Break a Leg

Happy Jen Day!

So, a little history on this one:

Back in the summer of 04 I was in a production of Romeo and Juliet with the Sonoma County Repetory theater, which is about 45 minutes give or take from where I live. So every day I had to do the drive twice. The kicker here is that shortly before rehearsals had started, some jerk broke into my car and stole my stereo. So that's an hour and a half of driving (give or take) every day for 3 months with no tunes. That's enough to drive a man crazy.

So I started making up a song.

As I have mentioned before: I am a pirate. I have a group of friends and we do piratey things. I like to sing. I found out that I also realy enjoy Irish drinking tunes, but hey, who doesn't? So I started listening and learning a few. Then, when we'd go to WAR, I'd have some period songs to sing around the campfire and whatnot. Good times.

Now, my pirate crew was originally called something in Gaelic that meant "Black Rose". And the Gaelic words sound a lot like "Rose and Dagger", especially if heard when drunk and then only remembered 3 months later. So I thought we were called The House of the Rose and Dagger. So that's the name of my song. It was only later when the song started getting really popular and i started making businees cards that my pirate captain told me we were actually called the crew of the Black Rose...which meant i had to write ANOTHER song. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

So, three months, driving up and down the same stretch of highway with no tunes. And let me also say: I cannot read or write music, I play the trumpet, but badly, and I'd never even considered doing anything like making up a song. It just sorta happened. But at the end of three months I had something I felt pretty good about.

I sang it for my friends. They loved it. I sang it for more of my friends. They loved it. I sang it for a crowd of complete strangers numbering about 300 people, they went nuts. It was this song that got me inducted into the Militant Society of Bards (M.S.O.B.) And now, after about three years of knocking it around and writing a musical based on it, I have finally managed to make a recording of it. And not only did I make a recording of it, I made a recording that sounds like I got together with a couple of weasels and a troll or two and busted the thing out over a few bottles of hooch. And this with a music editing and creating program that I have had and taught myself the rudiments of in just under a week. After I got done laying down the tracks, I listened to it over and over and over and just laughed. I hope you will, too. Enjoy.