Cordwood Masonry Acoustics

As I wrote last time, I'm excited (me, Mr. Mellow, excited, yup!) about the final appearance of some of my recorded music. Actually, 'excited' doesn't cover it; I'm having a hard time thinking about anything else, except for that new song I'm working on, which may be even better. The physical CDs just arrived, sounding great, and the cover art (photo by my Honey) came out perfectly. Since I can't think about anything else right now, I'm going to elaborate on this recording project.

Music from a cordwood masonry mead-hall!

I've been writing music for a long time, and in the last couple of years, after falling in love with my Honey, that creative impulse has just skyrocketed. Finding that my heart is where it belongs, finally, has been amazingly good for my writing and composing.

 Months ago I asked my friend James Lindenschmidt of Crafted Recordings, who has all kinds of recording expertise, for pointers about getting some recording done. To my delight, he offered to help out, volunteering his considerable skills, at least in part because he had been wanting to try some recording in our house. The mead-hall, our central room with twelve-foot-plus ceilings, cordwood walls, and an adjoining space with gracefully curved walls, has great acoustic qualities. 

His version of this may be different, but here's why I think the space is so good for music. Cordwood masonry is not flat. It has a combination of very hard and somewhat hard surfaces, curves, and little angled segments all over it. So while it bounces sound nicely (compared to a curtained room, for example), it doesn't sound at all like a tiled space or a stairwell, with that complicated echo on top of everything. Not only that, but it is a magical space, made by hand with love, using natural local materials, and it is the perfect place for me to record my music. After all, it's where I write most of it, and it's where my Honey and I first met. Unless somebody tells me otherwise, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this is the first professional music recording in a cordwood masonry space!

James and I have much in common, including acoustic music, a similarly spiritual way of living in the world and a long-standing love of mead and mead-brewing. My first experience with his recording expertise was when he interviewed me years ago for his excellent blog, Bardic Brews. Back then, he made me feel very much at ease in front of a microphone, and this time was no different, except that it involved more microphones! Then he put in many hours fine-tuning everything for me. The end result is a very good presentation of my and my songwriting at its current best, and I can't say enough about how sweetly he worked with the very raw material. Please check out the music, which is downloadable from most mainstream venues, as Harper Meader's EP, "Honey."

Coming up, I'll talk in detail about some of the songs in particular, and also about why I like Bandcamp. Stay tuned...

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!

More on Wood and Men

Blowing the sweat-lodge fire to life at Ironwood Hollow

In my last post I speculated about some kind of workshop that would bring men and boys together to learn/share/grow in their experience with wood. I don't think gender is a defining point in this, but my own experience is based in being first a boy and then a man, so that's coloring my thinking. After I wrote that piece, I found this photo in my camera, and there's so much in it. Please allow me to ramble.

On its face, what's happening is that the boys have decided to build a sweat-lodge. They found saplings that they could bend into shape, hunted down an assortment of tarps, old blankets, and plastic sheeting, and scoured the area for rocks to build a fire-pit. In the picture they are nursing a fire to life, to heat rocks and see if their sweat-lodge can be made sweaty and smoky. Right there, just that, is the kind of thing that I know in my heart is more good for them than a thousand hours of TV or computer time.

My own personal overlay of this picture adds so much more. That hammock in the foreground? I put that up last summer, thinking that, with my Honey and the kids moving in, I would surely need to wander out there with a frosty beer and a good book more than once in a while. You know...still my mind, commune with nature, let the kid-thing fade for a few minutes a week...

I've lain on that hammock exactly twice. For no more than ten minutes each time. The reason I bring it up is that the reason is so great; I don't ever have the impulse to go hide from this new life of having the house filled with my Honey and the kids. If I'm out there lost in a book, pretending there isn't a handful of lives closely connected to mine within a frisbee-throw, then I'm missing so much that is incredibly important. Those kids will grow up and move out into their own lives before we know it, and while they are here, I'm not going to miss it! Also, back to the picture, I find a sweetness in the way the boys thought that right next to my getaway hammock would be a great place for their sweatlodge. How cool is that?

Okay, there are even more layers to why this is such a rich photo. Just to the right, out of the frame, is where I have my shrine to the spirits of place, the magical energy that is unique to our little patch of forest. When I made it, years ago, I envisioned a life before me of settling quietly into an increasingly solitary life, mellowing under the aging trees that I know well, fondly remembering my youth of climbing those trees...I'm reaching for, and can't find to my satisfaction, the words to express how incredible it is to me that I had that vision all wrong. That saplings growing under the protection of my limbs would grow right there, reaching for the sun, that another generation of boys would scrape their knuckles wrestling chunks of stone out of the ground and dragging logs around, finding a niche of their own in the forest that provided my own growing-up space not so long ago. The spirits of this place have new ears to whisper into.

The more I realize how insidious the influence of technology in our lives has become, the more I want to listen to the trees, the soil, and my own heart, the more convinced I am that "Go out and play" may have been the wisest thing our parents ever said to us. Let's say it more often, to our kids and to ourselves.

Mud Season Musings

I'm going to start with a confession. My mom, a dyed-in-the-wool Mainer, moved to Florida quite a few years ago, and stayed there for most of the year, only coming home for Christmas and a little bit of the summer. My confession is that, among all the kids and step-kids, I'm the only one who never went to visit. My sister went, and even found parts of Florida that she liked. My step-brothers and step-sisters all went, and more than once. I even sent my daughter down alone on a plane, and she had a nice time. For myself, though, I just knew I would hate Florida.

As an avid reader of mystery novels, you'd think I would love it there, the home of not only Clinton "Skink" Tyree and Marion "Doc" Ford, but also of the father of Florida Tough Guys, Travis McGee. Nope, even that's not enough. The reason that I knew I wouldn't like it is that having a frost is so crazy there that it makes national news. That, and the fact the you could throw a frisbee over its highest point from its lowest point with little effort. Sorry, but this Maine boy likes his seasons, and his hills.

Ironwood Hollow Awaits Spring

Eventually, and sadly long after Mom gave it up and moved back home, I went to Florida for a weekend, and was completely vindicated. It's terrible there, or at least it is for me. The weather was mild, in the fifties, and people kept apologizing for the cold, as though their state was in breach of contract. There are no hills, neither up nor down, and that flatness applies to the weather as well. I couldn't wait to get back home, and will never go there again. That doesn't mean, of course, that I'll stop reading Randy White and Carl Hiaasen! This morning, snuggled in bed with my Honey and watching a drizzle feed the thriving crop of mud that is taking over our dooryard, we were talking about this, and realized that we both have the same prejudice.

Here it is; real, honest-to-god seasons, so that you have to change your wardrobe, either start a fire or open a lot of windows, and adjust to new waves of wildlife that follow those seasons, build character and give a shape to our lives. Yes, of course I get tired of shoveling and snow-blowing, of getting up before dawn to go out and be turned into Frosty while wrestling the old Gravely snowblower up and down our quarter-mile driveway, only to come in and shake life into my frozen fingers in front of a smoky fire. Yes, of course I can't wait for mud season to be over, when I don't know from day to day whether I'll end up frame-deep at the crest of the driveway, needing three men and a come-along to get out. Yes, of course I am ready for fall long before the mosquitoes, blackflies, and deer-flies have gotten tired of bleeding me dry in the hot sun. Absolutely, each season has its time, sometimes more than enough of it, and I keep having to adjust as one gives way to the next.

We can't imagine life without real seasons!

The point of it all, though, is that the process of loving, hating, and adjusting to, each new season is an enormously important part of what makes life interesting. I waited all summer to be able to kick through piles of autumn leaves with my Honey during our first fall season together. Then in the fall we both dreamed of being snowed in together, of watching the trees out the window, sagging under pillows of snow while we stayed snug under covers. Now we're eagerly awaiting that first day that's warm enough to sit on the porch in the sun, maybe with sweaters on. If every week were more or less the same, it would be like living in a house with only one book to read, wouldn't it? The sameness would be stifling. Sledding the car out through the deepening mud this morning, I celebrated in my head, thanking the universe for seasons, for cycles, for the woman who watches just as keenly as I do for that first touch of gold in the willows, then in the forsythia, then for the first north-bound goose, and then...and then...

Happy Mud Season!

Writing and Reading on Paper

Yes, I have been remiss in my blogging. Sorry about that! My excuse is that I haven't had an interesting DIY or cooking project going for a little while, and have instead been busy with things like the water heater not working, the snow needing lots of snowblowing, and similar efforts. The real reason though, if I'm perfectly honest with you, is more complicated, and has to do with this medium, the internet. 

I was just reading a fellow bookseller's blog, and he very intriguingly related books to horses. I think his point was that, even though we have always loved horses and relied upon them, they have been needed far less in the mechanized era, but books have been more resilient in the digital age. That's how it struck me anyway. I enjoyed the post very much, and it got me thinking. I find that once I saw through the glittery show of how much the internet and social media can connect us, bring information to our fingertips, render encyclopedias obsolete, and so on, and realized how thin the experience of digital media is, I am more than ever in love with paper books.

Apple Valley Books in Winthrop Maine

It's not just the books, though. I am more in love with live acoustic music, song from vocal chords, friends to talk to in person, real food on a real plate, and most importantly, love with the woman who shares so many up-close breaths of real air with me. It goes on...chess with Soren at the kitchen table is vastly more rewarding than chess online with strangers. Frisbee or other real outdoor play will beat any online play you can conceive of. Pinterest may show us the most delicious pictures of bacon-wrapped goat-cheese monkey-bread with avocado glaze, or whatever, but the finest thing to cross my palate lately was cooked by my Honey in a real pot on a real stove, and was not shared or liked online. For those who want to know, it was sweet potato and brussels sprouts baked with herbs, bacon, and chevre, but it could have been ANYTHING and beaten out pinterest.

Back to the books though. What I've been doing with my time hasn't been something that shares well on a blog, at least not yet. I've been fine-tuning my song collection with the goal of recording, for one. I have about a half dozen songs that I think are as good as any of my favorite recorded songs, within my musical taste, and will find a way to get them out into the world. Also, I've been writing, a novel, on paper. It's moving along nicely, and I am happy with it. I'm writing in pen on lined notebooks, then revising it just a bit as I type it on the computer. I found my old typewriter, got a ribbon for it, and when I can type out on the porch so as not to deafen everyone in the house, I'll switch to that for my first draft. The relationship between our dreams and imagination, and the physical act of writing down words, is a magical thing that I believe will survive the digital age intact. In this age, it may well be an e-book at least as fast is it can be a paper book, but the book-lover in me hopes that paper copies will be kept and loved for years on good old-fashioned bookshelves by people who live most of their lives away from glowing computer screens.

I'll be back into the blogging, I promise. There are many projects waiting for spring, waiting for the workshop to be warm enough to do carpentry in, waiting for winter to loosen its hold on those of us who live under the snowdrifts until May up here in Maine. In the meantime, get off this computer thing, and go play, write, cook, read, be with your loved ones, eh?

Men and Wood

If you have been reading right along, you already know that I have an affinity for wood. Trees are metaphor-rich, and I love metaphors. Some of my best childhood memories are about wood, from watching Dad build first a gunning float, and then a sailing dory, in our suburban basement when I was little, to building my teenage muscle by carrying anything I could of the trees he cut down for firewood, to earning minimum wage splitting enormous elm trunks by hand during one long and memorable summer. The memories are many, and powerful. 

Half your wood, and half your hay...

This winter, having a newly-enlarged family in the house, We've been going through more firewood, and that means cutting more firewood. That work has been lightened by having boys to help, and I am so very conscious that this work is my chance to help them gain similar memories, metaphors, and strengths of their own. Just as I remember my father teaching me how to spot cherry in a woodpile by the orange color of the heartwood as it seasons, how to measure out four feet quickly by waving the chainsaw over the log a certain way, how to bring down a snagged tree safely, I hope they remember decades from now these days of learning some of the same "guy-stuff" knowledge.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all on board with women doing heavy lifting and using power tools. It's just that working with wood is one of those few remaining arenas where men can almost always find common ground and a sense of shared humanity. In the last week three different men have stalled at the store, clearly not wanting to get back to their work or errands, because we got to talking about wood. Just today I spent a full hour talking about thermal mass, drafts, recirculating masonry-stove heat, and the relative merits of pellet stoves, with a man who obviously was thrilled to talk shop with another guy. Last Friday I spent a similar hour with a man who shares an interest in music with me, but who had never stayed so long to talk about guitars even though he is in the store nearly every week.

An ironwood sprig on the woodshed when it was new.

Last summer I spent one day with friends helping them cut and carry cedar logs for their planned cordwood masonry building project. It was gasping, back-wrenching, sweat-soaking work, and I felt like a dishrag afterward. But those few hours of grinning at each other through the flying wood-chips and mixed-gas smoke, joking while carrying logs too big to be exactly good for our backs, conferring about which way to drop a particularly tricky tree, all brought Ben and me much closer than we had been before. I eagerly await a next time, even as hard a day as that was. 

I wonder if there's something to the idea of a wood-centered workshop for men and boys, where those who know, share what they know, and those who are new to tools, trees, even to varieties of wood, can learn, and build their connection to nature and to their own manliness, which is really just one of the kinds of humanity if you think about it. Cut down a few trees, learn what it is to carry a tree-length log through the woods, get the smell of bar-and-chain oil in your hair, split a bit of firewood by hand, learn to identify the most common trees in your area, and then bask in the afterglow of all that work, leaning on the result of your work, still talking wood, trees, and stoves with the guys.