I had been playing the guitar for a while at the time I started writing songs. I remember being asked by other kids who had started to play in grade school to play certain songs that I had no interest in playing for whatever reason, and besides, my hands were small and some chords were quite literally a stretch, and besides that, I wasn’t going to be a parrot.
I had the pleasure of playing with a couple of like-minded friends in high school and college and we formed Pied Cow (…the name snagged from an early Penguin edition of Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, page 69). Tom Sauret (drums) and I penned our original songs and Paul Farrar played bass and critiqued everything we wrote (…still does…)
After 50 years, Paul Farrar is still my songwriting partner, doing the heavy lifting in the studio — writing, arranging, composing, and giving me the business.
If you know a record company looking for some tunes, we have over 300 we’d like to sell. Everything from power pop to folk, blues to ska
New work will appear here from time to time. Listen, but if you borrow, kindly give credit and thanks for listening.
Americana, as in the American way
The 80’s was no place for the faint hearted and it seemed there were too many in the room at the party who couldn’t tell if they were having fun or not…and wouldn’t admit it if they weren’t. This songs for us
the hardest song to write is the one that will break your heart, steal redemption from your grasp, and turn your life inside out…until many years later, they give you hope they weren’t written in vain…only to evolve again
The Crayons did a blistering, bouncy rock version of this — Paul, Dana, and Will strip the threads off this tune and it is still my favorite version … on this take, I’m sitting around doodling in the studio..
Songs of Woe and Annoyance…..there is a tribe of troublemakers who practice such agonies….I’m here to poke cordial fun..
You Get the Point
Paul Farrar -vocals, bass, drums
Ross Timberlake – guitars
Faraway 21 – recorded in Bethel, Me. in the studio I built above my furniture shop.
This is the 21st take of the song which is about chasing God. It’s one of those songs with an evasive subject and I honestly didn’t know what I was writing about until I was staring at the lyrics about five days into recording and it struck me..
I’m playing all the instruments and vocals, doing the honors behind the board, and labored as long as I could stand it on the mixing.
Ross Timberlake – most all instruments
Paul Farrar – bass
Hollow a cynical assessment of where a lot of us are these days….and I’m semi-hopeful it’s where a lot of us can escape from as well.
Ross Timberlake -guitars, vocals, production
Paul Farrar- bass
When The Should Dies Young
Written in 1991. My brother, Seth, died in a car accident in ’73, an event that took me years to come to grips with. This song, like many, were attempts to come to terms with a deep sorrow. Grief is not an easily accessible emotion with a predictable on and off switch. As I write this, I remember jamming with him in Dave Pendleton’s bar on Isleboro island that summer. He played the harp with reckless abandon and we didn’t stop till the last keg was emptied…..
Trouble At The Door was one of this rare songs for me, built off the bluegrass guitar riff….lyrics more or less tumbled into place after someone knocked on my shop door expecting to find someone else
