Volume 3 - Rockin' the Hard Road

 

As happy as I was with my first rock songs on Volume 2, that didn't mean I was in a phase of kicking back and enjoying it at the expense of getting back to the keyboard and writing new music. It was strange at that point, really. I was entering a phase of my life where my creativity was peaking, and the songs were flowing out of me one after another. And I don't mind saying, that they are all great songs.  Of course, I can't sing, so I just left them on the floppy disc or put them on a cassette tape, and there they sat for years. I couldn't even let anyone hear them. Because with no one singing the songs, (which did include lyrics, btw) they just weren't ready to be listened to.

Which is why I'm singing the songs now. No I'm not pretending to be a singer. And no, I don't play them for anyone still. Just me. Because I can at least stand my own voice. I don't dare subject anyone else to my vocals yet. Another day I will put them on Sound Cloud or Spotify or whatever. The day will come. Right now I just want to finish Volumes 9, 10, and 11. Then I'll put the vocals to them and then I'll put the lot of them online. So stay tuned. The songs are great. Just wish the singing was too.

Volume 3 playlist includes:

Portrait
Long Hard Road
You're My Friend
Show Me the Money
If You Call Me
You Never Give Up
Crazy Days
Gone Already
Dark Society
The Reaper

A couple interesting notes on the origin of some of those songs. I was in the middle of composing the songs for Volume 3 just about twenty years ago. My son was three or four years old at the time. And when I entered my room he was there playing with some toys, and he was singing a song that apparently he had made up on the spot, and the words were "...you're my friend...I know..." and from that five note segment I was inspired to put it into an entire song from there.

And yes, it's the song titled You're My Friend.

Another interesting thing about this album is that during this same period I woke up one day having a dream about a new song. An original tune was sounding in my head, and I thought it was a great riff. So I ran downstairs immediately to my keyboard and played out the riff that had been sounding in that dream. And sure enough, I put that riff into a complete song. After writing the lyrics I called it You Never Give Up. To this day, it's one of my favorite songs.

But I have a lot of favorites. After all, I have 13 total albums and I have even more songs to put on even more albums. Can't wait to get them all done.