Curt Siffert

5:04 minutes

I don't really know how to describe what this one is about, but I'm interested in hearing how it comes across, so leave comments or contact me. This one was another one-nighter - I seem to have better success with the songs I write in one night. It was a Saturday night, took about eight hours to get from the appearance of the first piano riff to the first recording where I got through without bobbles. This recording is from after digesting the tune for a couple of weeks.

2:53 minutes

I wrote "I Have A Cold" in a couple of hours one night when I started coming down with a cold. I was trying to keep a sense of humor about it before it socked me too bad. Of course, the next few days sucked. Since then I've been adding little touches to it and recording better performances. This will be the final version until I either add other instruments or professionally record it. Previous versions available in the Bone Yard.

3:55 minutes

In March I had a rehearsal with two friends of mine, and I pulled out this song to try and get a decent performance of it - I think it turned out pretty well. All Aboard is a song I originally wrote while I visited Nashville for a weekend. It's about how sometimes we follow a path just from simple inertia - what it can be like when we don't take the road less traveled. There's still more to add - I want more backup vocals and maybe a tin whistle solo - but it's starting to come together. Special thanks to Ken and Steve from Quoting Napoleon for helping me out on the recording.

3:41 minutes

On 11/11/06 I wanted to see if I could write a song in less than an hour. The first draft took 45 minutes. The piano line was partially inspired from one of my piano improvs, Small Town Sunday. Lyrics were free-written. Tonight I pulled it out again and reworked the bridge. This is the first recorded version where I got through it successfully from beginning to end.

4:46 minutes

This is a re-arrangement of As One - composed by Curt Siffert, but arranged/covered by Steven Vavrick. It's quite a different style than I ever envisioned for the song, but it's a real treat to hear such a different vision applied to something I wrote.

4:35 minutes

I wrote this song for my college a cappella group back in 1995. It was actually for a friend who seemed to really need the message of what the lyrics were about. It's interesting to me because the arrangement of the song feels different to me than the song itself, even though at the time this was the only version of the song that existed. Others must have agreed, because the song has actually been redone by people other than me.

3:17 minutes

This is about the divorce of a friend of mine. He became aware it was happening while sitting in an empty house they had just bought together.

Of course, it took me a while to finish the song - I had to rush to finish it before he got married again. I ended up finishing it on his wedding day. I later submitted it to a couple of large songwriting contests, where it advanced to the second round both times.