Good morning and happy Monday, folks. I’m back from Oklahoma. We had to have a funeral for my grandmother who passed away on the 17th. Here are two playlists to make up for missing last week. The first is a selection of my songs, while the second is just a list of songs I’ve been listening to lately.

Playlist #147: A Whitman’s Sampler of Charlie Cottrell Songs

1. “Unanswered Prayers”: I still love the slide guitar on this one.
2. “Saint Joan”: Clif really likes how slightly off-kilter the piano on this one is, and I have a hard time disagreeing with him.
3. “Complete Control”: One of my better rockers.
4. “I Wish You Would”: I feel like this song could’ve been recorded anytime between 1967 and yesterday. Dig that Bakersfield guitar solo.
5. “Oh, My Love”: The vocals on this one were overdriven a bit on purpose, and I’m probably most-proud of those guitar solos.
6. “Dark On My Street”: Still one of the best-recorded songs I’ve ever done; Clif played all the instruments on this one.
7. “Burnt Offering 2”: If there’s one song that illustrates how important it is to have a good collaborator working on your songs with you, it’s this one. Clif took what I’d recorded and turned it into a powerful, dare I say beautiful song.
8. “My Head’s Not Equipped To Deal With This Bliss”: An older song that I recorded for the latest album. The new album, Middle Aged Heartthrob, is half old songs, half brand-new songs.
9. “Losing Sleep”: Just me grappling with death, the passage of time, the collapse of American society, and my reading list.
10. “The Ocean Just Gets In The Way”: This was originally going to be the closer for the new album, but then Clif went and recorded that little banjo bit at the end of “As Shadows Lengthen” and it just felt like the perfect way to end the album, so this became the penultimate song.

Playlist #148

1. The Low Anthem, “Champion Angels”: I’ve spent most of this morning listening to Oh My God, Charlie Darwin, and this is one of my favorite songs on there.
2. Martin Sexton, “Diner”: I blame the TV show Scrubs for this one.
3. The Mountain Goats, “Fall of the Star High School Running Back”: Who doesn’t love a story of a high school football star who gets injured, starts taking pain medication, then starts selling pain meds for profit?
4. Norah Jones, “The Long Way Home”: Not the Supertramp song, but the Tom Waits song of similar name.
5. Ondara, “Torch Song”: I like the simplicity of the instrumentation on this one. Mostly just acoustic guitar and standup bass.
6. Wings, “Helen Wheels”: McCartney rarely rocked out that hard, but this one rips.
7. Brian Fallon, “Forget Me Not”: I still like the way he shouts the girl’s name, “Stacy!” at the beginning of the verse.
8. Jars of Clay, “Reckless Forgiver”: I like the idea of reckless forgiveness. It takes a concept that is usually so carefully considered – forgiveness – and says just give that to everyone, everywhere, regardless of anything. It’s a nice idea.
9. David Gray, “Easy Way to Cry”: I was on a David Gray kick on the drive home this weekend, listening to several of his albums back to back. This one always sits with me afterwards.
10. Josh Ritter, “Monster Ballads”: I often wish I was a better lower-register singer. Songs like this make me rue that lack even more.