New music: "The Waiting Boy"

I really love my weekends. Like the majority of people who are reading this (yeah, you), I work pretty hard from Monday through Friday, and while I'm past the point of needing to go out to clubs and parties and such to enjoy my free time, I really require those couple of days each week to shut down my responsible brain and get some relaxing chill time in my life. This particular weekend, I had nothing specific on the agenda other than to kick back with my lady.

But as they say about the best laid plans of mice and men, something happened to change that scenario. I picked up my guitar and my hands started doing things they hadn't previously done. Side note: I have no idea how to write a song. The only way I've ever been able to do it is to try and not play the guitar while I have the guitar in my hands while playing it. If I try, nothing happens. It's the cruel irony of being a creative person. Anyway, I strummed a few chords, and started humming along with something that seemed to be a melody. Then I said to Kat, "I think I'll do a little work on music," and fired up the computer software that allows me to record things. I started layering tracks of drums, acoustic and electric guitars, and bass. It slowly started becoming an actual song... minus any singing, for the moment.

By Saturday night, I had most of the music done. On Sunday morning, the in-progress tune was still very much in my head when I awoke. After a bit of back-and-forth in my own brain about what the song was about, it came to me in a flash that lasted about three seconds, which was fortunately enough for me to start writing little phrases and thoughts. By mid-afternoon, it was done, and I recorded two tracks of myself singing. Finally, I added a rather understated organ solo, and... well that was all. No tweaking, no messing around, no second-guessing myself. I did a mix of the tracks very quickly, again without giving it much thought, and then bounced the song down to an MP3 file and uploaded it to SoundCloud, which you can hear above.

So... that's all, I guess? I've had songs that I've worked on for years to vary degrees of success, and songs like "The Waiting Boy" which were fully realized in less than a day. Note that I still consider this to be a demo... I'd like to refine certain aspects of the tune. But the final version should sound pretty similar to where it's at right now, and you can expect it on the next Zak Claxton album, whenever I get around to making that. For the time being, I'm happy to be having the first new original solo tune that I've been able to share in almost six years.

Feel free to let me know what you think by commenting here or on the SoundCloud page. Enjoy.