Songs to Play at my Funeral

I wanted to share another then and now song like I did with Simple Song in an earlier post. Selfishly, as I write these entries I am fighting the urge to post my most recent stuff that frankly has a much better recording quality than the early stuff and if I am being honest, my songwriting has improved over the years, which is hard for me to even type.

I remember coming up with this one as I was feeling particularly happy on this day and I wanted to write a love letter or song. Again, true to my form there are not a ton of lyrics and I think you will find as I go on that they songs get a little longer, but for sure there are many that only have a verse or two and one chorus. Not sure if that is a confidence thing or why that is, but I do whatever the mood tells me to do. The original recording of this was done on the cheap Sony tape deck with a built in mic. I hadn’t yet purchased the newer 4 track so it was all I had. I believe if my memory serves me on this one, I kind of just sang what came to me after I hit record. That is probably why it is so short, but I really like these words and this tune.

IRIS (original form)

My mind is clear
Like the green hills against the bright blue sky
My heart is full
Like the color in the iris of my eye

Full of love, that I can’t describe
Full of hope, no one can deny

My mind is clear
Like the green hills against the bright blue sky
My heart is full
Like the color in the iris of my eye

The updated version of this one is night and day a better quality recording and much more intricate. Lyrically, it is shorter as I removed the Full of love and hope lines. I just couldn’t find a way to make it work with the melody. I would like to take credit for the guitar in this, but this recording was done in GarageBand (as all of my newest stuff is) and is post my 4 track era. So the guitar part is a prerecorded loop with a backing drum track. But everything else was me on a keyboard and I believe I used my iPad for this one. I am usually very hard on myself when it comes to singing (as I am sure you have picked up on by now), but I have to admit I like my vocals on this one and even played around with splitting the audio between the left and right speakers in the beginning which makes for a nice sound on headphones (hint, hint). This one has a very ethereal feeling to it and one of my earliest “complete” songs. One of my personal favorites.