River City

Most of my lived experience of what a "river" means has been formed by a view of this:

The Arkansas, as it flows through south Tulsa, is naturally made up of more sand than water. Which makes it funny that Jenks, Oklahoma, long before the "River Walk" was built and some municipal magic made the water level rise, boasted a giant antique/nick-knack shop with this title:

I've spent a lot of time in River City Trading Post. I bought this Beethoven bust/fancy hat rack there:

 

 My sister recently found THIS there:

 

And our mom used to work there.

Anyhow, today's offering is not part of the Friendstravaganza. It's a song called "River City" that has basically nothing to do with the trading post. 

River City

I've been asked to provide a moment of music at the opening ceremonies for a week-long residency at OU for an Irish playwright this March, and I'm supposed to play one of my own songs and one traditional-sounding Irish song. Do y'all think this one sounds like enough of an Okie tune to balance against the one they pick for me?

On any given day

This weekend I'm visiting Doug, Danae, and Henry Castle out at New Life Ranch in Colcord, Oklahoma. Today was Henry's two-month birthday and we celebrated with brownies and ice cream. Well, all of us who weren't a baby did.

This is the saddest father/son picture I have ever taken:

Doug and I have been friends and musical accomplices since freshman year of high school (about ten years ago now!) and we first played this song together about halfway through that time, maybe late summer, 2006.

Summer Song

Doug wrote it and never really gave it a title. Tonight I tried to sing it while Doug played piano.

This is the Castles' pretty, huge piano named Lester:

These are the words to the song:

I Am a Rock

Installment #1 in Steven's Musical Friendstravaganza 2012!

Kyle Vanderburg recently ordered a lead sheet of Simon and Garfunkle's "I Am a Rock" (don't ask my why), so when I asked him to come over and tell me what song we would record together he pulled it out.

We decided not to listen to the original recording for reference, so what you are about to hear is the (un?)fortunate result of trying to read off the page. Mostly...

I Am a Rock

A couple of hopes for 2012

Twenty years and humpteen-thousand dollars of the taxpayers' (mostly my parents') money later, I am done* with my schooling years. I met a man this week who has been in prison the past twenty years and just got out. There are worse things I could have been doing with my time...

I have several hopes for my life post-graduation, for 2012, some of them better-defined than others. For one, I hope to find a second job to supplement my hours at the Fine Arts Library. I've applied for OU's temp-placement program, and at the insistence of a letter I got in the mail yesterday from a friend in Alabama, this week I will apply for food stamps and for a job at Panera. Those two ingredients, I'm told, will ensure my success. Well, that and meeting Dolly Parton, but that's another story.

This isn't that story, but on Monday a couple friends and I used our day off of work (is January 2nd always a holiday? I'm new to this...) to gallivant around the Arbuckle Mountains. At a little junk shop called "The Gettin' Place" (or something like that) I did pick up a Dolly Parton record. It has both of the songs of hers that I know on it.

We were planning to climb around the castle at Turner Falls Park, but the park was closed. Instead, we found a bridge in Sulpher that looks like it could be part of a castle.

Here's me looking sinister while Caroline and Maggie perch pleasantly on the bridge behind me:

Another hope for this year is to record a song every week, and to probably post it on this blog. Sometimes I'll write new songs, sometimes I'll record songs I just like to sing, and sometimes I'll record songs that my friends like and ask them to play along with me.

Today's offering is called "Going Away" and it's by The Innocence Mission.

Going Away

*Due to a technicality (that is entirely my fault for procrastinating) I still won't have my master's degree until I fill out one more form and have a professor sign it and have three or four foreign dignitaries look at it without giving a harrumph of stately disapproval.