BEAVERS AND WILLOWS
Capo @ 5 in C
FCG FC FCFG
F C G F C
Like beavers and willows
Bats and mosquitos
F) Toad C) frogs and F) flies (G
DA DA - E Am G C
Algae and oil spills
Shovels and coal hills
Black holes…
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 love the"Mistook Moon" song! Like one of your fans commented, it's both a story and magical! Definitely a sense of the magical. I relate to the voice of the song... my vision is so wonky these days, when I am riding w/ Greg or Shanna (my red-heaired daughter) I have had a couple of screaming scares (terrifying my driver) thinking an odd play of light and shadow was another car we were about to hit full speed! So I can understand, mistaking a train for the moon. Only for me it would have been reversed: I would have screamed and duckedin terror from the moon! Gwyn Henry
HUNGRY EYE
He goes down to a honky tonk to see the people there
He'll pick him out an angel and he'll stare
But it does not really matter if she is alone
It's not his thot to take the lady home
Hungry eyes. Hungry eyes.
He's just come…
CEDRICK Key G Open G tuning (GGDGBD)
He gave me 2 rings. Silver with turquoise insets. That was 1974. We were moving from Oregon to Texas in an old Dodge school bus. Towing the Chevy Van behind it. Unhitched the van when we stopped in Albuquerque…
CEDRICK Key G Open G tuning (GGDGBD)
He gave me 2 rings. Silver with turquoise insets. That was 1974. We were moving from Oregon to Texas in an old Dodge school bus. Towing the Chevy Van behind it. Unhitched the van when we stopped in Albuquerque…
...there’s something about Cedrich the Indian that I can’t get enough of. Very dynamic and unexpected. I love when you come in out of know where w the vocals. Dana Deathridge
CEDRICH/DRUNKEN INDIAN
CEDRICK Key G Open G tuning (GGDGBD)
He gave me 2 rings. Silver with turquoise insets. That was 1974. We were moving from Oregon to Texas in an old Dodge school bus. Towing the Chevy Van behind it. Unhitched the van…
There are some great songs on this album! Y’all were a trip!
This may be my favorite.
He still limps
Honey child
Cedrich (my favorite for some reason. Dana Deathridge
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…
Dad wanted me to write him some funeral music. This is it. He's still alive at 91 and sings this song to himself and tears come to his eyes. I have a video of Dad and me singing a duet of this song.
EULOGY
He grew up in Clinton, Oklahoma…
After Brook drowned.
Ra Byn did everything but rhythm guitar.
He must have been about 12.
Open 9th tuning...
Well, you say that you're lonely
I see that you are
Tell me, where have you been
Life ain't no lay pen
Yeah, you call it a…
Gwyn Henry
Meet Me at the Club-- darker than its exterior. I love it. Barbara and Peggy sound great! What a lot of pain must have been wrapped in those sassy harmonies. This song has a Bopcat feel,. musically--- apples that fell from the same tree, and didn't roll too far from ea other. Your vocals especially good in this.
BEAVERS AND WILLOWS
Capo @ 5 in C
FCG FC FCFG
F C G F C
Like beavers and willows
Bats and mosquitos
F) Toad C) frogs and F) flies (G
DA DA - E Am G C
Algae and oil spills
Shovels and coal hills
Black holes…
TWO POUNDS - (Diethylstilbestrol Daughters)
"DES, which was once prescribed to prevent miscarriages, caused obesity, rare vaginal tumors, infertility, and testicular growths among those exposed in utero." http://www.motherjones.com/environment…
CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT Key G (open G tuning GGDGBD)
Also, called THE BUG SONG
On Feathers in the Wind album
They’re flying in from miles around - C
They circle and they settle down – Bm
They sit and feel the world go round with you – Am…
About "If I'd Been A Lutheran *"
Dodie told me not to use her real name.
C Csus C Csus
C Csus C
If I had been a Lutheran I might have married
Csus
Dodie Harris…
...after reading John Steinbeck's IN DUBIOUS BATTLE and watching the John Ford movie of GRAPES OF WRATH. The opening and closing statements are quotes from the Preacher in the movie.
A friend said he wanted to do a video of this track. I…
I wrote this after I sang with a friend
at his mother's funeral.
He had always wondered
why he looked nothing like his brothers...
DOOR MAT
Key - A
A) My daddy treated Mama like a door mat
D) Me and little brother didn't like that…
I wrote this after I sang with a friend
at his mother's funeral.
He had always wondered
why he looked nothing like his brothers...
DOOR MAT
Key - A
A) My daddy treated Mama like a door mat
D) Me and little brother didn't like that…
HOME
(Am D) or (F C)
VERSE 1.
Where the (G) windmill sings to the mocking bird
And the (CM7) prairie wind, without a word
(Am) Whispers thru tall (D) grass, I’ll be (G) home
(F C G) or (Am D)
VERSE 2.
Where the butter cups and…
When I was a kid, my dad was the preacher at the Church of Christ in Tehachapi, California. We lived in Palmdale, so we'd get up early on Sunday mornings, pile the 5 of us into our 1950 Chevy coupe and head up thru Lancaster and Mojave, over the…
I wrote this song with Lisa Aschmann. CAPO @ 3
Video - https://www.facebook.com/100001011201926/videos/1285714588695761/
HICKORY STIX
Dm Am
Billy Mac and Don McCray drive to work each dawn at six
Down the mountain to the factory, makes…
Tim Tandy
Hickory Stix has always captivated me. Dang, I gotta start getting out to open mics again. Might even get the chance to sing that high harmony on the "oohs!"
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…
Peggy taught me an Eagles song toward the end off our life together. I think it was NEW BOY IN TOWN. (I had no idea what she was telling me.) I took the chord progression from that song and wrote this. Peggy said that was cheating.
WATERMELON…
OH JIMMY
capo @ 4 or 5 live
C Am F G
On page thirty of the yearbook he found a picture sweet
A girl named Marie Angel, in school right down the street
Dm walk down G
He didn’t notice…
Yes, it is obvious to anyone who actually listens to follow the story. The killer line ... the picture that finishes breaking what's left of the listener's heart is "but Jimmy bought the yearbook, and he hold it now and then". Lazarus Knight
capo @ 4 Am - 3/4 time (starts on A)
Am G Am G Am
Last night I said Good bye to Rose but long ago I learned.
The things that last we seldom know and think a bridge is burned.
Bb…
brush up on "Lest night I said goodbye to Rose" I know that's not exactly the title, but I think many people would like that song like I do. Lazareth Knight
OH JIMMY
capo @ 4 or 5 live
C Am F G
On page thirty of the yearbook he found a picture sweet
A girl named Marie Angel, in school right down the street
Dm walk down G
He didn’t notice…
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…
COWTOWN
In a court yard down the alley
There's a grave yard, weeds and litter
Memories, undisturbed, await their doom
Beneath the glitter of COWTOWN
You take a building, old and crooked
Long ago the life forsook it
Paint it up and name…
I was talking about the Wight Hotel, directly across the street from The White Elephant. The things you mention were going on when The Beer Garden 1st took over that rat hole between the Elephant and the steak house.
Yeah, there's an "Indian" graveyard somewhere out there at the Stock Yards.
COWTOWN Key Em
Em C D Em
In a courtyard down the alley there’s a graveyard…
Tim Tandy
This one really grabs me, Jim. I enjoy the "play like" aspect of the Stockyards District today, but I KNOW what was real and what wasn't. When I grew up in East Fort Worth in the 50's thru the 70's, the Stockyards were a working affair. Everyone downwind got the dust and rancid odors that were a mixture of cattle manure, blood and guts, and rendered fat. Get up close, and you added in the panicked sounds of cattle going up the ramps to slaughter. The buildings along E and W Exchange were mostly delapidated flop-houses, and I recall there were usually destitute men in soiled undershirts leaning out the upstairs windows smoking cigarettes and taking it all in. When the slaughterhouses shut down and the development folks took over, they neatly "packed up" the ambience of the historical "Hell's Half Acre" - gambling halls, saloons, cheap hotels, bordello's and the site of gunfights such as the famous Luke Short/Jim Courtright affair - which had been razed in the 60's and replaced with the Water Gardens and Convention Center as an act of "urban renewal", and "relocated" them to the Stockyards. I really don't object to all of it, but just wish they were a bit more open about what's shit and what's Shinola, ya know? All the tourists crowd E Exhange at the appointed hour and hoot and holler and excitedly REAL Wild West every day when the "cattle drive" occurs. Oh, well, as Bruce Willis' character in "Die Hard" liked to say, "Yippi-ki-yay, MF!"
When this happened I couldn't get home before I had the song half written. What a lonely feeling.
NOBODY KNOW ME IN TOWN ANY MORE Key of G
G Em
There’s a bird in the gutter that…
Sad, and that was 11 years ago. How does it feel now ... like more of the same? It seems to me like your not just accepted but held in high esteem at the places where I've seen you perform. Lazarus Knight
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…
Terry Rasor
I remember those daze Michael, y’all were awesome and I’m glad and proud to have known you all and have you at my Raz On The Braz festival so many years ago! Love ya my friend!
Roland Brown
Sorry to hear about Barbara. Texas Water was as good as you say. I’m thinking about adding “I’ll Be Glad to Let You Love Me” to our band’s set list.
THE DUST ON THE PIANO
Capo at 2 in Dm
Dm C (2) or Em D
He used to play piano because it made her smile
Dm C (2)
She could be in any room. He'd sit and play a while
F C Bb (G)Dm or G D C Em
He didn't need to see her. He knew she loved…
THE DUST ON THE PIANO
Capo at 2 in Dm
Dm C (2) or Em D
He used to play piano because it made her smile
Dm C (2)
She could be in any room. He'd sit and play a while
F C Bb (G)Dm or G D C Em
He didn't need to see her. He knew she loved…
THE DUST ON THE PIANO
Capo at 2 in Dm
Dm C (2) or Em D
He used to play piano because it made her smile
Dm C (2)
She could be in any room. He'd sit and play a while
F C Bb (G)Dm or G D C Em
He didn't need to see her. He knew she loved…
THE DUST ON THE PIANO
Capo at 2 in Dm
Dm C (2) or Em D
He used to play piano because it made her smile
Dm C (2)
She could be in any room. He'd sit and play a while
F C Bb (G)Dm or G D C Em
He didn't need to see her. He knew she loved…
THE INAPPROPRIATE QUESTION - Capo @ 2 to sing
G C/G bass
She said, “I can see that you’re hurting,
And I can see that you are wearing a ring.
Perhaps an inappropriate question,
but I’d like to ask you something.
Soon I will be a grand…
THE COUCH - key - C
https://fb.watch/lIEUn31mBZ/
https://www.facebook.com/100054814402634/videos/2856132984527543/
1-C 4-F
Today we put the couch out by the road
5-G…
Gwyn -Verrrrry nice! PS: I listened to the "shorts" you sent me while sitting in the car waiting for Greg to pick up some groceries. I think you have invented a new artform with these shorts: Haiku Songs! I really loved them. I laughed a lot, and that's a compliment!
NOWHERE - Key of G
James Michael Taylor
1. Maybe I misunderstood G
Maybe I was wrong C
But I thot you loved me D
You stayed so long G
2. Maybe I missed something…
Comments on James Michael Taylor's stuff
Nuno Santos Going through an album of old dusty snapshots...
I love the"Mistook Moon" song! Like one of your fans commented, it's both a story and magical! Definitely a sense of the magical. I relate to the voice of the song... my vision is so wonky these days, when I am riding w/ Greg or Shanna (my red-heaired daughter) I have had a couple of screaming scares (terrifying my driver) thinking an odd play of light and shadow was another car we were about to hit full speed! So I can understand, mistaking a train for the moon. Only for me it would have been reversed: I would have screamed and duckedin terror from the moon! Gwyn Henry
What a great song... what a great album. Good Lord, this album has been part of ALL my adult life! Thank, you, JMT... Thank, you, very, very much.
No bs Lyle Lovette? It’s got a cool groove. Kind of reminds me of Ray Wylie or James McMurtry style. Dana Deathridge
...there’s something about Cedrich the Indian that I can’t get enough of. Very dynamic and unexpected. I love when you come in out of know where w the vocals. Dana Deathridge
There are some great songs on this album! Y’all were a trip! This may be my favorite. He still limps Honey child Cedrich (my favorite for some reason. Dana Deathridge
Lordy, I'd forgotten how damn good this album is.
Martha Es I love it!! That's an amazing song! It's emotional, but also mystical magical. I like how you put the lyrics with the song.
Is that the melody from East Virginia Blues? It fits very well with your words.
Gwyn Henry Meet Me at the Club-- darker than its exterior. I love it. Barbara and Peggy sound great! What a lot of pain must have been wrapped in those sassy harmonies. This song has a Bopcat feel,. musically--- apples that fell from the same tree, and didn't roll too far from ea other. Your vocals especially good in this.
Bruce Balmer I listened to “My New Shorts.” Brilliant use of time. Like mini-oreos or something. Interesting production, nice vocals.
Holy cow. What a song. Michael Rehahn
Enjoyed that one, I think I've actually heard you do that live once.
A great song about how conditions early in life shape our future and how some great potential just disappears.
No doubt you my friend are genius. Ghost dance.
Gwyn Henry Thanks for writing this, Jim.
"Powerful stuff." Ray Russell
I like coming back to listen to this one in particular sometimes. Sweet tune!
That's some sweet guitar playing. Ray Russell
'Very good capture." Gwyn Henry
Comments made by James Michael Taylor
Bruce Balmer I like the parallel sixths in the backing vocals.
Tim Tandy Hickory Stix has always captivated me. Dang, I gotta start getting out to open mics again. Might even get the chance to sing that high harmony on the "oohs!"
Rose Jeffus - I agree. (with Lane. "I declare this album your #1 compilation."
Watermelon Wind is a good one too. Really inspiring images Lazarus Knight
Yes, it is obvious to anyone who actually listens to follow the story. The killer line ... the picture that finishes breaking what's left of the listener's heart is "but Jimmy bought the yearbook, and he hold it now and then". Lazarus Knight
brush up on "Lest night I said goodbye to Rose" I know that's not exactly the title, but I think many people would like that song like I do. Lazareth Knight
Oh Jimmy rings of a certain kind of pain that you've captured perfectly. Lazarath Knight.
Lane Beauvais By the power invested in me, I declare this album your #1 compilation.
I was talking about the Wight Hotel, directly across the street from The White Elephant. The things you mention were going on when The Beer Garden 1st took over that rat hole between the Elephant and the steak house.
Tim Tandy This one really grabs me, Jim. I enjoy the "play like" aspect of the Stockyards District today, but I KNOW what was real and what wasn't. When I grew up in East Fort Worth in the 50's thru the 70's, the Stockyards were a working affair. Everyone downwind got the dust and rancid odors that were a mixture of cattle manure, blood and guts, and rendered fat. Get up close, and you added in the panicked sounds of cattle going up the ramps to slaughter. The buildings along E and W Exchange were mostly delapidated flop-houses, and I recall there were usually destitute men in soiled undershirts leaning out the upstairs windows smoking cigarettes and taking it all in. When the slaughterhouses shut down and the development folks took over, they neatly "packed up" the ambience of the historical "Hell's Half Acre" - gambling halls, saloons, cheap hotels, bordello's and the site of gunfights such as the famous Luke Short/Jim Courtright affair - which had been razed in the 60's and replaced with the Water Gardens and Convention Center as an act of "urban renewal", and "relocated" them to the Stockyards. I really don't object to all of it, but just wish they were a bit more open about what's shit and what's Shinola, ya know? All the tourists crowd E Exhange at the appointed hour and hoot and holler and excitedly REAL Wild West every day when the "cattle drive" occurs. Oh, well, as Bruce Willis' character in "Die Hard" liked to say, "Yippi-ki-yay, MF!"
Sad, and that was 11 years ago. How does it feel now ... like more of the same? It seems to me like your not just accepted but held in high esteem at the places where I've seen you perform. Lazarus Knight
Terry Rasor I remember those daze Michael, y’all were awesome and I’m glad and proud to have known you all and have you at my Raz On The Braz festival so many years ago! Love ya my friend!
Roland Brown Sorry to hear about Barbara. Texas Water was as good as you say. I’m thinking about adding “I’ll Be Glad to Let You Love Me” to our band’s set list.
Joe Brunelle - I like this, Jim
Lazarus Knight That's a really good song. It resonates with truth.
Tim Tandy Brilliantly haunting! Like a character in a Hank Williams song, you're telling a poignant, sad story, but NOT seeking pity.
"Wow, beautiful." Ken McIntyre
I like that a lot. Its a fresh perspective. Lazareth Knight
Gwyn -Verrrrry nice! PS: I listened to the "shorts" you sent me while sitting in the car waiting for Greg to pick up some groceries. I think you have invented a new artform with these shorts: Haiku Songs! I really loved them. I laughed a lot, and that's a compliment!
Laurie Callinan ...beautiful heartbreaking song.