Tag: poetry

Categories
Arts & Entertainment Interviews music reflections

Love Found And Lost


“Sky Blue and Black” by Jackson Browne is an emotional roller coaster looking back on the joys and sorrows of love and its lasting impact. Browne wrote the song over a four-year period and released it on his album “I’m Alive” in 1992. The source material comes from Jackson’s relationship with a famous actress. However, Browne never wants his songs to be identified with his specific life events, so he rarely speaks about his real-life relationships, especially in context with his music.

“It’s a drag to even imagine that people are thinking about [the] relationship instead of their own lives,” Jackson told the Los Angeles Times. “I think if a song is any good, eventually it’ll turn out to be about the life of the listener and not about the life of the writer. Anyway, that’s my hope.”

Here’s my cover of “Sky Blue and Black”.

Categories
artists Arts & Entertainment folk guitar music

Simple, Honest, Transparent, Beautiful


In a ten-year career tragically cut short by Leukemia, Kate Wolf wrote and performed over 200 songs. Her music is poignant, straightforward, honest, and beautiful. She performed at venues throughout her native state of California. Since her passing in 1986 at the age of 44, Kate’s audience has grown steadily as people like me discover her music. “September Song” (recorded on Kate’s 1979 album “Safe at Anchor”) is one of my favorites.

The song is replete with images. I particularly like the image conjured in the second verse illustrated below:

“The ghost of a frontier lady walks through the tall rooms/Of an old Ontario farmhouse under the full moon.”

Here’s my cover of “September Song.”

Categories
acoustic guitar artists Arts & Entertainment music

Jefferson Airplane: Comin’ Back to Me


Jefferson Airplane was one of the premiere psychedelic rock bands of the nineteen-sixties. The Airplane epitomized the subversive love and drug culture that emerged from psycho-active drugs like LSD, Marijuana, Mescaline, and Peyote. The band came to prominence in San Francisco in 1965. The original group of six, featuring lead singer Grace Slick, had a seven-year run. Later incarnations of the group lasted until 1990, but the original group spawned the songs that mattered. “Comin’ Back to Me” is one of those hits. The piece appeared on the band’s second album, Surrealistic Pillow.

The story behind “Comin’ Back to Me” goes like this. While sharing a joint of righteous Marijuana with blues guitarist and harpist Paul Butterfield, Marty Balin wrote the song in five minutes. “It just popped out,” Balin said in an interview. He immediately went to the studio to record the song with any available musicians there. Jerry Garcia happened to be one of them.

In addition to being one of the Airplane’s greatest hits, the song was covered by major recording artists like Richie Havens, and versions of it appear as background music in several Hollywood feature films.

Here’s my cover of the song.

Categories
Arts & Entertainment music relationships

“Fields of Gold”

Fields of Gold, Sting, Song, Love, Ballade, Relationships, Commitment.

Guitar,Solo,Sting,Song,Love,Ballade,Relationship,Commitment, Eva,Cassidy, Fields of Gold,

“Fields of Gold” is one of Sting’s most famous songs. It is a stunning and thoughtful track about the journey of commitment. The song first appeared on Sting’s 1993 solo album “Ten Summoner’s Tales.”

Sting wrote the track after he bought a house near a barley field. The sunsets and the colors of the field helped inspire the lyrics, along with Sting’s love for Trudie Styler, who he married in 1992.

“Fields of Gold” can be seen as a fulfilling romance from beginning to end. It is about courtship, marriage, and finally, death.

The romance of the couple in the song is so strong that even the sky and “its jealous sun” are envious of the relationship.

Before the male narrator dies, he tells his lover that she will never forget him and the time they shared. They will always walk and lie together in golden fields of sun drenched barley.

Here is my version of the song played with Eva Cassidy‘s guitar technique.

Loving Couple Laying Down After A Picnic In An Open Field

“The heart is always the place to go. Go home into your heart, where there is warmth, appreciation, gratitude and contentment.”

AYYA KHEMA

Categories
folk music music Videos

Love In An Open Field


“Lay me Down Easy” is technically a blues song. To me, the song sounds upbeat with a whisper of the blues in the background. And there’s definitely an element of wry humor in the mix. Maybe “bitter sweet” is a better description of “Lay Me Down Easy.”

I’ve been playing many of Kate Wolf’s songs lately. The beauty of Kate’s music steals its way into my heart the more I listen to one of her songs. As illustrated by the photos, I’m feeling the joy and the love in the song more than the backdrop of the blues. Listen, and let me know how you receive it.

Loving Couple Laying Down After A Picnic In An Open Field

Photo by Vlada Karpovitch on Pexels

We must continually choose love in order to nourish our souls and drive away fear, just as we eat to nourish our bodies and drive away hunger.

ELISABETH KÜBLER-ROSS AND DAVID KESSLER

Categories
folk guitar folk music music Videos

Looking Back On Warm Times With Friends


Kate Wolf Playing The Trumpet Vine. Folk Guitar, Pop Music, Folksinger,

“With a voice that has all the sweetness of a California morning and the loneliness of the sea beating against its rocky shores, it’s a mystery why Kate Wolf went unnoticed for so long. Listening to her songs, you never feel like you’re hearing studio recordings made many years ago. Instead, it feels like the singer’s sitting next to you, picking a guitar and telling stories near to her heart. With just a few words, Kate Wolf creates a great sense of intimacy.”*

Certain songs speak to me. Kate Wolf’s “The Trumpet Vine” is one of them. It typifies the aching beauty of her music. Here’s my cover of the song.

*Excerpt from an article written by Kasper Nijsen

Categories
current events inspiration

Break Open the Sky


Let the sky break open and burn a deep azure blue.

Let the ripening fields explode in the warmth of the shimmering sun.

Let God fall down from heaven and lead us out of the valley of death to a land overflowing with milk and honey.

Let divine swans fly gracefully in skies of eternal light.

Let freedom and joy rain down from the heavens in a nourishing deluge; feeding the thirsty Seekers of Truth.

The round of life churns on and on. For too many people the immediate goal is to merely survive one more day.

How have we gotten ourselves into this mess which stretches back to the dawn of time?

The latest iteration of this is the monstrous coronavirus.

I am calling out. I am affirming. I am manifesting.

“Open up the new world.  It cannot be the same old world.

Move on.  Move forward.  Find traction.”

Where is the light?

Where is the Oxygen?

Where is the nectar?

I’m reaching for the next rung, but I can’t find it.

I grasp only handfuls of air.

Claw, slash, burn; find a way.

I am leery and weary of the toe holds I used before.

Change is in the air.

I will not march down the same old roads.

There is a way.

There is a new world.

I (we) must discover it.

 

Categories
Essays inspiration life Making Changes motivation musings reflections

Droplets of Joy


What if you didn’t have to complain?

What would you choose to do if you were free to do anything you wanted to?

What if the word “boundary” was not in your vocabulary?

What if you dared to dream?

What if your dreams came true?

What if you listened to the symphony of your soul rather than the chatter of your mind?

What is peace?

What is love?

What is contentment?

What is harmony?

What if reality was sweet rather than harsh?

What if droplets of joy rained down every day and you learned how to collect them in the bucket of your heart?

What if happiness became your constant companion instead of a distant relative?

What would happen if you took the time to get to know your deepest, truest self?