So it’s a long story, but the TL;DR version is, around the time I turned 40, I decided it was time I taught myself to play the guitar. I just wanted to play some Al Stewart songs, but as soon as I could jump from E minor to G, songs started coming out of me, and I never did learn Stewart’s Modern Times.

I ended up with quite a backlog of songs I didn’t do anything with because I couldn’t play well enough to do them justice and I certainly can’t sing them well, even though I was writing for my own voice.

So my song catalog was destined to languish until I remembered my great Uncle Carl Binum, and how he would write songs about the history of the state of Arizona. And because those songs were all in his head, they all left the planet with no record when he passed.

So I decided to find some way to preserve the songs I’d written, and decided to go the YouTube route to do it, with cross-postings on Facebook. To separate the music from my books, I chose to perform them under a different name, and because I liked the music of several artists who are solo acts that record as a band name – Brad Sucks, Eels, Badly Drawn Boy – that’s the route I chose. And the name I picked was Just A File Clerk. The reason? Well, there’s probably a whole future post on that.

Once I worked out all those details, I determined this would be the year I started getting those songs down in earnest, and here’s the first. There will be others. You have been warned…