My songs can be grouped into four broad categories (although there are overlaps among categories). Song lists within each category can be found by following the links, which eventually lead to some background on each song, as well as the complete lyrics and an mp3 of me playing and singing it (not very well, i’m afraid). My personal assessment is that i have a pretty good talent for lyrics (often doggerel, to be sure), but at best mediocre vocal and guitar skills.
Autobiographical |
Political |
Humorous |
Parodylans |
My first foray into song writing was to write the lyrics to a third verse of Neil Diamond’s “I’m a Believer” (made famous by The Monkees) because i thought the song was too short. (This was in 2006, give or take.) Later i updated a verse of Bob Dylan’s “With God on Our Side”, and when i discovered that i was not struck by lightning for tampering with Dylan’s lyrics, i decided that i could write full songs for myself.
My first full set of lyrics was an environmental song set to the melody of “Greensleeves”. (It originally had two verses, but in 2014 i added another verse.) My next song writing project was a history of our Afghanistan and Iraq wars — “At War Again”. I added verses to it over a several year period to keep it timely, though i quit doing that in the first year of the Obama administration. The initial version was set to the tune of John Denver’s “Back Home Again”, but i soon decided to come up with my own tune for it so that i could say to myself that i had written an entire song, words and melody.
I have compiled two collections of some of my songs into CD format, and given them to friends, with the caveat “Amateurishly recorded by a mediocre vocalist and musician, but a pretty good lyricist.” You can play them by clicking on the album art below:
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For my 70th birthday Jane gave me the experience of one of John McCutcheon’s songwriting camps, held in June at the famous Highlander retreat in Eastern Tennessee. 
Although i don’t think i learned much about improving my songwriting, i had a wonderful time interacting with fellow songwriters. (See group picture above.) The song circles at night were especially enjoyable. I did write one song there — “David Easterling”, about one of my fellow campers (just to the left of John McCutcheon in the photo).