I wrote this song after planting and fertalizing a crop of sudan grass just to have the sun shine down with no relief on it for 100 days and no rain. We, Texas Water, were heading home one night AFTER A GIG at Gringo's in Grapevine when the…
Bret McCormick Many years ago, after you handed me a Texas Water cassette, I listened to it and this song was the first one that totally grabbed my attention.
CHAMELEON
She's a chameleon. "Been there. Done that."
She's a chameleon, if you know my Ilene
She's a chameleon
At first I thot that we were twins in spirit
Everything I'd touched, she'd been near it
Shaking her head, "Yes, I know…
The guitar is great on that song James...is it a vocoder or a phaser or wah or something like that..stereo vocoder maybe....makes it sound like an synthetic organ type sound...matches the theme...disguised...unreal..very clever.. Matthew
It’s a small town. Woodlake, California. East side of the San Joaquin Valley. 14 miles from where all those “Lindsey” olives you see on your grocery store shelves come from. The Woodlake Echo, says, “In the foothills of the Sequoias”.
FOOTHILLS…
LANCASTER STREET
Midnight in Cowtown. 90 degrees
Too hot for a blanket. Too hot for a sheet
The trash on the sidewalk is trying to sleep
Breathing the bus fumes on Lancaster Street
Sunshine brings tacos. Sunshine brings beans.
Sunshine…
I have always loved this poem by Robert Frost.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods…
If you don't like me, I understand
If you are tired of me, I understand
This won't be the first time
It won't be the last
Yes, you are sorry, I understand
Yes, you feel guilty. I understand
But don't say, "I love you,"
as you walk out…
I have always loved this poem by Robert Frost.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods…
LANCASTER STREET
Midnight in Cowtown. 90 degrees
Too hot for a blanket. Too hot for a sheet
The trash on the sidewalk is trying to sleep
Breathing the bus fumes on Lancaster Street
Sunshine brings tacos. Sunshine brings beans.
Sunshine…
I have always loved this poem by Robert Frost.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods…
LANCASTER STREET - Em
James Michael Taylor
Midnight in COWTOWN. 90 degrees
Too hot for a blanket. Too hot for a sheet
The trash on the sidewalk is trying to sleep
Breathing the bus fumes on Lancaster Street...
Sunshine brings tacos…
I have always loved this poem by Robert Frost.
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
BY ROBERT FROST
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods…
BETWEEN - 11-27/28-12
I step out of the car
I don't know where we are
Somewhere between a planet
A planet and a star
I never dreamed I'd end up
in a place like this
The Multnomah Falls is up the Columbia Gorge
Somewhere between Portland…
And ALL of that... I remember when my boys first came to CA. They were late teens, and early 20s. I took them to see Sunset cliffs. If you don't know it, it's easy to imagine: a sweeping vista of sky, sea and pelicans on a postcard. We got out, walked around... they said nothing, somber faces, withdrawn. "I step out of my car/ I don't know where we are..." It seemed the oddest thing at the time, but I knew this is what they were feeling. This song carries the magnificence of arrival in a beautiful new world. Or when my mother drove my sister & I from OK to CA to join my dad during the Korean War. Somewhere in New Mexico along Rt 66 we pulled over to sleep for a few hours. I woke up at dawn before anyone else, to discover the windshield of the car was filled with an enormous glowing ball. At age 6, I had never seen anything like this sun. I hardly knew what it was. This song was written for such moments. A beautiful, beautiful song. And those guitars in the middle are liquid light. Thank you for thinking of me in relation to this. I will always feel a tiny bit it belongs to me.
She danced in my eyes and to my surprise
Her intentions were clearly defined
She danced with the band and the pen in my hand
Danced with her as she danced in my eyes
Portland, Oregon. She was drunk. She thot I was James Taylor.
Flower…
...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…
LOVE this! Love all that's going on dramaticaly in the sound track. Love the use of text from the book. Love the driving rat-a-tat rhythm. Very creative. Almost like a movie! :)
HOME ON THE RANGE
Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam
Where the deer and the antelope play
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word
And the skies are not cloudy all day
Home, home on the range
Where the deer and the antelope play…
I HATE GOODBYES September 8, 2017 Capo 2 IN D
I go in the back door. Never in the front
All of that attention is the last thing that I want
You know what I’m talking ‘bout the kisses and the hugs
Climbing on the furniture, tripping…
GEEZUS, Jim, you keep freaking me out w these amazing songs!! So many styles, and this is my very favorite... until the next fav comes along!! Great lyrics, love the back up vocals, guitar solo, and hope you don't mind me sayin' a bit of a JJ Cale/ Tulsa Sound vibe by my ear. Mesmerizing. Gwyn Henry
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…
Love it that he lived (has lived?) so long, long enought to enjoy this song as much has he seems to have, and sing it in duets with you. What a joy. And I love to song, too. Our shared roots and Red Dirt!
LANCASTER STREET - Em
James Michael Taylor
Midnight in COWTOWN. 90 degrees
Too hot for a blanket. Too hot for a sheet
The trash on the sidewalk is trying to sleep
Breathing the bus fumes on Lancaster Street...
Sunshine brings tacos…
COLORS - A song for Donna...
Roses are red. Violets are blue
I could name a bunch of flowers and colors too
Roses are red. Tulips are too
But I could never name all the colors that look good on you
CHORUS
There was a time my world…
“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…
CATTAILS AND BUTTERFLIES capo @ 4 in C
C G repeat
There was a field around the corner
And a stream flowed cross the field
There were cat tails in the summer time
And monarch butterflies
And tadpoles sprouting wings
E…
Comments on James Michael Taylor's stuff
Bret McCormick Many years ago, after you handed me a Texas Water cassette, I listened to it and this song was the first one that totally grabbed my attention.
The guitar is great on that song James...is it a vocoder or a phaser or wah or something like that..stereo vocoder maybe....makes it sound like an synthetic organ type sound...matches the theme...disguised...unreal..very clever.. Matthew
OMG - you bring tears to my eyes and joy to my heart...I understand and identify with all the words you have written.
Listening to your songs evokes imagery of being a lonely and mysterious character stuck in an old dusty town.
Man this is beautiful!
Cool Song !
nicely done,james.the music suits the lyric perfectly
Cool feel to this one. Haunting
Beautiful song James!
fuckin awesome song but why didn't you sing the last 2 lines?
Lovely James. What a blessing to cheer up my down morning.
And ALL of that... I remember when my boys first came to CA. They were late teens, and early 20s. I took them to see Sunset cliffs. If you don't know it, it's easy to imagine: a sweeping vista of sky, sea and pelicans on a postcard. We got out, walked around... they said nothing, somber faces, withdrawn. "I step out of my car/ I don't know where we are..." It seemed the oddest thing at the time, but I knew this is what they were feeling. This song carries the magnificence of arrival in a beautiful new world. Or when my mother drove my sister & I from OK to CA to join my dad during the Korean War. Somewhere in New Mexico along Rt 66 we pulled over to sleep for a few hours. I woke up at dawn before anyone else, to discover the windshield of the car was filled with an enormous glowing ball. At age 6, I had never seen anything like this sun. I hardly knew what it was. This song was written for such moments. A beautiful, beautiful song. And those guitars in the middle are liquid light. Thank you for thinking of me in relation to this. I will always feel a tiny bit it belongs to me.
Delightul! Notes of honey on that guitar solo! Lyrics are a poem. The pipes coming back at the end, haunting. Something very Irish about this.
LOVE this! Love all that's going on dramaticaly in the sound track. Love the use of text from the book. Love the driving rat-a-tat rhythm. Very creative. Almost like a movie! :)
Good rendition I am sure Teddy Roosevelt would be proud. I sang this song every day at elementary school for 6 years.
GEEZUS, Jim, you keep freaking me out w these amazing songs!! So many styles, and this is my very favorite... until the next fav comes along!! Great lyrics, love the back up vocals, guitar solo, and hope you don't mind me sayin' a bit of a JJ Cale/ Tulsa Sound vibe by my ear. Mesmerizing. Gwyn Henry
everything is right on here. vox and mood. would love to hear more of this
Love it that he lived (has lived?) so long, long enought to enjoy this song as much has he seems to have, and sing it in duets with you. What a joy. And I love to song, too. Our shared roots and Red Dirt!
This brings tears to my eyes. The imagery couldn't be better for spreading empathy.
❤️i love this!
Comments made by James Michael Taylor
“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.
504 Hathaway, San Luis Obispo, California. 1954