“Strummin’” (Original Jim Fusco 12-String Acoustic Guitar Song)

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to yet another edition of “Original Wednesday” here on the best music video blog in the universe: The Laptop Sessions!  “Original Wednesday” is the once-a-week occurance where we put aside our acoustic rock cover songs and play you an original from our vast catalog.  Tonight, it’s my turn, which comes but once every three weeks, so you know it’s going to be a good one!

“Strummin'” is a song off of my album “That’s All Folks” and was also a bonus track on my earlier album “Formula”.  It actually appeared as my first music video on the Enhanced CD portion of that disc.  I put the video up on YouTube- you can see how much thinner my face was then…and it was only 2004!  Watch the song HERE.

This is a very simple song…well, actually it uses a few jazz chords that I learned while taking my only guitar class in college.  I already knew how to play, but this class filled in a lot of the music theory for me, and I was the best student in the class.  I was actually the only person in class to play Billie Holiday’s “God Bless the Child”.  So, I took a couple of those great sounding jazz chords and turned them into a song of my own.

I needed to finish this song for that music video, which we were going to film the next day.  We even got clearance to use my old high school’s auditorium to tape it, so we had to get it recorded and done right.

So, I wrote the rest of the song quickly and tried out my newfound soloing technique that I also learned while taking that guitar class.

All the lyrics in this song are true-life lyrics.  But there’s a line at the end, “Highly doubt this song will make me a star.”  For some reason, I always thought that this would be the song to make me a star- just because it’s so different and clever.  I hope all of our loyal visitors will send this video around to their friends- if anything, it’ll give you a smile.

Enjoy this song tonight and make sure to come back on Saturday, when I’ll be premiering my first-ever Laptop Sessions cover song on piano.

“The Red, White, and Blues” (original Jim Fusco song)

By Jim Fusco:

Welcome to the Laptop Sessions’ Original Wednesday. I’m guessing some people will be new to the Laptop Sessions because of this original song video, and we welcome you aboard!

This song, a pun on the “Red, White, and Blue”, is my first and only “protest” type of song.

The song was written in early 2002 after 9/11 about the hypocritical actions of Americans automatically becoming “patriotic” as soon as a disaster hit. This original song is just me wondering why people weren’t just ALWAYS patriotic!

This song is still as relevant today, six years later, as it was when I wrote it. I even talk about Easter in the song (it was that time of year), and I thought this would be the perfect week to bust it out again.

Basically, I’m giving the point of view of an 18 year old kid (at the time) from Connecticut because all the hardship and fear seemed so distant from my everyday life at the time.

To say this song is still relevant today shows how stagnant the country’s been lately.  We still are fighting a never-ending war on terror and the patriotism of the country is waning once again.

Oh, and the verse about California: it’s in reference to when they didn’t have the Red-Carpet festivities for a big award show that year. I didn’t think that was helping anyone. Letting the terrorists know we’re scared? That’ll really help…

“The Red, White, and Blues” is from my double-album set, “That’s All…” that I released in 2003.  I say “double album” in a different way than you would normally think of it.  For instance, the Beatles came out with a double album with their “White Album” (simply titled, “The Beatles”) in 1968.  That album consisted of over 20 original songs and couldn’t fit on just one vinyl record.  For “That’s All…”, it’s a bit different.  You see, I had just gotten a guitar- my first real acoustic guitar, an Ibanez Artcore.  I instantly wanted to play everything on the acoustic guitar and quickly went to playing folk songs.  I even came up with a bunch of my own.  I thought a blues song like “The Red, White, and Blues” would be a perfect way to start off an album of folk songs.

But, I also had a bunch of original songs that I’d written in my normal rock’n’roll style, too.  So, I decided to record everything at once and split up the whole project into two original albums: “That’s All Folks”, which featured all of the folk songs I’d written, and “That’s All Jim” that featured all of my songwriting efforts in my normal style.  I put both albums on one CD, but each album had it’s own cover.  Plus, the combo-pack of both albums called “That’s All…” had it’s unique album cover!

I hope you all enjoy this original song music video. If you want to hear the original recorded version and buy the double-album online, you can go to my website: http://jimfusco.com/albums/thats_all.html

“Looking To You” (Indie Music – by songwriter Jim Fusco)

By Jim Fusco:

Thanks again to Jeff for coming up with “Original Wednesday”, as I think it’s a great way to work some of our own material in here!

Today, I’m doing one of my songs from an album I made back in late 2003 called “That’s All…”. I couldn’t stop listening to this song (yes, I listen to my own music quite a bit- I think I should be making music I actually like listening to!) so I decided to make it my first non-Christmas original here on the Laptop Sessions.

I like the way the verse isn’t very “standard”. I don’t exactly know what prompted my creation of it, but it’s always stuck out as both unique and meaningful.

Problem is that I don’t really remember the meaning, either! Actually, I can take a pretty educated guess: Basically, the song says, “I gave you everything. You could’ve had anything. But when I ask for a little something in return, you tell me I’m greedy and hold it against me.”

I must’ve felt this way, as most people do in a relationship at one time or another. I think it made for great song material!

Well, as they say, a Laptop Session a day keeps the doctor away! They don’t? Well, anyway, here’s your daily dose of great music from Jim, Chris, and Jeff!