Tag: Contest Winner EP

Open Mic Adventures XLIX: Sloppy “Hipster Girl Next Door” Medley

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This past Friday, 22 September 2023, I played a gig at a local coffee shop with my buddy John.  I was recovering from a sinus infection, but through a combination of cough drops, water, and tea, I soldiered through and managed to hit quite a few high notes—woooooot!  It also helped having John there to carry lead vocals on several tunes.

It was a sloppy performance on my end—I mixed up the lyrics to a song I have been singing for eleven years!—but I’m chalking that up to the sinus congestion and my slowly diminishing mental faculties.  The result, regardless, was an absurd, self-indulgent, over-the-top, ridiculous, long closing number to a very fun show.

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Lazy Sunday CLIV: Behind the Songs, Part II

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Subscribers to my SubscribeStar page have enjoyed (I hope!) a series of retrospectives about the songs from my debut EP, Contest Winner EP.  I’ve dubbed this series Behind the Songs.  Today, I’m dedicating the second of two editions of Lazy Sunday to look back at this series.

Here are the second and last three tracks in the series, in case you missed them.  Access to the full articles requires a subscription to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more, but you should at least get a good taste for the pieces with these previews:

Happy Sunday!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

Lazy Sunday CLIII: Behind the Songs, Part I

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Subscribers to my SubscribeStar page have enjoyed (I hope!) a series of retrospectives about the songs from my debut EP, Contest Winner EP.  I’ve dubbed this series Behind the Songs.  As such, I’m dedicating the next two editions of Lazy Sunday to look back at this series.

I’m thinking of compiling these posts—which are quite detailed and lengthy—into a short ebook, which I might also offer as a PDF download with future purchases of Contest Winner EP.  I’d expand these pieces with some introductory and concluding remarks.

In the meantime, here are the first three tracks in the series, in case you missed them.  Access to the full articles requires a subscription to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more, but you should at least get a good taste for the pieces with these previews:

Here’s to an enjoyable listening experience for you.  And if you haven’t already, pick up my EP and my other work on Bandcamp!

Happy Sunday—and Happy Listening!

—TPP

Other Lazy Sunday Installments:

SubscribeStar Saturday: Recording Contest Winner EP

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

For the past six weeks, I’ve been writing about the six tracks from my 2015 release Contest Winner EP, the only recording of my original songs I’ve ever released.  I’ve released several other albums and singles, but  I’ve written a lot of other songs that I have not recorded.  Indeed, I plan on doing some simple cellphone videos of some of those unreleased tunes for subscribers in the coming weeks.

One reason I have not written another album is because I hit a songwriting drought somewhere around 2015.  Sitting down and writing songs is difficult and time-consuming, and while I love it, my schedule grew increasingly hectic around that time.  I began teaching very late nights at a local technical college (I could only keep it up for a year—even I can’t work that much), and the Artsville Songwriting Competition, which gave me the incentive to write regularly, folded.

Still, I have managed to write a few more tunes in the intervening years—maybe not enough for a proper album, but certainly enough for another EP.  But that leads to the other reason I have not released a second album:  the recording process is tedious and expensive.

It is also super fun, despite the long hours and late nights in the studio.

Today, I’m going to give a brief overview of the recording process, way back in 2014 (yep, it took me over a year before I finally released the album).

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Contest Winner

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Well, here we are—the final installment of Behind the Songs.  I’m wrapping up this extended, self-indulgent walk through my debut EP, Contest Winner EP with the final and title track, “Contest Winner.”

“Contest Winner” is probably the first track I wrote for the EP, long before I ever conceived of releasing an album or EP of my own.  If I’m not mistaken, it dates back to 2012, so it’s ten-years old this year.

I wrote the song for my very first songwriting contest, figuring that I might as well as be confident.

It did not win the contest, but it did win the People’s Choice Award.  And it spawned an era of artistic inspiration—and a lot of songs.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Behind the Songs: Funeral Pyre

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Apologies to readers for the slight delay with today’s post.  It was a grueling but productive week, and after teaching eighteen lessons in five days to seventeen students (and it would have been twenty lessons and nineteen students, were it not for The Virus), I fell asleep a little before 8 PM last night, and slept until around 7 AM this morning.

Today’s post is the penultimate in my Behind the Songs miniseries.  I’ve been going through the stories behind each of the six songs on my debut EP, Contest Winner EP.  With “Funeral Pyre,” the fifth track, we’re nearly through the entire release!

I often conceive of “Funeral Pyre” as a companion piece to “Ghostly,” which I covered in detail last week.  Both are unusual songs, and it’s pretty easy to link ghosts and funerals thematically.

I thought I’d written “Funeral Pyre” last among all the songs on the EP, but it appears that I wrote it roughly three weeks before “Ghostly.”  Both tunes date to January 2014—6 January 2014 for “Funeral Pyre,” and 30 January 2014 for “Ghostly,” according to the original lead sheets.

Regardless, the two songs share some similarities.  Besides the thematic similarity, both are fairly dark in tone compared to the other songs on the EP.  They also were late additions:  originally, I think I was just going to record “Hipster Girl Next Door,” “Greek Fair,” “By the Light of the Laptop Screen,” and “Contest Winner,” and release a single.

But a gnarly ice storm meant that my recording session was delayed, and I wrote “Funeral Pyre” while sitting at home in my tiny apartment in Florence, South Carolina, while the world was covered in ice.  I was supposed to go that night to start recording the record, but the foul weather meant a postponement, which allowed time to write the song and, it seems, “Ghostly.”

One other similarity:  “Funeral Pyre” and “Ghostly” are the songs from the record I play live the least.  “Ghostly” does enjoy a lot of playtime during the spooky season, but for many years, I neglected “Funeral Pyre” in my live sets.

As we’ll see, I now think that was a mistake.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Behind the Songs: Ghostly

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Today marks the fourth installment of the six-part Behind the Songs miniseries for SubscribeStar Saturday.  In this series, I’m going to reveal the stories behind each of the six songs on my debut EP, Contest Winner EP.  I’ll go track-by-track, in order, detailing the inspirations behind these songs.

This week’s tune, “Ghostly,” is perhaps the most unusual track on the record.  That’s by design.  I wanted to write a song in 3/4 time with a kind of creepy carnival feel.  I also wanted to write it in C minor, as I was not very familiar with the key, but it was similar enough to C major that I could shift into familiar territory (as I learned just this week, classical composers considered C minor to be particularly unstable and tumultuous, and Beethoven reserved it for his stormiest, most emotional works; I wish I could claim I knew that at the time, but it’s fitting for this song).

Needless to say, “Ghostly” remains the weirdest song I’ve ever written.  For that reason and others, I love it.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Behind the Songs: By the Light of the Laptop Screen

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Rest in Peace to Marvin Lee Aday, better known as Meat Loaf, who passed away Friday at the age of 74.  I’ll be writing a full obituary about Loaf next week, but I wanted to take a moment to remember his legacy here.  Few musicians have had a greater impact on my vocal and composition than Meat Loaf and his frequent collaborator, songwriter Jim Steinman.  In a series about songwriting, it seemed fitting to acknowledge his influence.  Indeed, today’s song, “By the Light of the Laptop Screen,” owes much to the rock ‘n’ roll-meets-Broadway style of Loaf/Steinman.

Today marks the third installment of the six-part Behind the Songs miniseries for SubscribeStar Saturday.  In this series, I’m going to reveal the stories behind each of the six songs on my debut EP, Contest Winner EP.  I’ll go track-by-track, in order, detailing the inspirations behind these songs.

This week’s tune, “By the Light of the Laptop Screen,” is something of a companion to “Hipster Girl Next Door.”  The two songs are part of what I call my “two-part coffee shop trilogy” (I wrote another song, “Sweet Little Ukulele Player,” that was something of a third part, but I seldom play it, and I don’t think it rises to the level of the other two tunes).

Like “Hipster Girl Next Door” and “Greek Fair,” “By the Light of the Laptop Screen” has becoming something of a fan favorite.  A graduating senior used it (to my delight and, given the lyrics, my chagrin) to accompany his graduation slideshow—while receiving his high school diploma!

There’s also been rich speculation about who this song is about.  Today, I reveal all.

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Behind the Songs: “Greek Fair”

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

This weekend I’m continuing the six-part Behind the Songs miniseries for SubscribeStar Saturday.  In this series, I’m going to reveal the stories behind each of the six songs on my debut EP, Contest Winner EP.  I’ll go track-by-track, in order, detailing the inspirations behind these songs.

Last week’s installment detailed the smash hit, lead-off single “Hipster Girl Next Door.”  It’s my most-requested song, and a pretty catchy tune.

But this week’s tune is, perhaps, my personal favorite from the record, and almost certainly the best song I have ever written.

It’s time to go back to “Greek Fair.”

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SubscribeStar Saturday: Behind the Songs: “Hipster Girl Next Door”

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Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Today I’m beginning a six-part miniseries for SubscribeStar Saturday called Behind the Songs.  In this series, I’m going to reveal the stories behind each of the six songs on my debut EP, Contest Winner EP.  I’ll go track-by-track, in order, detailing the inspirations behind these songs.

Naturally, that means the best—or, at least, the fan favorite—will be first:  the lead-off single “Hipster Girl Next Door.”  To this day I close 99% of my live shows with this song, which is probably my most-requested tune.

So, what inspired this catchy little sendup of the early 2010s hipster subculture and 1950s rock ‘n’ roll?  And why do fans love it so much?

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