· When people ask me if I write the lyrics first or the music I will answer "yes", but 'yes' doesn't really tell the story. Sometimes I write some lyrics and then find some chord progressions and work out a melody. Other times I've got a bit of melody and need to wait for some words to fit. And sometimes the two happen simultaneously. But invariably the melody will lead to changes in the lyrics and vice versa. Often the process takes place over...

Daniel Weinstein · Perfect Is The Enemy The phrase "perfect is the enemy of good" is an aphorism commonly attributed to Voltaire in 1770, but even he was apparently quoting an Italian proverb that had been around for a while. It seemed to me to be a good idea for a song. After all, trying to make a song perfect is an effective way of never finishing one. I've got dozens of unfinished songs that might, just might, be good enough but for one...

Daniel Weinstein · Freely Flowing This is the song referenced in "Blue Book", the story song I released a few days ago. I found the lyrics in a fifty year old travel journal. I tried to find Patrick Dietsch, the composer of the original song, but I was too late. He died in May 2021. When I found the lyrics my memory of tune sort of came back. I was pretty sure about how the first line went and the first two or three chords, but I was unable to...

Daniel Weinstein · Blue Book This song is simply a story, all of it true. It's about a another song called "Freely Flowing". The original music for "Freely Flowing" was written by Patrick Dietsch, a French guitarist I met at the end of 1972 somewhere in Mexico. He was travelling with another guitarist and they would pick up some travelling money by playing at whatever venues they could find. I only knew him for a week or two. The last time I...

Daniel Weinstein · Collaborator I'm not a performer, a singer, a musician, an arranger, a producer. I'm just not. I do what I can but I dream about what it might be like to work with someone who could do the things I can't do, which is quite a lot. Wouldn't it be great to have a collaborator?

Daniel Weinstein · Mistaken ===== Mistaken was re-mastered in September 2022 ===== Some songs grow from a seed. The seed for this one was the phrase "I couldn't have been more mistaken". I had that written down for a long time before I started to turn it into a song. That was a process that took quite a while because I didn't know what the song was about. Until I did. Then the pieces fell into place fairly quickly.

Daniel Weinstein · Mad Hatter The picture attached to this track is from my 1972 passport. I was heading towards South America via Mexico and other parts of Central America. I knew that certain hairstyles were frowned upon at various borders. Rather than doing anything drastic, like cutting my hair, I purchase a $15 dollar short hair wig and wore it for my passport photo. That's me in my wig hat. That wig hat served me well across a number of...

Daniel Weinstein · Annette ===== Annette was re-mixed and re-mastered in September 2022 ===== When a line of a melody occurs to me I try to record and save it on my phone to be considered later. Sometime the melody is already attached to some words but often it occurs to me without any context. When that happens I try to fit some words to the melody so that I can identify it later. In 2015 Eve and I were travelling through Queensland and...

Daniel Weinstein · Twenty-two ===== Twenty-two was re-mastered in September 2022 ===== This song began as an anniversary present to my wife, Eve. I started it on the day of our 22nd anniversary and finished it by our next anniversary. We've recently celebrated our 28th anniversary. When i perform this song it often follows "Love Song Kind of Guy". I leave it to the listener to decide which of the contradictory songs is actually...

Daniel Weinstein · November Day I wrote this song in early 2017 while Eve and I were travelling around Australia with our camper trailer. It was intentionally ambiguous because I figured that its real subject would cease to be relevant after a while. I wish I'd been right about that. Once you know that the song is about my reaction, an an expatriate American, to the election of the last US president, the lyrics make a lot more sense. I've...

Daniel Weinstein · Immortality This song occurred to me on a morning in Byron Bay when I was going to a friend's 70th birthday in the evening. I didn't know how that particular friend was going to take the reality of a number that big. It's a "no shit" number. It's a number that makes it hard to keep the reality of mortality at bay. Byron Bay is full of young people who take no notice of their mortality and regularly do foolish and dangerous...

Daniel Weinstein · My Entire Life When I'm asked what this song is about I'll probably say that it's about 5 minutes and 10 seconds. I didn't know it was going to be this long. I only found out when it was complete and ready to post on Bandcamp. Most of my songs have too many word and end up being long, but when I finally record them I notice and find a way to make them shorter. I like to keep everything under 4 minutes - that seems a...

Daniel Weinstein · Easy To Smile ===== Easy to Smile was re-mixed and re-mastered in November 2022 ===== [This is a new mix. Drums by John Bennetts have been added and pretty much everything else has been changed, at least a little. April 2002.] Sometime around 1971 I wrote these words. I don't remember writing them, but I know where they came from. I don't think I ever performed it as a song back in the day. I found the words in an old...