Listening Room
Unreleased Tracks, Alternate Takes & Home Demos
Change A Thing
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This track was recorded during the Northern Skies sessions. I’ve always loved it but at the time it just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the collection. This version has a beautiful harmony sung by my friend Michael Hayes (Lemonpeeler, Vinyl Skyway).
Out Of My Head
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Back in 1995 while I was on tour in Ireland I spent an afternoon with Irish singer/songwriter Kieran Goss and we co-wrote this song together. Kieran recorded the song for one of his records and it became a popular track for him among his fans and on radio. I recorded my own version of the song intending to use it on a compilation but it never came together.
Nine Tree Falls
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I wrote this song before the Favorite Waste of Time sessions. My band Courage Brothers had recently broken up and I was reeling from the emotions surrounding that ordeal and struggling to figure out where to go next. After being in a band for so long it took some time for me to figure out who I was as a songwriter and artist, and I remember feeling exhilarated and petrified by that process all at the same time. I’m sure those feelings of fear and uncertainty are what sparked this song.
Burlingtown
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I wrote this song (inspired by my hometown, Burlington, Vermont) before we recorded the first Courage Brothers album (Something Strong) and I remember thinking that I had turned some kind of corner in doing so. I think it was one of the first “good” songs that I wrote, or at least it felt that way to me at the time. It’s a very personal song which made it a bit different from most of the other material we were writing for the band back then. I think that feeling of naked honesty resonated with me and definitely affected how I approached songwriting from there foward. Jim Wooster, my partner in the Courage Brothers, wrote the instrumental section that I like so much which adds a really nice break to the song before the final verse. This is an acoustic version that I recorded for a compilation of Vermont born artists, but we ended up using a different track and this one never found a home.
Where You Can’t Be Found
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Here’s an example of one of my home demos. Often times while I’m in the process of writing a song I’ll record a fairly complete version of it, playing all the instruments myself, even before I have all of the components figured out. It can be inspiring to hear what the song might sound like later on a record, and that in itself can be a great motivator. I’ll take these demos with me when I’m in the car and listen to them repeatedly making lyric and arrangement notes in my head as I go. The downside to this method is that sometimes you find yourself later trying to re-invent the demo in the studio because you’re so attached to it. And honestly there are times when the demo actually is the best version. There’s just something about the freshness of recording a track for the first time that can be hard to recapture. This song ended up being recorded for Northern Skies and has a beautiful piano part played by Adam Steinberg on that record. Here’s the original.
Tomorrow’s Such A Long Time
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We cut this Dylan song during the Little Mystery sessions and I sang it with Neal Casal who was part of the studio band for those recordings. Sometimes in the midst of making a record it’s nice to step back and just play and record a song for the fun of it which is what we did here. At the time, I had been listening to Rod Stewart’s “Every Picture Tells A Story” a ton, and I couldn’t get his version out of my head. Everyone was pretty familiar with the song so we just went for it one night and gave it a whirl. I’m a big fan of Neal and his voice and love his verse and harmony vocal on this track. A big treat came later during overdubs when the amazing Greg Leisz played his beautiful pedal steel part while I sat a few feet away in the control room completely in awe.
Stranger
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Here’s a quick demo I did of a new song I finished recently. It’s still rough with a very simple drum track but you’ll get an idea of where we might take it.
Nothing To Me
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Here’s another track that we recorded during the Northern Skies sessions that didn’t find a home on the final album. I still really like the song though and I love this recording of it. You’ll hear my friend Amy Fairchild singing the harmony.
