music reviews, fascinating trivia, opinionated commentary
This week I’m trying to write three new songs. This idea came to me a few weeks ago, and when the ending landed in my brain the day before yesterday it wrote itself.
Recorded in the basement using my iPhone and mandolin. Continue reading “The Politest Pirate”
I love singing along with Kansas City Star. It’s one of those silly songs Roger wrote that leaves out all the struggle and heartache, and puts in everything that’s right with our hearts and heads.
Besides, how often do you get a trombone solo and scat vocals in a country song? Yeah, Roger had a hard time coloring inside the lines. Continue reading “Better a Kansas City Star Than an Omaha Nobody”
Love is, even in the best circumstances, a complex thing. Good songwriters find the words to sing about it.
Great songwriters know there are no words for it. Continue reading “Words by Roger Miller. Lyrics by Love.”
Pretty sure Roger never meant us to take this one seriously.
My friend and I went to the picture show in town
They called his name and said his house and just burned down
I took his hand and offered him my sympathy
When suddenly, I remembered that he lived with me Continue reading “Happy Heartbreak #2: It Takes All Kinds to Make a World”
If you ever want to get depressed just come to this town
Hard to top that as an opening line. Nice internal rhyme with the next line Continue reading “How Many Kids Love Their Hometown?”
Some songs are obviously made for headphones. Anything by Pink Floyd. Some classical and jazz.
Paul Simon’s Kodachrome isn’t so obvious, but I just heard a different song from the one I’ve been listening to for lo these many years. Continue reading “Mama Don’t Take My Kodachrome and Leave Your Boy So Far From Home”
One of Disney’s greatest soundtrack triumphs was getting Roger Miller to write and record the soundtrack to their animated version of Robin Hood.
The film doesn’t hang entirely on a single star. I can’t imagine the list of movies these folks have made: Continue reading “Not in Nottingham”
A hallmark of Roger Miller’s songwriting is what I call his happy heartbreaks: the saddest stories, told with wit to cheerful music.
Just as Hitchcock makes pokes us with the incongruity of life by making us laugh during a terrifying scene, Roger reminds you that life isn’t the events, but our reactions. Even the poor guy standing in a train station somewhere 110 miles from Baltimore sounds more resigned than heartbroken when he says “I don’t think she loves me any more.” Continue reading “Happy Heartbreak #1: Engine, Engine #9”
Jazz musicians occasionally highlight a melody by playing all the notes around it, leaving a hole where it should be. If you’re paying attention, you’ll “hear” it.
Some smart doughnut shop decided to stop rolling all the doughnut holes back together to make more doughnuts, and just started frying up doughnut holes to sell. Continue reading “Doughnut Holes and Roger Miller”
I don’t know if you can see
The changes that have come over me
In these last few days I’ve been afraid
That I might drift away
So I’ve been telling old stories, singing songs
That make me think about where I came from
And that’s the reason why I seem
So far away today Continue reading “Caledonia, You’re Calling Me”