This instrumental tries to convey the experience of walking at night in the dark. I wanted to get that slightly hurried step, the sounds you might be straining to hear, and just the partly scary, partly stimulating side of the experience. For blind people, this is every walk. The song is available on all streaming…

A friend told me about a relative who was essentially addicted to watching a certain news network. This network conveys a world of violence, conspiracies, and spreads general misinformation. This person became clinically anxious and depressed, needing therapy but not doing well. So this song is about that phenomenon, how people spread fear and suspicion…

I like writing songs about historical events and places, particularly around where I live in Minnesota. Way out in Lake Superior stands Isle Royale, now a national park. Native people mined copper there since 3000 BCE. Much more recently, white settlers created mines, one of them being the Saginaw mine. It did not last long,…

I wrote this song about a real experience. A friend and I, when we were teens, took a rubber raft to a swollen stream after a huge thunderstorm. We could float through this pretty well, but it joined a much bigger stream or small river, and we could not control the raft. We managed to bail…

Young men and boys are in trouble. Lots of statistics back this up. Compared to boys and young men of the past, fewer are seeking any kind of higher education, fewer have left their parent’s homes by their 30s, and fewer have partners. Some of these disaffected guys are easy fodder for extremist groups on…

I’ve mentioned this over and over I suppose on my website or in other places, but I am blind. Not lifelong, but rather a fairly recent phenomenon. It’s hard not to write songs about this, as it is kind of a life changer, but I wanted to write a song that is a bit weird…

It was approaching Halloween when I wrote this song. I wanted a Halloween type story with a bit of a twist. Who helped Jimmy that night? Who knows, but like most people, whoever or whatever was probably a mix of good and bad. The song is available on all streaming services, and if you do…

This song combines a couple of experiences. When I was young (well, a teenager), I went for long walks. This was just to get out of the house. We lived at the edge of town, so these walks took me on country roads, roads that ran through cornfields and passed scattered farms. A little later…

I have spent some time as a volunteer at the local public library. This library has received a number of challenges to books, especially children’s books, that some people find objectionable. I think it’s fine if people care what their kids see and do. They should keep track of internet use and gaming and streaming…