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MP3 Steve Brandick - Home is Where the Music Plays
13 MP3 Songs
FOLK: Progressive Folk, FOLK: Folk-Jazz
Details:
When I was a teenager in Chicago, we''d play music at parties. Kids would gather around someone with a guitar and we''d sing the popular songs of the day, mostly folk songs. It was nothing odd or unusual. It was how we would entertain ourselves. Unfortunately in this electronic age, that kind of thing does not happen as much anymore. I am fortunate that my home has been filled with music. My kids, Charlie and Jessica, learned the piano when they were little, both sing and Charlie plays the bass and guitar. Several of my friends play and sing. When we have parties, the guitars come out, percussion instruments are passed around and we make music. There is nothing better.
Home, family and music are the focus of my life. The songs on Home is Where the Music Plays paint a bit of a picture of this life I live in a beautiful community at the base of Boney Mountain fifty miles north of Los Angeles, California. The style of the songs range from simple folk to protest songs, to a little jazz. The whole project was digitally recorded in my family room which until recently doubled as a laundry room. More on that later, but don''t worry. You won''t hear the washing machine or dryer. We did one thing at a time.
Here is a little bit on the songs:
Little Man and Sleepy Eyes harkens back to a beautiful spring day sitting with my kids in an outdoor café in Hermosa Beach, California. It''s a snapshot of a moment in time that I wanted to hold onto.
There You Were is yet another song for my wife who really did save me when I did not have much faith in myself. Every now and then I have to look back to see how far I have come and marvel at this amazing woman who has so much strength and beauty.
Talking to the Wall is about the other side of a strong relationships, the times when we don''t communicate so well, the times when living together has its challenges.
Silent Place was written for my kids when they were in elementary school. It''s about trying your best, being unafraid to fail and having a safe place to go to when you have to regroup. Jessi takes the lead vocal with Charlie and I doing harmonies.
Which Way We Gonna Fall was written shortly after 911. It''s about the insecurity that accompanied entering scary époque in US History. I had this awful feeling that George Bush was not in control and those that were did not have our best interests in mind. The poetry is short and very simple. The ending is still up in the air. I was trying to evoke a scary feeling.
The Invisible Man is for fathers. Sometimes we just feel invisible. We do what we do each day to keep the family moving forward, but seem to remain mostly in the background.
Growing up has never been easy. I might want to go back to 30 or 35, but I''d never want to be 16 again. Just too much stuff to deal with. These days growing up is even harder with all the extra stuff that is thrown at kids from the media and the internet. I wrote No Tattoos when my kids were both in high school with the message that doing crazy things as a kid is normal, but you don''t want to do anything permanent, like getting a tattoo or having a kid.
I record in our family which doubles as a laundry room. When I am recording, I put a sign on the door that say, "Quiet Please. Recording." One day I went to the family room to see this sign that my wife put up, "Quiet Please. Doing Laundry." The song was inevitable. My friend Scott Spindell a wonderful local musician plays the electric guitar on this one.
Home Is Where the Music Is has a jazzy tinge to it. It''s what happens when we just sit around playing with nothing but an interesting chord progression in mind. Charlie plays the bass on this one.
Of the Ocean and the Moon was written a long time ago, around 1973, when I was way into Leonard Cohen and was staying at a friends house in Eastport, Maine, a beautiful fishing village on the Atlantic Coast. If you can figure out what the song is about, please let me know. I still am not sure.
The wife again. This time in All These Years Later I sing about how we are so different, but still together and still going strong. Still rocking along and still going dancing when we can find good live music to dance to.
I look around me at the world that my kids will inherit and I am not happy. I have lived through the Cold War nuclear scares and Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War. I really felt that my generation could change the world. Then recently, I took a look around that this world that we changed and I could only say, "What a Shame!" and sat down and wrote The Mess We''ve Made, a good old fashioned protest song. The problem is I am protesting my own generation.
My mother was always waiting for the ship to come in. It took me the longest time to figure out that waiting like that was a giant waste of time. It is much better to build your own ship and take off sailing. When the Ship Comes In is about the family I knew in my formative days a long time ago.
People who are interested in Leonard Cohen Michael Franks should consider this download.
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