The banjo, bass and guitar on this song
was played by Michael Jeffrey. This is one song off the record we did together back in 1975/6 on his 4 track machine. Michael and Barbara Anne Taylor sing harmony.
I LIVE WITH REBECCA
I live with…
Any chance you played in a bar in El Paso August 1978? That’s where I heard “I live with Rebecca.” Bought an album there with this song, actually because of this song. Peace - Phil Estes
NEW DAY Key Am
In the morning when she gets me up
Pours some wake up in my coffee cup
She opens the window, lets the new day in
She says, “Open your heart and embrace it.
Take that frown and erase it.
I whistle a happy song…”
So…
capo @ 3
Am walk down...
When I was a child we'd drive 200 miles
to Grandma's in the Spring
I'd hop out of the car, run to the back yard.
Grandma had a swing
But the times have changed...
When I became a dad I took all the rope I had…
Marcie Brooks
Oh, I LOVE this! The fact that your camera placement, while swaying and playing, made me feel like I was actually swinging to the song. GENIUS!
OWIE! in G
When I get an owie
I want to tell somebody
When I get an owie
I feel so alone
When I get an owie
I want to show somebody
When I get an owie
I run strait to mom
When I get an owie
It's better if it's bloody...
capo @ 3
Am walk down...
When I was a child we'd drive 200 miles
to Grandma's in the Spring
I'd hop out of the car, run to the back yard.
Grandma had a swing
But the times have changed...
When I became a dad I took all the rope I had…
What a poignant song, Jim! It captures so well the joy many of us had in simple pleasures like swinging--and how our grandchildren are lured at very early ages to the artificial razz-ma-tazz of cell phone games. I remember what joy my youngest son had, swinging on the tire swing we hung up in one of our backyard trees so many years ago. He'd spend hours, climbing onto the nearby picnic table (seated on the tire), jumping off, and letting the tire sway and spin. I feel sad that my grandson didn't get that kind of kinesthetic experience and all the pleasure it could bring.
capo @ 3
Am walk down...
When I was a child we'd drive 200 miles
to Grandma's in the Spring
I'd hop out of the car, run to the back yard.
Grandma had a swing
But the times have changed...
When I became a dad I took all the rope I had…
Brent Woods
Oh it brought back memories of a swing when I visited my Grandmother ! Bitter Sweet Memories of times gone by.! Thanks for bringing that back to me !
capo @ 3
Am walk down...
When I was a child we'd drive 200 miles
to Grandma's in the Spring
I'd hop out of the car, run to the back yard.
Grandma had a swing
But the times have changed...
When I became a dad I took all the rope I had…
capo @ 3
Am walk down...
When I was a child we'd drive 200 miles
to Grandma's in the Spring
I'd hop out of the car, run to the back yard.
Grandma had a swing
But the times have changed...
When I became a dad I took all the rope I had…
capo @ 3
Am walk down...
When I was a child we'd drive 200 miles
to Grandma's in the Spring
I'd hop out of the car, run to the back yard.
Grandma had a swing
But the times have changed...
When I became a dad I took all the rope I had…
capo @ 3
Am walk down...
When I was a child we'd drive 200 miles
to Grandma's in the Spring
I'd hop out of the car, run to the back yard.
Grandma had a swing
But the times have changed...
When I became a dad I took all the rope I had…
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…
Yes. The listener knows from the beginning that she is gone, but the sadness becomes haunting when the harmony was t his ear.
Enter
You sent
I see.
Enter
You sent
My sadness begins when I sing, "She's been gone for three years..."
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…
When does THERE SHE WAS begin to engage the listener and what about it makes the listener sad?
Enter
Lazarus
Lazarus Knight
To me, iy was when he heard her harmony in his ear.
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…
Saw a black man on TV one night. His name was John Ferguson. This is his story. He's not a songwriter.
DAMNED IF I DO - G
I got thrown in jail for killing a guy
Then I went crazy, waiting to die
So, now they can't kill me
Because I'm…
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…
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…
Written for the movie THE STONE RAFT
Que Paso capo @ 5 in G
Am/G x3
G G bass Em Am bass G bass F#
The man on the radio said we are falling apart
Am bass G bass F# G
Falling apart…
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
Any chance you played in a bar in El Paso August 1978? That’s where I heard “I live with Rebecca.” Bought an album there with this song, actually because of this song. Peace - Phil Estes
Robert White Beautiful Song James Michael Taylor! Thanks for sharing! 🤗
Kat Angel James Michael Taylor Delightful!
Kat Angel Good wake up song. I can see the teacher playing this song for the kids at the start of their school day and they all sing along.
Cathy Maxwell · 1:51 that's a great HAPPY song!!!
Marcie Brooks Oh, I LOVE this! The fact that your camera placement, while swaying and playing, made me feel like I was actually swinging to the song. GENIUS!
Laurie Callinan James Michael Taylor thats great… we are alone till we share
What a poignant song, Jim! It captures so well the joy many of us had in simple pleasures like swinging--and how our grandchildren are lured at very early ages to the artificial razz-ma-tazz of cell phone games. I remember what joy my youngest son had, swinging on the tire swing we hung up in one of our backyard trees so many years ago. He'd spend hours, climbing onto the nearby picnic table (seated on the tire), jumping off, and letting the tire sway and spin. I feel sad that my grandson didn't get that kind of kinesthetic experience and all the pleasure it could bring.
Brent Woods Oh it brought back memories of a swing when I visited my Grandmother ! Bitter Sweet Memories of times gone by.! Thanks for bringing that back to me !
Allen Hurt I love it my friend, very well thought out and i love the way you pick throught it. Keep up the great buddy
Kat Angel Heartfelt, you told the story so well...I was there
Brent Woods This one got Me ! I'm humming it now ! Man oh Man . . . Greatness !
Brent Woods James Michael Taylor my Friends. One of the Greats and I'm proud to say . . . Friend !
Yes. The listener knows from the beginning that she is gone, but the sadness becomes haunting when the harmony was t his ear. Enter You sent I see. Enter You sent My sadness begins when I sing, "She's been gone for three years..."
When does THERE SHE WAS begin to engage the listener and what about it makes the listener sad? Enter Lazarus Lazarus Knight To me, iy was when he heard her harmony in his ear.
Made me cry. - Laz
"Damn. advise from a murderer." Steve Theskin
Greg West My favorite JMT song.
Please send me a link or the lyrics to the song about "there she was". That is a masterpiece! - Lazarus
Tony Desmuke Thanks for writing such a great song and sharing it.
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.