Gas Prices and Songs

As the price of gas goes higher and higher, I am trying to focus on other things in life. I hope this blurb will help you all, too. Besides things like air and food (necessities of life) there are other things that I must have to exist. My family is cherished, and Jesus is in my heart. Those are he most important to me, but there are other things I cherish, too. Music is one of them.
Music is something that is always in my head. Whether it is a song of a bird, my three year-old pitter-pattering across the floor and making a beat, or a song on the radio, I have always enjoyed the gift of music. That is why I write personalized songs. I can take any song and customize the song for any occasion. No matter what genre of music, I can rewrite it to make it special for someone's life. To make people smile with my songs makes me smile. That is why I do Song Squeeze. My favorite part of Song Squeeze, however, is writing original lyrics AND the music itself. I love when an idea comes into my head, and God allows me the talent to make it come together in the form of a song. I don't care if it is a ballad, a country song, or a punk rock song. As long as it is a good song, it makes me happy. Music is cool.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

We live in the midwest, and most everyone knows we've been bombarded with rain. Last night we got an additional 2-3 inches, they say. I'm getting really, really tired of the rain. Our drainage ditch looks like a rushing river. But there are advantages to these storms. We witnessed it two days ago. We were at our pastor's house planning an event. It was about 8:30 or 9:00pm and, as usual, it had been raining and storming something awful. But here we were planning this event when someone shouted "A rainbow!!". We all bounced up, and ran outside to look. Not one but TWO, FULL RAINBOWS. One of the rainbows was in bright, brilliant colors. The other was next to it, a little more faded, but clearly there. And I'm here as a witness that I know exactly where the pot of gold is because the rainbow landed at the house up the street from where we stood.
I've got two daughters who were with us at the time. One is 3, and the other is 8. Just last week we finished painting their room. One of the things we painted was a huge, colorful rainbow; so my daughters were especially excited to witness their first full rainbow in the sky. This morning my youngest daughter, Melody, told me she wanted to see the rainbow again. Only this time she wanted to ride it. Oh, to have the heart and the mind of a child! I told her that I'd like to ride it too (without going into detail on how difficult it might be to actually ride on colors of light in the sky. For now, we'll just dream of the possibilities.) My oldest daughter, Carly, is intent on finding that pot of gold now that we saw where the rainbow landed.
I'm just thankful that with all this rain, God always gives us a glimmer of Himself through it all. What a fantastic storm it was, and finished up with a fantastic rainbow! And somewhere over that rainbow, skys are blue! Someone ought to write a song about that... hmmmm. Well, I hate to tell you but it's already been done. But I found this really neat rendition of this guy singing a customized song version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World using a ukele. Click on this link to the youtube video. I think you'll really enjoy it. (And just keep in mind that SongSqueeze is ready to customize your favorite song as well.)

Customizing a Song

Ever since college my friends and I have been a part of taking apart a song and putting new lyrics to it. I don't really know why it was so fun...maybe because of our love for good ol' rock and roll, and then our other love for family and friends. I remember my friend Tana's dad had a birthday coming up. I think he was turning 50. We got together all the songs we could find that sort of made fun of him turning 50, and cut and pasted segments of songs together (on cassette tape!) and then played it for him over the phone on his birthday (he was 500 miles away). Although we couldn't actually sing the songs ourselves, he still loved every minute of it. I'm certain he knew it took a lot of time and effort on our part. And time and effort equal love, don't they? I remember one of the songs was called "Through the Years" or something like that. They were all classic songs though, and ones he loved. We sent him the tape; I'll bet he still has it and plays it. He's that type of guy.

Well, now we have a business kind of like that. Not Tana and me, but my husband Bill and his brother and me. Bill is a great musician with exceptional talent and has always loved taking apart secular songs and putting Christian lyrics to them. Or, in other cases, rewriting the lyrics of someone's favorite song by making the lyrics reflect their lives, and then singing the favorite song to lyrics that reflect their lives. He's especially good at poking fun at people. But he's also been known to write songs from scratch-wedding songs and such- so he can be as serious as anyone prefers.

We sang together at our wedding reception. It was the song "Still the One". What a great upbeat song. I'd imagine that could make a fantastic customized song for someone. That's what is so great about music- so many beats, genres, types. I'll bet there is no one out there who doesn't love some sort of music! Maybe it's rock and roll or maybe it's something from the 20's! That music was great too! Man! To think that that music is nearly 90 years old! I myself even love a little classical music now and then. I really do! There are just times when I want to sit back and let the music calm me down. And other times, it's the music that makes the party so much fun.

I believe music creates real memories. My friend Tana emailed the other day and mentioned some songs we created new lyrics to. One was for a joke on a friend. What great memories it brought back! Not necessarily specific memories, just memories of happy times with her and my other friends hanging out-listening to music. College was a blast, and a lot of it had to do the music. There was always a radio on or a cassette tape in the player.

My husband always says "Why should the devil have all the great music?" That's when he sits down and creates new lyrics to a great old tune. I have to agree that a lot of great tunes have been ruined by some pretty dumb lyrics. Think of the song "Running with the Devil". What an awesome song! But even in the 8th grade I felt guilty just listening to that song. I actually asked my pastor during confirmation class if he thought it was ok for me to listen to that song, and I explained that I really just liked the music! His response was "What do you think Jesus would think of it?". Bummer. I was hoping for a better answer. Why couldn't they have written better lyrics like "Running with my do-og". I would have been thrilled to take my dog out for a jog with my headphones on listening to that song. I guess I'll have to get my husband to get to work on that one so I can introduce it to my kids. 'Cause you know I'd never want them to listen to it either- unless it's been tweeked with a little song customization!

Fun Songs to Squeeze

One of my favorite classic songs to make a custom song was a cover of a Neil Young song. We covered Cinnamon Girl to make it a unique gift of a proposal song. We always loved that song. At first, I need to get two guitar sonds to mesh, but still be distinctive. I used a bass drum microphone to mic the one amp, then messed around with a clean, yet still crunchy distortion sound. For the other guitar I used an old Boss pedal, set it to Eddie Van Halen sound, and took off. My brother and I did the vocals in one take. He can really sound like Neil Young as you can hear. I have the lower harmony. Since we have been singing together our whole lives, it was really easy to do. I decided to do the live ending of the song, with the guitar that keeps going. Mixing it was fun, too, and we were really excited about the final product. This song will make a very cool proposal song.