Audio Book

These recordings are the whole ebook “Small Stories” in audio. I recorded them in my art studio in 2015.

Introduction

I, a Canadian, on a whim, up and left my Australian home and soon found myself unexpectedly living in a small fishing village on the west coast of Ireland.

In a flimsy wooden cabin, directly across the road from Dunguaire Castle, a stone’s throw from the pier in Kinvara, I would look out the large single paned window that overlooked Galway Bay and write my songs.

When the wind blew the thin wall creaked. When the rain fell the window streamed and misted. But days when the sun dried the sky I could see rainbows stretching across the bay from Galway City to the Burren without leaving my chair.

In 2008 fate flew me to Texas via some brief months in Arkansas. I love it here… here being Austin, the Mecca for songwriters. And yet even with this 71 degree breeze in February and with the cedar elm branches squeaking like horse saddles outside the cabin (cabins seem to find me wherever I go) images fo Ireland muscle through my happiness and soak me in a most delicious nostalgia.

Ireland fits into Texas eight times and more. I do like this big blue dome with dry distant clouds but in Ireland the horizon hugs in close and I love that. Sometimes the sky is so low you can almost touch it. the hills roll toward you, they don’t scuttle away in ripple of heat. Ireland is small. It fits neatly into the heart. Maybe that accounts for why a number of these stories hark back to there. Besides, nothing gets you loving a place like up and leaving it.

PS   Most of these stories are autobiographical. Four are complete fiction.

PPS  The echo you hear is the sound of my high ceilinged art studio in the woods.

1. “BANJO”

 

2.  “SIGNAL”

 

3. “CRYSTAL”

 

4. “SPACESHIP

 

5. “FRONT”

 

6. “CLOTHES LINE”

 

7. “WARD”

 

8. “WOOD”

 

9. “HUNGER”

 

10. “MIST”

 

11. “AIR STRIP”

 

12. “CURRENT”

 

13. “CLOAK”

 

14. “DUST”

 

15. “NEEDLE”

 

16. “PLATE”

 

17. “HILL”