I performed my song "Classified Ads" from the CD of the same title (1994) at my concert called "Late Harvest," in New York City at the Beechman Theatre 10/13/08.
Back when I was trying to make it in the music world, this song actually reached #1 on the Seattle NPR station. The DJs all told me. "This song gives good phone."
This was, of course, long before Eharmony and Match.com and what have you. You placed your ad in the paper. My mother was horrified. ("Right in there with the used cars!" she said)
5/10/14: "She Got Me"--My 10-year anniversary gift to the woman who walked beside me all those years with dignity and grace. Homegrown Music Cafe in Pt. Jefferson Station, NY (Long Island).
5/10/14: "Song in my Soul"--a song I wrote in the eighties for my Sunday School class to sing. I'd been attending church with a chip on my shoulder, in my black leather jacket with my Pat Benetar hair spiked so you could hurt yourself on it. I ONLY went for the baked goods afterward. But the late Reverend Pat Keller (rest his beautiful soul) took one look at me and said, "Why don't you teach Sunday School?" I laughed in his face. But he was serious. I wrote this and they sang it for everyone at church. And I found a completely doable version of God in my life.
5/10/14: "Mind Like a Carnival." Fellow Tisch Graduate Musical Theatre writer Daniel Maté had a brilliant idea. He invited his songwriter friends to choose a living person currently residing in Brooklyn, interview them, and then write a song about them. About a month later, he produced a concert of all these songs, called "Brooklyn Has Characters. My song was about my incomparable optometrist.
5/10/14: "Beautiful" This is one of my favorite songs in my collection. I wrote it while I was still attending the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing program at Tisch School of the Arts (NYU). I think it was just one of those spontaneous songs that just jumped out of me. Sometimes they do that..
5/10/14: "Don't Look Away" and "The Road Home." When I was still performing, I usually ended with these two songs, and I always asked people to hold their applause after the first one so the message could sink in before I went onto the second one. "The Road Home" is the title cut to my most recent (2000) cd.
The magnificent Broadway singer/actress Soara-Joye Ross sings "Don't Wanna Sing Hallelujah." The song celebrates a learning moment in the life of a disillusioned angel. Soara-Joye Ross is an award-winning actor and singer who's performed on Broadway, at Carnegie Hall & Lincoln Center, in Regional Theaters in the US, toured in productions overseas, in film and TV. (Check her out as 'Giselle' on the HBO Comedy, "Crashing" directed by Judd Apatow)
2/14/20: "Love Life"--Once again, a song for my beloved wife. This one I wrote on the little ukelele I finally bought after wanting one for years. So it's my very first attempt at playing it. I found the song while fooling around on it. I'm an amateur at it, but I am sincere. :-)
This is a rare, intimate recording of a song that my daughter, Chloe, and I have sung together for years. I'd written it for my Sunday School class to sing on Christmas Eve when we lived in Cody, Wyoming. Chloe's all grown up in this video, a deeply gifted singer in her own right as you can hear for yourself.