Track 9 - A Song About Birds

Track 9 – A Song About Birds

Here is a song that is not actually very good. I made a lot of jokes at the time about writing bird songs because it was fashionable. I didn’t realize how true that was.

The song began because I was visiting my parent on a snowy weekend. Late one evening we took a walk in the park across the street. There was a lot of new snow and it was very quiet. Then we heard again and again Great Horned Owl calls. As we walked we saw many of these owls calling to each other from the tops of trees and street lights.

So, I took that beautiful scene and transformed it into this meaningless, heavy handed parable about like the environment and stuff, I guess. I was trying to work with some different chords. I was trying to write in an earthy, folky style. I was trying to explore the feelings of urban living with a desire for something other than urban living. I did each of these things more successfully in other songs. What I will for this song is that it does a pretty good job painting a few scenes for the listening.

The recording is good. Jangly guitar, which is what I was into at the time, trying to compensate for the lack of a band or more instruments. My voice cracks at some point, because I am a chronic over-singer. I’m not embarrassed. I think this mediocre song really comes across well in this recording.

If I don’t like the song, you might ask why I included it here. Well, I’ll tell you. I recorded this song for a ‘fundraiser’ disc that I used to fund part of my second album. After recording that version of the song, I wrote a bridge section that vastly improved the song. I would say that it improved the song by 100-150% That is a lot! I wanted this song to exist somewhere with this beneficial bridge. I can stop thinking, “I really should record that one with the bridge.” I can close the door on this song.

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