People Playing Your Songs

There is an indescribably weird, but good, feeling I get when I hear people playing songs that I have written. The first time that I really experienced this was in college. I was in a hack band “You, Me and Carl” and we had a song called “Roast” (the title came from the word Roast on a Folgers coffee can). Our only gigs were these coffee houses hosted by our dorm several times a year. At one coffee house, after performing to our adoring fans (think Mel and the Flight of the Conchords), some of our even-more-hacks-than-us friends performed “Roast” as the band “Me, Myself, & Ormy” (they worked at Burger King and so they wore their uniforms, I think, their alternate name was “Captain Ormy and the Burger Police”). It was horribly played but awesome and hilarious at the same time. I got one of those once-a-year laughs that was so good that I cried. And it was so weird to hear a song that I had written (with my YM&C bandmates) being played by someone else.

Last week I had a similar experience, although it was much less horribly played than Captain Ormy’s performance. I lent a guitar to my 11-year-old nephew only about a month ago. He requested a video iChat and proceeded to show me his progress on guitar. He played my song “Zabada” and was amazingly good, especially for only playing for a few weeks. It’s quite tricky for some people to play and sing at the same time at first, but he’s got it down like a pro already! Here’s a video I shot of his performance:

This really put a smile on my face, both for his great early guitar progress and for his taking to my fine composition!

Reminder, you can hear my original here: Zabada the Song or the whole album here: Zabada the Album.

Zabada!