Just thinking about Happiness. Thinking about how she said she was leaving because she wanted to be happy.
HAPPY Key - C walking down...
Happy is the anvil as the hammer strikes the blade
A fleeting spark that fades as the memory is made…
When I was in college my room mate told me a STORY about a traveler who arrived at the gates of a city in a strange land. Seeing a beggar at the gate he gave him a coin and asked him a question: "What kind of people will I find in your city…
GRUMBLE RUMBLE
Remembering Standing Rock
Grumble rumble goes the sky
Spitting water in my eye
Whhhhhhhhhhh goes the wind
Time to call the children in
That's no rumble from the sky
Those are guns with barrels that glow
And the freezing…
Unforgettable! Will become an earworm for some. Very disturbing, this scenario, but "same as it ever was." This country has been exploiting the land/resources/culture/heritage/peace of mind/environmental balance/spiritual elements of our native peoples since the very beginning. Began on the backs and bones of the indigenous, and developed economically on the backs and bones of the slaves. Yea, us. A city set on a hill!
When I was in college my room mate told me a STORY about a traveler who arrived at the gates of a city in a strange land. Seeing a beggar at the gate he gave him a coin and asked him a question: "What kind of people will I find in your city…
Rocka my brain. Rocka my soul
Rocka my body in a six foot hole
Don't leave me here to face this night alone
Rock me in the evening. Rock me at night
Rock my body in the broad day light
But don't leave me here to face my life alone
You…
GRUMBLE RUMBLE
Remembering Standing Rock
Grumble rumble goes the sky
Spitting water in my eye
Whhhhhhhhhhh goes the wind
Time to call the children in
That's no rumble from the sky
Those are guns with barrels that glow
And the freezing…
GRUMBLE RUMBLE
Remembering Standing Rock
Grumble rumble goes the sky
Spitting water in my eye
Whhhhhhhhhhh goes the wind
Time to call the children in
That's no rumble from the sky
Those are guns with barrels that glow
And the freezing…
GRUMBLE RUMBLE
Remembering Standing Rock
Grumble rumble goes the sky
Spitting water in my eye
Whhhhhhhhhhh goes the wind
Time to call the children in
That's no rumble from the sky
Those are guns with barrels that glow
And the freezing…
A PICTURE I CAN'T THROW AWAY Key C
Capo @ 4
(Yes. It's a true story. I changed it to 1st person. It was a friend of my brother, Joe's.)
This audio is missing. I will have to find it in the archives or re-record it some day…
Always Young In My Dreams capo at 5
G D G GbassG#
I’m always young in my dreams
Am AmbassG AmbassF# D
My horse is always Old Shane
Am D D#dim Em
So proud and strong as we canter…
was a Texan.
Quannah Parker was the son born to Cynthia Parker, a white girl, stolen by Comanche raiders who grew up to be the wife of the chief. Quannah, in turn became the leader of his tribe. Eventually, Cynthia returned to her people. This…
My motto is INWARD THRU THE FOG. One day about a month ago, Laura 'Taylor' Whitfield told me I should, "write that song." Thinking back on a fog-bound night in California, I wrote it. Norman Pilcher, a friend from Texas, and I were headed north…
TRAIL OF TEARS was not a metaphor. It was an American Holocaust. Michael Jeffrey helped me with this track.
TRAIL OF TEARS
Am Bm/A C/A Am C/A Bm (3) E
A
CHORUS - Well, the trees…
TROJAN capo @ 3 in C
(C) When mommy and daddy live two thousand miles from each other it’s hard on the (G) kid
He can’t hold both their hands but he must stand between them and you know it’s for nothing he (C) did
And you (F) know it’s…
You know what, I still get that Harry Chapin vibe from your song (and voice). And I LOVE Harry Chapin!
This is another very, very good song, and a perfect performance.
Always Young In My Dreams capo at 5
G D G GbassG#
I’m always young in my dreams
Am AmbassG AmbassF# D
My horse is always Old Shane
Am D D#dim Em
So proud and strong as we canter…
TROJAN capo @ 3 in C
(C) When mommy and daddy live two thousand miles from each other it’s hard on the (G) kid
He can’t hold both their hands but he must stand between them and you know it’s for nothing he (C) did
And you (F) know it’s…
TROJAN capo @ 3 in C
(C) When mommy and daddy live two thousand miles from each other it’s hard on the (G) kid
He can’t hold both their hands but he must stand between them and you know it’s for nothing he (C) did
And you (F) know it’s…
I have always thought this song superb; also, I think it has great potential for "popular" success. It is such a relevant song in today's world. I personally love JMT's own cover, but I have always wondered why some female singer, with "tears in her voice", didn't give this song a try?
“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
Pure poetry, sung! And I love the clarinet (?) with the strings. Beautiful sound!
You got me chuckling this morning. 40 seconds of truth.
Great melody, love the story and you perform it so well!
Unforgettable! Will become an earworm for some. Very disturbing, this scenario, but "same as it ever was." This country has been exploiting the land/resources/culture/heritage/peace of mind/environmental balance/spiritual elements of our native peoples since the very beginning. Began on the backs and bones of the indigenous, and developed economically on the backs and bones of the slaves. Yea, us. A city set on a hill!
Love this story! Awesome poetry
Great lyric, performed with emotion. Nice job!
Nice one James ! There's a lot going on, brilliant !
That is a good song that sticks in you mind , you feel it after you hear it
Like this. Lyrics, melody, effects, rhythm. Good job!
beautiful...
this is very nice indeed.....
Love this.
I don't want to repeat myself over and over. Kudos for another great song! :)
good song james..
No matter which song of yours I randomly play - I almost always like it! :)
You know what, I still get that Harry Chapin vibe from your song (and voice). And I LOVE Harry Chapin! This is another very, very good song, and a perfect performance.
Pretty song! :)
I agree its a superb song
I have always thought this song superb; also, I think it has great potential for "popular" success. It is such a relevant song in today's world. I personally love JMT's own cover, but I have always wondered why some female singer, with "tears in her voice", didn't give this song a try?
I just found you on YouTube . . . Good Stuff James! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IL1HCW3uzE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRukvPERWZk
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