449 posts tagged with folk.
Displaying 51 through 100 of 449. Subscribe:
Asleep at the Knife
Turns out my version of the serenity prayer involves a lot more quantum sci-fi and psycho-killer imagery.
Been working on this for a good while, trying to figure out how to program drums for a slow 6/8 time. Pretty happy with how it finally came together, but I'd love some pointers. Still worried it's a bit too saturated, but that's kinda my MO. Lyrics in the fold. [more inside]
Get Rid of the NRA
Just some opinions, set to the music of a three string guitar. Video of this same performance at YouTube or Facebook. High quality (AIFF) audiofile available for free download at SoundCloud.
Be a light
It's been a while since I posted anything, so here goes with a slightly off-kilter, folksy, moody vocal and guitar piece.
An Spealadoir
I'm baaaaaack! After quite a hiatus, during which much has happened, but myself and a friend were in the recording studio to make an album. Thought you fine folks would like a sample. This is a traditional song in the Irish language called "An Spealadoir", or the Hay cutter. My friend and I joke that of all the big songs in the Irish tradition about shipwrecks, wars, love lost and emigration, she managed to pick a song about cutting grass. Enjoy!
Take A Knee
Topical song. Recorded live in one take, fast and dirty, at home. Vocal, three-string guitar and stompbox, all coming out of a 15 watt VOX guitar amp. I videoed the performance too, which you can see at Facebook or YouTube. If you'd like to download an AIFF audiofile, you can do so at SoundCloud. [more inside]
The Ballad of Highway Boy
All this awful flood action has inspired me to dig up the sad old tail of Highway Boy, raised by his trucker brother, because his father was a hurricane and his mother was a cellar door. [more inside]
Every second of the time
As long as I am posting moody, folksy songs with voice and guitar...here's another one!
I've been drinking all day
(That's the title, I have not in fact been drinking all day...)
Country-ish, imagine you and your man are on the outs and you're feeling a little bitter about it.
Down in the Well
Vocal and guitar, one rough take, one track, melodic and intense two minutes and thirty seconds
Just Like Me (Orsa's song)
Due to circumstances almost entirely beyond my control, I recently became responsible for a wonderful young dog named Orsa. This song is written from her perspective. [more inside]
I never said I'd stay
Warm, mellow vocals, guitar, fiddle. My first post!
fool's gold (manifest gutterpunk)
a rough recording of a song i wrote the other day. inspired by a number of travelers i befriended while bumming around BC. [more inside]
Esme
A song written for my 4 month old daughter. [more inside]
When the Curtains of Night
I'm happy to present my collaboration with not_on_display: this is our version of a neat little tune that was included in The American Songbag (a 1927 folk song collection by Carl Sandburg); the song there was itself derived from a late 19th-century song by William S. Hays. [more inside]
Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child
A quick and scarcely rehearsed lofi recording of my take on the classic folk standard/gospel/African American spiritual, with an overdubbed chorus and acoustic guitar.
The Leaving of Liverpool
I had a great time collaborating with billiebee on a cover of this traditional folk song/sea shanty. The goal was to record a simple arrangement that was different from the more lively covers out there -- to borrow billiebee's phrase, a gentler version. I'm hoping our rendition highlights the lovely melody of the song. [more inside]
A Simple Song (in Troubled Times)
An original song, just written and performed on the ukulele, recorded on my cell phone.
Sin City
Written by Gram Parsons and originally recorded by the Flying Burrito Brothers in 1969. It's one of our favorites and is just as relevant today as ever so here we (Corwin Bolt & the Wingnuts) are. [more inside]
Silent Night / Seven O'Clock News
What I did for 25.12.16, echoing Simon and Garfunkel.
Cold Home
My home is cold right now
Thoughts in B-flat
In the past couple of weeks, I found myself going back to a piece that I'd started working on a few years ago -- probably because it's in a slower triple meter that's somewhat calming for me. This is a condensed one-minute version, featuring piano and guitar, for the 60 Seconds and Under #2 MeFi Music Challenge. [more inside]
Everything Is Fucked (Keep On Going)
A wrote a little pep talk, for myself and for anyone else who needs one, as we wade through the fuckedness of all this. Catchy and short and angry and upbeat and exactly a minute long. [more inside]
Hip with the kids
Delirious, teeth-gritted ballad about weapons of mass destruction and grass roots violence. Also, a breathless love song from one monster to another. Also, a way to distract myself while this horrifying evening plays out.
Rough mix. Suggestions welcome. Lyrics past break. [more inside]
A Heartbreak Cliche
I've been cranking out a lot of songs almost involuntarily lately and many of them seem to sort into a genre I think of as "Tragicomic Americana," a traditional mode of American blues, country, and folk songwriting that ruminates on heartbreaks and losses exaggerated to such dramatic extremes, the effect becomes darkly comic, like Hank Williams's "There's a Tear in my Beer," for example.
Well, FWIW, here's my latest attempt to make a minor contribution to that grand tradition... [more inside]
Apples and Walnuts
A few weeks ago I was asked to play at the wedding of some friends. I don't really have anything appropriate, but was (against the odds) able to write something for it. This is it. [more inside]
Worry About The World (cover/mashup)
This is a cover of a song my dad wrote (that I actually found via combing through his post history on Metafilter after he died) [more inside]
I wanted to
Another acoustic song! I'm really digging this thing where I limit myself to two strings, probably because I'm lazy.
Angeline the Baker
Improvised acoustic guitar / singing. Recorded on phone.
A bluegrass standard, but I'm playing it as a stream of consciousness improvisation. Usually these days my playing is pretty much by the book, but here I was thinking about ecstatic / outside players like John Fahey and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan.
No patching in. Only one take. No overdubbing. Get it right in the moment. Be real and accept flaws as long as they don't spoil anything important. [more inside]
Kicking up the Dust (original)
Acoustic folk heartbreak. [more inside]
All The Time
The first song from my new EP -
Americana fingerpicked singer-songwriter folk-rock-ish type music
The War On
Satire. [more inside]
You Only Care...
Just finished writing a new song :) I was trying an experiment using to convey a good part of the emotion in it.
Oh also, playing with a new tuning I found while trying to learn a Nick Drake song. CGCGCG I like it but I'll have to play with it more.
Kensington
I wrote this with my brother back in 1993 on a night we were thrown out of home and had no where to go. We spent the night sleeping on the steps of McPherson library in Philadelphia. [more inside]
Dark as a Dungeon
An old Merle Travis song that I learned years ago when I first started getting into bluegrass. Another chance to break in the new resonator guitar, and do some fun chorus harmonies. [more inside]
In The Pines
I went and bought my first resonator guitar yesterday, a Gretsch Honey Dipper (evidence), and this seemed like a good tune to try and break it in on. [more inside]
Jackson (Lucinda Williams Cover)
My entry for the May/June 'City Songs' challenge. [more inside]
The Crow on the Cradle
A quick recording of a way I've been messing around with approaching an old song. I think the time-signature change makes it seem a bit more bitter and a little less sinister, which is interesting, if not necessarily better.
A Smuggler's Song
Somewhere between Show of Hands and the Mountain Goats, we find this story of a man in a boat off the coast of Cornwall, drunk, armed and fearful. [more inside]
Whiskey Before Breakfast
An arrangement of the traditional fiddle tune with its not-often-heard lyrics. Full album now streaming on Bandcamp. [more inside]
Black Rabbit
A friend of mine lost her pet black rabbit recently. A conversation about it led to me digging out this old (c. 2007?) recording. [more inside]
River Town
Where does one genre begin and another one stop? I'm asking myself the very same question every time I hear that this song is indie or pop rock or folk rock or dream pop. Well, whatever one calls it, I hope you enjoy this. [more inside]
Headphones
Two minutes about my paralyzing self-consciousness about working on my music in the presence of other people. [more inside]
In Western Lands
Sam Gamgee's song in the tower of Cirith Ungol. Words by JRR Tolkien, melody by Stephen Oliver. [more inside]
Ferguson, Missouri
This song addresses the situation in Ferguson and the frightening militarization and violence of today's police forces across America. I made a video for it, which you can view here.
Woman in Black
The Devil Walks the Earth
Here's a live recording of a song I premiered at a gig two nights ago (July 18, 2014). The bassist accompanying me is Keigo iwami, from the Swamp Root Jimmies. The song is anti-war, anti-greed, anti-death. Video here.
Beat Heroes Die Too Soon
Another acoustic guitar, piano and vocal sample-based song.
It's Not So Bad
An quickish acoustic one, with lyrics about my dad, his melanoma, and a couple of other things. Has probably the most acrobatic bridge bit I've ever done. [more inside]
What Was That Sound I Heard
A song concerning the September 15, 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. I made a video of historic photo images to accompany the song, which may be viewed here.
Balkanofellini
If you are anything like me, you sit in awe during all the 'musical moments' laced throughout any Fellini film (music composed by Nino Rota). Combine that with the unexplainable excitement during those lively Balkan snippets of any memorable scene of most Emir Kusturica films… that is what this song feels like… to me anyways.