Student Recordings
High school freshman Lydia Booth has been taking weekly guitar lessons with me since December 2002. She’s a voracious student, sometimes learning one song or more per week. But she hadn’t expressed much interest in writing music, insisting she "wasn’t ready," until one afternoon we sat down to begin our lesson and she exclaimed, "I wrote a song!" and then played "Spilled Nail Polish." I was blown away.
We recorded "Spilled Nail Polish" using my home recording equipment over a few lessons in September 2003. She returned to the studio in the summer of 2004 and recorded "This Life" using her newly acquired skill in composing vocal harmonies. Enjoy!
"This Life" – 2004
"Spilled Nailpolish" – 2003
Jordan Spencer
Jordan came to his lesson one fall afternoon excited to show me a riff he’d made up. I proposed we put some chords to it, write some lyrics, and turn it into a song. To brainstorm ideas for lyrics, Jordan listed some things that made him really happy. One stood out: Runescape, his favorite computer game.
Three months later, the song was done, complete with a drum track programmed by Jordan, several guitar tracks (Jordan plays all but one of the parts), and a super-cala-phreshalistic beatbox breakdown in the middle. Jordan Spencer in the houuuuuuuse!
Grace Noah
Grace was a third-grader when I first started teaching her in the spring of 2003. Since that time, she’s become a Coffee Shop Jam veteran, written her own songs, and in the spring of 2006 recorded a cover of Anna Nalick’s song "Breathe (2 AM)" with her cousin Katy Nichols on keyboard and her mom Barbara on viola. Check it out!
Jam Workshop – Winter 2006
Here are recordings of three of the four songs we learned in the Jam Workshop. Thanks for a great class Ben, Beth, Ray, Lisa, Jamie, and Paul!
"Harvest Moon" – Neil Young
"Friend of the Devil" – Grateful Dead
"2 Kool 2 Be 4 Gotten" – Lucinda Williams
Jam Workshop – Spring 2006
And here are some songs featuring students the Spring workshop–Joann, Eric, David, Jim, and Joel. That’s Jim playing harmonica on "Harvest Moon" and Eric’s electric guitar work on "Folsom Prison Blues."
"Friend of the Devil" – Grateful Dead
"Harvest Moon" – Neil Young
"Folsom Prison Blues" – Johnny Cash
