Probably anyone who plays the guitar could write this song....
Someone asked if I was actually in Spain in 2003. Actually, 2000. Working on the movie, THE STONE RAFT with George Sluizer, from a book by Jose Saramago.
Inspired by something Jenni…
STRICKEN - James Michael Taylor
Boy's Theme (River Phoenix) in River's last movie,
DARK BLOOD.
...none the less, in my broken mind,
some of the false hope leaks thru...
Key D capo @ 2 in C
I've been C stricken. I've been pierced…
More "love is mislabeled" music.
ROCKS
How many times have you heard someone say, "I thot it would go on forever"?
How many times have you scratched your head and thot, "How clever."?
There's a rock in Yosemite that will probably stand…
James, ThANKS for taking the time to comment on my songs. You are certainly a prolific writer and have so much uploaded. Isn't it a blessing to be gifted by God this way. There is tremendous satisfaction from making music!
Paul
This is, actually, the instrumental version of I Play C and THEN comes SNAPSHOTS, which was written one morning at a campground between Comfort and Welfare, Texas called OLD NUMBER NINE Depot. It was a weekend songwriter retreat with Liza Gilkyson…
I asked my love to take a walk
Just a little old walk. Just a little old walk
Down beside where the waters flow
Down by the banks of the Ohio
If you’ll just say that you’ll be mine
And in no other’s arms entwine
Down by the banks where the…
I asked my love to take a walk
Just a little old walk. Just a little old walk
Down beside where the waters flow
Down by the banks of the Ohio
If you’ll just say that you’ll be mine
And in no other’s arms entwine
Down by the banks where the…
I have a video called THE BROKE PIANO on line at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JON_poM_sdY
Ironically, it does not include this song.
Key D
D (figure is D D sus, D D sus)
I am a BROKE PIANO. Got no damper and no keys
G…
Standards
capo @ 5 in Am
I got my standards
Oh, yes, I do
Don't allow no smoking
No tobacco chew
Don't allow no boozin'
Don't allow no grass
If I catch you hurting yourself again
I'll leave your ass
Oh, yeah, you're pretty
and yes…
Standards
capo @ 5 in Am
I got my standards
Oh, yes, I do
Don't allow no smoking
No tobacco chew
Don't allow no boozin'
Don't allow no grass
If I catch you hurting yourself again
I'll leave your ass
Oh, yeah, you're pretty
and yes…
A friend of mine sent me a poem and asked me to put music to it. I took the liberty to mangle a bit of the lyric.
MANGO
I like a mango. I like a mango.
Well, I like mangos mornin' noon 'n night
I like's in the dark. I like 'em in the light…
ACID TEARS
As the hours turn into days and the weeks turn into years
I am happy, but I'm always close to tears
Surely as the love that we share will last forever
Our bodies will die and our love will go on
And tho the thot that love will…
ACID TEARS
As the hours turn into days and the weeks turn into years
I am happy, but I'm always close to tears
Surely as the love that we share will last forever
Our bodies will die and our love will go on
And tho the thot that love will…
Guilty Roses
Three dollars at the drug store
For a rose as real as life
Can't pass the display
I want to take one to my wife
But she's one suspicious lady
A rose herself you see
"I'm not that complicate."
That's what she said to me…
Nice work, lyrics are even poetical, but stay within a song-form context.Pretty g'tar flowing in tha background. Tha backup vocals at end are a nice fade out... c):~)
Guilty Roses
Three dollars at the drug store
For a rose as real as life
Can't pass the display
I want to take one to my wife
But she's one suspicious lady
A rose herself you see
"I'm not that complicate."
That's what she said to me…
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
very nice, James, really dig your writing ...quite nice story intermingled in a comforting prose...the guitar is patient.
Riding your pony,and ponying on down...
Love it so much!, Harold
James, ThANKS for taking the time to comment on my songs. You are certainly a prolific writer and have so much uploaded. Isn't it a blessing to be gifted by God this way. There is tremendous satisfaction from making music! Paul
Always great Harmonies and vintage guitar sounds!
Still holding up well I like it a lot.
love the harmonies here, as usual. Unusual venetian sound tucked in there too.
Love the spring reverb. Always creative mixes and vocals.
All old lost instruments are so beautiful. Beautiful song and lyrics.
This is really great JM! Love the perky feel, the lyric and the music. Bethan
Oh go on, I'm fascinated! What brought this on? I love it, by the way! Bethan
Nice dancy tune and well played James. A bit different coming up with an instrumental. Yeah, most enjoyable! Bethan
Oooh thats a hoot James!Love it!
had 2 hear it 2wice...
My favorite one of yer ditties... c):~)
Beautiful
Nice work, lyrics are even poetical, but stay within a song-form context.Pretty g'tar flowing in tha background. Tha backup vocals at end are a nice fade out... c):~)
OMG, James that's superb. Bethan
Are you going to leave it like that I wonder? Bethan
Lovely and tinkly James. That is so short and to the point. Delicate!
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.