Videos
I was blessed to have the talents of Rebecca Doerflinger in building my website and putting the videos together. I had no idea what to do, but Rebecca had it taken care of in her very professional way. She asked me, “What is your favorite city?” “Chicago”, I replied. Everything fell in place after that. The hardest part for me was picking out the pictures to go with the songs. I love how they turned out. Thank you Rebecca!
One of my favorite cities in the entire world is Chicago. During a very special time in my life I spent Christmas and Thanksgiving downtown on Michigan Avenue. No city does the holidays better than Chicago! Here is my love song for this amazing city.
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I wrote the Ravens Fly (21) in several hours during one of those very rare moments (for songwriters) when the words were coming so fast that I was having a hard time getting them on the paper. The Ravens Fly is dedicated to all military service personnel and their families. Thank you for your sacrifice! On a personal level this song is in memory of SGT William Greenleaf, a family member and veteran of Afghanistan: 4/15/1984 to 6/4/2012.
Dressed in Blue is portrait of a beautiful woman who looks great to the outside world, but who is broken and hiding a grief that can not be expressed. Rick Cutlip's expressive guitar solo fits the song perfectly.
The Rain Falls Down is a snapshot, of a time long gone. Sad and sweet, the great piano work by Stuart Shelton perfectly conveys the feeling of loss in the song, and his keyboard mimics raindrops perfectly. The mood is augmented by the magic of Craig Christman’s Saxophone. Amazing!
Sorrow Sleeping is an up-tempo song about change. It is about stepping outside our comfort zones and taking charge of our lives. “I think of what was lost” in the second verse lets the listener know that effecting life-change is not always easy. If you stop listening before the first bridge you will miss an amazing display of great musicianship. I was blessed to have world class players on this CD.
Love Gone Cold tells of a relationship that is irretrievably broken and way past the point of ever being fixed. Sometimes people stay together for all the wrong reasons. At 90 beats per minute, the song uses Major 7ths to advance the melody line then goes into a soaring chorus with tight harmony.
The Music Plays was written one evening after I attended a band rehearsal of a very good friend. I built the story line around a couple on the dance floor. I love secondary chords (4 note chords) so the song starts out with a hammering between A Major and A Major 9. I usually perform this at 105 to 110 beats per minute depending on my mood.
"I hold you close, I hold a memory and time just fades to grey. A silver light, a candle burning bright and grief that tears betray" begins a poignant love song filled with imagery of fire, photographs, and loss. It is pretty clear there is no happy ending here.
Silhouettes and Shadows was almost a song that never happened. I wrote the song and had pretty much decided it was not very good until my sister Jo Alderman McWilliams heard it and loved it. I am also a big Dan Fogelberg fan. I had the privilege of seeing him on his Solo Acoustic Tour in 2003 so I was shocked and saddened to hear of his death. The death of the much beloved Tim Russert was equally sad. It was the empty chair on Meet the Press that gave me the metaphor for the lyrical content of the song. The imagery was as sad as anything I had ever seen on TV.