The Island Song Trio just volunteered their time to help local businesses in downtown Port Clinton (PC) who have been devastated by recent worldwide events. If you check out our upcoming gigs, you will notice that we have added several free concerts in the middle of Madison Street in downtown PC to entice shoppers, travelers, diners, and beverage consumers to visit our beautiful lakefront city. John’s good friend (and PC Mayor) Mike Snider has asked for help and the Trio is responding.
This Monday evening, June 15, at 6:00 PM, our drummer, David Altman, and bassist, Tim Barrett, will meet with our music producer, Mr. Shawn Daley, at The Mohawk Studio (inside the HALO concert hall) in downtown Sandusky to try to finish our next album of Lake Erie drinking songs. We have been featuring many of these songs during our recent concert tour. Make plans now to stop in and listen for yourselves. Remember to support your local musicians and artists.
After two long months without practicing as a trio, Island Song gathered on the main floor of the 105 year-old stone church that is HALO (www.halolive.us) and worked on current and upcoming tracks for two different albums. Our producer, Shawn Daley, co-owner of The Mohawk Studio, had prepared all of the recording equipment needed to produce the incredible sound that can only be produced in such a venue. Since the Covid 19 virus has shut down concert gatherings, the entire floor of the old church was arrayed with furniture, speakers, sub-woofers, household lamps, lending to an atmosphere not unlike conducting a concert in a really comfortable living room in your grandmother’s home.
As we rehearsed some of the soon-to-be-recorded music, Shawn recorded, as best he could, our performances on his audio-visual equipment for later upload onto this web site. David Altman played the Ashiko drums (one of the two he borrowed from his wife, Gilda) and Tim Barrett added bass and cello tracks to the the 35 original songs that I wrote for these two albums. Our goal is to select the best from the 35 songs we worked on, weeding out those songs that we deemed not worthy of public consumption without further work.
Tonight, Dave will join Shawn in the studio to add drums to the 16 songs on Island Kind of Life that are complete with guitar, vocals, and a little harmony. Tim will finish up the bass work next Monday so that Shawn can Master the album soon for public release. This album will feature these songs:
Island Kind of Life
Little Red Bucket
Old Man Dancin’
Livin’ My Life This Way
Island Forecast
Bought a Boat
Perch Search
People Like Me
Battle of Lake Erie
I Missed the Damn Ferry Again
Island Saturday Night
Morning After PIB Blues
Starve Island Resort
Island Kind of Life
My Sweet Bessie (rewrite of a traditional folk song )
The next album, Gone Too Far, will be more serious in nature, reflecting on struggles with love, anger, depression, anxiety, sadness, and imperfection as human beings. The song, The Last Day of My Life, sounds sad, but is hauntingly beautiful with true love at its central core. Looking for Mary Lou is devastating in its frankness, a true story from my past. Window Pain is a song I wrote for a friend who spoke of looking out through a window at the rain streaming down the window pane while tears streamed down his face…the pain of a lost love. Keep Breathin’ In I wrote for my good friend, Rose, and all others who are cancer fighters.
Gone Too Far
All We Got
Antidote :23)
Damn Thoughts of You
Dreamin’
Ebb and Flow
Flawed
Give a Damn Blues
Gone Too Far
I Rue the Day
Keep Breathin’ In
The Last Day of My Life
Livin’ My Life
Looking for Mary Lou
Love Is A Song
Screamin’ at the Demon
Window Pain
More to come as we progress on this musical journey. I may release singles such as: Itty Bitty Lime-O, Down Below Key Largo, Island Boys Makin’ Noise, Playin’ All Day, One and One Ain’t Two (a tribute to John Prine), and Takin’ Her Top Off (Yep, it is exactly what it sound like). Have a great day and remember to support your local musicians. Crash
The Island Song Trio meets Friday for practice and on Saturday at The Mohawk Studio for some live recording time. Currently trying to wrap up bass and drum tracks for the album “Island Kind of Life”.
I created this site to encourage military members and song writers in general to publish their music, poetry, and writing to help them cope with the traumas that come with serving our country in far away places. Oh…and to have fun!
That’s me in the middle. Your host, Dr. John M. Davenport, Lt. Col., USAF, Retired. Dave Altman is on the African drum and Tim Barrett is on bass.
Hello, my name is John. I am also known within military circles as Colonel Crash and I write and perform as “Island Song”. I live on one of several small islands on Lake Erie and write many of my songs about life on the islands.
My music also has a dark side. I have struggled for years with depression that accompanies PTSD from places like Africa, the Gulf War regions, and flying dangerous, low-level missions in hostile environments.
Music makes me happy and calms my soul. I especially enjoy the art of writing music. I would like to help other veterans or other older, struggling, social media-knuckleheads to write better and get their music out to the public. By doing so, perhaps we can help each other survive, grow, prosper, and pass on what we learn to others.
The Frosty Bar @ Put-In-Bay (2017)
As soon as I figure this site out (seems impossible to me at the moment) I will begin to upload music from my first CD recorded in Nashville in 2016. I am also currently in the process of recording my second album containing nothing but fun island drinking songs. I have written 192 songs to date with an even mixture of island music such as Old Man Dancin’ at the Bay, I Missed the Damn Ferry Again, and Island Boys Makin’ Noise and serious compositions such as Why Am I Still Here, Keep Breathin’ In, and Flawed.
Nothing prettier than an old D-28 Martin guitar and an old 33′ Bertram Sportfish
Writing original music, at least for me, accomplishes several things. First, it provides an avenue of escape for my overactive brain that I have cultivated over my 20 years in the military, throughout my civilian life, during my journey to complete my doctorate, and when I begin to succumb to the demons lurking beneath the surface. To me, this is a hobby. To others, avocation. Still others may be seeking the dream of success in the music industry. How does the process work for me?
I wake in the middle of the night (my wife thinks I am crazy) and sneak into the bathroom stall, close the door, and record some snippet of a melody or tune on my I Phone so that I can listen to it in the morning. Most of the time these segments of “music?” are so bad that I immediately erase them. Sometimes I don’t. There are currently over 160 of these little 1- to 2-minute recordings on my phone.
Coming from the lyrics direction, I have a file on my computer in my office that simply says, “New Song Ideas”. The magic comes when these two avenues (melody and lyric) collide to create a song. Are any of these songs any good? Let me ask you a question. Assuming you have children, “Do you love your children”? If not, “Do you love your car, your boat, your significant other. Good or bad, most of us love our progeny and the things that make us happy. My music isn’t great, may not be worthy of a Grammy, and may not be published (yet), but I still love them. According to Mike “Mad Dog” Adams, our songs are our children. Please do not speak ill of them.
I am often asked, “What genre of music do you write”? Define genre. I write what I know; what I feel; what moves me; what I think is funny; what I believe describes the hell around and within me at times. I love country music for its simplicity. I love pop music for its complexity. Being of limited talent in the guitar-playing arena, I am forced to keep my music fairly simply constructed. Three chords and a capo make up the majority of the songs I write. I recently began performing with a drummer and bass player which has deepened my music somewhat, allowing more complexity to creep into the sound we produce together.
