| A Bad Week - Anyone who has ever tried to quit using anything addictive will relate to this poem that was written in 2005. |
| A Junkies Dream - I wrote this when I was a senior in high school. Eighteen years old. I should not have known so much about life to be able to write this poem at that time in my life. It was 1967. The world today is very much like the world was then, but eighteen year old kids were much older then. |
A Perfect Storm - A very interesting, if not a little tricky analogy of the Perfect Storm as it pertains to the weather and the Perfect Storm as it might pertain to Anger. The music to this song is awesome, but the lyrics, message and story holds up over the guitar work and the underlying dark mood to the song.
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A Single Mother - Pened in December 2010, this is actually a true account of a womanI know. She is a low life, sociopath, tweaker, who is a pathological liar and a cheap slut.
A Visit From An Old Friend – It always seems to me that whenever I have made a significant, but difficult change, for the better, in my life I will be doing just fine when out of nowhere an “old friend” will pop back into my life. The “old friend’ will want me to do things that I had a rough time successfully stopping. The “old friend” turns out to not be a friend at all. It took me too long, in my life, to learn what the difference is between an “old friend” and a “good friend. |
| Anal Retentive - This is a stupid little poem, but it cracks me up and I thought that my father might like it so I put it in this book. |
| Another Song From A Love Struck Mind - This is about the fear of love. Sometimes people will fear love because they fear pain. I have feared love to the point of running away from it. I regret doing that now and wonder how different life might be if I was not so afraid of being hurt. |
| Bambi - This is a really old song….. 1975. I used to play it for my older kids when I put them to bed for the night. I wrote it after Carloyn and I had been backpacking in Mineral King (Western Sierra Mountains). We were packing out the day before hunting season opened in the state forest. Somehow dear knew this and, en-masse, they crossed over to state park property where they cannot be legally hunted. We found ourselves, literally, in the middle of a pack of around 200 or more deer. It was a special moment. Of course this is often misinterpreted as a anti-hunting song. It really isn’t. |
| Cardboard Boxes - 1998. Suzanne was moving in with me. We both had some baggage in our respective lives. It was not a wise thing for us to be doing…. Moving in together after only about three months of dating. Sometimes we do stupid things when we are in love. The inside of my house was cluttered with cardboard boxed containing Suzanne’s personal things. I thought then that it looked like her whole life was in those boxes. All of her memories seemed to be in those boxes. I saw her life in those cardboard boxes. When Suzanne came into my life I was going through a pretty bad time in my life. The line in the song “you can make a smile out of a frown” is directly related to her. She really could do that for me. Suzanne had some demons of her own to deal with, but even still, she made me very happy during a very difficult time in my life. I am sorry to say that I don’t think I ever really thanked her for that. So if you ever happen to be reading this…. Suzanne, thank you! |
| Carolyn's Song - Carolyn and I were together for twenty-four years and married for twenty-two of them. Over the course of our relationship I wrote many songs and poems either for her, or I was inspired by her. This is one of them. I wanted to convey the concept of the guitar representing love and the more in love you were, the more strings you would want to have on that guitar. This guitar had one-thousand strings… Building the guitar is building love. Then imagining what a guitar with a thousand strings might sound like…. “No prettier song could there ever be.” I wrote that song sometime around 1976 or 1977. Definitely a love song written for a wonderful woman by a man who was very much in love with her. As I have grown older and wiser and become a better and better guitarist I can look back now and think, My God, how in the hell would you ever tune that sucker? |
| Carpe Diem - One of the catch phrases of the twenty-first century…. Carpe Diem. That is right up there with “Have a nice day” from twenty years ago. At first I thought it carpe diem was French for “bull shit”, but I was wrong. It is still bull shit, only not in language translation. So…… this is my twist on “seize the day….. Carpe diem…… bull shit! |
| Cyberspace Cowboy - 2002 Inspired by my youngest son, Brian. He was then, as he is now, always glued to his computer. One night I thought of him as being a “Cyberspace Cowboy” for no particular reason. I thought it was kind of a catchy name. Like a lot of times when I write I could not possible sleep or concentrate on anything else until I wrote this poem. Then I actually started to think of Brian as being a Cyberspace Cowboy…. Whatever the hell that is! I just thought it was kind of funny and it would be fun for Dad to tease his son. A Cyberspace Cowboy! Why not? A person can be whatever, or whoever they want to be in cyberspace. Right? A week after I wrote this poem Brian was in a very frightening automobile accident. He rolled his Ford Explorer. We both strongly feel that it was divine intervention that allowed him to walk away from it without a scratch. It was a real eye opener for him and there seemed to be a lot of better things I could say to Brian than to tease him and call him a Cyberspace Cowboy. I guess that it was a real eye opener for me as well. Cyberspace Cowboy…. Pretty catchy name though! |
| Dance With Me - Plenty of references to the band “The Who” in this poem. I wrote it in the fall of 2006. It was inspired by Denise. There is a lot of “us” in the poem. It is, what you might say, “sexually charged.” Our relationship is like that as well… Sexually charged! Very much so! “The Who” is Denise’s favorite band of all time and the song “The Bargain” is her favorite song. Denise, like “The Bargain” is the Best I Ever Had!!! This poem may or may not actually be based on a true story. The writer is not saying. |
| Deep, Dark Family Secrets - This is one of those kinds of poems that I write and then the next day I will read it and hardly be able to remember writing it. That happens to me a lot. I have said many times that I sometimes view life from a strangers eyes and write with a hand not of my own. This poem reflects one of those times. I have never lived a life that is represented in or by this poem. There are no deep, dark family secrets in my life, or in my family, that I am aware of. We are a pretty typical American family and we are not without our fair share of issues and some degree of dysfunction. However there are, to my knowledge, no skeletons in the closet, never any abuse or anything like that. No Deep, Dark Family Secrets! When I read this poem the day after I wrote it… I was scared! I hope that I never have to view life from that particular strangers eyes again. I have shared this poem with a lot of people and I am still in awe about how many people actually relate to this poem. They have lived it and some are still living it. I thank God that my life, in that respect, has been very good. I woke up from a sound sleep to write this sometime in mid-2003. |
| Don't Go Near The River - I was nineteen or twenty when I wrote this song. It has been arranged as a rock song, a blues song, a country song and a ballad, but it is at it’s best when performed the way it was originally written…… Highly influenced, in it’s day, by John Fogerty and Credence Clearwater Revival, it has a hook that is very contagious, no matter what genre of music it is being played in. It still is one the most requested songs that I play when I perform. It has held up very well over the years and I am sure that it will continue to hold up for years to come. |
| Every time It Rains - This is about the fear of love. Sometimes people will fear love because they fear pain. I have feared love to the point of running away from it. I regret doing that now and wonder how different life might be if I was not so afraid of being hurt. |
| Father Knows Best - Written late 1990’s Here are Robert Young, Jane Wyatt, Ellenore Donahue, Bill Gray and….. I was a few years younger than Betty, but I fantasized about what was under those tight sweaters that she wore on TV. It was the fifties and early sixties. We were in a very intense cold war with the Russians. The nukes, the race for space and world domination, drilling at school for a nuclear attack by ducking and covering up under our desks. I guess we just took it as word that if we got into the fetal position under our desks we would survive a multi-megaton nuclear bomb attack. Father Knows Best was one of those TV shows that completely ignored and never even hinted at all of the shitty stuff that was going on in the world at the time. It was an escape though. Every week we could spend a half-hour with the Andersons in Springfield, Somewhere USA and escape the frightening real world of the day. I wish that there were modern television shows like that on the air today. I guess The Simpson’s are about as close as we are ever going to get to that. Nick At Night still plays the old re-runs of Father Knows Best every week and you know….. Betty still looks mighty tasty! |
| For Every Moment - If anyone asks me to describe love I can easily recite this. I wrote this a long time ago. Even though I looked at life through a strangers eyes and then wrote it with a hand not of my own, this time the stranger was a teacher |
| Gold Digger - This is one of many songs and poems that I have written on my boat “Ellis Island.” The woman portrayed in the poem is loosely based on someone whom I know, or I should say used to know, very well. Written in the summer of 2002. |
| Goodbye - I lost a wonderful woman to a very terrible disease. This song was my way of saying goodbye to her in early 2005. This one is for Sue Freeman. Goodbye Sue. |
| Greasy Katie - Summer1973, somewhere in the middle of Wyoming. My ex brother-in-law, Chris, and I drove my VW bus round-trip from Long Beach, California to Detroit Lakes, Minnesota. Based on the first time I ever visited one of those giant truck stops that are out in the middle of nowhere. Chris and I sat at the counter and ordered the biggest, greasiest, an probably the absolute best cheeseburgers either one of us had even imagined. They were served with a mountain of french fries or onion rings and, of all things, a salad. The waitress’s nametag read “Katie.” She was a sweetheart, called everybody “Hun” and was very friendly. By the time Chris and I pulled back onto the inter-state we had already coined her with the name Greasy Katie. This poem is a reminder to me of the adventures and good times that Chris and I had on that trip. |
| Guns and Bibles - It was Memorial Day 2005. The war in Iraq was already out of control. George Bush made a speech about how important it was for the US to be there and he honored the soldiers who had died there fighting for...... I became rather angry. Not only about the war, but about everything the Bush administration had fucked up. My anger manifested itself in the form of this song. Orange County is a big time right wing conservative area. To date I have never performed this song in public for that reason. |
| Has Anyone Seen My Penis - I penned this on my boat in the summer of 2003. I was thinking about a woman who I had dated for awhile. She wanted to change me and the way the way that I lived my life.. The poem is a work of fiction, of course, and my penis is alive and well. I have never really lost it, even though there have been times when I wish that I would have. That would have saved me a considerable amount of time and trouble. |
| He Looks Over You - It was the winter of 1991. I was surfing mid-week at "Secret Spot" in Huntington Beach. There were only a few other surfers in the water. This song just came to me, pretty much in full, music and lyrics, while I was sitting on my board waiting for the next set. The lyrics pretty much represent where my head was at the time. I went home, picked up my guitar and in about an hour the song was on paper. |
| Homeless family - I was in San Diego with some other people on a bike ride. In the waiting area there was a mother and her two kids, obviously homeless, holding a sign asking for any kind of help. I could not shake that vision of the homeless family. A few days later this song came into my head. It was the late 1980's. Sadly, all these years later nothing has changed. In fact there are more homeless families now than there were then…. In the United States of America. What is wrong with that picture? |
| I Fell In Love With You - I had been up for about three days when I wrote this. It was early December 2006. I had recently purchased a new acoustic/electric bass guitar and I was playing it a lot. I wrote this song totally on the bass guitar. It is a very bluesy tune with sort of Boz Skaggs melody, but definitely a Rick Ellis style of song. I was feeling very connected to Denise and the concept of being in love before anything existed in the universe, before the universe itself existed, came into my mind. A good way to describe the term “soul mate” I think even though the word “soul mate” is never used in the song. |
| I Would - This poem was penned in late 2005 by a man who was deeply in love with a woman at a time when he did not want to be in love with anyone. Funny how someone can come into your life and your life abruptly changes. |
| In The Garden Of Eden – This was written shortly after the January 2007 State Of The Union Address was given by George Bush. It speaks for itself. |
| Ineffable - Ineffable means that there is no way to describe something. In this case, a broken heart, pain and lost love. Written in 2004. Unfortunately, I know what a broken heart, pain and lost love feels like. I just cannot figure out anyway to put down into words exactly what it feels like. |
| Ineffable - Ineffable means that there is no way to describe something. In this case, a broken heart, pain and lost love. Written in 2004. Unfortunately, I know what a broken heart, pain and lost love feels like. I just cannot figure out anyway to put down into words exactly what it feels like. |
| Is It All For The Love Of Money - I was thinking about the older man/younger woman relationships that we all see .I wondered what might be in it for both of the people involved. I saw things from a perspective that I had never considered before and wrote about it sometime in 2003. |
| Is It Too Late - Written in November 2005. It took almost a year after my mother passed away. before I fully realized how fortunate I was to have resolved some still open issues with my mother just a few days before she died. When she passed away everything was okay between us. If they had not of been then this poem would have definitely applied to me. I wrote it as a reminder to myself that issues between loved ones should be never go unresolved. You never know what tomorrow might bring. Never let things get to the point where it is too |
| Just Like Bogie And Bacall - I am a real fan of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall movies. One of the cable channels was showing a bunch of their movies one week and I watched all of them again for the um-teenth time. I went to sleep after watching one of them one night and woke up with lyrics to this song in my head. It was written in March 2005. |
| Last Call - I have played music in bars, on and off, for many years. This song, written in 2004, is based on the composite of all of the “bar fly women whom I have met over the years. |
| Let's Walk Together - I have always liked this song. It was written around 1972. I was married to my first wife and high school sweetheart, Patti. To this day she has never heard me play it. This song was and still is for Patti. |
| Letting Go - My mother was dying. She only had a few days to live. My stepfather called and said that I needed to get up to Bremerton, Washington. I wrote this poem on an airplane while traveling from Orange County to Seattle. About a week later this poem was used in the memorial card that was given to mourners at her funeral in February 2005 |
| Looking For A Country Western Band - A 1972 song. It was one of the first songs that I wrote that told a story |
| Looking For A Country Western Band - A 1972 song. It was one of the first songs that I wrote that told a story |
| Midnight With My Martin - I wrote this song while sitting at my dining room table in my home in Huntington Beach in 1998. Suzanne had recently moved in with me. The lyrics to the song pretty much tell where my head was at the time. |
| Million Dollar Pleasure - Written in 2006. There is not anymore that I can say about this poem. The poem says it all. |
| My Little Pussy - A catchy title! A stupid song about a stupid cat. Written around 1986. |
| No - I have heard that the first word that a baby ever understands is the word “no.” Can you imagine what the world might be like today if the first word that a child ever understood was the word “yes?” This poem was originally written in 2002, then re written a few times since then. |
| Oceans Blue - I suppose that I could have written a similar poem about our forests, our rivers, our lakes or any other natural resource. Being a life long surfer I chose the oceans. Penned in the early 1990’s. |
| Old Red Shoes - After about twenty years with the “Redshoes” nickname this little ditty came to me late, late one night. The man in the red shoes in the poem is not me. At least I don’t think he is me. Maybe he is me… future me. But he is not consciously written into the poem to represent me. I think I wrote this around 2002. I remember being very sleep deprived when I wrote it. When I go a long time without sleep I often start producing theta brain waves. When I am in that state of mind I become ultra creative. A lot of the best music, songs and poetry that I have created occurred when I, for one reason or another, had gone a long time without sleep. |
| Old Songs Playing On The Radio - It is funny how two people can be in a close, loving relationship for a long time and then after breaking up one of the them gets into another relationship and after a few months gets married. Written in late 2002, this is one of my favorite songs. |
| Once I Had A Penguin - Penguins, for some reason, kept popping into my life via TV, movies, magazine articles, etc. Being a parrot owner and having very close relationships with them, I wondered what it would be like to own a penguin. Like driving around in my convertible with a penguin on my front seat…. Definitely a “chick magnate” I would think. This is pretty funny, but really it is a story is about heartbreak and lost love and taking life for granted with a little bit of hope thrown in….. Written somewhere between midnight and sunrise sometime around the fall of 2006 |
| Orange County Man - You know who they are. Most of them are tucked away in inland Orange County planned living communities. When they are not playing golf in their own neck of the woods they occasionally migrate to places along the beach for the day, or to an to an Angels or Ducks game. You can spot them a mile away. Bermuda shorts, brown loafers with no socks, a pink or lavender Izod polo shirt, a contrasting sweater tied around the neck, a blue tooth hanging off of one ear, a wife with a big ass and store bought tits, driving a mini-van or SUV with a My Child Is An Honor Student at…… down the street, blinker always on, a Kenny G. CD playing on the stereo. They are everywhere. |
| Outcall Girl - Inspired by an actual advertisement in the telephone Yellow Pages in 1970. |
| Picket Fence - I originally wrote this poem when I was seventeen tears old. Then about twenty years ago I changed a couple of things in it. Again, about ten years ago I ran across it and changed some words and there it is. By the way, my mother was a wonderful person and I was never raised by a drunken grandmother. This poem is purely a work of fiction. |
| Prozac, Valium And Beefeater Gin - I was having about the worse day imaginable one day in 1999 while working as a design engineer. Someone came into my office and asked me how my day was going and I curtly responded like “oh, nothing that Prozac, Valium and Beefeater Gin would not make better. I thought about the three substances that I had just put together in words and thought “now there is one hell of a hook for a song.” After I got home that afternoon and chased down some medicine with a martini I wrote it. |
| Red Mountain Wine - The alcoholic beverage of choice for the discerning Oceanside High School student of the late 1960’s. $1.49 per gallon. This tribute to this fine libation was written in 2005. |
| Red Snapper - We have probably all known someone similar to character described in this 2006 poem. I am not sure why I included it in Songs In The Key Of Life except for the simple fact that, for some reason, it makes my laugh every time I read it . |
| Riding With The Wind - Composed and written in 2004. I wrote the music for this song on the piano and the bass guitar. While writing the music, the hook “I am running once again and I’m riding with the wind” popped into my mind. It followed the bass line really well. The rest of the song just came together after that. |
| She'd Rather Wait - This song was written in 1999. A lady friend of mine was in love with a man, but he was not in love with her, or really even very interested in her other than for friendship. She declined many opportunities to date other men in hope that this man would finally be available to her. It never did happen. She waited for him for a year or so before finally accepting what was to be. |
| Shine - This song was written for and about Denise in 2005 |
| Shit - I actually wrote this poem when I was about twenty. LBJ was in office and the war in Viet Nam was at its height. A year or so ago, thirty-eight years later, I resurrected the poem and updated it to modern times. Sometimes, the more things change the more they same the same. |
| Shopping Just For One - The lyrics to this poem came to me while I was grocery shopping at Ralph‘s Market one evening in 2005. Denise and I had recently decided to live apart and re-evaluate our relationship. |
| Songs In The Key Of Love - Written in January 2007. This song and the inspiration for writing it is still very fresh in my mind …. With a smile on my face and love in my heart! |
| Tail Lights Fading Into The Night - Tail lights fading into the night…….. The final scene in a movie where a man watches his lover drive off into the night never to see his lover again. He watches the tail lights of her car fade into the night until they disappear. But this is not a movie. This is life. Sometimes we think that life imitates art, but it is actually the opposite. Art imitates life. Two people share a love, but only for a while. No matter what happened, there will always be memories that will be special to them… “There were sunsets that only we could see.” |
| Ten Hot Fingers And One Cool Guitar - Sometimes when I write something happens to me where I see life from a strangers eyes and write with a hand not of my own. This song is autobiographical. It is a glimpse into the way I write and what goes through my head. |
| Thank You For Saying I love You – Sometimes saying “thank you” to someone who says “I love you” can mean a lot more than just saying “I love you too.” Love is a gift. |
| The House On Nottingham Lane - I wrote this on Fathers Day 2002. I was really depressed because I had no reason to believe that my two oldest children would even call me to wish me a happy Fathers Day. Neither one did, nor have they since that day. I know that it is my fault. I have not really been a father to either one of them. By the time I learned how to be a good father to my third child from my second marriage, my two kids from my first marriage were already teenagers. I was so young, I was still a kid myself when they were both born. By the time I grew up they grew up too. |
| The Moon And The Sun - A love song written in 2002 at the end of a long term relationship. In reality the lyrics represent how I wish I would have felt, but not they way I actually felt. I wish that the relationship could have worked out, but it was not to be. When it came to an end the relationship had played its course. Its time had come. It was over…. And that was fine! |
| The Search - “A moment in time is a moment too long for the love of my life to be gone” This lyric sums up what I was trying to covey in this song. This song is not about searching for a lover, rather it is about searching for and keeping love always in your life. |
| The Unwritten Song - An interesting concept in songwriting. In hindsight this looks like it might have been a very difficult song to write, but actually after it was conceived it almost wrote itself. |
| Things Are Looking Better - “Things are looking better” is the catch phrase that you might use after you have been at a stage in your life where that phrase would be replaced with “I don’t want to live anymore” and the phrase you might use before you get back to that place in life where you would say “Things could not be better.” A poem that I wrote at one of those times in my life when “Things are looking better.” |
| To Measure My Love - This poem was written as a testament to Denise about how much in love with her I was |
| Valerie - This song was written in 1990. Valerie is a pseudonym for the anti-anxiety drug Valium which I was dependant on for many, many years under a doctor’s prescription. |
| Vieux Carrie - My friend, Vicky Stewart, were hanging out and fooling around with some new music that I had recently started playing around with. She suggested that I write a song about New Orleans, a city that I had not yet visited and only knew very little about. She answered questions that I asked her about the city and a couple of hours later Vieux Carrie was born in the dining room of my house on Nottingham Lane in the fall of 2002. It is an awesome blues song that I play slide guitar on. |
| What A Guy - This song is about a man named Scott Blum. I worked with Scott in the late 80’s and early 90’s. He later went on to big things including being the CEO of Buy.com. He was not very well liked when I worked with him and I understand that he is not very well liked by most to this day. I penned this in 1992 after I could no longer stand working with him and I quit my job |
| What Happened To me And You - This song was written around 1973. Two friends, a young man and young woman were very attracted to and drawn to each other. It might have become a life long love, but it was a relationship that could never be. They were both married to other people. They would think of each other and about what might have been for the rest of their lives. |
| What‘s Her Name - Ever forget someone’s name at absolutely the worse possible time? I sure have. Many more times than I want to even think about. This is little ditty is based, somewhat loosely, on a true story. |
| Why Does Love Have To Be So Sad - This song was written by a broken hearted, down and out man with a bad case of the blues. The blues is western civilization music, just as jazz, country and gospel music is. I sometimes wonder what kind of music a Chinese man with the blues writes! Maybe Chinamen don’t get the blues. Maybe the blues is something that only afflicts people in the western civilization. |
| Women should rule - I wrote this long before Hillary Clinton ever decided to run for President. There is a lot of truth to this poem |
| You Are An Angel - I was baptized, for the second time in my life, when I was forty-nine, in the Pacific Ocean atCorona Del Mar, California. It was late afternoon in the middle of July 1998 and the sun was low in the western sky. I was held by two men and submerged into the water. When I came up and took a breath I opened my eyes to look on the beach in the cove where members of my church had gathered. The sun was bathing them in an yellowish-orange glowing light and I thought, at first, that they were all angels. When I returned home that evening I wrote the song “You are an angel” out of the inspiration that I received that summer afternoon. |
