The Singing Maine Guide

In my music, I write about the people and the life I’ve known in the places I’ve lived.  I think that puts me in the folk tradition, even if at times, my songs may not sound very folksy.

Unlike many fellow musicians, I never picked up a guitar until I was out of college.  I bought an EKO 12-string in Rome, Italy after meeting a street musician named David Rapp Judd from Utah.  We traveled to Greece together on a trade–he’d teach me how to play, I’d keep him from starving.  We lived in a bamboo hut on a beach in Corfu.  We dove and speared octopus, and fish so exotic to me, it seemed odd to eat them.  But we did.  David more than held up his side of the bargain, working with me 8 to 10 hours a day until my fingers bled.

The first song I ever wrote was called, “Your Shot’s No Better Than Your Aim.”  It was around the time the movie, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid was popular, so I gave the song a western motif.  It’s on the One Road CD.  Once this songwriting thing started for me, it never seemed to stop.  Today, I don’t know how many songs I’ve written because of the ones that never made it to a recording session.

It wasn’t enough for me just to write songs;  I took on jingle writing in the early 1980’s for a small ad agency.  That work soon mushroomed, becoming my full time job for 20 years!  Early in that process, I started my own company.  I still hear jingles playing today that I wrote years ago, as well as new ones, just starting to gain traction.

I think it’s this way for many musicians:  When you go back and listen to songs you’ve written, it feels like reading a diary.  Things that were true then might not be now.  Other things never change.  Barbara Kingsolver wrote in Lacuna that books are where we go to be free.  I would lengthen her list to include music.

Randy’s Releases