I like the story telling abilities of country writers, the creativity and attitude of blues/rock musicians and the lyrical consanance and addictive beats of hiphop and reggae, so I took what I like and spliced it all together.

19 MP3 Songs in this album (88:08) !
Related styles: Rock: 90's Rock, Avant Garde: Avant-Americana, Type: Lyrical

People who are interested in Ray Lamontagne The Temptations Tim Hardin should consider this download.


Details:
In December of 2009 I was deployed as a Marine Corps Combat Engineer Officer to Iraq. It was awfully quiet in our area of operations by that time, so I occasionally had a few hours to myself. After checking out with the boss, I would generally pass the time by sneaking off to find a quiet, soundproof place to play a few songs. Usually I ended up in a SCUD bunker. By December, though, the temperatures at night could drop below freezing, and the SCUD bunker was not cutting the mustard anymore. During the day sometimes I would find time to play a song or two before the sun went down, so as not to completely forget the songs I'd been working on (I never actually write down the riffs and I couldn't record anything out there). However, I needed a new creative outlet, because two songs a day is nowhere near sufficient to keep me sane. So I started writing my first full length novel. I don't know anything about writing novels, so I decided to write a novel about music and put some of my songs in it, so that I would at least know something about the content of the book, even if the format and style ended up being grossly subpar.

One cold, quiet evening I got a message from my friend Robbin David, who's a producer and sound engineer in Joshua Tree, California. He asked how things were going and if I was getting any time to play while I was deployed. I told him things were going well and I was fine and all that. A few days later as I was pounding out a few tunes behind the operations center, it occurred to me that I had thirty or forty original songs to try to remember and many of them had never been recorded. I needed to ensure that I would preserve all these ideas. So I picked seventeen songs (since I figured I could put seventeen songs on one CD) and decided that they would be the basis of the storyline of the novel. Then I sent Robbin a message and told him I wanted to record an album at his studio in Joshua Tree as soon as I got back from Iraq.

The novel is coming along well...I think. The album is finished, and I personally think it's something pretty special. I am of course unabashedly biased, but I will present these arguments to support my position:

1. Most songwriters write songs by coming up with a five to eight second hook and then filling out the rest of the song with rhyming lyrics that have no message or substance of their own. Personally, I find that atrocious. The average listener doesn't hear the lyrics anyway. He just taps his feet and sings along with the one part of the chorus that he remembers. This is why most of what you hear on the radio is just pure garbage from a lyrical standpoint.
2. Songwriters aspiring to be viewed as deep and intellectual often write songs with no real meaning, but which sound as though they have some meaning. Robert Plant claimed to have mastered the writing of essentially meaningless lyrics from which people could interpret all sorts of fanastic and powerful messages. This approach does work out for a lot of artists (like Led Zeppelin for instance), but I'm still not a fan of the idea.
3. A lot of people ask me how I go about writing songs, otherwise I wouldn't really feel justified in writing this diatribe. When I write a song it's about something that really happened in my life. I did once write a song about a dream, and I have occasionally exaggerated details of stories I've told in songs, but a lot of people who know me are shocked to find out how many of the stories in the lyrics are one hundred percent fact.

I write true stories because that's what moves me. I don't write and play and record music because I like the attention or because I want to get famous. I do love entertaining, and I was born to be centerstage, but I don't need to write to be in the spotlight. I write because I can't help it, and because it's import to me that I get my point across as precisely as possible, I have learned to write like a poet instead of a pop singer. I do understand that a lot of people listen to the music for the melodies and the harmonies and the beat, and don't think about the lyrics, and for them I do my damndest to write interesting, original melodies and harmonies and to find the best drummer around whenever I record a song or play a show. But the hidden wonders and greater meanings of modern music speak to lonely fools in simple, brilliant poetry, that can uplift and unite and inspire people through their most miserable days. The creation of that sort of art has become my singular mission in life (aside from taking care of my Marines) and this album is my second shot at it.

Take it easy,

Steve Baldino