The Duck Pond
My new single, The Duck Pond, tells the true story of a romance-novel-like agreement to meet a college girlfriend from 1978 ten years later at the Central Park lagoon (a.k.a. “the duck pond”). The Catcher-In-The-Rye-inspired song was produced by Doug Kwartler at Hollow Body Studio, and the lovely hand-painted lyric video was created by Lisa Bastoni. The single is on the Hudson Harding Nov-Dec 2021 folk radio singles CD compilation and was released for streaming and download on all the usual platforms on Nov 3rd, 2021.
For My Boys
My Father’s Day-themed song For My Boys is on my 2018 CD A Landscape of Ghosts. The song was also on the June 2021 Hudson Harding folk radio singles CD compilation, where it received national airplay. Christine Lavin also had a song on that compilation, heard mine, contacted me out of the blue, and made this video for me.
Damaged Goods
Take a beat-up old sportscar, a Guild D55 that fell off the back of a postal truck, and a head wound, and you’ve got yourself a song. My entry to NPR’s Tiny Desk contest.
McNamara’s War
My video of the song from my 2018 album A Landscape Of Ghosts about Robert McNamara, secretary of defense under Kennedy and Johnson. The song was heavily influenced by the Erol Morris film The Fog of War, which was an interview with McNamara near the end of his life. YouTube has labeled it as “age-restricted content” because it contains graphic Vietnam war photos. For this reason, embedding the video results in this scary-looking message. The video, however, will play if you click “Watch on YouTube.” It can also be seen here.
Ed McDermott’s Handy
I had a lot of time on my hands during the early days of the pandemic (didn’t we all?), so I re-learned the Gordon Bok finger-style masterpiece Ed McDermott’s Handy. There’s a lengthy description on YouTube of how the song figures into my early musical history and what it means to me.
A Landscape Of Ghosts
The title track of my 2017 CD, performed live at the CD release show at Club Passim in Cambridge. The video is from the low-resolution livestream, but the sound is directly from the board. Tim Roper on fiddle, Peter Tillotson on upright bass, Rudy Borkowski on piano, and Doug Kwarter (who produced the CD) on drums.
Sense of History
My take on vividly remembering the jarring events of the sixties while being a few years too young to personally be in the thick of them, and how John Lennon’s shooting effectively buried what remained. I wrote the song after Lennon was killed in 1980 and have recorded it several times. This is the version off my CD Shaker Chair. The video is amateurish, just using web photos that we’ve seen so many times they’re almost cliché, but that’s how I remember it.
5-Song Set on HCAM (Hopkington Community Access Television)
I forgot all about this one. This was a nearly-cleanshaven me on Cheryl Perrault’s “Wake Up And Smell The Poetry” series at HCAM studio on Nov 21st, 2017. Since it’s an actual soundstage, the lighting, video, and vocal recording are great, though the guitar’s a little soft. All songs are off my Landscape of Ghosts CD, except The Scream, which is unreleased.
2:30–>Watchmaker
6:20–>McNamara’s War
10:10–>Orion
16:40–>The Scream
22:45–>Guild D40
Shine by Hewitt Huntwork
My rendition of my friend Hewitt Huntwork’s spectacular song Shine. Captured on cell phone by Lindsay Dodd at The Center for Arts in Natick (TCAN) on 6/27/2017 at Oen Kennedy’s birthday and open mic feature.