A Train Bound For Nowhere

How My Song Finds Its Story

Do you remember Casey Kasem’s Top 40? I was a kid with a tape recorder in the late ‘70s early ‘80s and looked forward to Sundays for a chance to capture a recording of my favorite songs. My sister and I would wait patiently for the songs we wanted to capture and hit the record button.

Some of my favorites were Charlie Daniels, Queen, Pink Floyd, even The Dukes of Hazzard episodes on Friday nights.

Imagine this… “Another One Bites the Dust” is the #1 song on the countdown. You know when it’s going to play. You wait patiently for the entire Top 40. Casey says, “…and the number one song in America…” You hit record – and your sister cries, “It doesn’t work, it doesn’t work in the beginning!”

Needless to say, we have a decades long running joke when something isn’t working.

I didn’t know it at the time, but telling stories would become central to my future songwriting.

Finishing The Long Game

During the summer of 2025 I was seeking a good closing song for my latest album, Lessons From The Long Game. I’d been working on it since late 2022. So almost four years later, if someone asked what is the key “lesson” from this project, how would I answer?

I had recently seen A Complete Unknown – Bob Dylan’s biopic. Which inspired me to attempt a traditional folk song to convey the key lesson: Grace comes slowly. The initial song was abstract. D major, 100 BPM, “we” language dominated the lyrics of impatience leading us astray.

It failed my unspoken until now litmus test. Do I compulsively sing it while I work, walk around, go to sleep, exist?

My critical review: It was a mix of throat clearing and compost. Who cares?

It was also off-brand for me. A traditional folk song isn’t where my music currently lives. So I sent it to my compost pile to ferment.

Listen to the compost here:

Finding My Song’s Story

As I stewed on the failed first attempt to find Slow Grace, and reflected on my trip, I was reminded that I’ve always loved songs that tell a story. It started in 1979 with “The Devil Went Down To Georgia.” Imagine an 8 year old boy’s reaction after waiting hours to record his favorite song… only to get to his favorite part and hear, “… you son of a gun!”

So I started writing about my trip home from Hamburg. And it was eye-opening. Three encounters, three missed opportunities. A homeless man, a woman in a wheelchair and an incompetent Uber driver. All three times, I was the problem.

Jesus greeted me three times and I responded with irritation, frustration and anger. That reflection became the story arc for my song.

Finding My Song’s Sound

“On a warm summer’s evenin’… On a train bound for nowhere…”

Kenny Rogers was a master storyteller. The Gambler was a fantastic starting point to for thinking about the “folk” side of my story telling song. I’d sing you a few more bars… but then Danni will stop me because of the ear worm that results. Kenny was right… You got to know when to hold ‘em.

I already said traditional folk (or country) is not my music’s genre. Where’s the Grunge? So what if The Gambler met up with an artist with a broken heart that only sees black?

Yep - you guessed it. E minor darkness, Vedder-like vocalizations, chord progressions carrying emotional weight.

Black meet The Gambler.

A Train Bound For A Demo

My songwriting usually begins with covers that start with me plucking a simple bass line to the guitar chord progression and learning to sing the lyrics while I play the bass. I did this for both The Gambler and Black. It was fun playing with both Kenny’s and Eddie’s vocalizations and styles.

I had my sound and my story arc: three encounters and three missed opportunities.

The refrain: “Hey there, did you miss me here?”

My proof and litmus test that I’m on the right track: am I singing the song just about everywhere I go? Am I making up more verses, refrains or interludes based on situations I encounter? If the answer is yes, then I keep going.

Like the other day when someone said something I thought was stupid, I couldn’t help but sing, “Why can’t he be stupid… somewhere else?”

A Story Song’s First Demo

I recorded vocals for the first time earlier this week and mixed them in ProTools with my iPad synth instrument stems. It’s my first work-in-progress demo. My plan is to experiment with some new workflow items through the end of February with an objective of releasing the song by the end of March.

Forty-five years after waiting by a speaker to record Johnny calling the Devil a son-of-a-bitch, I’m still waiting to hear how my latest story turns out. Meanwhile, you can check out the demo here: