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Ida Clare, well Ida 2

  We have 9 original songs on the new Ida 2 recording; Songs about love and death, friendship and betrayal, despair and hope. Really, they are just snapshots of what is happening in the world around us and how we react to it. The craft of songwriting has always been interesting to me. The first time I can remember actually thinking about a song as a thing to create was when I heard the song Deep Purple by Nino Tempo and April Stevens. I was only ten, but I was standing in that garden as night fell and the stars came out. Something about the description of night falling in the garden, the sweet sound of the duet harmonies and the melancholy sadness of the lyrics really spoke to my 10 year old heart. It is funny but as I am writing this and rereading the lyrics from Ida 2 , I realize that I used one of the lines from the chorus of Deep Purple in the chorus of I Still Cry, the 1st song on Ida 2 “The mist of your memory”. I Still Cry is a song Robin and I wrote. She had come up wit
Recent posts

Just Like Magic

It was January 3rd 2020 and we received a text; our bass player said he quit.  Oh no!  You can't just quit Ida Clare!  We had spent so much time together - writing and arranging songs, developing our sound, entering contests, winning, recording our first CD, and well - just hangin’ out.  We had been through a lot. We had booked as many gigs as we were willing to play through August of that year - life was good.   But now we didn't have a bass player - this was terrible.  What else could go wrong?  The pandemic started in March! All our gigs were canceled. We stopped practicing. I stopped writing songs. No one knew what the future would bring. For a long time it didn't bring much. Then slowly we started playing again...outside....separate mics.....different guest bass players. Sometimes we played as a trio. That was pretty rough, but at least we were playing. Truth is, we were just holding it together with the hope that someday, when the wind was from the west, the sky would

There's No Time Like The Present

I guess I should begin at the beginning.  It was the summer of 2012.  I had just returned to the United States after a stint in the Peace Corp.  I was pretty beat up and trying to find my path.  It was a very introspective time, and I started writing a few songs - you know, just to get it off my chest. A friend told me about a Bluegrass jam on Monday nights in Lagrange.  I almost didn't go because, well, I didn't play Bluegrass.  Some folks say I still don't but that's a topic for later.  So, I went.  It was there that I met Lea and Mark, and some other really nice folks.    Before long we had loosely formed a jam band called Coffee Jam, because we had all met at the Monday jam Lea hosts at her coffee shop, Lagrange Coffee Roasters.  It was a lot of fun!  Having never played with Bluegrass pickers, I was astounded at how talented, accepting, and humble everyone was.    I started writing a lot and Lea helped.  We played a few gigs as a trio, but something was