In the corner stands a guitar that plays only sad songs
Give me when a friend lost his wife
And this fine leather jacket came in a package
The day after he took his own life
In a bar down in Austin, he was drinkin' and boastin'
This ring…
In the corner stands a guitar that plays only sad songs
Give me when a friend lost his wife
And this fine leather jacket came in a package
The day after he took his own life
In a bar down in Austin, he was drinkin' and boastin'
This ring…
PORTAL and HAPPINESS and TIME are three of the songs on my new CD, EUREKA. Short pieces.
TIME
There was a time when I figured my Chevy van would last forever
I guess that was back when I was about thirty
And there was a time when I thot…
One night after three month of no rain, as we were driving home from singing at Gringos in Grapevine a splash of water hit the windshield.
I said to myself, "Sweet Rain."
I went home and wrote the song. It's on the soundtrack of a movie called…
This story is a poem sent to me by Lesley Sawyer from a blog on her MySpace site and I put it to music and am posting it so she can hear it and maybe see if it's alright. We don't know who wrote the poem. If anybody does please tell me. j mt
James, I got so busy that I forgot you sent me notice on this. I hope I followed up and gave you the writer's name. I'm sorry if I haven't. It's an old children's book that I fell in love with.
Hope you are doing well.
Happy Thanksgiving
One night after three month of no rain, as we were driving home from singing at Gringos in Grapevine a splash of water hit the windshield.
I said to myself, "Sweet Rain."
I went home and wrote the song. It's on the soundtrack of a movie called…
This song is just what it is and says what it says.
It's where I am and where my hopes lie. It all just happens to fit into a song...
WHEN PEGGY COMES HOME
When Peggy comes home I’ll have the dishes put away
The floor will be swept and…
One night after three month of no rain, as we were driving home from singing at Gringos in Grapevine a splash of water hit the windshield.
I said to myself, "Sweet Rain."
I went home and wrote the song. It's on the soundtrack of a movie called…
Something just broke and I think it's my heart
It wasn't an arrow. It wasn't a dart
It mighta been a meter that tore it apart
But, something just broke and I think it's my heart
G.
A bedside bomb with no alarm…
Growing up is hard.
For everyone.
I once had a Facebook Friend named Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick. A poet, from Midland, Texas, doing advanced studies at Sarah Lawrence. She was so good she could write a hundred pages about how she couldn…
Growing up is hard.
For everyone.
I once had a Facebook Friend named Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick. A poet, from Midland, Texas, doing advanced studies at Sarah Lawrence. She was so good she could write a hundred pages about how she couldn…
Sequoia Memories...Capo @ 5
C
Off the coast of California
Where the dolphins ride the waves
We stood and watched them from the cliffs above
Until the sunlight went away
Then we slept in ancient shadows
Underneath the redwood trees…
This song is just what it is and says what it says.
It's where I am and where my hopes lie. It all just happens to fit into a song...
WHEN PEGGY COMES HOME
When Peggy comes home I’ll have the dishes put away
The floor will be swept and…
Something just broke and I think it's my heart
It wasn't an arrow. It wasn't a dart
It mighta been a meter that tore it apart
But, something just broke and I think it's my heart
G.
A bedside bomb with no alarm…
This story is a poem sent to me by Lesley Sawyer from a blog on her MySpace site and I put it to music and am posting it so she can hear it and maybe see if it's alright. We don't know who wrote the poem. If anybody does please tell me. j mt
Delightfully sweet way to start my morning, thanks to Bethan for pointing this out... Sounds a lot like a story that could have been written by the late Childrens Book author "Doctor Swoofs" (smirk). Wonderfully heart-warming lyrics (great job Lesley), and very nicely adapted to song format, very enjoyable/catchy/folky music, sung and played "just right". I hope she likes your adaptation. Love the message.
This story is a poem sent to me by Lesley Sawyer from a blog on her MySpace site and I put it to music and am posting it so she can hear it and maybe see if it's alright. We don't know who wrote the poem. If anybody does please tell me. j mt
This story is a poem sent to me by Lesley Sawyer from a blog on her MySpace site and I put it to music and am posting it so she can hear it and maybe see if it's alright. We don't know who wrote the poem. If anybody does please tell me. j mt
Growing up is hard.
For everyone.
I once had a Facebook Friend named Shannon Elizabeth Hardwick. A poet, from Midland, Texas, doing advanced studies at Sarah Lawrence. She was so good she could write a hundred pages about how she couldn…
This song is just what it is and says what it says.
It's where I am and where my hopes lie. It all just happens to fit into a song...
WHEN PEGGY COMES HOME
When Peggy comes home I’ll have the dishes put away
The floor will be swept and…
One night after three month of no rain, as we were driving home from singing at Gringos in Grapevine a splash of water hit the windshield.
I said to myself, "Sweet Rain."
I went home and wrote the song. It's on the soundtrack of a movie called…
Bali Hi, at 6th and Broadway
Just a little place where people go
To have a quiet drink,
Listen to the band and think.
Maybe meet a friend, you never know
I said, "Hi, I'm kinda lonely.
My wife and I just had a fight.
I've been married…
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” - Charles Dickens
This song contains the body of the first song I ever wrote. A poem sent to me while I was away to school in Idaho in 1959 by Carolyn Opitz that I sat at an old pump organ and sang a thousand times when I was a junior in high school.
YOU CAN…
SLAUGHTER MOUNTAIN
My mom’s dad was a coal miner. Her mother died of TB when she was a kid. When she was twelve, her dad, dying of black lung, slit his throat with a butcher knife. That left her with a cripple little brother to take care of…
SLAUGHTER MOUNTAIN
My mom’s dad was a coal miner. Her mother died of TB when she was a kid. When she was twelve, her dad, dying of black lung, slit his throat with a butcher knife. That left her with a cripple little brother to take care of…
Candy Davis
I love that album. You gifted it to me a long time ago, and I still think about those hapless men becoming ill and dying, making hickory handled hardware. And "Help!' raises so many emotions in me--that people would just stand on the shore and do nothing while you risked your life alone to save that boy. All of the songs on Slaughter Mountain are ones that are so well written and so memorable!
Randy Brown and I did a little co-write this evening and this is what we came up with...
I MISTOOK IT FOR THE MOON Capo @ 2 Key D (Play in C positions)
I was coasting across West Texas/Had my top down, it was late at night
I caught a coyote…
I just listened to A YEAR IN JAIL. both versions. Yours is much better than mine.
Jeff
Jeff Prince
Thanks. I remember approaching it as a straight-ahead country-and-western song vocally, and the production is good, especially toward the end. Great song. The music is better from the 1st note.
My mom is 91 and still holding on.
The people that help her make it thru
each day have learned that there is no
sense in arguing with her about who they
are or when it is...thus the song.
MAMA HAS A TIME MACHINE key - Em
Mama has a…
You really broke me down on that one. It's like you have been looking into my living room. It took me a second to remember your names is James also. - James Bucannan
Worshiping at an abandoned alter...
Let my breaths be as long as her legs
Let my breaths be as smooth as her back
Let my breaths be as cool as her hips
Let my heart be as still as her tongue
Let my mind be as bright as her skin
Let my…
FOREVER
She stares out the window. That look in her eye
How deep can her heart know life's passing her by
The radio's playing. She holds back a tear
A song she's forgotten
Holds back the years...Forever
And she says,
"I wish I 'd loved…
FOREVER
She stares out the window. That look in her eye
How deep can her heart know life's passing her by
The radio's playing. She holds back a tear
A song she's forgotten
Holds back the years...Forever
And she says,
"I wish I 'd loved…
Well, it's like I went down town last night to see Guthrie playing with Ray and I came home with a song.
NOBODY KNOW ME IN TOWN ANY MORE Capo @ 1 in G
There’s a bird in the gutter that’s so sound asleep
He can’t hear the music that’s sweeping…
The lyrics of this song,
as they pertain to plot,
are my exact memory of the event.
I had spoken to the kid maybe a minute before the "action" started about how the pressure of the water was very strong. He was nestled down with his back…
NAAD -Just read your lyrics and liatend.to the son...w
Very beautiful, very moving...beautiful how you he'd on the rhyme scheme an dmade it work...so love the slave t rhymes as well...they're my favorite...super smooth transitions....tell me a bit about the inclusion of you garden reflections in the middle of the song...counter point? Balancing urgency and reality? Love, love, love thisnone...will.ha r to listen again.
"tell me a bit about the inclusion of you garden reflections in the middle of the song...counter point?" it all ties in when I relate it to the weather, "...there's lightning and thunder...but this summer is a wash...what we really need is rain." The reason the river was up that day was because there had been so much rain in the previous days, they were lowering the dam to lower the water lever in the lake that fed this river.
Refuge into the imagination:
Is it crazy?
Is it survival?
Is desire to survive crazy?
THERE SHE WAS Key - G 102811
G
She'd been gone for three years now so he'd been on the road
Playing every truck stop bar and every song he…
Now and perpendicular to now, where shadows are, as we will create the next song of music and make sounds together in the now but also in the perpendicular to now for the theme at sound in. of course any music on theme or not is ok. At right angles…
One night after three month of no rain, as we were driving home from singing at Gringos in Grapevine a splash of water hit the windshield.
I said to myself, "Sweet Rain."
I went home and wrote the song. It's on the soundtrack of a movie called…
I never sing this song the same two times in a row.
The lyric below is pretty close to how I sing it now.
Listening again, this is an awful version of this song...
I have my recording machine working again...I must redo this.
I PLAY C…
Like most or all of your songs, there is always something really stands out and pays off big time. That last verse (or is it the last two) is absolutely, powefully emotion packed. And it is somewhat Vonnegut like in that so much is conveyed so precisely and with elegant simplicity. "... in the dream we left behind" - my God man, it's pure genius. Not the first two times I heard the song, but the first time I "listened" to it, I thought WHAT WAS THAT! And the it sunk in.
I have a new love
Of course she doesn’t know
How can a work of art
Know when lovers come and go
And when the artist is the art!
My eyes are the eyes of the beholder
And my eyes are the eyes of the world…
…when the artist is the art…
Comments on James Michael Taylor's stuff
Great tune.
Nice work JMT!
Good to see you back here, James. Great songs as always!
I love this track, and Ms Taylor's voice.
James, I got so busy that I forgot you sent me notice on this. I hope I followed up and gave you the writer's name. I'm sorry if I haven't. It's an old children's book that I fell in love with. Hope you are doing well. Happy Thanksgiving
Nice song..
Ah, Karma then! Lovely set of tracks here. Thanks for the info.
Who is the lady with the beautiful voice? This song is wonderful.
This is just so great on so many levels!
Good call Alex, this is spot on.
god bless the mangoes shuffle.. had missed this one. I been tired since i was born.. so i can relate
it's a classic, man :)
I like that humming-good humming is harder than people think! Guitar arrangement is fine--great song. Bob
There's that blues--Biglish Bob
Delightfully sweet way to start my morning, thanks to Bethan for pointing this out... Sounds a lot like a story that could have been written by the late Childrens Book author "Doctor Swoofs" (smirk). Wonderfully heart-warming lyrics (great job Lesley), and very nicely adapted to song format, very enjoyable/catchy/folky music, sung and played "just right". I hope she likes your adaptation. Love the message.
One of the most enchanting things I have ever heard. Wonderful!
Magical.
You have the most wonderful way of phrasing.
Great song James! Got a willi nelson feel to it.
wow this is different from what i have heard. again i am finding myself surprized and wanting to hear the next tim
Comments made by James Michael Taylor
A true classic. Deceptively simple, yet so many feelings in there: angst, loneliness, and hope, all rolled into one. Candy Davis
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” - Charles Dickens
Wow! Starts of so light and carefree. Then pow to rock lead guitar breaks the tranquility. Contrast. Js Bchard.
David Young That’s the album that got me started loving your music! I used to listen to it often on my drive to work and back.
Candy Davis I love that album. You gifted it to me a long time ago, and I still think about those hapless men becoming ill and dying, making hickory handled hardware. And "Help!' raises so many emotions in me--that people would just stand on the shore and do nothing while you risked your life alone to save that boy. All of the songs on Slaughter Mountain are ones that are so well written and so memorable!
Wow. That is a good one. Michelle Soto
I just listened to A YEAR IN JAIL. both versions. Yours is much better than mine. Jeff Jeff Prince Thanks. I remember approaching it as a straight-ahead country-and-western song vocally, and the production is good, especially toward the end. Great song. The music is better from the 1st note.
You really broke me down on that one. It's like you have been looking into my living room. It took me a second to remember your names is James also. - James Bucannan
Haunting voices and guitar work. Nuno
The line: "The window's a mirror when it's dark outside..." Wow! Nuno
Gerald Ray - I love this.
"Nobody Knows Me". Your voice is so different in that song. Deeper.NUNO
NAAD -Just read your lyrics and liatend.to the son...w Very beautiful, very moving...beautiful how you he'd on the rhyme scheme an dmade it work...so love the slave t rhymes as well...they're my favorite...super smooth transitions....tell me a bit about the inclusion of you garden reflections in the middle of the song...counter point? Balancing urgency and reality? Love, love, love thisnone...will.ha r to listen again. "tell me a bit about the inclusion of you garden reflections in the middle of the song...counter point?" it all ties in when I relate it to the weather, "...there's lightning and thunder...but this summer is a wash...what we really need is rain." The reason the river was up that day was because there had been so much rain in the previous days, they were lowering the dam to lower the water lever in the lake that fed this river.
Cory Michael -I listened to the song and think you should definitely sing it next week. You're a hell of a story teller, James!
Evocative stuff.
Cindy Grayson James Michael Taylor beautiful song
Pamela Steuber Anderson James Michael Taylor I love this song. Thank you.
Like most or all of your songs, there is always something really stands out and pays off big time. That last verse (or is it the last two) is absolutely, powefully emotion packed. And it is somewhat Vonnegut like in that so much is conveyed so precisely and with elegant simplicity. "... in the dream we left behind" - my God man, it's pure genius. Not the first two times I heard the song, but the first time I "listened" to it, I thought WHAT WAS THAT! And the it sunk in.
That is beautiful, James. Thank you. Rachel Eastman
It's fun trying to imagine the movie this is the sound to. "Hoooooonk." Thanks for listening to my music.