A western mood, a cowboy song

I saw True Grit recently, which a) I thought was incredible and b) put be in a country western mood. This has nothing to do with the movie, but it’s a western story.

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Maybe Jericho Hill looks like this.

 

Showdown at Jericho Hill

meet me there tonight on top of Jericho Hill

if we don’t make our stand right now i fear we never will

i got nothin’ left to say

i got blood left to spill

on Jericho Hill

we’ll release the horses, they got no part in this

we’ll clean our six guns well, tie our holsters to our hips

i’ll pull my hat brim low

you’ll shove a smoke between your lips

and then we’ll take the higher ground

plan an ambush from it

darlin’ here we go

i got one in my sights

won’t you cover me while i reload?

we might not see another sunrise

but i’m proud to stand with you if this is our last fight

if this is our last fight

now i’m winged in the left shoulder

and it hurts like bloody hell

i’ve done for half a dozen of ’em but i’m runnin’ out of shells

sheriff hollers ‘give it up young man!’

but we both know damn well that i’d take the final bullet

before he’d see me in a cell

and they got a length of rope for me

yeah they wanna see me hung

for a crime i swear to you that i never done

what’s more i think he knows his deputy’s the guilty one

they had to frame me up

so i had to cut and run

partner here we go

this is our last fight

won’t you cover me while i reload?

we might not see another sunrise

but i’m proud to stand with you if this is our last fight

if this is our last fight

they told me ‘come on outta there – hold your hands way up high!’

as you might expect, i hollered down

‘you’ll never take me back alive!’

i hauled leather, my six gun it hammered at the sky

the sheriff fell down dead

i hit him square between the eyes

darlin’ here we go

this is our last fight

won’t you cover me while i reload?

we might not see another sunrise

but i’m proud to stand with you if this is our last fight

if this is our last fight

***

My bandcamp website w/ lots of free music: http://fearlessfreep.bandcamp.com/

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A review! 3-out-5 stars for Fearless Freep

Soundscraper says 3-out-of-5 stars. I'll take it!

My music is reviewed in this week’s Vegas Seven magazine, one of the weekly rags covering the weekend scene in the city. An acquaintance at work writes the regular music column. He’s got his own band, a self-described “post-apocalyptic doom death metal band” called Dead Neon, which I’ve seen a few times. I told him about my own DIY hobby a while ago and gave him a copy of This Island Life, which he gently made fun of. When I gave him a copy of YSYIC after a work meeting, I expected much the same result. Certainly, I didn’t expect him to like it. He emailed me about 20 minutes after I gave him the cd, said he listened to some of it on the car ride back to his office and enjoyed what he heard. He wanted to know where people could get the music online. “Why?” I wrote back, genuinely surprised. “You going to write about it?” So that was what prompted my bandcamp Website. I have been patiently waiting for this week’s edition of the magazine ever since, kind of nervous about what he would write. When he told me he put my real name (not just Fearless Freep) in the write-up, I was really nervous.  But he was kind, and it feels good to be featured. He likened my voice to Tom Petty’s (yeah!) and he described subjects of my songs as “characters pushed to desperate margins by their thwarted desires and skewed loyalties.” The guitars, he wrote, are “in your face,” which seems funny because this whole thing was recorded with a crappy single 8″ practice amplifier, not a particularly in-your-face rig. Though I think he meant the phrase more in terms of the guitars being so prominent t in the mix – not all that common in an age of synthesized radio rock. In the end, I got 3-of-5 stars on the rating system. Fair … and totally cool! I kept a few copies for posterity.

Dive In … to the past

…

Fearless Freep's stand-in getting ready to take a dive.

This was one of the first songs I ever wrote, Dive Right In, circa 1998. It’s about making music without really knowing how to make music … or play guitar … or arrange a song, etc. The first time I recorded it, I didn’t realize I was swinging the beat in my head – didn’t know what swing time was, in fact. That makes programming drums and software instruments pretty hard. No wonder it never sounded right to me!

I can’t remember if I wrote this song before I started calling my music project Fearless Freep, or after. It was right around the same time. I remember thinking how the lyrics dovetailed with the name, which is an obscure reference to a bugs bunny cartoon. You know the one – Yosemite Sam drafts Bugs at gunpoint into a high-dive act when the real performer, Fearless Freep, fails to show up by curtain time. Hilarity ensures. Of course Bugs gets the upper hand. Later, when I found a band already existed called Fearless Freep, I was devastated for five minutes.

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Dive Right In

But you know I’m gonna dive right in

Cause it’s the best way that I know to begin again

C’mon – it’s easy, believe me, when you dive right in

Right in

There’s no right, and honey there’s no wrong

You can take a left, you take a right, you keep moving on

There’s no wrong turns now

There’s only lessons to learn now

When we dive right in

Right in

C’mon in now, the water’s fine

Forget your towel, you’re gonna drip dry

Sink or swim ’cause there’s no better time than now

C’mon give it a try

And dive right in

Right in

You can live your life by one little rule

You can just dip a toe, you could drown in it too

So c’mon

Do what you will now

But I’ll drink my fill now

I’m gonna dive right in

Right in

Pack my suit I’m leaving tonight

I’m off I’m gonna find out the rest of life

Maybe we’ll meet another time

But now I’m gonna find of a little peace (piece) of (my) mind

But you know I’m gonna dive

right

in

now …

Caution Yellow: Out of lemons, rock

Got stood up for a date recently. It’s ok though; got a nice little rocker of a song out of it. Caution Yellow is below.

Loving my new toy.

In other news I am LOVING my new guitar interface. So much easier to play clean and monitor what I’m playing – now the only sound I hear is post-effects. Before, I was just micing a crappy practice amplifier. Lots of speaker hiss, ambient noise (the dishwasher, air conditioner, etc.), and I could always hear the raw sound sound from the speaker beneath the monitor sound in the headphones. Annoying … but no longer. Now, my only excuse for the guitar not sounding great is that I am not a great guitar player. Working on it.

This is the first song w/ the new setup: interface and Garageband 9 – got a new computer, too. I am discovering a few cool new things in the new version of Garageband. Thank you, Apple, for totally kicking ass!

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Caution Yellow

here I am again, waiting on a girl

and she’s late

Maybe she’s not coming at all

call it flaky, call it fate

but i’d really like …

like the chance …

the chance to read the tattoo that she hides

so i’ll go for broke, hell i’m broken anyway

it’s caution yellow as i accelerate through the light

driving home again

all alone again

she never showed up

any fool could see

anyone but me would give up

but i’d really like …

like the chance …

the chance to read the tattoo that she hides

so i’ll go for broke, hell i’m broken anyway

it’s caution yellow as i accelerate through the light

accelerate through the light

is it green?

is it red?

if it’s yellow, stop ahead …

here i am again waiting on some girl to show up

it don’t look like she’s coming at all

and that’s just pretty fucked up

but i’d really like …

like the chance …

the chance to read the tattoo that she hides

so i’ll go for broke

hell i’m broken anyway

it’s caution yellow as i accelerate through the light

OMFG! Download the new record, FREE

Hello Freepers! I know you’re Freeping excited about the new record, You’re Still You in Camouflage.

The good news is, you don’t have to wait any longer. Go to my new bandcamp Website and download the entire thing now in the format of your choice! OMFG!!

For future reference, you can always use the FREEP MUSIC DOWNLOADS hyperlink at the right.

For you email subscribers, the website is: http://www.fearlessfreep.bandcamp.com. You’ll definitely want to bookmark it or add it to your favorites!

From the site, you can stream every song on 2009’s This Island Life and the just-released You’re Still You in Camouflage. There are several free downloads between both records. If you want whole albums, YSYIC is free – at least for right now. This Island Life can be purchased in its entirety for $8. It’s worth it, just ask my Mom!

Rock on!

C