A couple of Christmas tunes for you.

So it's a rainy miserable day here in Chattanooga. The cold weather, and a couple of stray dogs in the neighborhood have curtailed Ellie's desire to run outside and try to kill stuff. She will stare out the window, occasionally glancing at me as if to say "fix this, will ya?" When the urge to kill gets overwhelming she'll chase bits of things across the apartment, there's a piece of felt and a busted rubber band that she seems to hold a grudge against and will throw all around confines of this tiny apartment. This place is just the right size for me, but it's way too small for her.

I've been working on some Christmas tunes, I wanted to do three new ones (why three, I don't know) and have them done by December 5th, but life has a way of making it's own plans. Anyway, How about two songs on the 18th instead?

Here's the first one.

Good King Wencelas

The year of the loop pedal started on Dec 28th of last year, I was playing Rock City as part of their Enchanted Garden of Lights and seeing as my housemate/bandmate had just had a meltdown, found myself faced with being interesting for four hour alone on a mountain dulcimer. So, taking inspiration from Mike Clemmer's version of the same tune (which I had seen him play at Unicoi earlier) I worked up a version using a loop pedal a guitar and some other stuff. I didn't know it then but it was the beginning of finding my true voice. All the tracks (except "bass" and "drums" were made with my Bill Rich hourglass/

Download the track here (right click and choose "save link as")

Christmastime is Here

I've said that "Linus and Lucy" is my favorite Christmas song from my Favorite Christmas TV Show, but the truth is I love the whole of the soundtrack to the Charlie Brown Christmas Special O Tannenbaum, Skating and this tune ranks as some of my all time favorite compositions period. At the Christmas show this year, I played this with Steve Brehm, who handled it with his typical aplomb. This recording is culled from our one rehearsal.

Download the track here (right click and choose "save link as")

I plan to get off my butt and blog more, that's my new year's resolution...early. First up, I'll recap this year's England tour.