Chuck Cheesman Videos @ YouTube
free mp3 downloads
- "You and Me" (from the compilation First Friday Song Sampler 2004) Chuck Cheesman voice/guitar, Steve Joyner mandola/electric guitar, Steve Jacula bass, Darren Garvey percussion, Karen Banks-Lubicz voice.
- "Election Night" solo acoustic demo ~ This song was posted on a blog shortly before the election of President Barack Obama. Northwestern University's radio station lifted this song off the website and played it on their folk music program the weekend before the election.
- "Crawdad Song" from A Family Songbook ~ original lyrics ~ Chuck Cheesman voice/guitar, Mark Dvorak banjo. Steve Joyner mandola, Steve Jacula bass, Karen Banks-Lubicz voice.
discography
- Solo
- Coming Home (contemporary folk 2000)
- A Family Songbook (children's music 2002)
- Campfire (contemporary folk 2006)
- Compilations
- First Friday Song Sampler 2004 (songwriter showcase 2004)
- Wiggleworms Love You (Old Town School of Folk Music 2005)
free guitar lessons
- Crawdad Song chords & lyrics
- One octave scale shape for guitar
- Basic fingerstyle patterns using an alternating bass
Poems
Coffee Shop Scale
I am fully invested in these words
married to music -
rhythm, harmony, melody, urgency,
my guitar,
and my voice.
But if I listen closely
I hear the old man gumming his pencil
and the absolute certainty in his scratches at a crossword,
an exhale surrendered as pawn topples queen,
you shuffling your economics notes yet again,
even the argument
(and if I really concentrate, its architecture)
concerning the exchange rates of such currencies
as songs and singing
and silence.
© 2008 Chuck Cheesman
Keeper?
You brought me a book for my birthday,
a collection of poems,
Billy Collins' Sailing Alone Around the Room.
In much the same way folks will say,
"Bob Dylan is not a singer,"
I am not a poet.
I write poems like I read them -
like a fisherman
playing out a line, then reeling it back in
again and again and again and again
only to find the same empty hook at its end
again and again and again and again.
I could buy a fish at the supermarket.
I might have simply said "thank you,"
but that wouldn't have been enough.
© 2008 Chuck Cheesman
