Acoustic Music by Singer Songwriter Ben Bruce

Random listen: "Green Bandanna"

• "Baggott Inn"

  About a moment I remember forever.

• "Black Bear"

  A melding of two true stories, both occurring at a special place in the Rocky Mountains

• "Break My Mama's Heart"

  I wrote this in a desperate moment at a bar ...

• "Cowboy Lover"

  A story about a woman I once knew. A story about a woman I once knew

• "David"

  This is a story from the Bible -- one of the saddest stories I've ever read.

• "Everyday"

  A song I wrote for my wife

• "Fire That Burns"

  My faux-spiritual. Everyone's got one ...

• "Freedom Time"

  Road trip.

• "Gnossos"

  A homeless man I met in Austin, TX. Or as the Texans write it, Texas.

• "Green Bandanna"

  This song I wrote for my then-girlfriend (now my wife), soon after we first started dating.

• "Handles Gin"

  Can you handle it?

• "Here I Stand"

  Geeze. This one is pretty fatalistic.

• "Homesick"

  Melancholy. This is a real moment in my life.

• "IANTYTIA"

  The first song I ever wrote.

• "Jaden's Lullaby"

  This is ... you guess it ... Jaden's lullaby.

• "Jubilee"

  This is an idealized version of my favorite place: a music festival.

• "Lament"

  The first song I ever recorded [by my first band, Waxen Wane] -- since lost to history

• "Lion in the Sun"

  I first hummed the "roar" of this song on the street in Brooklyn, NY. I was feeling particularly animal, I suppose, but the riff stuck with me and in a quieter moment I turned it into a song.

• "Little Dancer"

  Written for my son, who has always been a dancer (or perhaps a better description is "has always rocked out")

• "Moment"

  Everybody take a moment ...

• "Mountains to Climb"

  Written just before I set off across the country on a new adventure.

• "Never Had to Try"

  Wrote this one night when my wife and son were away ...

• "Our Love"

  This one is about frustration, and understanding

• "Poised to Soar"

  This was written in Vermont, the conceit taken from William Carlos Williams' "Letter to a Young Poet"

• "Rise"

  Sometimes you've got to jump, and pray for wings

• "Riverside"

  This is sort of a "happy place" of mine, set to odd, dark but stirring bluesy music

• "Self-Medicate"

  This song gathers several low-points in my life, and "celebrates" the common medicine for them all.

• "Serenade"

  Written by the sea, nearby my parent's house in Groton, CT

• "Sexy Way"

  I've since found her!

• "Shaggy Dog"

  A term I learned in Poetry, plus a mood.

• "Shiver and Shake"

  Set to sort of sexy rock, this is just a fun one ...

• "Simple Song"

  This is exactly what it's entitled. A love song for my wife.

• "Storm God"

  Sometimes I feel ... elemental.

• "The Day After the Boy That Died"

  I wrote this the day after a boy committed suicide on the campus of Johns Hopkins University

• "Tide Came In"

  Written when we first learned we were having a baby

• "Torn Wings"

  This is a song that just "came to me" out of thin air. I literally saw an eagle, and the way it flew in the sunlight, I could see that it's wings were torn up.

• "Vow"

  Adapted from my wedding vows, spoken October 9, 2004.

• "Walkin'"

  This is a song I wrote long ago, in another time ...

• "Will It So"

  A song about experience and growth

• "You Do Not Walk Alone"

  Something I wrote for a special lady -- and mean to say to everyone.