Songs are like children. Sometimes you set out to make ’em, other times they just happen. And no matter how you try to steer and guide ’em, they end up taking on a life of their own.

Winter! is a perfect example. I wrote it in 1986, sitting on the couch of Garrett Whatley's bat-in-the-belfry apartment in an old painted lady Victorian mansion in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Garrett was writing album reviews for me for a local music mag, and we had started getting together to jam on acoustic guitars. That eventually led us to start a band called the Mall Weirdos. But that night I remember being a little bored as Garrett was doing something with his girlfriend at the time (a very young Paula O’Rourke, who went on to her own career in music), and the song just came out. Paula liked it, I remember, but Garrett never thought much of it so we never played it in the Mall Weirdos. 

I made a demo of the song in 1987 with my drummer friend Bob Mueller at this old farmhouse where we were living in Oshkosh, Wis. Never did a thing with it. Thirteen years later, I started playing a weekly live gig in Milwaukee with Bob and bassist Jared Drake, and Winter! resurfaced. It turns out Bob had played our demo for a band he was in called the Lost Pioneers, and they were doing their own cool version of the song. It didn’t get recorded for the one CD the band made before breaking up, though I think some live recordings exist somewhere. But I always liked playing the song, and in 2006, I updated the original demo (replacing my vocal and rhythm guitar tracks, while leaving my original bassline, guitar solo and Bob’s drums) for release on Cool Music for a Big Dumb World, the second Bean Hoy CD.  

The tune is built on a standard country/folk G-C-D chord progression, but with a strong backbeat to make it rock. It’s a story song with personal anecdotes illustrating my native Wisconsinite love (kind of) for the season. It’s a bit unusual as I alter the “response” wording in each of the three call-and-response choruses, but it all serves to build tension and momentum for the final refrain: “All right! It’s 20 below!” 

Full lyrics and link to free song sample

Are guitar amps and recording studios going the way of the film camera and cassette tape? Don't sound "Taps" yet, but more and more musicians are turning to their computers to get all the cool sounds you used to be able to get only in things like a big heavy tube-powered amp stack. A recent USA Today article, Musicians ditch studios for computers, sums up the growing trend pretty well. 

I've been using Cubase recording software for several years now and love the versatility, but there's an energy that comes with crankin' it up in a roomful of loud amps and acoustic drums that satisfies the primal mojo in a way that digital doesn't. Maybe you can hear it in the grooves of the last album I recorded with the old analog technology. Grammy-winning producer Mike von Muchow recorded the sessions and played in my band along with Casey Virock and Kevin Skrenes. In retrospect, we picked a pretty appropriate name for our group: the Sons of Distortion.

Hear free samples of the CD

Cliche of the day: The more things change, the more they stay the same. Back when I first started buying music, it was all about singles and the Top 40. A stack of Beatles, Steppenwolf and Motown 45s and a portable phonograph and you were good to go. I bought my first record (Classical Gas) after watching Mason Williams play the song on the Smothers Brothers TV show.

Decades later, singles are king again. Only this time we're downloading MP3s, maybe after seeing a homemade video on You Tube. Even product-oriented sites like CD Baby have followed the lead of iTunes and Amazon and switched to a digital download emphasis. Their new redesign seems almost to discourage actual CD sales in favor of the almighty download. See what I mean at the landing page for Get Lost: The Studio J Sessions, the latest CD by my band Bean Hoy.

Bottom line? The technology may be different, but a good tune is still worth searching out. Slab of vinyl or a buncha megabytes, it don't much matter how we get it. But we still gotta get it. To paraphrase Led Zeppelin, the song remains the game.

Top 10 Bean Hoy band downloads