry, and realize great truths, if assembled in the proper order. One of those “career aptitude tests” I took as an emerging adult concluded I might enjoy architecture, and word-smithing is a kind of architecture — building a story from the ground up, pouring the foundation, and creating a structure that stands the test of time.

There’s an oft-quoted saying, “When you find what you love, you won’t work a day in your life.” Well, that’s not true — everything involves work. I worked pretty hard the other day trying to whip the garden into shape, and there are days and sometimes whole seasons when I really have to make an effort to get the right words out.

The saying only, um, works if by “work” you mean something you really don’t want to do, but you have to do it to put food on the table and a roof over your head. Work that you love is still work, but it’s fun, it gives you a sense of accomplishment; you work every day but you enjoy it. It’s not “you won’t work a day in your life” as much as “if you had a choice, you’d be doing this work anyway.”

Find the Fun — find what you love — and watch the words or the melodies or the images or the sculptures or the landscapes come pouring out of your mind. The agony and the ecstasy of making art — come on, it’s fun, if you’re doing it right.

Maybe that’s why sourpusses scoff at artists who are trying to make a living at it — “That ain’t workin’” because work is not supposed to be fun. Sez who?

Crimson Sky Release Party, Part 1

My album Crimson Sky on New Year’s Morn is now available on all of the usual music streaming services for your listening and downloading pleasure. Just go to Spotify or Apple Music or YouTube or wherever you usually stream, music and do a search for “Bluhm Crimson Sky” — remember that’s B-L-U-H-M — and if everything works the way it’s supposed to, the album will pop up.

Over the next two or three weeks, my plan is to share, one song at a time, the 12 songs that I wrote and recorded in the first couple of months of 2026 with the help of the handy-dandy GarageBand app on my MacBook Air laptop.

And it all literally begins with a crimson sky on New Year’s morning. 

I picked up my guitar on the morning of Jan. 1 and glanced out the front window of my house, which faces east. The sunrise was a brilliant red, calling to mind the old aphorism about red skies and sailors.

I grabbed my pencil and wrote, “Crimson sky on New Year’s morn, Old sailors take it as a warning; Crimson sky on New Year’s night, Sailors ready for delight.”

That seemed like a good start, so I lifted the guitar again. I decided to try starting the song with a more exotic chord than your plain vanilla C or D or G, so I droned out an Asus2 (A-suspended-2), which has a strange, lovely sound made by pressing just two strings side by side (four strings on the 12-string guitar).

I called out the lyrics I’d just written, and my mind seemed to say the moment called for a rather standard transition to G, then D, and back to Asus2..

Somewhat to my surprise, the next words that I sang sprang from the Old Testament book of Joshua.

“As for me and my house, we’re gonna serve the Lord.”

A short time later, I had a composition of eight verses that have not changed much since then, my first new song of the new year. And the adventure was on.

And that’s the first song from Crimson Sky on New Year’s Morn. The link will send you to clips from all 12 songs and further links to your favorite streaming services, or you can just go to Spotify or Apple Music or YouTube, or wherever you usually stream music, and do a search for “Bluhm Crimson Sky” — and thanks for listening!