As I may have mentioned in a previous blog post, my father and mother each told me (separately) that when I was an infant, I would always cry when they sang “Good Night, Irene” to me as a lullaby.
If that is true, I’m not sure why they kept singing it to me (maybe to see if — yet again — it would move me to tears?)
I recorded it with pianist Doug Hammer when we were working on a show called “Songs About Parents and Children.”
I used to think that it was written by Rodgers & Hammerstein, but it turns out — as you may already know — that it was written by Richard Rodgers after Oscar had died (from stomach cancer on August 23, 1950 at his beloved Bucks County farm in Pennsylvania).
They are a well-known songwriting team based in New York City, and they have crafted a bunch of stand-alone songs — along with entire musicals — which are beloved by performers.
A few of their NYC-area hits include “I Like Them (Bald),” “Alto’s Lament,” and “Taylor, The Latte Boy.”
Jinny Sagorin and I recorded their song “There’s Nothing I Wouldn’t Do” with pianist Doug Hammer a few years ago.
Originally from South Africa, Jinny has lived in the Boston area for the past two decades.
In recent years Jinny has expanded beyond musical theater and cabaret to becoming a cantor.
We both share a sense that music can be very sacred (as well as silly, sexy, heartfelt, and open-minded).
Will (with broken elbow), Jinny and Doug — Photo by Jeremy Schmahmann
And performing in a synagogue, library, church or retirement community can be just as satisfying as performing in a bar or club — although we have both done plenty of that, too!
I first met Jinny when I was co-hosting an open mic at The Cambridge Center For Adult Education in Harvard Square (where I also was employed as an events manager and PR person).
Eventually we put together an entire program of songs called LIFE MATTERS.
Jinny also invited me to perform as a special guest when she debuted her solo CD, IT’S FOR YOU, to a sold-out crowd at Scullers Jazz Club in Boston.
And she has performed many of my original songs when I have done showcases of my own work.
In addition to being a performing artist, Jinny is also a visual artist.
Here’s an example of a work of art she created for an annual show called ART/Word in which she is a regular participant.
Thank you to Marcy and Zina for writing this song.
Thank you to Jinny and Doug for recording it with me.
PS: If you feel like streaming this song on your favorite digital music platform, please click here for links.
PPS: I haven’t mentioned the current challenges here on planet earth (wars, heat waves, forest fires, floods, spreading diseases, rising costs, lack of food/fertilizer/fuel, political upheaval, etc.) in recent blog posts.
But I remain vividly aware of them.
And I continue to find inspiration and hope from the courageous candidates and hard-working GOTV (get out the vote) organizations at work around the USA.
As you are probably well aware, there are a bunch of very inspiring human beings stepping up at the local, state and national levels these days.
Let’s support them — with tiny donations of time and/or money— as much as we are able.
My friend Molly Ruggles recently released a new song called “Sea Of Lies.”
She was inspired to write it by the ongoing challenge of sorting through all the news and advertising and sound bites and spin and “blah blah blah” coming at us on an hourly/daily/weekly/monthly/yearly basis.
I originally learned a version she created for four voices (the same four who sang on “My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella).”
But then she decided to re-write/re-arrange/re-focus it for two voices plus her piano accompaniment.
That’s the version she ended up releasing to various streaming platforms.
It is the sort of melody — and message — which easily gets stuck in my brain on auto-repeat.
“Need a little peace… just a hint of hope — with a hand to hold, maybe I can cope.”
Molly sings lead vocal plus some extra harmonies.
I sing a few harmonies.
I think my favorite moment of the song is when we both sing “Save me… please save me” in harmony.
Molly also designed the artwork to accompany her song.
She is a multi-talented human being.
I am curious to learn — or be reminded — about how other human beings deal with all of the (dis)information coming at us 24/7.
I know some wise people turn off their phones and computers for hours at a time.
And others make sure to exercise (walk, swim, bike, and more), do some gardening, sit in meditation, cook with friends, take a bath, read a book, lie in a hammock, do some yoga, and/or cuddle with their loved ones (human, feline, canine and otherwise).
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
What are YOUR coping strategies these days?
One of mine is — no surprise — making music and doing music-related activities such as this blog.
I also find a lot of hope and inspiration learning a few details about people who are brave enough to run for office — whether on the town, city, county, state or national level — all around our country.
And then there are the flowering plants of the world!
They always lift my spirits.
Thank you to Molly for writing this song and then asking me to sing harmony with her.
Thank you to the generous and talented photographers at Pixabay.
And thank YOU for reading — and listening to — yet another blog post from me…
Today I have been inspired by the aphorism “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
You may have seen it on posters, coffee mugs, etc. — attributed to Albert Einstein.
But according to an online search, there is little evidence that Einstein ever said it.
Instead I learned that a writer — Rita Mae Brown — created this quotation and attributed it to a fictional character in her 1983 book Sudden Death.
Thank you, Ms. Brown!
I think about this aphorism when I am reminded that one is supposed to budget an equal amount of money to market/promote/advertise one’s product as one has spent creating it in the first place.
Yikes!
I have never done this.
Other than maintaining my website, pitching a few songs to music bloggers, and writing this blog, I have spent very little money to promote my music.
However, this particular piece of marketing advice comes up fairly often when I am reading books/articles and watching videos about how to navigate the business of making music in the 21st century.
Now I must pause for a moment for a digression…
Over the past thirty years, I have observed that the music business — like life itself — is always changing and evolving.
So it is virtually impossible to do the same thing over and over again for more than a year or two.
And as a result of personal computers entering our daily lives, we have to keep endlessly learning the latest versions of many different programs/applications — as well as updating our hardware and software.
So as much as I would love to be able to do the same thing over and over again — while drafting new songs using Apple’s GarageBand or making videos using Apple’s iMovie, for example — I am forced to learn the latest updates (and alleged improvements) in order to continue making music.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
This has always seemed to me to be a huge waste of time AND money in order to make a few tech company owners, tech company employees and tech company stockholders rich.
Graphic Design by Stephen C. Fischer
I keep hoping to find a research study which would document the billions of hours which we human beings have wasted in the process of learning — and re-learning…and learning yet again — how to use various computer programs.
I would also like to find studies which explore the cumulative toll on our mental health due to the Sisyphean frustration of having to update and re-learn so many basic tasks/skills on an ongoing basis.
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
So I am happy to report that my friends Molly Ruggles, Ellen Epstein, Michael Cicone and I went in a pre-industrial — and some might even say late-Paleolithic — direction with our most recent song release which we recorded a cappella.
A couple of years ago singer/songwriter/pianist Molly Ruggles took my original version, added an entirely new section of music + lyrics, and then arranged it for four voices to perform a cappella.
Our new version is in the player at the beginning of this blog post.
You may recognize Molly as a vital part of my trio recordings with Carole Bundy.
Molly, Ellen, Will & Michael (Photo by Doug Hammer)
I have known the other two singers on this recording — Ellen and Michael — for decades.
If you are a fan of contemporary folk music, you may be familiar with them as part of a musical trio with singer/songwriter/guitarist Cindy Kallet for forty-five years.
Ellen and Michael have released three beloved CDs of music with Cindy as well as appearing on many of her solo recording projects.
So I feel very honored and excited that they agreed to be part of this recording!
Now I will circle back to the aphorism that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Molly and I are doing something new with this recording.
We have hired a fellow singer-songwriter, Erik Balkey, to help us promote it to folk radio programs/stations around the USA.
Erik puts together compilation CDs of new recordings every two months and sends them to a couple hundred folk DJs and program directors.
We were surprised — and pleased — to learn that he chose “My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella)” to lead off the second CD in his July/August promotional compilation.
If you happen to listen to a folk program in your neighborhood — or maybe far away from your neighborhood via an internet radio station — please let me know.
Then I will check and see if Erik sent his July/August promotional CDs — including “My Sweet Honeydew (A Cappella)” — to your favorite station/program.
It will be interesting to see what does — or doesn’t — unfold regarding airplay for our song this summer…
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
Thank you to Erik Balkey for his radio outreach.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for his collaborative production skills (and spontaneous photographic impulses).
One of the pleasures of doing a Throwback Thursday blog post — as you may well know — is rediscovering something one once wrote (which one may have completely forgotten!)
In the case of this Throwback Thursday, I also rediscovered a song by Stephen Sondheim called “Everybody Says Don’t” which I had forgotten I’d recorded.
A new biography of Mr. Sondheim came out earlier this year which my sister gave me for my birthday.
I just finished reading it and — not surprisingly — come away with renewed respect and gratitude for the wealth of songs and shows he helped to create over the course of a 50+ year career…
If you are not very familiar with his work, he wrote the lyrics for two blockbuster Broadway favorites — WEST SIDE STORY and GYPSY.
But what he really wanted to do is create both music and lyrics — which is what he finally got to do with A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM, A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, COMPANY, SWEENEY TODD, INTO THE WOODS, ASSASSINS, PASSION and other shows.
Mr. Sondheim experienced a few flops along the way, including ANYONE CAN WHISTLE and MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG.
But he continued to work on the latter show for decades until he (and various collaborators) finally arrived at a version which was one of the hottest tickets on Broadway — starring, among other talented human beings, Daniel Radcliffe (the original Harry Potter) — during 2023-2024.
A version of this production was filmed and can be watched via various streaming platforms.
And I learned from Wikipedia that Richard Linklater is filming his own version of it over many years (as he has done with other creative projects). Sounds like we may have to wait for a decade or more to see THAT version…
Mr. Sondheim did not have many of his songs become big pop hits, although Judy Collins recorded a lovely version of “Send In The Clowns” from A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC.
He crafted his songs to advance the plot of each show and often wrote them for particular actors to perform.
This specificity may have made it more challenging for pop musicians like Frank Sinatra or Barbra Streisand to pluck one of this songs out of the context of a particular show to become a more generic pop hit — although Ms. Streisand DID include many of his compositions in her two albums devoted specifically to Broadway songs.
And Mr. Sondheim, bless him, did agree to write additional lyrics for Ms. Streisand’s version of “Send In The Clowns” so that it made more sense for her to sing it (out of the context of the original show).
I think I may have featured photos of hydrangeas in a previous blog post, but they are what is blooming right now in my neighborhood as summer officially gets underway in the Greater Boston area…
And I LOVE them.
Happy summer to any and all readers in the northern hemisphere of planet earth!
The only flowers remaining these days in my neighborhood are chrysanthemums and asters.
They are a hardy bunch, bless them.
We’ve had a few frosts; so most bees and butterflies are gone…
I’m already counting down the days to the winter solstice, when daylight in the Northern Hemisphere will again start to lengthen!
In recent weeks I’ve re-discovered the pleasures of tea — my current favorite being Celestial Seasonings’ Bengal Spice with some honey — and soup (today chicken, squash, carrot, potato, onion, garlic and ginger, are simmering together on the stove…)
Today’s blog post is made possible by our copyright laws.
Cole Porter’s terrific song “Let’s Do It” entered the public domain last year.
So my friends Carole Bundy, Molly Ruggles and I can now share a very fun version which includes some updated lyrics (by Molly and Carole) as well as an entirely new section of the song — written in the style of Cole Porter — by Molly.
Molly created the first draft of this song for a performance with her friend Kate Stringer at Club Cafe in Boston during which I sang some harmony.
Then — after Kate moved to London — the song evolved a bit when Molly, Carole and I added it to our repertoire.
Adding new sections to pre-existing songs is one of Molly’s many creative super powers.
But it can create copyright challenges — unless one is able to get permission from whomever owns the rights to the song.
But now, because “Let’s Do It” (which was first published in 1928) has entered the public domain, we are allowed to take creative liberties with it.
Molly, me and Carole in Maine
“Let’s Do It” was one of several hit songs from Cole Porter’s first big Broadway success — a show called PARIS.
He had been writing songs for a couple of decades — starting in Peru, Indiana (where he grew up the only surviving child in a very wealthy family) and continuing in Massachusetts (where he was valedictorian of his class at a prep school, Worcester Academy) and in Connecticut (where he attended Yale).
According to Wikipedia, he wrote hundreds of songs at Yale — two of which continue to be sung at football games.
He also wrote the songs for four entire musicals which were performed in New Haven and also on tour at college clubs during vacation breaks.
After he graduated from Yale, Mr.Porter pretended to study law at Harvard (to satisfy his very wealthy grandfather, who was paying for his education) while actually studying music and writing songs — and rooming with future a Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, who was then an avid law student.
Cambridge borders East Arlington (where I live), and I love walking through Harvard Law School — which happens to be next to Harvard’s music department — and thinking about Mr. Porter treading the same streets a hundred years ago.
Although he lived an extravagant life, the second half of it was filled with chronic pain due to a horseback riding accident on Long Island.
This accident (the horse he was riding fell and rolled on top of him) left him with multiple leg fractures which never healed well…
Molly, Carole and I leading a service at the UU Church in Milton, MA
He endured many corrective surgeries over the following decades and eventually had the lower part of one of his legs amputated.
Argh!
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
Although some of his earlier songs had been interpolated into other shows, Mr. Porter did not have his own hit show until he was 36 years old.
But — in the midst of much revelry and travel — he could be a very disciplined person.
He continued working on music during his 20s and early 30s while simultaneously leading a life of extraordinary luxury — renting historic palazzos in Venice during the summer and hiring entire ballet companies to entertain at his parties.
He even wrote a jazz-inflected music score for a ballet production in Paris which pre-dates George Gershwin’s much more famous Rhapsody In Blue.
Carole, Molly and I are not living lives of extraordinary luxury, but we ARE acutely aware of how fortunate/privileged we are to be able to devote time and energy to making music during this very challenging — and at time horrifying — time on planet earth.
A deep breath of gratitude in.
And a deep breath of gratitude out.
Thank you to Cole Porter for writing “Let’s Do It.”
Thank you to our copyright laws for allowing creative material to go into the public domain after a certain number of years.
And a special THANK YOU to everyone who has been streaming, liking, and playlisting our “Molly, Will & Carole” music!
We’re up to 2500 total streams on Spotify and 6500 total streams on Pandora (which are the only two music-listening platforms I currently keep tabs on…)
I have recently learned that streaming activity on the very first day of a song’s release strongly influences the future algorithmic behavior of that song on that platform — ie: whether a song is recommended to other potential listeners.
So if you might be willing to click here to stream “Let’s Do It” on the platform of your choice — and maybe even “like” it and add it to a playlist — we would be very grateful.
I will end with one final THANK YOU to you for reading and listening to yet another one of my blog posts!
For over twenty five years I camped there every summer with my sweetheart and his extended family.
And then COVID — and a new baby — entered our lives, and we all decided to rent a house together at the opposite end of the state (in Pittsfield) with a big, fenced-in backyard instead.
The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend — or a meaningful day.”
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
This song was inspired by a couple who rented a campsite at the other end of the little valley at North Of Highland campground where we had a perennial campsite.
I don’t remember exactly how we reached out and introduced ourselves, but I am pretty sure I showed them the wild blueberry bushes which were bearing fruit all around our little valley.
And they invited us over for an informal cocktail hour one evening, which was very pleasant.
And then we discovered that the guy was a swimmer who, like me, loved to do laps along the ocean shoreline — although this was becoming more and more risky because the increasingly abundant population of seals in North Truro had been attracting more and more great white sharks…
So we hit it off with these two friendly people and became well-acquainted over the course of a few days.
Then, to my surprise (because I had assumed incorrectly that they had a week-long rental) they packed up their tent and — with warm goodbyes — drove away.
I have been very aware of — and sensitive to — the realities of love and loss ever since I was young.
In fact, I have been told that my parents used to sing “Good Night Irene” to me when I was a very small child just to see me well up with tears.
Deep sigh…
I have written in previous blog posts about the challenges of working professionally as a child and teenager. One of an actor’s most important skills is developing a sense of connectedness — first with the receptionist who checked you in at each audition, then with the casting agents, with the clients, and with any actors who were part of the initial audition and subsequent callbacks.
And if I got a job — whether for an hour doing a voiceover, for a day on the set of a TV commercial, for a couple of weeks filming a TV pilot, for a few months doing a movie, or for a year doing a musical — I needed to nurture ongoing, positive working relationships with my fellow cast and crew members.
I needed to show up on time.
I needed to know my lines.
I needed not to complain about anything.
I needed to behave as if I was a small, manipulable adult.
When a job was done, I remember how awkward and sad I felt as all of the camaraderie, friendship, affection and even love which had developed among members of the crew and cast would evaporate and disappear.
That was very confusing.
Was any of the camaraderie, friendship, affection and love I had experienced real?
Or was everyone just acting?
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
On a vaguely related note, our planet’s relentlessly-marketed fossil fuels — along with the cars, trains, busses, ocean liners, planes, motorcycles, etc. which need them to run — have allowed most of us human beings to become much more mobile and much less rooted in one neighborhood, one town, one city, one state, one country.
The postal service and the internet have also given us extraordinary options for meeting and becoming acquainted with other humans.
How do we make sense of — and peace with — all of the beings who come and go in our lives?
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
I tried to make a little bit of sense out of the ebb and flow of relationships by strumming a ukulele in my tent and then jotting lyric and chord ideas in one of my songs-in-process notebooks.
Eventually “The Crazy Touch And Go Of Our Lives” emerged.
I performed it by myself — playing a ukulele — at some open mics.
Then a few years ago my friend Molly Ruggles (who sings, plays piano and writes songs herself) created a lovely harmony part for her and our friend Carole Bundy to sing.
The three of us performed it at a bunch of porchfests and then recorded it with Molly playing piano last summer at Doug Hammer’s studio north of Boston.
Another deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
As I write this blog post, I am reminded of the Dalai Lama’s words about making each day — and, each friend — meaningful.
That is certainly what has happened with me and Carole and Molly.
We first collaborated when I was invited to sing during a service at the UU church in Medford where they were both members and where Molly was also the music director.
And this musical collaboration has deepened and widened over many years — and many delicious dinners — to become meaningful friendships.
We sing and harmonize and rehearse and perform and bear witness to the twists and turns of each other’s lives.
Deep breath of gratitude in.
Deep breath of gratitude out.
I will end this post with my customary thank yous plus a bunch of beautiful images from Pixabay that somehow reminded me of this song.
Thank you to all of the folks who have kept North of Highland campground going for many decades. I miss being there each summer!!!
Thank you to the couple who camped for a few days across the little valley from us at North of Highland campground.
Thank you to the Dalai Lama for his wisdom.
Thank you to my sweetheart and his — now our — family for letting me sit in my tent at the campground all day long, working on new songs.
Thank you to my dear ukuleles, to my “tent of creativity,” and to the various pencils, pens, notebooks, rhyming dictionaries, and laptops which help me to write songs.
Thank you to Molly and Carole for our years of interactions.
Thank you to the UU church in Medford for bringing me and Carole and Molly together as a musical unit and as friends.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for engineering and then mixing/mastering our recordings with us.
Thank you to the grasses and bushes and seaweeds and crabs and sea birds and seals and sharks and fish who make the Head Of The Meadow beach — a short and beautiful walk from the North Of Highland campground — so interesting to visit.
Thank you to the ocean and the sun and the moon and the tides which sweep the beach clean twice a day.
Thank you to everyone who has been listening to my songs via Pandora, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and any/all of the other streaming platforms.
Each stream, each like, and each addition to a playlist is noted by that streaming service’s algorithms — and encourages it to share the song with other listeners.
As you may remember — or perhaps you have blocked it out of your memory in order to be able to move on with your life — three years ago things were not going well in the USA.
Many hospitals were overwhelmed by COVID — with dead bodies being stored in refrigerated trailer trucks until funeral homes and crematoria could catch up with the demand for their services.
And 2023 has brought new challenges — and tragedies — into our lives here on planet earth.
Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.
Wars continue to grind along, destroying human lives along with the lives of countless other beings caught in the cross fire. Pollution continues to seep into every ecosystem here on planet earth. Climate change continues to increase with catastrophic consequences.
My heart goes out to anyone who is feeling hopeless, who is feeling distraught, who is feeling alone, or who is feeling unloved during this holiday season.
And although I am fortunate to have a life partner + family + friends with whom I can gather during the holidays, I can vividly remember how heart-broken and grief-stricken I felt when the first big love of my life chose to end our relationship many decades ago…
Image by Scott Wynn
“After The Holidays” taps into those feelings of raw desperation.
Here is a link to my version “After The Holidays“ in case you might like to stream it.
And as I have explained before, if you “like” one of my songs or add it to one of your playlists, that will improve the algorithmic sharing of my music.
Thank you to the John Meyer for writing such a moving song.
Thank you to Doug Hammer for playing so sensitively on my version of John’s song AND for being such a diligent engineer/producer.
“Music is a great encouragement to people in hard times.”
Deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
I also explain in this past blog post about how little money is earned by performers and songwriters from streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, YouTube, etc.
Spotify, which last year had an almost 50% market share of music streaming worldwide, still pays less than half a cent per stream.
Apple Music was the next biggest player, with almost 25% market share of music streaming worldwide — but paid a penny per stream (almost triple what Spotify paid…)
All of the other music streaming companies share the remaining 25% of worldwide music streaming — and paid anywhere from .00069 cents per stream (YouTube Music) to .017 cents per stream (Napster).
Here’s a graphic representation from this article of all of these numbers.
Suffice to say that I have not been earning any significant money as a result of people streaming the 37 recordings I’ve released during the past 34 months.
Deep breath in.
And deep breath out.
But I DO have the satisfaction of knowing that my music is out there in the world, being listened to by folks in fifty different countries — including the USA, Finland, Canada, Taiwan, Great Britain, Kazakhstan, Australia, Indonesia, Turkey, Brazil and Chile!
“Music is part of what makes the world keep going.”
And in recent months my streaming statistics on Spotify have risen significantly (although my total numbers are still quite modest).
This rise in my stats helps me feel that what I am doing — releasing music — is not entirely futile, useless and/or egotistical.
And it gives me a small sense of hope, which is what Ron Sexsmith’s lovely song does, too.
Hope remains a blessed mystery to me.
I hope you feel at least a tiny kernel of hope in your life.
Recent regional elections here in the USA have renewed my sense of hope in our political process.
And small children — such as those who grace my Music Together classes — also give me a sense of hope as well as a reason to continue to work for a more balanced, sustainable, and respectful future here on planet earth.
I’d be happy to learn in the comments about what gives YOU a sense of hope these days.
amusicalifeonplanetearth 