Songs Written By Me If you are a real musician please feel free to steal these. Some of the links here are not live; this means I haven’t finished a good recording of the song yet.
Nobody Cares: Oops I didn’t meant to post that.
Torn Spinnaker: (Needs re-record) A song dedicated to my sailmaker friend Dwight stitching away in the loft.
Louisiana with Lyrics : You know how in middle life you have friends who have become empty shells of their former selves and you know that inside their brains there are neurons from the friend you used to know, but those neurons are suppressed and they can’t speak to you? This is a song about that.
Emily with Lyrics : Plato told a fable. Mankind once was hermaphroditic, and every human had two heads and four arms and four legs, etc. But then the sexes were ripped apart, and each half of the severed creature yearned to be with its counterpart. When they tried to rejoin, they fit almost perfectly but not quite perfectly. This is a song about that.
Eva’s Song with Lyrics : When the pandemic first came, my daughter’s mom and her partner were busy working at the hospital saving everyone’s lives, and I couldn’t work because my job required in-person meetings, so for a couple of months I would get up every morning and walk over and take my daughter, who was not yet three years old, on a long walk all day in the parks and levees and climb trees and play, then I would take her home and say goodbye, and the next morning at seven I would get up and do it all over again. This song is about that. True story.
Fence-Walkin’ Johnny with Lyrics : This is a song about a chimp named Johnny who is always walking the fence and imagining what it’s like to be a man, narrated by a guy who comes to the zoo and imagines what it’s like to be a chimp.
Me and Mr. Munford with Lyrics : This is a song about me and my grandfather Sims Munford.
The Ballad of VotingWorks has no lyrics because they were made up on the spot. This song is about a true friend.
Hard To Talk to God with Lyrics : When I was in high school I wrote this song about what it felt like in the United Methodist church.
Hope This Feelin’ : What it’s like to be a dad.
Rebirth : A paean to Psilocybe cubensis.
Lamplighting Time with Lyrics: A song about dusk and its regenerative power for life, even the dusk that sets for the last time.
Daddy Love Song with Lyrics: When my daughter was one year old, her mother and I divorced, but somehow the force of loving our little girl kept us from becoming totally evil to each other, and gradually our family ties have grown stronger and stronger as we co-parent together. This song is about what it feels like to try so hard, and know you can’t hang on too long.
Jake with Lyrics : This song is about my buddy who can’t help but be the real guy he is.
Duck Song : Somewhere on Long Island lives a lady and her man and her ducks. In this magical valley we sojourned one New Years Eve, and rose and slept to the sound of the cute little duckies going back and forth on their merry path to the fish pond. And then we dined on smoked duck!
Barely: if it sounds country, man that’s what it is. It’s a country song. I wrote this for a girl that broke my heart one time.
Total Body Press: A song about a first date that happened once upon a time
Married Blues: This song is totally imaginary and 100% poetic license
Covid Denialist’s Anthem with Lyrics: A song of mourning and protest
1234567: A brilliant work composed and performed spontaneously by poet Dave Gorin and kid Eva Sims Munford
Before Nightfall: This song pretty much speaks for itself I think
On 55 with Lyrics: When I started my farm business in Mississippi after grad school I ended up buying a slaughter house in Springfield, Louisiana, and selling meat all the way down in New Orleans and Baton Rouge from our cattle. I was buying them all the way up in Montgomery County from my business partner Donnie Sultan. After all that cut out I took a job with the voting machine company. I travel all over the whole state and come back to our place in Yazoo County to sleep at night. I live in New Orleans with my family, meanwhile, so I have driven the heck out of I-55 for about eleven years. This is a song about my favorite road. True story.
Squaw Valley Horses with Lyrics: The next two songs comprise my coming-of-age series. This is a true story of some time I spent out West hitching and working on different outfits, looking for something I could never quite define. I worked for a while on a wagon at a place called Squaw Valley that really had not changed much since the nineteenth century, and probably still hasn’t changed much now. True story.
Getchell Mine with Lyrics: After I left the ranch in northern Nevada I went down to work on a driller’s rig in a gold mine. This is a song about courage and fear and what men are willing to do to make a living when they have no choice. True story.
Transformations with Lyrics: Here is a weird poem I made up and set to music. The tune comes from part of the old Edith Piaf number Sous le ciel de Paris. It’s about the utter weirdness of being.
Washin’ The Laundry: A song about the neighborhood, and all the people who try their best every day to just do it again. God Bless America
The Fancy Game of Polo with Lyrics: This is a terrible evil song that glorifies economic inequality and objectifies women and several other no-no’s and it should probably be cancelled. But I couldn’t help myself.
The American Chestnut with Lyrics: It’s not often that the dry field of dendrology in which I was once formally trained offers a moving drama of the heart. But the tale of the American Chestnut is such a story.
Flatwoods Firestorm with Lyrics: Come to think of it there is another story in the forestry realm that is definitely worth telling. The longleaf pine ecosystem in the Southeastern coastal plain is a community of plants and animals that have co-evolved with frequent wildfire for at least 22 million years, and they all depend on regular burning to thrive. And thus they can teach us.
Tuatara: The rare living fossil whose genes have undergone rapid neutral molecular evolution but whose phenotype has been fixed since the Cretaceous period. A great example of how nature refutes neodarwinism and epistolution fits better as an explanation.
On Two Wheels: A love song
Tip of My Tongue with Lyrics: Another love song
Country Lullabye: A love song composed for an Indian girl named Princess Flower and her sick little baby named Princess Leaf that live in the forest at my apartment and need medicine and quiet time
The Submarine: Just a riff that I came up with
Passin’ The Buck: a cappella tune
Marching Up The Morning: a cappella tune
Dis Don’t Like Hamburgers V1 …V2 …V3…: Playing around on a theme
Big Tube of Toothpaste V1 ….V2….More goofy stuff. I wish I had a band.
We So Gone Birdsong: Just some riffs and crazy bird-talk
The LNA Song: The most boring part of my old job
All The Same
Mary Battle’s Song
Father and Son
Be Free
See My Baby
Share The Love
Quiet Shades
Wishy Washy
Pelican Landing
Baditrina
Seis Quince
Lulu’s Lament
The Miocene
Tailgaters
More Than Words
Voodoo Lady
Mouse House
Ripe Fruit
Takeaway
Shaving Cream
Cherimoya
Take A Minute
Bernie