As any songwriter can attest, many songs get written, but not all get heard. Through the years, things happen, and for whatever reason some songs just don't fit on any particular album, or the songwriter simply moves on and writes other songs. We're always most excited about the song just written, and every new song seems like it may be the best ever. Sometimes that's true, and sometimes the best ones get lost in the shuffle. But if you dig through the lost and found, you just might come up with a few treasures...

So that's what we have here - 11 misfit tunes that have just been sitting around, waiting to be heard. They don't have a whole lot in common with each other, except that they were all written by yours truly, and all of them are more or less acoustic recordings. As the title indicates, this is the first in a series of 3 "lost and found" albums. I divided the first 2 volumes into acoustic and electric/full band recordings, because I feel that helps make them sound more like one work.

These recordings span from around 2006 to 2013, with one a couple years after that. Most were recorded during my time in NYC, but a few were recorded in Nashville. These tracks have been "retouched" a bit to fix some minor audio blemishes I couldn't fix at the time, and to make them all around the same volume. For a track by track explanation, see below.

1. Silver Screen - This is a song I wrote in late 2006 while living in NYC. I wrote a couple other songs around this same time, including "A Place Called Home," which ended up on "American Songs." There's also a version of this song on that album, but listening back I actually prefer this version. There's a certain innocent quality to it that I don't think I ever achieved on subsequent recordings. This was kind of a new sound for me at the time, with more of a falsetto voice.

2. Meet Me in Memphis (part 1) - This is the earliest song here, written before I even moved to NYC. This recording, however, was done at Lo-Fish Recording Studio in Manhattan. I got a temp job there for a while and recorded this during one late night when I had the studio to myself. Though it's still a scaled-back production, you can hear the nicer condenser mics and overall recording quality. I was let go not long after recording this, though not for that reason. And yes, there is a part 2, but for now it will have to wait to be done properly.

3. Henry Poole is Here - This is a song I wrote because there was a contest to get your song in a major film with Luke Wilson. This was my original demo for it as I wrote it. I ended up taking it to my producer's studio, and we did a totally different arrangement that I ended up submitting to the contest. I didn't win, and the movie wasn't a big hit, but I still like the song. Listening back, I think I prefer this version to the version I ultimately submitted, which I'll include in the next Electric volume. The song that won was actually closer to this kind of acoustic production, so maybe my initial instincts were correct. Ah well.

4. Inside My Door - This wasn't my original version of this song. The first recording was an electric version, and that will be on the next volume. But I also dig this acoustic version which also features my friend and longtime collaborator Renato Buchert on piano. It's a bit slower than I'd like, but that kinda adds to the feel, as well.

5. Black & Blue Rose - This was a song that just kind of came out exactly as you hear it here. I saw no need to modify it then, and don't now.

6. Wings - I wrote this one shortly after returning to Tennessee, with an eye to the Smoky Mountains. Parts of this song I ended up using in other songs, like "Still I Rise." Still, I like this song, too.

7. Bear - This is another Tennessee/Smoky Mountains themed song. I really love this one, but couldn't find anywhere else to put it, so here it is. Note my expert mandolin playing after learning just enough to record this. Nod to Steven Fromholz by way of Lyle Lovett at the end.

8. Unrequited Love - One of my first Nashville tunes. I debated putting this on Volume 3 of this series, which is all country songs. But I also thought it was such a strong song that genre was irrelevant.

9. The Other Side - This was originally called "Lost in the Shuffle" so I thought it would fit in well here. I recorded this when my friend Daniel Wayne was staying in my apt for a while in Nashville. I had sold him my old Korg digital 8 track recorder, so while he was there I took advantage of that to record on my old machine. It always had a sound of its own, and it reminds me of a certain time. This song came out of me trying to write a song based on the first chord progression I ever came up with. It turned out pretty cool, but this is another one that I never found a proper home for. It sounds more like something I would have put on "The X&Y Project" back when I still was using this recorder. But it seems at home here.

10. Waiting... - This was a song I wrote in NYC around 2010. At this point I basically wanted to leave but didn't know how, when or where to do it. So I was just waiting for something to happen. Eventually, it did, ironically, on a trip out west to Arizona, a place I was considering moving to. But while I really enjoyed it out there, I began to feel very homesick for my home state of TN. That feeling kept growing, and I ended up deciding to move back to Nashville and give it another try. While it didn't solve all my problems, it did put me in the middle of Tennessee, and I needed that.

11. Closing Statement - This was written around the same time as "Waiting..." with a handful of other songs. I actually thought "Lost & Found" would be a good title for an album of those songs at the time. This is one of the few I still really enjoy from that batch of songs, though. Some of the other tunes were "trying" too hard to be something, while this one just "is what it is." And, as the title says, it's the perfect closing statement.

Once these songs were lost... and now they're found, at least on Bandcamp. Overall I'm happy to have found a place for them, and to put them out into the world. Hopefully they still stand up, as I believe they do, and as any good song should.

Stay tuned for Volume 2...

9.