November 27, 2008

Sympathy for those in India...

"Forgiving or punishing the terrorists is left to God. But, fixing their appointment with God is our responsibility."


                                 - An Indian Army saying.

November 26, 2008

This year, give the gift of words and music

Snapshot 2007-08-06 18-29-15

19 songs (18 written by me) played by some really cool players.

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Not just the sheet music to those songs but the stories behind what inspired me to write them.

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Over 100 poems in a limited edition of 200 signed and numbered copies.

Raised In Vain / Afterthought....Dave Tutin songs volume one....or words to that effect...
all available from amazon.com.

November 24, 2008

One from the archives: Blue Highways

This is quite strange. I was clicking through my archives a couple days ago and found this song. But I ignored it because I was totally convinced I'd written about it already. A search of my own blog revealed that I hadn't. Maybe I meant to and never got around to it. 

Well, it's called Blue Highways. And that's a "borrowed" title. It comes from a great book by William Least Heat-Moon. Losing his job as a teacher in New York (if I remember correctly) William, reassuming his Native American name in the process, takes off on a trip not across America but literally around it. He kind of circumnavigates the country using only the roads marked in blue on the maps - the back roads. Hence the title, Blue Highways. Even though, technically, highways were what he avoided.

It's a great read.

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My song of the same title takes a little less optimistic view than William's book. I wrote it when I found myself in one of those middle-of-nowhere towns that could only exist in this country. The words tell the story, so I won't elaborate here.

November 18, 2008

A good problem to have, I guess.

Writing450


Writers are the first to get paranoid when they haven't written anything for a while. We think maybe the ability has left us and that we'll never write again.

So we learn to enjoy it when the opposite happens. I've been writing a lot recently. Which, as I said, is a nice problem to have. The only downside is that I've been writing a lot of songs. And unlike other forms of writing where the words are an end in themselves, songs have that extra, complicated stage to go through of being recorded - of the words being brought to life with music. I'm starting work on a new album but I already have too many songs! It'll be an interesting task to decide which ones make it and which don't.

That said, here's the words to the latest:

MERCIFUL RELEASE

I want to see the blue sky
where no building blocks the sun
Don't care how many years I've had
I want to feel like I've just begun
I want to make it
out of the city
I want to make it
in one piece
I've been dreaming for so long
of this merciful release

I want to tell my father
wherever he may be
Your son made it out alive
Your son is finally free
I want to make it 
out of the city
I want to make it
in one piece
I've been dreaming for so long
of this merciful release

I don't understand the music of the city no more
Every day's a fight but I'm not sure what I'm fighting for

I want to see the desert
to the mountains slowly climb
The rocks that change so slowly
they seem unchanged in one lifetime
I want to make it
out of the city
I want to make it
in one piece
I've been dreaming for so long
of this merciful release

©2008 Dave Tutin / openDmusic

November 12, 2008

And then the Experience was over

Hendrix


The last surviving member of The Jimi Hendrix Experience - drummer Mitch Mitchell - died today. Noel Redding joined Jimi in 2003 and now the band is reunited.

There are some wild sounds coming out of heaven tonight...or somewhere!

November 11, 2008

A new song started in Montreal and finished in New York 24 hours later. Oddly enough it's about time.

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THE LIKES OF YOU AND ME

There's the way it was
The way it is
And the way it soon will be
But they might as well be different worlds
For the likes of you and me
Some people stay in one place
It's there they live and die
But life is not that simple
For the likes of you and I

There's killing time
And time to kill
And time to wait and see
But time is just a lame excuse
For the likes of you and me
We'll never know the reason
That grown men bend and cry
There's no light beyond the sunset
For the likes of you and I

Nothing changes
Nothing stays
Unchanged - forever free
Everything is here and now
For the likes of you and me
People talk in twisted riddles
Of how they've seen time fly
But the time is always now
For the likes of you and I

It's like it never happened
Except inside your head
For the likes of you and me
It's all better left unsaid

There's the way it is
The way it was
And the way it soon will be
But they might as well be different worlds
For the likes of you and me
Some people stay in one place
It's there they live and die
But life is not that simple
For the likes of you and I

©2008 Dave Tutin / openDmusic

November 10, 2008

A lesson in stupidity

Art.bush.gi


This man had one of the highest approval ratings ever in the first survey taken after the horror of 9/11. He had the sympathy of the entire world, excluding those who attacked us. Who, of course, had nothing to do with the country he then chose to attack.

He will leave office with the lowest approval rating in history - less popular than Nixon when he resigned.

Even before he is President, Obama has already changed America. Hopefully we will, in future, recognize an idiot when we see and hear one.

November 09, 2008

“Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen” - Leonardo da Vinci

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If I know anything at all about poetry, and believe me that's a big if, it is that Leonardo's description comes closer than any other definition I've read.

I think poems do indeed paint pictures. They capture frozen moments in time, or frozen emotions in the flow of life. Well mine attempt to, at least. Who knows if they succeed? The reader cannot possibly know the sights, sounds and tastes of the moments that inspired them. Maybe that's the point. Maybe it's when a moment from one life finds a mirror in another life, a moment similar enough to be relived through the same words, that we truly connect as souls lost in a similar place. 

Which is why most of my poems will mean very little to most people most of the time. But in a collection of over a hundred poems maybe just one or two will allow us to meet in a deeper fashion.

if you want to find out, or words to that effect is now available at amazon.com. For the very worldly sum of $20 we might be able to meet on a different level.

It's a strictly limited edition of 200 numbered, signed copies. 

Don't worry about the 'out of stock' warning, order it and it will arrive.

November 04, 2008

November 4th, 2008

The day America woke up.

November 03, 2008

Finding "new strength" in a new song

Dave


LIFE GOES ON

It's easier not to try
To say your time is past
your time is gone
But life goes on

Wiser now but sadder too
You have to find new strength
to call upon
As life goes on

Edges dulled by time don't cut as clean
The anger is still there but not as keen
Carrying the weight of all you've seen
makes the future seem so brief
the past so long
But life goes on

Addictive eyes and haunting smile
You believed with all your heart
she was the one
But life goes on

The night was once another day
Passion lit the room
like a midnight sun
But life goes on

Edges dulled by time don't cut as clean
The anger is still there but not as keen
Carrying the weight of all you've seen
makes the future seem so brief
the past so long
But life goes on

©2008 Dave Tutin/openDmusic
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Interesting sites

  • Dave Tutin
    My music site. Listen to songs, read lyrics...link to where my album is available.
  • Leonard Cohen
    The best Leonard Cohen site. But also check out leonardcohen.com
  • Linda Manzer
    Linda makes beautiful guitars. Like the one I'm holding in the pic above.
  • Craig Snyder
    When Craig is not producing and playing amazing guitar on albums like mine, he creates great ad music.
  • Records by mail
    If you still love vinyl - this site is for you.
  • Gary Southwell
    Not only does Gary make superb classical guitars, he does it in my home town of Nottingham, England.
  • Goedde Guitars
    The guitar featured on this site is the one I own. Larry Goedde makes wonderful instruments.
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