My how the time flies. It’s time for another “Song From the Ballroom,” and this one is the surprise I was talking about. It’s a live version of “Free Life” from my brother Matt and my show earlier this year at the Pantages Theater in Minneapolis.

I love how it eventually turns into a duet between my voice and Matt’s guitar. We’re just putting the finishing touches on a deluxe live album download of the concert, but more on that later! Meanwhile, sign up on my mailing list (at bottom left you’ll find a link,) and receive this track and all the tracks to come, gratis, pro bono, free, just because I love you.

The new installment of my “Songs From the Ballroom” is a song called “However Long.” I wrote the first verse and the chorus sometime in the early 2000’s, sang it into my memo device, and forgot all about it for years.

I used to keep a “businessperson memo device” in my purse. I’m sure most of these things are used to record statements like: “Note to self: Buy more gold!” But I used mine for music, to help me remember scraps of song ideas that came to me at odd times of the day. I’d sing song ideas into it while walking around, running errands, doing the dishes, driving (I know – dangerous,) having conversations (I know – rude,) recording in the studio, while writing.

Every once in a while I would transfer all the files out of the memo device and into iTunes. When I wanted to jog my memory or get some random inspiration going, I would play the song scraps and snippets back in shuffle mode. I was doing this kind of “random playback” on a cold day in 2010 and the verse and chorus for “However Long” jumped out at me. I think I finished the song over the next two days. The key changes were a surprise, I never do that, but they brought out the epic atmosphere of the lyrics.

“Lights, low in the dark
Slow-moving sparks
Sad as a bright tracer’s arc”

Today what I think of when I hear this recording is driving from Minneapolis to Mankato, Minnesota, to buy a pump organ that I’d found on Craig’s list. A hundred bucks. My then-two-year-old daughter Lily came along for the drive, against her will, and screamed in the back seat for the entire drive. It was totally worth it. That instrument is instant vibe.

The organ is small – one person can carry it by two handles inset into the sides. The nice woman who sold it to me said that her grandmother used to take it to church on Sundays with her, and play hymns in the parking lot. But since her grandmother died, no one played the pump organ. So of course I played “Amazing Grace.” “Listen!” she said to her daughter. “That’s what it used to sound like when my Grandma played it!”

Next time: a surprise, I hope.

Anyone can receive this track for free for the next couple of weeks by joining my emailing list (Please see link at lower left to sign up) I hope you enjoy it.

Natalie Maines and I did a lot of songwriting together with her fellow Dixie Chicks on their “Taking the Long Way” album. Recently we got together for a recording session: she sang harmonies on a couple of songs on my album-in-progress. Then a week or so later, Natalie surprised me by e-mailing me a rough mix of this version of my song “Free Life.” I love what she and her producer Ben Harper did with the song. (I’m a Ben fan, too – it’s exciting for me to hear his voice peeking through on the chorus harmonies.)

Back in the early days of my songwriting, I used to think a lot about John Hiatt. I had admired him as a recording artist (Bring the Family has a lot of great songs on it) who also had a life as a songwriter for others – his “Sure as I’m Sitting Here” was covered by Three Dog Night, for one. And the songs he recorded for his own albums got covered by other artists, too, which seemed really cool to me (“Have a Little Faith in Me” from Bring the Family, for one.)

But generally that’s not the path my songwriting has taken: if I’m writing on an artist’s record, it’s usually a fresh, from-scratch song written with the artist. So it’s especially sweet when an artist I admire, like Natalie, covers a song of mine that I’ve already recorded. It makes me feel like John Hiatt.

Oh, and one more thing – just coincidentally, John Hiatt’s “Bring the Family” album supposedly got its start after a show of Hiatt’s at McCabe’s in Santa Monica, where I’ll be playing on May 18th.

The next installation of my “Songs From the Ballroom” series is a demo of a song called “Patience.” I recorded it during a solitary six-week period over New Years 2010 in Minneapolis. During that time, I sequestered myself in my third-floor recording space – “the ballroom” – and did nothing but write songs and make super-simple demos of them. In 2009, I had been doing a lot of co-writing and producing for other people’s records, and by the end of the year I found myself with a growing urge to write a lot of songs, alone. I told my family that I was going to disappear upstairs for a while, and write a song a day during December and January. In the end, the pace was more like a song every two days, but it felt good and I also ended up making simple demos of other songs I’d written during the year.

One of these is “Patience.” That’s me on acoustic guitar, pump organ, and bells, all alone, doing my thing. Every time I hear this demo I’m reminded of the solitude and the silence of those wintery weeks in the ballroom. Anyone can receive this track for free for the next couple of weeks by joining my emailing list (Please see link at lower left to sign up) I hope you enjoy it.

The first song from my “Songs From The Ballroom” series is a live version of “I Want You” from the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, recorded in 2007. I wrote it with Rachael Yamagata for her first full-length solo album “Happenstance.” I always loved the song and its weird Roaring 20’s vibe and unusual (for me) chords. Anyone can receive this track for free for the next couple of weeks by joining my emailing list (Please see link at lower left tosign up) I hope you enjoy it.