Meanwhile Back at the Ranch Song Listing

This song is an homage to Clint Eastwood. The faceless drifter is an avenging angel, the hand of justice, seen riding across the prairie on Christmas morning. The compositional style is my idea of what it might sound like if the Eagles and Rush recorded a song together. Composed circa 1991 but not recorded until April 2008. 

For Betsy, challenged to forgive so many things. Composed in the winter of 2008. 

 Composed circa 1985, but first recorded in May 2008.

Composed in 1985 and recorded in the winter of 2008. Sandy Koufax and Willie Mays were not only the best players in baseball in 1965, but also icons of moral leadership and reconciliation, as demonstrated on August 25, 1965, two weeks after the outbreak of the Watts riots. The Giants were playing the Dodgers. The two teams were locked in a tight race to win the National League pennant. Koufax was pitching for the Dodgers and Juan Marichal for the Giants. When Marichal was at bat in third inning, he thought that Johnny Roseboro, the Dodgers' catcher, was intentionally throwing the baseball back to Koufax very close to Marichal's head. An argument developed, and Marichal struck Roseboro over the head with his bat, causing a gash that required more than a dozen stitches. Koufax immediately tried to restrain Marichal, who was still waving his bat as a weapon. The benches emptied, and a 14-minute brawl erupted between the two teams, creating a disgraceful spectacle on national television. Together, Mays and Koufax eventually broke up the fight and Mays, the captain of the Giants, led the bloody Roseboro off the field. This piece is composed from the perspective of a boy in 1965 watching the NBC Game of the Week, after watching the Watts riots on television the week before. For that boy, Koufax and Mays will always be heroes.

Composed in June 2007 for my wife, Melinda, to commemorate our twentieth wedding anniversary. She requested something with steel drums. So this piece has a bit of a Jimmy Buffett feel. Folks in Parrothead regalia are supposed form a big conga line around the swimming pool during the long showdown between the marimba and the blazing accordian.

Composed between March and November 2008.

Composed in the winter of 2008.

Composed between August and December 2008. Near midnight, somewhere outside Barstow, on the edge of desert, I pulled into a seedy motel with an empty swimming pool in the front, unable to keep my eyes open any longer. It was the kind of place where one expected to see an historical plaque, "Hunter S. Thompson once slept here." The night clerk demanded cash in advance. I collapsed on the bed. An hour later, the building started to shake. I thought it was an earthquake. But soon a deafening rumble arose and flashing lights filled my room. Looking out the back window, I realized that the joke was on me. The motel sat 30 feet from the tracks of the Santa Fe Railroad. For some reason, this song makes me think of listening to Waiting for Columbus by Little Feat. So let it be one for Lowell George, as he drives his phantom eighteen wheeler from Tehachapi to Tonopah.

Composed between August and December 2008. 

Composed in December 2008 and January 2009.

The marriage of progressive rock and country rock. Strictly speaking, Manifest Destiny is the American political philosophy of the 1840s reflected in the annexation of Texas and the vast territorial acquisitions of the Mexican War. But I intend the phrase here to express more generally the westward migration, lasting through the 1880s, that produced the iconic image of The West, which remains firmly planted in the American identity even today. Composed April 12, 2009.