All New Good Songs for Guitar

ALL NEW GOOD SONGS FOR GUITAR is my first album of instrumental fingerstyle guitar compositions. All songs were written for solo acoustic steel-string guitar.

Collectively, the theme of each piece is the energy created by the interaction of myself and another person—or animal; I’m a big pet person. Each involvement with another strikes me as having a unique set of vibrations, a unique frequency and amplitude. In other words, each interaction has its own music, its own melody and force. This is the foundation upon which each piece is built. I begin by actually “hearing” various aspects of the relationship.

I studied classical guitar when I was about twelve years old. My teacher was Ric Chrislip, the classical guitarist and lutenist for the Chicago Symphony. He showed me how to play melody, harmony, and counterpoint at once as a soloist. I didn’t much know what to do with this information at the time, because I was not yet in the ninth grade. But somehow the rudimentary skills that Ric taught me stuck with me.

During my college years, my next serious teacher, Tony Sano of Albany, taught me the rudiments of working with alternate tunings. He transcribed for me The Beatles’ BLACKBIRD, which can be played in standard tuning; however, the “right” way to play the guitar part of the song is in Open G tuning: DGDGBD, low string to high string. Tony also taught me how to develop my own augmented, non-classical fingerstyle technique.

After migrating to San Francisco, my close friend Grant Miller—a fingerstyle guitarist and fantastic composer—taught me how to write my way into the fingerstyle technique. He also taught me how to approach open tunings as a composer. Within about a year, I was working on three of my own original fingerstyle compositions: MULE, SUSAN BY THE RIVER, and SONG FOR JAY. SONG FOR JAY is in Open G tuning.

As time has gone by, I realize that the various inspirations for these pieces lean heavily on what I call The Riddle of the Pet Tiger. The “Tiger” is a metaphor for a person or force that comes into one’s life and teaches an important lesson. But by nature, Tigers can’t stay in anyone’s life permanently. A person can’t keep a Tiger as a pet. These are beings of true force, and they cannot be shackled to anyone’s life but their own.

Profound sadness, at least in my experience, always accompanies the departure of a Tiger. But they need to leave. That’s the order of the world; there’s no real choice in the matter. I’m willing to bet that the Tiger is sad too.

I’ve thought about the conundrum of the Pet Tiger for decades, and I thought that I had learned the lesson completely. But then a few years ago I suffered a long hospitalization, which caused me to rethink the whole thing.

Night after night I was alone; no one came to see me. Then one night I had a vivid dream.

I was lying in a sleeping bag outside. The ground was flat, dirty, and barren. There was a small fire in front of me, casting strange shadows on the cold ground. I was alone. When I realized that I had no person or dog with me, as I normally would have in a camping situation, I became ill at ease. I was not so much frightened as disoriented.

There was a long, low sound from something I couldn’t see. I could tell that I was not hearing the ground rumble; rather, I was hearing a growl erupt from the throat of something very large. I realized that my arms were pinned beside me in the sleeping bag. I couldn’t free myself.

Another low growl, longer this time.

I was terrified, but I was also very curious. How had I come to be on this barren plain? I felt the sense of being utterly alone, yet something else was also in this strange place. Something had found me while I slept alone.

The first thing I saw was the tail flicking off to one side behind the fire. Then the Tiger walked toward me, into the light.

This being was—well, majestic is the only word for it.

The Tiger continued to growl in the same low register. After a moment, I realized that the animal was purring. She or he, I have no idea which, sat calmly on its haunches between me and the fire.

The Tiger was protecting me.

The next morning I discovered that overnight I had been contacted on Facebook by an old friend, a former musical mentor of mine, whom I hadn’t heard from in over forty years.

The next night, three Tigers appeared in the dream. The next morning revealed two more overnight contacts from old friends. They were from the same era of my life as the first friend who had come to me out of the past the night before. I thought I had lost touch with these people forever. But here they were, over forty years later.

And that’s how I figured out that sometimes, when you need them, the Tigers come back.