West River
Recording as Jon Olsen, I made this ep of my songs in around 2003. The ep is entitled West River and is extremely country-flavored with my characteristic pop structure (verse-chorus-verse) which has served me well as a songwriter. It is totally in glorious monophonic sound, which is how you would hear me because I only have one voice and one guitar.
I Don't Want Understanding is about being mad at some friends who were mad at each other and, far as I know, never have forgiven each other. It's also about feeling slower and less serious than other people. This is one of the songs I need to sing early in a set to get my sense of time and place under me.
Rain in January is about living in Minneapolis and wishing I'd lived elsewhere, particularly the night it rained like 7 inches and then froze. It is very maudlin, appallingly morose and self-pitying.
West River Boy is my paean to Outer Dakota, a land of distances and voices in the night. If I had one wish for this song, it would be that it get played on AM radio all over the western Dakotas.
Nothin' Like Loneliness is a simple (almost too simple) number about the changing times. Lyrically, this may be my weakest work. c'est la vie.
Codeine is a song about how much love is like high-wire dentistry and also how pain sucks.
Paranoia Americana probably my worst song title for a song of which I'm very proud.
Look Twice in which I sing about the day I realized that in my sinful state, I'd turned from ardent admirer of things that are good and pure into a dirty old man or something very much like one. As summer trees turn to autumn cascades of riches and autumn's gold turns to muddy gloom of winter. Just like that.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License.
I Don't Want Understanding is about being mad at some friends who were mad at each other and, far as I know, never have forgiven each other. It's also about feeling slower and less serious than other people. This is one of the songs I need to sing early in a set to get my sense of time and place under me.
Rain in January is about living in Minneapolis and wishing I'd lived elsewhere, particularly the night it rained like 7 inches and then froze. It is very maudlin, appallingly morose and self-pitying.
West River Boy is my paean to Outer Dakota, a land of distances and voices in the night. If I had one wish for this song, it would be that it get played on AM radio all over the western Dakotas.
Nothin' Like Loneliness is a simple (almost too simple) number about the changing times. Lyrically, this may be my weakest work. c'est la vie.
Codeine is a song about how much love is like high-wire dentistry and also how pain sucks.
Paranoia Americana probably my worst song title for a song of which I'm very proud.
Look Twice in which I sing about the day I realized that in my sinful state, I'd turned from ardent admirer of things that are good and pure into a dirty old man or something very much like one. As summer trees turn to autumn cascades of riches and autumn's gold turns to muddy gloom of winter. Just like that.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License.