Original

01

2017.   Fort Collins, Colorado. Written for my friend and brilliant colleague Brad McRae. Brad passed away unexpectedly from stomach cancer after transforming the field of wildlife connectivity with his creation of “Circuitscape.” software for measuring connectivity.  I wrote this on David Ray’s back porch on the morning of the memorial service.  For connectivity geeks, the end (which I mess up here) is supposed to evoke the evolution from point-to-point to omnidirectional to wall-to-wall flow.

02

2007. Minnesota. I was stuck for an extra day in Minneapolis and after perusing the Open Book Literary Center I thought I would wander over to Dinkytown for a beer. Somehow I kept getting twisted around inside the UMN campus asking students this question. By the time I finally arrived I had this song in my head.

03

1986 Olympia Washington. One of my early attempts to capture an open tuning sound on a standard tuned guitar. The music expresses the early morning beauty of a quiet inlet on Puget Sound in a banquet of close-voiced m9th chords. The rhythm on the tablature is an approximation.

04

1970s.   Boulder, Colorado. Written for a friend’s wedding this was my first guitar composition. I had this long melody line in mind and it was magical to see how it laid out on the fretboard and how I could fit base notes around it. I had forgotten how to play it until I discovered an old Crestline Trophy Music Writing Blank Book, where I had scribbled it out in pencil in the late 70’s (based on the book’s price – $1.95). Here it is in tablature.

05

A crazy spring celebration with some seriously stretchy chords. This was inspired by Bruce Cockburn’s Skylarking but I have only seen an actual Skylark once in the high meadows of Ireland. Here in New England we have squeaky Bobolinks and ethereal Meadowlarks. It seemed they deserved their own variation.

06

07

1981.   Written for a little combo we had going in Olympia Washington -TomOscarCedarMark. This was inspired by a live Bruce Cockburn concert where the electricity went out and the band just started jamming acoustically. It was the best part of the show and I tried to capture the vibe in this peice. The melody and improvisation explores the Lydian scale from all directions.

08

A beautiful key on the guitar because the open E, B and G strings correspond to the minor 6th, minor 3rd and minor 7th creating some wonderful overtones. I am still learning to play this one.

09

A work in progress inspired by freshwater springs and rivulets in the high Appalachians.