new song > island life
my wife and I went on a cruise in the Caribbean not long ago, we stopped at Belize, Cozumel, Cayman Islands and Roatan – it was quite nice (especially the price: $550.00 each including flight and food), not long after that our son Jesse spent his J term in Belize. Somewhere in there, between reading his blog posts from Belize and my being back in MN winter, I got the seed idea for, and a deep appreciation into island life. Truth be told I really did write this for my wife as part of my Valentines gift for her. I basically took aspects of conversations, complaints, joys, longings and inside jokes and set them to music. There are some notable firsts… a lot of this song was sketched out on an ipad… I used several apps; ChordMapMidi, Thumbjam and Garageband among others. The basic song idea is around a sequenced acoustic guitar, and a retro bass synth… back in my home studio set up; on drums I wanted to use brushes, but alas, I could not find them when I was recording the drums so I used a harder sounding hot rod stick and never bothered to re-record…there is or course island percussion getting slinky – and even a steel drum (few instruments say island like a steel drum eh?). The vocals were basically a one off with some minor tweaks…the lyrics took a little longer on this one, primarily because I was trying to tell a proper story, and really wanted to include things I knew were meaningful to my wife, so there was that. So yeah, island life… enjoy.
island life
hey Tamara did you hear them say
winter storm is on its way
10 below and a foot of snow
weather men say its a polar flow
check with spirit and spirit say fly
out of the cold into the open sky
over the mountains to the deep blue sea
out on the islands wanna come with me
island life
island life
ocean breeze
sweet palm trees (2x)
had my fill of this snow rage
think its time to finally turn the page
north winds bitin into my bones
the frozen pines are just a creakin and a moanin
lets get busy lets get haulin
hot and sunny life is callin
i can almost feel my toes in the sand
cmon girl and take my hand
island life
island life
ocean breeze
sweet palm trees (2x)
live and love and laugh and sing
eat and drink and praise our king
pluck an avacado from an avacado tree
add some lime and spices and we got our guacamole
grab a blanket and head for the beach
laughin all the way cause we’re out of reach
from all the misery and ice cold weather
we’re just soakin sun holdin hands together
people been askin about our return date
well i was thinkin that maybe we should stay
island life
island life
ocean breeze
sweet palm trees
