The wind chimes have been bouncing a lot lately — it’s been windy, and that melodious tunelessness has been a constant companion out here not far from the waters of Green Bay.
The other day I looked out the window and saw a cardinal riding a narrow tree branch in the wind. The splash of red is always startling and welcome against the gray of winter. And this has been an especially gray winter with little snow cover. It’s been warm enough that we’ve had rain more than snow this winter … so far.
I’m certainly not planting tomatoes anytime soon.
I mentioned the other day that I’m working on a new book. I’ve also been picking up the guitar recently, and I’ve been thinking of my little hobby of making albums for myself. There are 20 little collections on CD and hard drive lying about the house, dating back to 1973. Before they were digitized, they were recorded on C-45 and C-30 cassettes, because record albums were 30 to 45 minutes long and I was making believe I was a recording artist, don’t you know.
And as you might guess from the illustration, I have chosen a name for my 21st album, which will be my first new recording of this nature since 2010 if I complete it. I have even written a song with that name — “New Dog, Old Tricks.” The title acknowledges that it has been so many years since I last played music regularly that it’s like starting over from scratch — I may have a new puppy, but to accompany myself I must rely on the tricks I used when I first learned to play, and I’ll save more advanced tricks for my 22nd album.
If I were to declare that this new album will have 10 songs, I conceivably am just two songs away from having a serviceable track list to record. I have four new songs, two songs I wrote in 1985 and would like to finally record, and at least two covers that I think go well with the other six songs. I don’t want to be in too much of a hurry, but I also don’t want to wait until my enthusiasm for the project fades.
The second-guessing has begun big time, and so I should probably get down to business soon. The second-guessing sounds like this: Are 10 two- or three-minute songs enough to comprise a full album, or should I wait until I have 12 or 14 songs? What happened to the thought I had a few months ago, to write 25, 50 or 100 new songs and pick the best ones for the album?
After ignoring my musical nudges for 14 years, I think I’m just anxious to get something down and leave the more grandiose ideas for the second/22nd project.
And then there’s the obvious question — how widely will I share this stuff? Most of these albums have only been heard by a handful of people or two. By writing about this in this place, am I raising enough curiosity that my handful of readers will wish to hear the new music? Or are you reading this and thinking, oh, gosh, no, please don’t inflict your melodies on the world — or worse, are you thinking, “I don’t care”?
I’m at that stage where it’s fun to be creating and I’ll figure out what to do with the creations later. Time enough later for second guesses and “what do I do with all this.”
2 thoughts on “My next album”