I don’t think I’m letting out a big family secret to say that my oldest sister and I didn’t get along when we were young. But the amazing part about growing up is we got to rediscover each other and now get along great.

Happy Birthday, Belinda! I hope you enjoy! Thank you for your joy of life.

I’d also say happy birthday to Spencer but he’s probably too mortified to get this far. I wouldn’t blame him. Mothers and uncles shouldn’t use the internet.

After I wrote a song for my mother, and being a colossal people-pleaser, I knew I had to be fair and make a song for my father. Fortunately this came along. Maybe I’ll just make little song ditties for every special day of note on the calendar. Watch for my future hit: Secretary’s Day!

This is still a rough demo, but it should communicate the idea well enough. I reminisce about that hallowed father and son bonding moment: sitting on the couch while he sleeps and wondering if I can get the remote away from him without waking him up. Warms the cockles of the heart, doesn’t it?

Happy Father’s Day (belated) to my much loved father and everyone else who is a father type person.

Listen:

Happy Father’s Day
(Music/lyrics by Corey Blake)

I wrote this song for you
My father on Father’s Day

This time of year I
Think back on memories

We had such good times
Together just you and I

You on the sofa
Asleep watching TV

I hoped you wouldn’t wake
When I changed the channel

I’m sure there was other stuff
But that’s all I remember

Anyway
Happy Father’s Day

© 2008 Corey Blake

This is a rough demo but hopefully it gets the idea across: a gentle tribute to mother turns into a loud rock number, then it sort of excuses itself and returns to more mom-appropriate music. More or less.

I think this is the first song I ever wrote. My mother bought me my first (and so far only) guitar several years ago, which is a great example of how supportive, loving and encouraging she has always been with my (often weird) creative pursuits.

Happy Mother’s Day to my awesome mother and to all of the mothers out there!

Listen:

Happy Mother’s Day
(Music/lyrics by Corey Blake)

It’s been years
Since we first popped out
Now we’re grown
And we want back in
But we can’t
So we’ll just chant

Happy Mother’s Day to you

© 2008 Corey Blake

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, although I’m constantly frustrated by the limitations of my musical abilities. Even so, the overall effect, and several specific moments, achieved what I was going for. So I’ll consider this a success, and keep learning.

I actually thought about putting this up on iTunes to sell, but I doubt I could get away with charging 99 cents for a 40-second atonal instrumental.

For those that care about this kind of thing: I used GarageBand to record this. There are three tracks of guitars (2 with some kind of distortion effect). These were recorded live with my nylon-stringed acoustic guitar, a pretty clean, folkie sounding instrument, so I was pretty happy with how dirty and electric-ish I could get these. There’s a vocal track with the ambient vocals effect – I think I did just one take, maybe two. The rest are instruments imitated by GarageBand that I played with my keyboard or mouse – two horn parts (high and low) and strings.

What do you think? Ever have a nightmare sound like this?

So, while we’re waiting for two hours to pass, I’m reminded how good we have it. It quickly became clear just how reliant we are on plumbing because I now can think of nothing to do that doesn’t involve a sink, shower or toilet.

Before we were demoted to 2008 B.C., I played the nearly-final mix of the song “Ballad of the Waitress”, which Aaron co-wrote, that I recorded last weekend. He and Kelly both saw me perform this song in the last Foe Pa show and really seemed to get a kick out of hearing this version. Edie Murphy continues working on mixing it, and we’re going to see if we can add some fiddle to the song since she’s such a great fiddle player.

Edie has been wonderful to work with. Her country band Dime Box recently released their first album, Five & Dime Waltz. Check it out! It’s available on iTunes. They’ve got come samples on the band’s MySpace page. What’s weird is that we discovered that Aaron somehow knows another member of Dime Box, lead singer and banjo player Kristi Callan.

Small world, huh? So small, we still can’t get this plumbing thing right.