by Dave Gude
An album-length collection of music videos.
Two acoustic guitars, 3 harmonicas, 1 voice, just me, singing 12 songs from my songbooks.
2. Seagull (2019) [Key of A, DADGAD tuning, capo 7, with D harmonica in blues style] - This is my song version of the 1970 book "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach, in which Jonathan the restless seagull is repulsed by his fellows squawking on the shoreline, fighting over scraps of food, and rises up as high as he dares and practices dive bombs to test the limits of the rush of air and the speeds he can attain. I placed a song within the song at the end to deal with the arrival of the mysterious spiritual guide in the story, who frees Jonathan's mind from limitations. I placed this song here to charge things up, plus to introduce some quite finger style playing, which continues in the next song.
3. Are We Flying? (1981) [Key of E, DADGAD tuning, capo 2] - We move from the newest song to the oldest in this collection. I was a mere 10 years out from learning my first chords on guitar. Apparently I have had flying daydreams and dreams all my life, and they are the best! I placed this song here to add depth to the styles presented, with some sweet finger picking and a gentle lullaby of a song. The lyrics mention "jet streams" so I think this came from a literal airplane trip, but the next lines dive back into a dream, so there you go — I'm just a dreamy guy!
4. Fire to Fire (2003) [Key of B, standard tuning, capo 2] - This is a song (among a few others I have written and Bev and I perform) about a particular overlook called Thunder Hill on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Boone and Blowing Rock NC. It is our place of bliss, of looking out on the rolling blue on the blue on the blue of receding mountains and foothills. In this song I am imagining being there at sunset and seeing the stars come out, something I don't think I have done in real life, but hey — artistic license!
5. Little Steps (1990) [Key of Am, dropped D tuning, with C harmonica] - It's easy to look around at other people and feel like you are missing out, and not having as good a life, but to me that's ROT, as my great aunt Marg would have said. Put one step in front of the other and forget everything and everyone else.
6. The Cruelest Month (1985) [Key of E, standard tuning, capo 2, with E harmonica] - I love the idea of a bright happy song paired with a dark or weighty lyric, so here we go. In my typical Dave fashion, though, I give it a happy ending (I guess?). This song and Little Steps have some oddly demolished (that's right, I said it) chords so I thought they would pair well.
7. Flying Dream (1993) [Key of D, dropped D tuning] - I named this collection "Blue Sky Flying Dream" so this is the "other" title track, and I spent a lot of time giving it some new love: revising and rearranging it from it's original 1993 origins, mainly so I could sing it comfortably. I used to have a funny habit of writing melodies I couldn't actually sing. Fixed it!
8. Her Boy Comes Flying (2003) [Key of A, standard tuning, with D harmonica for middle section] - This song started by adapting a direct quote from a news story during George W. Bush's gulf war after 9-11 which I found appalling: "As we wind down operations, the Coalition has lost only 99 or 100 troops." Those lives were just numbers to the Pentagon official who said that. Geez-a-loo! Then I added in a bit of a ghost story in a different time signature (and key), another songwriting trick I have always enjoyed, going from 3/4 to 4/4 time and back again for the ending. Woo hoo!
9. Sunset on the Ocean (Key of E minor, standard tuning] - Believe it or not, the sun can set on the ocean side of the East Coast and rise on the inlet, provide you are somewhere like Atlantic Beach in the Morehead City area, where the coastline runs pretty much East to West. So the sun is just off to one side, whenever you see it rise or set, and in whichever direction you turn! Anyway, this is a song about being in a dream and then waking and forgetting the whole thing. Our minds play clever tricks on us! Again, a second song patched onto a first song, using a different key, as is my stubborn tendency.
10. Could It Be I'm Wrong (1983) [Key of D, DADGAD tuning] - Moving rapidly toward the end of our adventure here, we go all the way back to a pair of songs from 1983. Bev and I were newlyweds, the pre-children years, finding our way together in a new town. I guess we had a disagreement. Sometimes you just need to be alone for a while and find your moment of Zen. And it all works out. You won't be surprised to find another dual song here. Again. But you might be surprised to here my best Michael Stipe of REM impersonation!
11. I'll Give You More (1983) [Key of D, DADGAD tuning] - If the last song was about a difficult moment, this is my immediate reconciliation and my promise to make everything better. And that has worked out to be a promise now long kept. This is a quiet moment, so naturally, I couldn't resist to end with happy happy joy joy on the next and final number.
12. Everybody Needs a Friend (1991) [Key of E, standard tuning, with E harmonica] - Everybody really does need a friend, right? Lots of friends, in fact. I am so thankful for mine. Sometimes I thing there is really nothing else of importance. This zippy number hopefully sends you back into your regular life with toes tapping. It manages to squeeze in an A.A. Milne-inspired nonsense children's poem at the end. May you stay forever young!
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GENERAL NOTES ABOUT THE SONGS
These are songs from my songbooks, from 5 decades of writing songs. My songwriting career — always secondary to school and marriage and children and day job, began in 1971, as soon as Gary Locke and I learned an E chord and maybe an A chord and immediately proceeded to write a dozen songs themed on The Lord of the Rings, with titles like "Nazgul" and "Butterbur" and "Theoden King".
From there I turned to writing my own songs in high school and college in the 1970s, then came the newly-married pre-kids years in the early 1980s, then the young children years in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and on and on to the present day with many more twists and turns in my musical experiences. Many of my songs have been adapted for use with our family band Graymatter, as well as for the Bev and Dave duo project. But those songs are happy to have found a home, and don't appear here.
Next year, 2021, as Gary recently reminded me, will mark 50 years since we taught each other to play guitars and set out on this adventure. Whoa!
So I needed to get some these out of my system, it seems, to make way for something new. And there certainly might be more songs that want to be heard from the several hundred clamoring for my attention in my songbooks. You never can tell with songs — they often have a mind of their own. In any event, these particular 12 songs seem to fit together somehow, despite the wide timeframes between their creation, stretching from 1981 to 2019.
