CD Baby has traditionally been a place to purchase CDs from - but you had to go elsewhere to download and MP3 version of the album. Well now you can get my new CD, Tallulah Lake, as an MP3 album directly from CD Baby!
These are very high-res versions: 200 kbps (VBR) as opposed to other places that are low as 128 kbps. That means the sound is much closer to that of the actual CD. PLUS...you can play these MP3's on any MP3 player you own. Also, there is no DRM - that is, Digital Rights Management - encoded, and that can be very annoying!
In addition, JPG images of the cover artwork and a text file full of the liner notes are included. That's pretty cool! Check out their page of MP3 Download info here: http://cdbaby.com/mp3.
So swing on over to my CD Page and check out Tallulah Lake. The CD is on sale for $12.99 and the complete MP3 album is only $9.99. Download the album immediately for your dining and dancing pleasure!
Beatles-A-Rama (http://www.beatlesarama.com) is an Internet radio show that plays, well, Beatles music. They also play music by other artists that have a "Beatles" sound...like me!
They (Pat Matthews, Beatles-A-Rama owner)) has chosen 3 tracks from my CD, Tallulah Lake to include on his show. The tracks he has selected are: "I Think of You", "You're Not Alone", and "Let Me In".
We did it! Thanks to your support, my song "I Think of You" has reached Number One on the Indie charts (as a sub-genre of the Alternative category) at Soundclick.com. That's out of 22,566 songs in that category!
On the Alternative charts the song has moved up to Number 7! So we're still pushing to get that to Number 1 also.
My song, "I Think of You" is still moving up in the Soundclick.com charts. Slowly. It has reached number 2 in the Indie charts and number 9 (number 9...number 9...) in the Alternative charts.
My goal is for it to reach Number One in both charts! And to help me reach that goal all you have to do is "listen" to the song on the Soundclick pages. Here are the links:
There are books dedicated to the subject of misunderstood lyrics. You think you hear the singer saying one thing when in fact something else entirely was said. As a case in point, in the song "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, the lyric:
"...there's a bad moon on the rise"
has so often been heard as:
"...there's a bathroom on the right"
that singer John Fogerty now sings it that way!
I received an email recently from a friend who said he heard my lyrics incorrectly. In the song "A Simpler Life" the lyrics are:
"I wish I was living a simpler life I wish I was living like a caveman and his wife"
But what my friend heard was:
"...I wish I was living like a gay man and his wife"
Hmmm. That's pretty funny. Now I can't get that version of the lyrics out of my head. So I'll probably be singing that version in the future without even thinking about it!
"I Think Of You" is the opening track on my CD, Tallulah Lake. This is the song that really started the whole album project. I began writing the song in 2004 during a time when my personal life was taking a major turn. I was discovering love all over again.
This is the song in which I hear over and over again that "it sounds like John Lennon!". It never sounded that way to me. What I heard was George Harrison. That was for two reasons. First, I play slide guitar. I love the sound George gets and have always tried to emulate his sound. So whenever I play a guitar solo I tend to gravitate torwards playing with a slide.
But the other reason the song felt so "George" influenced to me was the inclusion of the diminished chord in the verses. The second chord is a D-diminished which George used quite often (diminished chords in general - not just D-diminished!). What does that all mean? It just means that it sounds like a George Harrison-style song. The diminished chord is not used often in modern pop songs. But go back to the days of Gershwin and Porter and you'd hear them used more often.
To be honest, when I was first writing the song - just me playing acoustic guitar and singing - I wasn't too enthusiastic about it. It just didn't sound like anything I wanted anyone to hear. But as I began to lay down all the other instruments, the guitar solo, the background vocals, it suddenly began to sound like a song.
I put the song aside for a while. I went on to other songs. By the time I had a half dozen songs I decided to create a MySpace page and post a few songs to test the waters. The difference here is that I had decided that these songs were for me - no one else. I liked them. If anyone else liked them - then great! If not, that's okay, too.
But people started responding positively to my music and that really surprised me. I kept getting questions like "where can I get your CD" (I didn't have one), and "when will you be touring in Vermont?" (where's Vermont?). These were tough questions. So while I answered the first question (I released the CD in August on CDBaby), I haven't figured out exactly where Vermont is. But that doesn't mean that I won't be there in the near future!
Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to move forward with my songs. I get a lot of joy out of songwriting and I'm thrilled when I hear that my music affects someone in a positive way.
