Two Lieutenants, Sledding at Walnut Ridge, The Madison Road

Two Lieutenants (mp3 medley) (pdf)
Sledding at Walnut Ridge
The Madison Road (pdf)

Three tunes in a set that I recorded a couple of years ago for my bandmates in Contratopia. We've played this set some since then, although lately we've substituted a different tune for Madison.

Two Lieutenants gets its title from one of my Dad's favorite World War II stories involving his work as an MP with the V Corps in Europe and his encounter with two inebriated officers.

The lovely Walnut Ridge Cememtery in Jeffersonville, Indiana was our favorite sledding site when we were little kids. There were a couple of very nice unpopulated slopes and it was always quiet.

The Madison Road runs from Decorah to just outside of Ridgeway and is one of several possible ways to begin a journey to Cresco. It's really a very pleasant drive.

Rocks in the Sun

Rocks in the Sun (mp3) (pdf)

This week's tune comes from a trip out to Maine in the Summer of 2003. Acadia National Park is one of my favorite places and we always try to spend at least a few hours on Mount Desert Island whenever we can.

We usually fight the traffic into Bar Harbor and visit the Song of the Sea music shop. Then we drive up Cadillac Mountain for the incredible view and follow that with a leisurely spin around the Park Loop Road.

Near the Gorham Mountain Trailhead is a long stretch of rock-lined coast where you can sit on boulders and watch the Atlantic Ocean tide come and go. When the sun is out this is a very pleasant place to perch and pretend that you're a gull or a seal.

The actual tune that we have here was composed a day or two after our 2003 visit to these rocks and was originally known by a different title that my Contratopia bandmates were reluctant to embrace, so "Rocks in the Sun" it is.

Ekin Avenue

One tune this week:

Ekin Avenue (mp3)(pdf)(harmony pdf)

My grandparents on my mother's side lived on Ekin Avenue in New Albany when I was a boy. Just a lot away from the cross street (13th?) with a railroad track in the middle. I watched many a long train go by at very slow speed sitting on the curb there.

Years later, in the late 1970s, friends Paul Moffett (now editor/publisher of the Louisville Music News) and Ray Major hosted mighty jam sessions at their Ekin Ave. villa on Monday nights. Lots of good music happened in that big front room.

This tune was written, apparently, on Feb. 22, 2005 and was recorded sometime in the last year. I've used the Ekin Ave. title for a couple of different hornpipes in the last few years so if you have another tune from me with the same title scratch it out and call it something else.

Winter Leaves, New Blanket

Here are two more tunes:

Winter Leaves (mp3) (pdf)
New Blanket (mp3) (pdf)

Winter Leaves is a tune from about a year ago that in some way reminds me of the great tunes composed by Arto Jarvela and Timo Alakotila for the brilliant Finnish band JPP.

New Blanket is a waltz that has had a couple of other titles before this. Titles are often the hardest part but I think this one will stick.

A couple of people have asked what I'm using to do this. These first tunes have all been recorded on a recently purchased Zoom H4 Handy Digital Recorder. I want to keep this project simple so I've been using the built in condenser mics with no effects or EQ. I'm recording here at home so you might sometimes hear cars going by or household sounds. I download the mixed tunes to my computer and chop off the intro noises using an old version of SoundForge and save to mp3.

I'm pleased that I managed to get this next entry added just a week after the first. We'll see how often I manage that in the future. Let me know if you have any problems with the files.

Shelter Dogs, Needle in the Sawdust

Here are two tunes:

Shelter Dogs (mp3) (pdf)
Needle in the Sawdust (mp3) (pdf)

I write a lot of tunes. Along with tunes that get played at contra dances or by mandolin orchestras I have a big backlog of things that only exist in notebooks or that have been played once or twice for various occasions. Plus I keep writing new ones. My plan is to post a tune or two to this journal once a week or so. I'll see if doing this gives me the sensation of working through this backlog.

Unless stated otherwise, all music posted here is composed by John Goodin and, while under copyright, is offered to all visitors under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-NoDerivs 2.5 license.

Please let me know if something doesn't work or if you have a question about the music.