This week’s free “Song From The Ballroom” is “Annie’s Song” by John Denver. I’ve always loved his music, “Country Roads” and “Rocky Mountain High” being especially burned into my memory. One day a while back I got an e-mail from Rick Rubin which said something like, “How about covering a John Denver song, that one where the title isn’t part of the lyrics?” Took me a minute to figure out what song he was talking about. This is it.

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). “Songs From the Ballroom” is a series of free unreleased tracks, demos, live versions and rarities just for fans on my e-mail list. It’s been going for awhile now, and I think we’ll keep it going for a few more months at least. I hope you enjoy it.

Everyone, I’m doing another Stage-It concert from my music room, on Wednesday, July 24th at 7:00 PM PDT. You buy a ticket for what seems like the right price to you, then watch from your laptop in your home. Or wherever you happen to be. Yes, I’ll try to figure out how to turn on the fireplace this time but no guarantees. We’re going to hold the tickets to 100 total so the question-and-answer interactive element is doable while I play.

I’m going to do it as a “Words and Music by Dan Wilson” show – that is, I’ll be telling stories about the songs and talking about how they came about and also how I do what I do. Stage-It concerts are 30 minutes with 20 minutes additional for encores. Let’s just assume I’ll play the encore

To purchase tickets, click here.

All proceeds from the show are going to the Sheridan Story, which is a North-Minneapolis-based charity focussed on sending hungry kids home on Fridays with food for the weekend.

Finally! My brother Matt & I have completed our new live album, and it’s ready for purchase. Dan and Matt Wilson: Minneapolis 2013. The album includes all 22 songs that we played at our two shows earlier this year, January 31st at the Bryant-Lake Bowl and February 1st at The Pantages Theatre.

Minneapolis 2013 is a download-only album, and there are two versions: Click to learn more.

This week’s free “Song From the Ballroom” is “The Coolest Thing,” and it rocks! Okay, that’s what I hope it does. It’s me playing all the instruments and letting my Beatles roots show in a big way. The only things I didn’t play on the track are the horns, which are by Probyn Gregory. I met Probyn in February at the Wild Honey Benefit for the Autism Think Tank. Probyn was playing trumpet, sitar and various other instruments for this amazing Beatles tribute. Singing “Penny Lane” with them was one of the high points of my year.

Halfway through “The Coolest Thing” that’s Probyn letting fly on the trumpet, flugelhorn and tuba.

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.

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.