John and I were talking on the phone and spoke about settling. My initial thought was about where folks tend to live. John has lived in New Orleans a long time, in good and tough times for the city, and I returned to near the little town I more or less grew up in after living in other parts of the country for over a decade. There’s not a perfect place, job, or mate, yet we eventually settle making some compromise in exchange for a perceived benefit.
That said, John sent me some lyrics soon afterwards that went something like this:
I’ve been a wandering man
Who carves his days
From the fabric of the land
A place for the stoic trees
And the land, the land
She rolls like the seas
Where I saw trees was a forest
And the sky, the sky
A cotton candy swirl
That’s what she is
A cotton candy girl
A child of the world
Chorus
She’s good enough
Oh, she’s good enough
I finally see
What she means to me
So, she’s good enough
Good enough for me
How long was she there?
With flowing honey hair
The sun glinting so starry
Or was i just blind
And out of my mind
Burdened with more than i could carry
It all seems so moot
As i gather the truth
About where shimmering moonlight
Meets the union of the night
And the girl of the dream
Proves more than she seems
Chorus
Well, I have been working on learning some Tin Pan Alley songs on mandolin, finding that they share some similar chords. I started playing with this idea:
Initial chord idea on iPhone
That was recorded on my iPhone sitting on the couch by my newly replaced Vermont Castings stove. I then wrote a simple drum beat on my computer to keep me in time (later added a bodhran drum on top of that), recorded the mando backing with the new beat, and added an initial guide vocal (later replaced with what you hear here).
Early Tracks on Computer DAW
You can hear the completed song here:
Little Eddie and the Eagle 