Onward To Yesterday is now available!

The regular edition of the Onward To Yesterday CD can now be ordered online (over there on the right) or purchased at any of my shows. It's not yet in any stores, but stay tuned.

Thanks again to everyone who preordered the Limited Edition CD. I do still have a few copies of the Limited Edition, but they are no longer available for online order. If you want one you'll have to come find me. And you can start tonight in Concord NH, as I'll be hosting Open Mike night at The Red Blazer. The show starts at 8pm. Onward!

The CDs have arrived!

Hey, would you look at that. The good folks at Diskfaktory got the CDs delivered ahead of my projected release date! So preorders are shipping out now! If you've ordered the Limited Edition CD, you'll be getting yours in the mail soon. :)

There are still a few Limited Edition CDs available, so you still have a chance to grab one. The regular version of the CD will be available online in the next few days, and can be purchased at shows starting, let's say, now. I'm at Shooter's Tavern and Pizzaria in Belmont NH tonight with my trio (Jimbo's Garage).

Proud.

This song, originally written for Song Fight (www.songfight.org), came at a time when I was toying with a few ideas. I wanted to work with alternate guitar tuning; I was enamored with the internal rhyming in Dave Grohl's Foo Fighters songs; and for all my progress, I was feeling like my work as a musician wasn't going anywhere. This song is about rediscovering what music is to me. The Onward To Yesterday album takes its name from this track.


Proud

Onward to yesterday
A backlog of dues to pay
You're told to be proud
For holding it down
Making the best of it
Faking the rest of it
Review and replay
The last wasted day

Then you rise in the light of her eyes
And you find this is why you're alive

Blaze your undrafted path
Brace for the aftermath
That threatens your lives
And never arrives
Facing obscurity
Chasing eternity
You're told to be proud
For waiting it out

Then you rise in the light of her eyes
And you find this is why you're alive

(instr.)

Will you rise in the light of her eyes
When you find this is why you're alive


This song (and all the others on Onward To Yesterday) can be heard on the music player to the right.

God Hates Penguins.

I'll be honest with you; I like this song a lot, but I wasn't going to put it on Onward To Yesterday. It just seemed too incongruous to me. But a lot of people wanted to see it on there. It often surprises me which of my songs will resonate with listeners. Asshat is a very good example. Anyway, this Song Fight title came out not long after the March Of The Penguins movie, and I chose to write a sincere Beatles-esque number for it.


God Hates Penguins

Every creature great and small
They say the Lord God loves them all
But I would question what He calls okay...

God hates penguins, that's for sure
What else could it be
Why else would they have to fly the frozen sea
God made penguins' lives absurd
But not if it was me
'Cause why would I design a life of misery

He who made the mighty owl
Made the flightless waterfowl
It makes me wonder if it's just a game

God hates penguins I suppose
And only God knows why
It makes me wonder what he thinks of you and I

But with a better look I find
That for it all they just don't mind
And is a life untested a life at all

Does God hate penguins, I don't know
Sometimes it seems that way
But we may find that He could change his mind someday
And through the sky we'll watch the penguins fly...


This song (and all the others on Onward To Yesterday) can be heard on the music player to the right.

Brownie Points.

A song from the Nur Ein competition. At the Nur Ein, song titles are provided along with a non-optional songwriting challenge. This particular stage required a change in time signature in the song. Fun! I'm not sure what compelled me to write a song about a mom bilking the Welfare system, but I have known people who have taken that road, I guess.


Brownie Points

Monday - off to work we go
But you did it all years ago
And it's a good thing you got going in here
And they said you'd never find a career
You did the one thing that you knew how to do
Word is that you were good at it too
Now you're the warden of the family jail
Waiting for your brownie points in the mail

You can just sit around
And you can just wait around
'Cause you know it's gonna come around
And that's all you gotta do
To get what is coming to you

Payday - about God damn time
They don't even make you get in a line
But the mailbox is so far away
Maybe you'll go out and get it later today
You got things to do and things to see
With the little ones and the big TV
We all know that you work like Hell
Watching those kids try to raise themselves

But you're gonna sit around
'Cause you know you can just wait around
And somehow it's all gonna come around
And that's all you gotta do
To get what is coming to you

You can just sit around
You can just wait around
You know it's gonna come around
And that's all you gotta do
Excuse me, I gotta get back to work so that you
Can get what is coming to you


This song (and all the others on Onward To Yesterday) can be heard on the music player to the right.

How Do You Like The Colors

Another guy-and-guitar piece that got a full-band arrangement for Onward To Yesterday. This song was inspired by a pickup truck I saw at Wal*Mart. It had a bumper sticker on it that said THESE COLORS DON'T RUN, and the American flag on the sticker had almost completely faded off. There was also a yellow SUPPORT THE TROOPS ribbon that had gone gray, but that might just have been from road salt. Anyway, the title came up at Song Fight (http://www.songfight.org/), and the song practically wrote itself.


How Do You Like The Colors

How do you like the colors
On the magnet on your car
Do you remember when you bought it
Did you think it'd go this far
When you went and got your ribbon
Did you ever think they'd fade
Did your anger dull down with 'em
And the promise that you made?

'Cause you used to say
This time we won't run away
Not this time
This time we're here to stay

How do you like the colors
They get fainter every day
Will you go and buy another
When the yellow turns to gray
Was it proudly made in China
Or in the USA
And does it even really matter
If you can't read it anyway?

But it used to say
This time we won't run away
Not this time
This time we're here to stay

How do you like the colors
On the magnet on your car
Do you remember when you bought it
Did you think it'd go this far
And when you tire of the mission
Like the magnet on your car
Is it a modern-day condition
Or just part of who we are?


This song (and all the others on Onward To Yesterday) can be heard on the music player to the right.

Download card.

The Limited Edition of Onward To Yesterday (only available by preorder) comes with a digital download card. With it, you can visit http://www.dfjams.com/jim_tyrrell and enter the code on the card, which allows access to a mp3 album of outtakes from the OTY sessions. There's a lot of stuff there that you won't hear anywhere else.

Preorders are limited to 50 CDs, so get yours while you can! Each is signed and numbered, and features its own one-of-a-kind cover art.

Fight The Sea

Celeste had been having a recurring dream, and this song title came up at Song Fight (www.songfight.org), and this song came out of that. I was of a mind to do something epic. I often have an existing song in mind when I'm composing; not to rip off, exactly, but to refer to in its overall tone, its mood. Usually my results diverge wildly from my original inspiration. Such is the case with this one, I think. You'd probably never guess where my musical reference comes from here.


Fight The Sea

At five in the morning she wakes from the dream
It's as if she'd stayed awake
She leaves the house yawning and crawls through the day
She's not sure how much she can take

She spends the day dreading the night
Afraid that she'll start to lose sight
Of where the dream ends and the real world begins

She tries to remember what it's like to be sane
And then tries to act that way
The people around her, they say that she's changed
She don't hear a word that they say

She fights it as long as she can
But soon it's more than she can stand
She closes her eyes and she gives in to sleep

She dreams of the sea
Alone on the ocean
And here comes the wave
A hundred feet high
There is no escape
But still she's determined to try

She swims for the shore
There's no way to make it
You can't fight the sea
You just hope to survive
And just as before
The undertow pulls her away

(instr.)

She fights it as long as she can
She feels the wave coming again
And sooner or later she's going to sleep

(instr.)

She tries to pretend
That she's got the energy
To get through again
To try to break free
She lays down to spend
Another night fighting the sea


This song (and all the others on Onward To Yesterday) can be heard on the music player to the right.

Courage

I wrote this song for Song Fight (http://www.songfight.org/). The demo was a simple guy-and-guitar version; the full arrangement on Onward To Yesterday fills the song out nicely. This song was the first test of the recording facilities at my house; I had to move everything back home after the flood at the Ashland studio.


Courage

You've seen the vision
The course is charted out
Made your decision
But still you fight the doubt

Can't lose another minute waiting for help
You won't get what you need from anyone else
You've got to look for the courage to convince yourself
You've done the good thing - you've done the only thing

You sent the message
You had the bridges burned
No time for guesses
No option to return

Can't lose another minute waiting for help
You won't get what you need from anyone else
You've got to look for the courage to convince yourself
You've done the good thing - you've done the only thing

(instr.)

And now you're all alone and looking for help
A thousand miles away from anyone else
You better look for the courage to convince yourself
You've done the good thing


This song (and all the others on Onward To Yesterday) can be heard ont he music player to the right.

On My Mind

A rare collaboration. I asked Stacey Lucas to write some lyrics, just to see if a songwriting idea might come out of them. I got these lyrics in the mail, and to my surprise, I was able to set music to them quickly and without any major editorial changes. The recording on Onward To Yesterday features congas that I bought in Asheville, NC the day I played the song live for the first time.


On My Mind

They say everything happens for a reason
And what will be will be
But I won't see you 'til next season
Heavy pending on "we'll see"

My eyes wander 'round the space in here
Smoky haze and cheap beers and dim light
There's people laughing, people dancing
The room is full of you tonight

Chorus: Beyond any shadow of a doubt
It sure was my time to go
There's no way to deny
The winds of change as they blow
But tonight - tonight, oh
You're on my mind so

Bluegrass plays out to the crowd
As I set my glass for one last brew
It's getting late, the crowd grows scarce
As the band plays to the last few

The bartender wipes the tables
And sets the stools upon the bar
I think of you and I just smile
At thoughts of where you are

(Chorus)

Please don't mistake this all for sadness
'Cause I am grateful for where I am
I just can't shake this sense of wonder
At what's to come and when

(Chorus)

I'm more than alive - these times, they aren't tough
I know in this world I've got more than enough
I'm satisfied - and I'm glad to do this
To do this on my own
But tonight - oh tonight
You're just - you're on my mind so


This song (and the others on Onward To Yesterday) can be heard on the music player to the right.

The Blitz

The scene is a moderately busy city street. A small group of men huddle together against the cold and spontaneously break into song, offering the tale of an ex-footballer and his struggles with addiction at the end of his storied career. The motivation behind this song? NO IDEA WHATSOEVER. Except for the fact that I was in the Nur Ein songwriting competition, and the song title came up, and I felt like doing some a capella. And somehow, the bizarre content/setting/delivery combine to make something with an undeniable truth to it, at least to me anyway. It's too weird to not believe it.


The Blitz

If I saw you today I don't know what I would say
Because I don't like the way you live now
You're not completely to blame 'cause it's the fault of the game
And I know nothing's the same once you're out

You were the heart of the line in 1979
Before you ruptured your spine blocking down
There's more than one quarterback who never saw the attack
Until he's flat on his back wondering how

You made a business of fear for your entire career
When you would blitz from the rear and take 'em down
But soon enough came the day you couldn't play through the pain
You had to give up the game and walk out

It didn't take very long for you to see what was wrong
With all this freedom you suddenly found
You lost the glory and fame that goes with playing the game
And it's just you and the pain hangin' 'round

So pretty soon you will meet another man on the street
Who spends exactly an hour in town
You may have damaged your rep, and yeah you lost half a step
But when you want to you still get around


This song (and all the songs from Onward To Yesterday) can be heard on the music player to the right.

Sister Cocaine

A few years ago I was playing a show with Chris Downing at Clarkson University. A girl came up between songs and asked me to guess her name. What? I said I didn't know, and she said "Crystal Cocaine". Of course, I made her prove it, and she showed me her ID. Sure enough, that's her name (spelled a little differently, but still).

Some time after that, I found myself in an online songwriting competition called Nur Ein. The song title Sister Cocaine came up, and having only five days to write and record a song, I penned a fanciful story of the difficulties that such a name might present. The version of the song on the Onward To Yesterday CD is a slightly reworked (and remastered) version of that original demo.


Sister Cocaine

I knew a girl named Crystal Cocaine back in school
And I remember thinking her name was pretty cool
But twenty years of jokes and jeers had left her offended
And she thought that getting married was a good way to end it

She wasn't very choosy when she found a fiancee
He left her for a floozy who was built like Beyonce
Another year alone and she had finally decided
Her name was all she owned and she was foolish to hide it

But with a name like Crystal Cocaine
She aimed to live a life of humiliation and pain
No matter what she did or what she'd say
All that they'd remember was her name

She told her priest her sorrow was as deep as the ocean
He suggested that she follow a life of devotion
A better way was waiting there for Crystal to grab it
'Cause maybe all she needed was to take up a habit

So she hid away her beauty like a pearl in an oyster
And she did her sacred duty with the girls in the cloister
Soon it came time for her to do her missionary service
Even though the Reverend Mother was admittedly nervous

'Cause with a name like Sister Cocaine
She aimed to bring the nunnery nothing but shame
She could save a hundred sould but at the end of the day
All that they would ever remember was her name
No matter what she did or what she'd say
All that they'd remember was her name

(instr.)

'Cause with a name like Sister Cocaine
She aimed to bring the congregation nothing but shame
No matter what she did or what she'd say
All that they'd remember was her name

This song (and all the others on Onward To Yesterday) can be heard on the music player to the right.

Elegy For Industry

Track 3 on Onward To Yesterday is a pretty straight-forward treatment of a Song Fight title. It started as an attempt to write something I could perform solo with a loop pedal, and build up parts as the song went along. This album arrangement doesn't do that, and I haven't really worked out the live strategy yet either. Oh well.


Elegy For Industry

Chorus: Come down to the city with me
We'll poke around in what used to be
We'll go sailing on the blacktop sea
To the bones of the industry
We'll get drunk and we can break a few things
Don't you worry 'bout the trouble it brings
Nobody cares about you or me
Or what's left of the industry

They came in back in '73
All smiles and opportunity
And promises they knew they would not keep
We knew it too but we were in too deep
We swallowed hard and we closed our eyes
Any port's home in a storm this size
We let them build on a hnadful of lies
So what I got to show you shouldn't be a surprise but...

Chorus

They took the hopes and the dreams of this town
They drove them right straight into the ground
And once the benefit couldn't be found
You knew that they wouldn't be sticking around
They slithered off like a well-fed snake
When there was no more money to make
And who am I to say it was a mistake
Because maybe we all need something to break

Chorus


This song (and all the others on the new album) can be heard on the music player to the right.

Just To Be Difficult

This song was also inspired by a title challenge at Song Fight (www.songfight.org). When composing, I was of a mind to try and leave space in the arrangement, and to be more deliberate about how the instruments did their jobs together. The result is this workmanlike, sardonic number.


Just To Be Difficult

You got the medicine
But you don't want to take it
You just can't live with something someone was right about
You're learning to depend
On all the things you hated
Can't stop until you made it something to fight about

It makes no sense to me
That you'd go looking for it
Should just ignore it but you've got to be difficult
Why do you choose to be
So full of pain and malice
Contention uber alles - just to be difficult

You got what you want
You got your proud position
You got your fool to listen to you while you prattle about
All the things you don't
Believe you got to live with
Well it's another thing I think I can live without

(chorus) (solo) (Chorus)


This song, like all the others on the new album, can be heard on the music player to the right.

Hey Ruth

This is the opening track on Onward To Yesterday, and like a good many of the songs on the album, it takes its title from Song Fight (http://www.songfight.org/). At Song Fight, a title is posted, and you've got ten days (usually) to write a song for that title. With a title like Hey Ruth, one could write almost anything. I ended up with a fanciful tale of unrequited office romance. This song, and a song by NH musical mainstay Linden Mazurka, are the only ones I know of that mention the sword of Damocles.


Hey Ruth

Hey Ruth, I know you probably didn’t want me to wake you,
But I wasn’t really sure if you were sleeping or dead
Hey Ruth, ‘cause when you sit there barely breathing, what the
Hell am I supposed to do, you got me going out of my head
Hey Ruth, well do you think the boss’ll notice that you’re
Sleeping in your cubicle alone there at the end of the hall
Hey Ruth, with all the meetings and the quotas, do you ever
Stop to think about the reason that you do it at all

I remember when you started back in ‘93
I saw you filing and I knew you were the one for me
I asked you out but you were married to the industry
You traded what you had for what you thought you ought to be

Hey Ruth, if anybody could have seen you twenty years ago
They never would have guessed that you would end up this way
Hey Ruth, They’d probably wonder where the fire went that
Used to light your eyes before you signed up for your permanent stay
Hey Ruth - I’m only trying to survive and I can tell you that
It makes it better just to know that you’ve got a friend
Hey Ruth - I don’t know what it is that drives you but
What good is it to get there just to find yourself alone in the end

You worked your way through all the corporate insanity
To get promoted just to satisfy your vanity
Now you’re the president in charge of all calamities
They moved your desk right underneath the sword of Damocles

I remember when you started back in ‘93
I saw you filing and I knew you were the one for me
I asked you out but you were married to the industry
You traded what you had for what you thought you ought to be

Hey Ruth, I know you probably didn’t want me to wake you,
But I wasn’t really sure if you were sleeping or dead
Hey Ruth, ‘cause when you sit there barely breathing, what the
Hell am I supposed to do, you got me going out of my head
Hey Ruth, I know you probably didn’t want me to wake you,
But I wasn’t really sure if you were sleeping or dead
Hey Ruth, ‘cause when you sit there barely breathing, what the
Hell am I supposed to do, you got me going out of my head


This song (and all the others on the album) can be heard on the music player thing over there on the right. :)

Limited Edition CD Covers

Each of the 50 Limited Edition CDs features its own one-of-a-kind album cover art. Here are a few of them. The cover art is part of a signed/numbered 6-panel foldout that includes album

lyrics (and the original cover art too). Orders are rolling in; get yours while they last!

Limited Edition CD Preorder Info

Onward To Yesterday can now be pre-ordered! However: only 50 preorders will be taken. Each will get a special Limited Edition of the CD.

Each Limited Edition CD is signed and numbered, features its own absolutely unique one-of-a-kind cover art (the original cover art is included as well), and comes with a Digital Download Card that allows you to get mp3s of outtakes and unreleased tracks from the OTY sessions.

And the best part: the Limited Edition CD can be preordered for the same price as the regular release - $10! (plus $3 shipping.) Preorders will ship on or before January 31. Order yours right here!

Note: the Paypal button has been simplified to charge the CD price plus shipping as one sum ($13), because it was behaving inconsistently before that. Hope this simplifies things for everybody. Onward!