My Songs

By Joseph P. Garland

I played the guitar off and on in college and later. In 2012, and I'm not sure why, I picked it up again and also learned the electric bass. I played the bass in The No Cover Band, which gigged at a bar on Park Avenue South in Manhattan. We only did originals, and one was my song "I Like," which was a straight blues number.

I also started writing songs, first on a guitar I bought at Manny's on 48th Street years ago. Many of my songs were ballads, i.e., little stories. I performed sets of them on my acoustic at a coffee house and at my sister's NYC apartment.

When I thought of writing stories, my first one was based on "Going to California." I had to switch it so it was mostly set in New York and then had to dramatically expand it. But I had my main character, and the novel is Coming to Terms.

I haven't written songs since I've been writing stories. I decided to put them together. There are a lot of them. I tried to wean them out and put them in some kind of order. They are not poems but lyrics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dermody House LLC
• Release date: May 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201463793

Book preview

My Songs

––––––––

A Collection

of Lyrics by

Joseph P. Garland

Copyright © 2020 Joseph P. Garland

All rights reserved.

The characters and events portrayed in these lyrics are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the express written permission of the author.

The cover image is El Joleo, an oil painting by John Singer Sargent. It was painted in 1882 and portrays a Spanish Gypsy dancer.

Contents

Introduction

Ballads

Barrington

Sag Harbor

Mary Elizabeth Moved to Brooklyn

It’s The Old Story

Summer’s End

A Dylan Cover

Going to California

Shadows of a Leafless Tree

The Strand

New Town

He Is Gone And I Love Him Still

Ghosts

Truckstop

The Visit

Hunter’s Gate

River Town

Prison

At 80

Love Songs

Love Is Not Enough

Things Would Be Simple If They Weren’t So Complex

Waiting

It’s Eight in the Evening

Every Time I See You

Nothing Mattered But You

Thinking About You

I Have Always Loved to Look At Her

Drowning

Was I Dreaming?

Some Nights

Breathing

But Not Me

Falling Trees, Blooming Flowers

Wondering

Awake

I Taste Her

It Don’t Matter

Odds and Ends

Eldorado

Don’t Put Your Whiskey Bottles...

Gotta Go to New York

Sunday Morning Racing Blues

Hold Out For That Ring

I Like

Imagined Loves

I Found the Light

It’s Time To Go

I Miss My Dog

Long Time Coming

Oh Sweet Baby

Don’t Tell Me More of Your Lies

Patrick

Rain

Shot

Subway

Someone I Need to See

Tuesday

Wind

Sad Song

Midnight

The Old Canal

It Happened Before I Could Tell Him

I’d Change Everything; I’d Change Nothing

Colors

An Old Man’s Party

The Mystic

The Lyricist

Political

I Saw

More than a Rendezvous

About the Author

Also by this Author

Introduction

I played the guitar off and on in college and later. In 2012, and I’m not sure why, I picked it up again and also learned the electric bass. I played the bass in The No Cover Band, which gigged at a bar on Park Avenue South in Manhattan. We only did originals, and one was my song I Like, which was a straight blues number.

I also started writing songs, first on a guitar I bought at Manny’s on 48th Street years ago. Many of my songs were ballads, i.e., little stories. I performed sets of them on my acoustic at a coffee house and at my sister’s NYC apartment.

When I thought of writing stories, my first one was based on Going to California. I had to switch it so it was mostly set in New York and then had to dramatically expand it. But I had my main character, and the novel is Coming to Terms.

I haven’t written songs since I’ve been writing stories. I decided to put them together. There are a lot of them. I tried to wean them out and put them in some kind of order. They are not poems but lyrics.

The music? I tend to write simple chord progressions. I hope these lyrics allow you to get a feel for the music that underlay them.

Ballads

I’m not much of a poet but am adept at rhyming and, I think, telling stories. Writing stories as songs came easily enough for me, and several of these—Going to California, The Visit, and Prison—became short stories or, in the case of the first, a novel. Turning a scene or two from a song into a story is tough, but I used the song as the starting point.

So this group of lyrics are ideas that began with a character or maybe two and went from there.

Barrington

Sunday nights were special

Everything calmed down.

They could sit on the porch,

Week-enders leaving town.

Spring had revealed herself,

Green was everywhere.

The trees budding, and

A new season in the air.

––––––––

It wasn’t much to look at,

Could use some touch-up paint.

A hundred-year old Victorian,

Just the right side of quaint.

They sat in their Adirondack chairs,

And they drank too much wine.

Toasting the traffic heading south,

So everything was fine.

––––––––

Dancing in the twilight

Steps lit by a streetlight

The music the wind through the trees.

A kiss on the forehead

Both knew where that led.

Rocked back and forth on the breeze.

––––––––

The look froze her

As they held each other’s eyes.

A thousand times.

Yet each one a surprise.

They had been week-enders

Making that long drive.

Getting out of the West Side,

Kept them sane and alive.

––––––––

It was a sweet life

Each had a good wife.

Their little Eden on that hill.

They weren’t exempted

Each had been tempted,

But love had determined their will.

––––––––

Things were quiet,

The wind out of steam.

Now it was a moment,

Perhaps it was a dream.

Slept with the window open,

For the first time that year.

Awakened by a song bird,

And no traffic for them to hear

––––––––

It was a sweet life

Each had a good wife.

Their little Eden on that hill.

They weren’t exempted

Each had been tempted,

But love had determined their will.

Sag Harbor

She was five minutes late  /  Kiss on the cheek, she smiled.

As we left, I held her hand.

She laughed at the sea gulls  /  She hadn’t seen one in a while.

She said, I hope you’ll understand.

––––––––

I said, "We can do that later.

Right now let’s not talk.

We headed for what had been our old café.

Each step echoed loudly

On our quarter-mile walk.

I still didn’t know what I would