The Green Pages - The Official Mark Greenawalt Newsletter
VOL 14 ISSUE 7  

July 2019

 

Reworked Songs - "Simple Life" and "Shenandoah"
by Mark Greenawalt

Singer Songwriter Mark Greenawalt with 12-string acoustic guitar

I "renovated" two songs from my stint in Nashville to breath new life into them. The first is "Simple Life" which is an anthem about choosing to live life to the fullest instead of living a seamingly boring simple life. The song is centered around a riff that I wrote on my acoustic 12-string guitar and then recorded in my basement studio in Nashville. The bass and drums were played by a friend named Daniel Weiglib that I haven't been able to track down since then unfortunately. I laid down the acoustic guitar tracks and then I had Dawna Bradford sing a version of it and I sang a version of it. We made rough mixes of both versions, but I always intended to add some keyboards and electric guitar eventually. Well,...fast forward basically 20 years and I finally got around to finishing the song. I had all of Dawna's vocal tracks and my vocal tracks and decided to montage them together and make the song into a duet. I added the keys and electric guitar and then got the wild idea to put a saxophone solo in the mix. I'm still relatively new at playing sax, but I don't think it came out too bad and it is accentuated by a harmony guitar part playing along on the second half. I decided to take it one step farther and made a homemade video for the song. I set up some lights in the living room and hung my acoustic with some fishing string to record it spinning (this is the same acoustic that I've had since about 1983 and the one that the song was written on). The link to the song and video can be found on my Music Page .

The second song was also completed 'back in the day' and I was pretty happy with the lyrics that told the tale of a woman who broke up by leaving a message on an answering machine. It worked at the time, but I wasn't really keen on playing the song "Leave A Message At The Tone" to a world that has made those lyrics sound very dated. So for this one I didn't change any of the music except for remixing it and giving it more punch with the recording equipment that I own that has evolved in the past two decades. The lyrics, on the other hand, were completely overhauled. I sat down at my piano and as I tried to come up with a fresh start, the word Shenandoah seemed to fit so well (replacing Leave A Message). I grew up near Shenandoah Valley in West Virginia and Maryland and I remember the green forests and water falls in the park. My first pass at the lyrics hinted at a one-night-stand with someone while partying with friends by a campfire in these mountains and then the longing to find her again years later. I 'wordsmithed' the song a little more and took away one-night-stand aspect in trade for just a place where they first met (and had their first-night-stand so to speak). I wanted it be a conversation with the Shenandoah mountains, asking them to take him back to that place and that moment when they first met, but some people have taken it that the girls name was Shenandoah. Everyone is welcome to interpret it however they want. This song and a lyric video can be also be found on my Music Page .

 

 

Photos Of Award Winning Project Published In International Magazine
by Mark Greenawalt

Marina Heights architectural photography published in LD+A Magazine in July 2019 Marina Heights architectural photography published in LD+A Magazine in July 2019

The July issue of LD+A Magazine features two shots that I photographed of the Marina Heights campus at Tempe Town Lake. LD+A is an international publication of the Illuminating Engineering Society headquartered in New York City. Possibly the bigger part of the story is the content of the article which tells the story of how this project earned an Illumination Award from the IES in 2018 for me and several other lighting designers at Creative Designs in Lighting. Click HERE to see a scan of the article as it appeared in the magazine and click HERE to see more of my architectural photography and published tearsheets.

 

Book Cover For Pegleg Willie Sequel
by Mark Greenawalt

Book cover photoshoot for Sharon Skinner with model Lindsey Lockwood.

I'm thrilled to unveil the next book cover in the ongoing adventures of Captain Pegleg Willie. Here is synopsis of book II - "More adventures of Captain Pegleg Willie and the Birds Of Prey as they travel out of Arizona to some of the crews' home rain forests in Southern Mexico, Central and South America. Along the way they run into colonies of other intelligent animals and conversing with them find out more about the meteor destruction that changed their world. Captain Pegleg Willie meets Serena Marie a scarlet macaw singer that he falls in love with and has to rescue from English pirate raiders who imprison her." Please consider supporting author Benny "Gato" Aguerrie and purchasing the book on Amazon or save a few bucks and buy direct from him on the Facebook Page.

Just for fun, I decided to do a little 10-minute video of some of the steps I took in Photoshop to complete the artwork for book II. I posted it on YouTube and you can click HERE to watch it. I included some background music and I decided to go waaaaay back in my songwriting career to my high school days for a song called Atlantis that I co-wrote and performed with my friend and bandmate Paul Pensinger.

 

E-ya later,
Mark Greenawalt
mark@futureclassx.com

Upcoming events:
September 14, 2019 - Spark Jack Daddy - Copper Blues at Desert Ridge, Scottsdale, Arizona
October 13, 2019 - Spark Jack Daddy - 2pm - Oktoberfest at Tempe Town Lake, Tempe, Arizona

copyright Mark Greenawalt, Future-Class X Publishing - Phoenix, AZ 85044

Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions

To Read the Archived Green Pages, Click Here


Please subscribe to my mailing list

* indicates required