A Brief History of "Sunday Songs"

--The "Sunday Songs" CD was recorded in the studio pictured above between December, 2007 and February, 2008. A total of 11 songs were recorded, and all were used for the CD. Two songs were previously written and demoed, and nine were new compositions.

--The CD was recorded on a Tascam DP-02 CF Portastudio, which was purchased after the above picture was taken. The songs were transferred from Compact Flash memory cards into my computer, and then edited using Audacity.

--All new songs were written on a $249.00 Yamaha acoustic guitar. Most drums came from a vintage Casiotone keyboard. Other were "borrowed" from various sample patterns from online drum machines etc. Other instruments used included an autoharp, mandolin, harmonica, MusicMan bass, and Fender, Danelectro and custom-built electric guitars. Some songs also featured shakers, hand claps, and a shoe box with a shirt draped over it that I pounded on with drumsticks.

I Don't Wanna

Finished off the record with a tune I have been kicking around for years. Knocked this out really quickly after band practice today. Wanted to get the harmonica on something, although I must admit that this is one instrument I find totally baffling for the most part. Think a lot of people look at the harmonica as being one step up from the kazoo, but try as I might, I just can't get much to come out of it that makes any sense.

Made my first CD sale already to somebody I don't even know this morning! I feel like a rockstar today or something.

Have really enjoyed this creative period of my life, but I will probably take a break for a while. I'll try to keep this site updated as often as I can, and maybe try uploading some of my older stuff from the archives that I can stand to revisit..

-The Dandy Highwayman

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Cover Photo

From a scan of one of my grandfather's fantastic slides. A picture of yours truly huddled around the General Electric Show'n Tell with his family (and cousin Marcie). Wish my dad had hung on to that pink cardigan--would be quite hip today.

Here, Try These Drugs

During my student teaching assignment, I had to write an anti-drug skit to perform with my students. One of my kids was an actor, so he got to play the part of the dealer. After each kid got up and said what they wanted to do when they grew up, the dealer said "here, try these drugs." After they tried drugs, of course, their lives were ruined and their dreams were destroyed.

Just for fun, I tried to turn that play into a song this weekend, but the only thing that really worked over the music was the tagline. Pretty sure this is the only song I have ever written with a comma in the title.

Ordered a stamp with the project name and some blank cardboard CD sleeves this weekend. Figured that was the cheapest way to "release" this collection of songs for the time being.

If you'd like a copy, just click the "Buy Now" button on the right side of the page, and you will be magically transported to PayPal. I'd love to give them away for free, but even burning them at home and printing out the inserts on my HP Officejet ends up running me a few bucks per copy. I've decided to call the CD "Sunday Songs," and also to go back to using the name The Dandy Highwaymen as my artist's alias.

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Get To Know Me!

Please head on over to Mishaps, Mayhem and Merriment and check out an interview with yours truly on songwriting, blogging, and the state of religion in the North Carolina school system.

Sunday Song

Kind of snuck this in last weekend and didn't say much about it. I really like this one. Guess this is the result of spending 4 hours last weekend watch the new Tom Petty documentary.

If you haven't seen it, I'd say it was worth your while to seek it out. Wonder how many other bands that packed themselves into a station wagon and headed out to Hollywood to seek their fame and fortune never even made the cross-country trip, let alone established themselves as one of rock's top acts for the last three-plus decades.

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Taillights

This week's song seems like a bit of a throwaway to me. I tend to write mostly mid-tempo stuff, so at least this one is much more uptempo. Since I am using pre-recorded drum machine patterns for this project, I am kind of locked in to the tempos anyway one I choose a pattern.

Was working on another song and not getting anywhere with it when this one popped out instead. Maybe I'll get back to the other one this week...

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Devil Never Even Lived

We were talking about the concept of palindromes in school this week when I came up with the idea for this one. The rain you hear in the background is a combination of four different thunderstorms playing at once.

Everything just seemed to come together on this one. I like how everything has its own space in the mix. Having some trouble with the Portastud lately, as it seems to want to freeze up now in the middle of recording a take. The only solution is to pull the plug, which wipes out everything that hasn't been saved. Had to re-do the bass and vocals on this, and now I am sufficiently paranoid enough to save everything right after it is recorded, which I guess is a good practice anyway on these types of machines.

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