Dan Hewins: The Deck 52 songs in 52 weeks: A Deck of Songs in 2009 by Dan Hewins. A song-per-week project.

February 1, 2009

Four of Spades: Song Of The Sea

Filed under: black cards,spades — Tags: , , , , — hewins @ 12:00 pm

The Four of spades is my first foray into the wetter side of life.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be a fish in the sea? To swim around willy-nilly. Join a school and zip around with your friends. It would be fun to explore the depths and see all the pretty things that oceanic life has to offer. Swimming to any point in the wet earth might just be possible. Time wouldn’t be an issue. What does a fish have to do all day except for eating smaller marine life and avoiding the jaws of the larger? Have mass amounts of fun, is what!

Or what about a crustacean? The insects of the sea. Swimming backwards might not be so bad and maybe kinda fun. And some have the added bonus of having claws. What I could do with a pair of claws! Nuts would not be a problem anymore; I wouldn’t need that ballet-related Christmas ornament if I had claws. How exciting to not have internal bones! Oh, to be a mass of slime contained by a shell. Barnacles can go anywhere a ship takes them and they don’t even have to expend the energy to get there. A leisurely life, indeed.

Squids and Octopi? Not too bad either. So many tendrils! The mystery! The ink! Escape under a cloud of darkness and confusion. Cram into that little nook, this cranny. How easy it would be to hide and be safe. And the lucky ones get to grow to immense proportion and have show-downs with the masters of the sea: whales!

Shellfish. I admit that is not as exciting. How to mobilize? Can they even vote? Are there elections in the sea? If not, maybe a clam or scallop could organize the first. That would be a good way to make a name for oneself.

Just listen to the song.

January 25, 2009

Three of Spades: Letters Home

Filed under: black cards,spades — Tags: , , , , , , — hewins @ 1:23 pm

The Three of Spades is a bit more ambitious than the previous two songs. This one kept me in the space until four in the morning. A move that I regretted for the rest of the week since it was a Monday night. I don’t think I fully recovered until the weekend. Regardless of my complaining, I think I came up with something cool, if not just unusual. I have been reading Team of Rivals, a book about A. Lincoln, and it’s influenced the lyrics of this song. It’s a bit about a man in that era that has to travel away from home to serve in government. The travel is slow and hard and he has to stay for several months away from his wife and family. The lyrics are contents of letters home to his wife.

What makes it a bit ambitious is the number of tracks on the song. Aside from all the percussion and the guitars and bass, I recorded eight vocal tracks. Five of them are in unison for the main part and the other three are all in unison for the harmony part. (There are some variances as far as unison is concerned: the “oohs” are not all in unison.) For one track of the percussion I banged on an electric fan with a drumstick; see if you can hear that.

It’s got an African sort of feel too it, particuarly the guitars. I was previously playing in a band called Intermissions where our inital goal was to make our take on  African-styled music so I started trying out some African-ish sounds on guitar back then. Note to purists: I am not trying anything traditional here, I’m just doing my take on things.

I hope you enjoy it.

January 18, 2009

Two of Spades: Merry And The Swede

Filed under: black cards,spades — Tags: , , , — hewins @ 12:00 pm

I was just about to finish reading a book when I wrote this song. I won’t say what book it was but I know that, for those who have read it, it will be pretty obvious. I did this at the practice space, which I’ll call “the space” from now on with electric guitar. I’m not sure if the author, or other readers, would agree fully with all the sentiments expressed here but I think it’s pretty close to the general idea.

January 14, 2009

King of Diamonds: It’s Good To Be King

Filed under: diamonds,red cards — Tags: , , , , , , — hewins @ 12:00 pm

I chose Tom Petty’s “It’s Good To Be King” for the first song to cover in The Deck. I didn’t start at Ace because I thought that King would be more fitting for obvious reasons. I did this at home with acoustic and electric guitar, bass, and reason for the keyboard and drum sounds.

January 11, 2009

Ace of Spades: The Beginning

Filed under: black cards,spades — Tags: , , , , — hewins @ 12:00 pm

Here is the Ace of Spades, the first card of the Deck. This song is aptly named “The Beginning” and is a simple song with a couple acoustic guitar tracks and a vocal. Here we go…

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