52 Free Songs

So, this song has a few themes.  The verses deal with insecurities.  The first verse finds the protagonist wondering if he could ever be enough for the girl he loves – even to the point of building her a mountain.  The second verse finds the protagonist lamenting being stuck in what seems like a slow-motion [...]

From November 2004 through February 2006, I recorded with my buddies Ira, Chris, and Ryan under the name Losing Summer.  In 16 short months, we recorded and released 5 EPs and an additional 18 Weekly Downloads, for a grand total of 46 songs.  Some of those songs are still staples in my live shows (The [...]

I just arrived home from 2.5 weeks of shows in Asia, and so I thought that Home might be an appropriate song choice.  It’s a very simple song about losing yourself when you’re away for long periods of time – which seems to be a reoccurring theme for me (Nothing Like Being Alone, Country Clare, [...]

I wrote this song exactly 10 years ago.  It was summer, and I was taking some art classes in Charleston, SC.  There was this really cute girl in one of my classes, and one day after a lecture, she started to chat me up.  So, we were walking to our cars, talking about who knows [...]

I don’t really feel like much needs to be said about this song.  It kind of speaks for itself.  The lyrics depict a conversation that flows back and forth from what I said in my head to what was actually said to me years ago on a summer night across the street from Cooper Square. [...]

This song is a fairytale.  But not the happy kind (surprise!).  It goes like this:   A boy and girl were very much in love.  But the boy had dreams that took him far, far away – making it nearly impossible for the two of them to remain together.  And so they didn’t.  The boy [...]

This weekend I leave to go play some shows in Japan for the next couple of weeks.  In light of the devastation that they have seen over the past several months, I thought I’d like to try to do a few things to raise some money for Red Cross relief efforts there.  All profits from [...]

Probably very few of you would be surprised to find that I am not the world’s best communicator.  I can be so starkly honest in songs, but somehow I am incapable of saying what I mean in real life.  This song is submitted as Exhibit #1.  A very dear friend of mine was getting married. [...]

I wrote Three Days in the summer of 2004, although it feels much, much older than that to me – probably because I’ve played it a bazillion times at shows over the years.  This is one of those rare times where I remember EXACTLY where I was when I wrote a song.  I was as at [...]

This song was written over 13 years ago.  I remember being upstairs and playing a song on my granny’s upright Baldwin (she had since passed and given the piano to my mother).  A lot of the bass keys no longer worked, which was probably my fault (I really liked to hit those keys hard).  The [...]

People sometimes ask me why I write so many sad songs – as if that’s a bad thing.  Well, on occasion (twice in 14 years), I do try to write happy, upbeat songs.  They tend to either come out sounding cheesy, or come out still sounding unbelievably sad.  For the next two weeks, I’m going [...]

There are definitely people you aren’t meant to be with.  Problem is, those people are always intriguing – for that very reason.  It’s like playing with fire – you know it’s a bad idea, but there’s something irresistible about it.  And often that intrigue will gloss over all of the bad aspects that everyone else [...]

In the fall of 2007, I spent some time in Ireland, writing songs for a new record, which was released a year and a half later as I Have Never Been Fond Of Falling From Heights (Swan Dive Into The Atlantic).  The album chronicles (though not in chronological order) my experiences during that time.  Too [...]

Once upon a time, I made EPs with a band called Losing Summer.  By the fall of 2005, we had released 3 EPs, and were in the process of releasing an additional collection of 18 songs on a week-by-week basis (sound familiar?).  During this time, I wrote a fourth EP that we referred to as [...]

True story.  Nearly six years ago, I was in the studio and I received an instant message from a girl I did not know.  We chatted a bit, but it was that awkward kind of chat where she actually knew me and was being personal, and I had no idea who she was and was [...]

Since it is/was Easter, I thought I’d post a very ridiculous song about bunnies – well, about one bunny – with an Icarus complex.  Most people view the story of Icarus as a cautionary tale.  For whatever reason, I’ve always found it daring and compelling and strangely inspiring.  In this story, the bunny has made [...]

Sitting is an old new song.  New, in that I just released it on last year’s I’d Let You Wear My Boots; old, in that I wrote it over 4 years ago.  This week’s free download is a demo of the song I did in Vermont, prior to the recording sessions in Nashville. I’d just [...]

Last year, I spent several months living in Nashville while making my latest LP, The Room Is Spinning Faster.  Oftentimes, I would have a few minutes alone in the studio before things got started for the day and I would just screw around on the piano.  One morning in December 2009, I came up with [...]

This is one of those songs that’s about everything and nothing at the same time.  One of those songs that’s about something very specific as well as about the entire picture.  It’s about history repeating itself.  Over and over again.  As a songwriter, history repeats itself in songs.  And every night, when you go on [...]

This week’s free song is punk rock.  That is, it moves right along and is under 2 minutes long.  This is another quick piano/vocal demo I did in a hotel while on tour in 2009.  As there’s not much of a song, it would follow that there is not much of a story behind the [...]