Beloved Love and Snow Drift Love

We have a couple of fun new things going on at Ironwood Hollow, but no photos ready today for those posts, so they'll wait. In the meantime, if you'll indulge me, I'll just talk a little bit about a  couple of the songs that can be found at Harper Meader Bandcamp.

Life in our winter is simply amazing.

The oldest song on the CD is "Beloved Love", and it's dear to my heart. Honey and I knew that we were meant for each other. We longed to be together, and our lives were just not quite ready to allow us that gift of waking up to see the dawn together. For me, our precious moments of time together were the finest moments my heart had ever known, and I was caught in that perfect storm of being exactly where I wanted to be, needed to be, and knowing that it was fleeting. Dreading the dawn, because I would once again awake alone, and at the same time thanking whatever Gods or spirits had brought us together for showing me the answer to my heart's quest.

For the musicians, I use a four-finger picking pattern in regular tuning, sort of Gordon Lightfoot-style, and the chords are:  Dsus2, Am, B7, Em, and G.

The next oldest is "Snow Drift Love." I wrote this last summer, on a very hot day, knowing that soon we would be living together, that we would spend our winters together, awake together in the morning to see that amazing blanket of snow that sometimes stops everything here at Ironwood Hollow. My favorite word in the song is "dooryard," a quintessentially downneast term. I once met an Italian New Yorker, name of Gaitano, who had moved to Maine, and remember asking how he liked it here. He was thrilled. "Oh, the language is endlessly fascinating. Just today I learned to pronounce a new Maine word." Then he crossed his eyes, and carefully said it: doouh yaahd! Then he clapped his hands with delight, and said that he found our country ways so charming. 

...underneath is still the front yard we know...

He has gotten tired of our country ways, and gone back to the city, but Honey and I, who truly love when we can see our breath in the bedroom on a frosty morning, still love our country ways, and this song is from when I looked forward to sharing that together with her. I hope you like the song, and queue it up on a blustery February morning...Honey and I will be tucked in with our tea, living the life we dreamed of, storm-stayed together and loving it!

Oh, for the musicians, I play this one with an alternating two-finger pattern, regular tuning, and the chords are: E and Asus2 alternating for the verses, and A, E, and one B7 snuck in there, for the chorus. Very easy, and one of my favorite chord patterns.

Long Time Coming

Check out my (at last!) recording at bandcamp.com

I guess you may have noticed, if you are a regular reader of mine, that I have been absent for way too long. Sorry about that! Here's what's going on...

A long-time friend of mine, James Lindenschmidt of Bardic Brews and Crafted Recordings, offered to help me with some recording. I have been a musician for my whole adult life, playing folk harp, fingerstyle guitar, hammered dulcimer, and an assortment of other instruments, but in the recent past my songwriting went into overdrive, fed by the life changes that came with falling deeply in love. Happily, my musicianship has kept pace with my heart and my writing aspirations, and I have a steadily-growing collection of really good songs to show for it! 

I went into overdrive, consulting with my Honey about which were the best songs to break out with, practicing like mad, making sure I had the words just the way they should be...and new songs kept intruding! But eventually, just a couple of weeks ago, Jim came to Ironwood Hollow, toting all sorts of esoteric equipment, and Honey left us to our own devices. He told me that he has always wanted to try recording in our home, with its very unique acoustics that come from the cordwood masonry, the high ceilings, and the curved walls. 

Long story as short as possible, we had about three hours of good recording time all to ourselves, and in that time we recorded six of my songs. For each of them, I played my solo arrangement and sang at the same time, then went back and recorded a harmony track and a second guitar track in some cases. The one that sticks in my mind the most is when I said, "Jim, let me just hear the tune, and I'll play through the lead guitar, and see if I remember how it goes..." When I was finished, he just said, "Oh yeah, I was recording; that's great. What's next?" 

Six songs of spiritual love recorded in a cordwood masonry meadhall!

It was that kind of session. Jim's knowledge of recording and innate calm made it a pure pleasure. Followed by many hours of his skilled time mixing and mastering, one of the finest gifts I've ever received, this session has turned into an EP of a small sampling of my recent music. (An EP is an extended play, several songs, but not long enough to be called a CD). I have been working my way through the process of making the songs available, now that Jim has declared the tracks finished. Actual CDs are in process, and I'll post details about that when it's all set up. In the meantime, harpermeader.bandcamp.com is where to go to hear them. I hope you will purchase all or some of them for download! Bandcamp offers music affordably, with the option of paying anywhere from a minimum up to what you feel the music is worth. They will appear in the other usual venues shortly (itunes, amazon, etc), as that process does its thing. 

The changes in my life and my heart that my Honey has brought to me are only hinted at in these songs, but I am so pleased to be able to share a bit of that joy with you. There will be more, since I've determined to make songwriting a major part of my future. Stay tuned. Among these songs you will find a steamy celebration of midsummer loving (Magic in the Moonlight), a rousing sailing song (Snapping Sails), the perfect tune for when you're storm-stayed with your love (Snowdrift Love), a partial-capoed pattern-picked epic-love-song for the guitarists among us, with a nod to the great love-poet, Rumi, (The Glassblower's Breath), and more.

I hope that you like my work. My hope is that this project will fund the next recording, and that my love of music, words, spirit, life, and my Honey will become something more than a hobby, that it will bring a piece of that joy that is my life into the homes of many.

Okay, a final note...anywhere else you find my songs, they're likely to cost about the same, but at bandcamp, you get the lyrics for free, and you can hear the whole song right there before you decide to part with a dollar or two. Also, just sayin'...as one of my blog-readers, you know where to find me. If you play, and want to know my chords, or get a hint about the picking patterns that I use, you know where to find me. 

Songwriting Takes Me Over

You may have noticed that I've been quiet lately, and I apologize for that. One of the reasons is that I have been plowing what creative time I have into my songwriting. A good friend has offered to help me record three or so songs, and I have been working like crazy at polishing up my best five (or so) songs to prepare for that. The trouble is that Love and the Muse, encouraged by the remarkable love story that is my life now, keep sending me off to write more songs, and what I think of as my top five songs keeps changing!

My fervent wish to express my feelings and experiences in a way that touches hearts, that may even brighten somebody's world, has pushed my musical ability to new heights, which after many years of being fairly intermediate is a very pleasant surprise. Inspired by the likes of Amos Lee, Ray LaMontagne, K.D. Lang, Jack Johnson, Gregory Alan Isakov, and a few others, I'm writing music that would have been impossible for me two years ago. So when James, my recording friend, gets me set up, I think the results will be very good indeed.

Just for a sneak preview, Honey and I have decided almost for sure which songs are in the top three. The first one is a love song written back when we had very little time together. One night I wrote the words in my head while lying awake wishing dawn would never come, because she would have to leave. It's unabashedly emotional, grateful, wishing for the moment to never end. Partial lyrics are:

"Beloved love, wake to me!
I hear you speaking in your dreams,
Asking all the spirits 'round us
Why does dawn come?
Every time I wake to find you
Sleepy-eyed, my arms around you,
Waiting for your gaze to find mine,
I thank them!"

Number two was written last summer, when I was looking forward to having my Honey move in with me, imagining that we would be snowed in here in the Maine woods together, the inexorable, beautiful drift-building weather a powerful metaphor for the way our relationship has only become more beautiful over time. It's very "Mainish," even using one of my favorite local words, 'dooryard.' Partial lyrics are:

"That's the way our love grows,
Building slowly like these all-night snows.
Underneath it all, just like our dooryard,
Never changing since I fell so hard
For you, that's what you do to my heart!"

Number three is recent. I have always loved sailing songs. I imagine my sailing ancestors whispering to my soul that the sea is calling, that I should follow in their salty footsteps somehow. Maybe this song will satisfy them. Like nearly all of my songs these days, love makes an appearance, but at heart it's a song about the lure of the sea.

"Once I asked the captain what he looked for in his roaming,
He said sometimes he rounds Cape Horn, sailing back from Nome
And then it's all downwind from there until he plants his boots at home,
And that's all he said when I asked why..."

For the moment at least, these are the top contenders, but Love and the Muse keep distracting me with new ideas, and the songs are starting to pile up in my notebooks, about twenty so far. I'm champing at the bit to share them somehow, either by recording myself, or by finding homes for them with good recording artists. At least a few will make an appearance soon, recorded solo at Ironwood Hollow. Stay tuned!