Songwriter-Songwriter is Going Back to School

Songwriter-Songwriter is Going Back to School

In late 2007 I decided to move to Belmont, Massachusetts, USA. I was 70 years old, living in a free studio apartment in Bangkok, Thailand, enjoying the best job an old guy like me could ever want, but as fate would have it, a course was coming up at the Harvard Extension School that was a perfect fit for me.

My best friend, Mao Sim, was finished with her doctorate, and would graduate ten days before the course started. It would be the perfect course for her, too, because it would not only introduce her to the science of climate change, which will play an ever more important role in all our lives, but would introduce both of us to the impact climate change will have on human lives, and the diplomacy and ethics that will apply to societies as the changes occur.

I’ve taught science nearly full time for almost forty years, and Mao has worked with refugees and Homeland Security and other human rights and immigration issues, and plans to study economics and statistics in order to apply her philosophical principles to the practice of public policy making. Career-wise, moving to Belmont, where Harvard is only fifteen minutes away was an excellent idea. Mao is located in Back Bay, Boston, and will do her next post-doctoral studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, if her plans work out.

As for me, I’ve been resurrecting and refreshing old music that I wrote when I was playing and singing in the US Army clubs in Germany in 1976. I began writing songs again when I moved to Thailand in 2005, just before Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated New Orleans and the eastern coast of Louisiana, and two weeks later, Rita devastated the western Louisiana coast.

In Bangkok, a colleague at Assumption University told me he had studied at Berklee in Boston. That intrigued me, and Tuesday I dropped in to check it out. At 2:30 PM today, I’m scheduled to meet with the head of the songwriting program there. I would really like to spend a year or more studying there, but I will need two things: admission to the program, and some kind of financial aid. I hope today’s visit secures both.

If that happens, I’ll have so much more to say in songwriter-songwriter, for I will be studying with people who have helped super stars of the music world reach their peak, people who’ve worked with Lou Rawls, Michael Jackson, Angela Bofill, Jerry Butler, David Geddes, Janet Lawson, and others. I’m so out of it professionally I did not recognize some of these names, and had to go to YouTube to find them and listen to their music.

Soon, I hope to have http://bostonmusicianscoop.com organized and on line, and next year I hope to start http://worldmusiciansmovement.com up and running.

Meanwhile this blog will slowly develop. To see where I really intend to be in a year, so to http://musicforabetterworld.blogspot.com, where I’m already doing my charitable musical thing!

Walkin’ In the Drizzling Rain

© 2009 James P. Louviere

Walkin’ in the Drizzling Rain,

Walkin’ in the Drizzling Rain,

You know I really hate to complain

But it’s getting’ really hard to refrain….

I feel like Cussing all this Drizzling Rain,

Cussin' all this drizzilin’ Rain!

I got rain in my hair,

I got Rain in my shoes,

Walkin’ along Singin’ the Rainy Day Blues!

Walkin’ in the Drizzling Rain,

Walkin’ in the Drizzling Rain,

I looked at the sky and the sky was black,

Look like Katrina was comin’ back!

And I’m Walkin’ in the Drizzling Rain,

Walkin’ in the Drizzling Rain,

Staying’ just one step ahead of the pain,

Walkin’ in the Drizzling Rain,

My mama said Son, don’t fight and don’t cuss,

And make sure you never miss the very last bus,

I went to the corner, they ain’t go no bus,

That driver don’t like to wait for folks like us,

I don’t want to fight and I don’t wanna cuss

But it looks like I just missed the very last bus!

I been Walkin’ in the drizzilin’ rain,

I’m walkin’ in the drizzling rain,

I went to the Shelter, but the Shelter was closed,

I gotta get out of these soakin’ we clothes

If I want to say dry and eat without fail,

I gotta get back in that Jefferson Jail,

Hey, Mr. Sheriff, Hey, Mr. Lee,

Take another look, don’t cha recognize me?

Reach in yo’ pocket, Get that long brass key,

Open the door and make some room for me,

I rather be dry, and eat without fail,

Like it is when I’m here in the Jefferson Jail,

I don’t wanna go outside and walk around free

Cause on the outside there ain’t no place for me,

I’m always Walkin’ in the Drizzling Rain, Walkin’ in the Drizzling Rain,

Stayin’ just one step ahead of the pain,

I’m walkin’ in the drizzilin’ rain!

July 30, 2009 09:05 AM

I'm Not Writing Songs Right Now Because. . . .

It would be nice to have time to write new songs and remake my most recent music videos. I did them with a Logitech Quick Cam Pro, which has lots of great features, but the sound does not please me. I'm also not really well set up with it, so I'm not condemning it, only saying that I have not set it up for music videos. It seems great for talking to people, even as a Real Player file, if not live, but I'm working on my Music for a Better World.blogspot.com blog, and its counterpart, http://bostonmusicianscoop.com, which is hosted for a fee at HostGator. I have so much work to do, and so little time. Maybe that's good, since I am "retired" and don't want to be bored.

what's keeping me up all night on the Internet? I have a dream. Here's where it starts: We owe something to the kids to be born in decades to come, and so far, our legacy looks really bad. Imagine being born into a world where climate changes make life very difficult, or, for many in Africa and lands dependent of monsoon rains, nearly impossible, a world where miserably poor and desperate people are given weapons and sent to the better off place looking for a better life, or, if that's not attainable, revenge for being victimized - rabble rousers from various nations or factions will supply the propaganda to make migrating people attack rather than join their new neighbors. Imagine being born into a land where the money does't buy enough to feed your child. Imagine finding no power when you turn on the lights, or no clean water in your pipes. Most people in the world are like that. No power (no refrigerator, no elevator, no lights or computers - they are getting along without anything that requires power as Americans know it. I spent 30 months, July 2005-January 2008) in the most populous area in the whole world, Asia, and I saw how the great masses of people live!

It's my dream to unite music makers, producers, technicians, performers, writers, marketers, everyone - even dancers - in creating music that will inspire people to be just, kind, tolerant, and to respect the earth and all its living things, human and non-human, and its great weather engines, the sea, landforms, and atmosphere. so that life can continue to flourish as it has in the past.

Please go to musicforabetterworld.blogspot.com and, soon, http://bostonmusicianscoop.com to join in this great, worldwide effort.
Thanks!
James P. Louviere