When I agreed to do this round, I could barely talk much less sing* so I had intended to use this round as a testing ground to find a new way to sing now that my voice loss has become more frequent.
Having said all that, I've been in pretty fair voice the last couple of weeks and could have easily sang this as normal, but in keeping with my original concept, decided to try and sing differently anyway.
The idea I was going for here was to try and keep tension free and let the voice kinda just fall out as opposed to how I normally sorta heave it out. And be more nasal and less throaty. I don't know, I kinda dig it.
I hardly ever get a chance to have enough quiet to get a mic open these days, so I didn't even try. It's an all-in-one-take special — appliances running and my wife washing dishes in the background and everything.

As to the challenge: Cohen, obviously, but less a song inspiration (although. . .) and more as an inspiration to completely change my voice (as I'm kinda doing a reverse Leonard Cohen here).

As to the song:
Sometimes when I have to go outside up here this time of year, I thinkxclaim, 'Dang! It's cold! Good thing I'm just walking up the sidewalk to the store!'
Other times I think of Jack London.
Doug might be interested to know that I wrote this on my old Oscar Schmidt.

*Below is a lengthy explanation of my vocal issues. If we are fb friends, you've probably already seen this. If not, short story: I have something called "Muscular Tension Dysphonia" — long story:
Some of you may be a aware that I’ve been having voice issues for some time now and while it’s really only gotten bad in the last few years, the issues go back (like Doan’s even) quite a few years.
The first time I started having trouble was when the Vagabond Saints’ Society played Nick Cave. I was the singer and I had lots of trouble with the material, which was odd as I had been singing that stuff for years with absolutely zero issues, but from first rehearsal through to the last song of the set on show night, I really struggled. Leading up to the gig, I completely lost my voice several times. In fact, it had returned the day before the show after having been absent for a day or two. It was bad, folks.
What almost no-one knew was my then girlfriend and me were arguing an awful lot around this time and on the verge of splitting for good. Not being a complete idiot, I figured my voice issues were related to the stress of all that, but being a poor American, I knew that there was no way in Hell I was going to get to go to a doctor to have myself diagnosis tested. And so I just dealt with it.
The years that have since pasted have been filled with a lack of steady gigging and apartment living which offered very little chance to ever really let my voice off its chain. There’s a lot that can be said about my singing voice and I’ve certainly heard plenty of it, the good and bad, but one thing no one has ever critiqued is my vocal power. I have (or rather, had) a pretty powerful singing voice. Maybe you dug it, maybe you hated it, but it’d be ridiculous for anyone to say it was “weak,” though now, that is exactly what it is. Kitten weak even.
I really noticed that it had gone downhill a bit when I returned to sing Tom Waits with the VSS. Again, I had a lot of issues with the material and again, this was odd considering. . . well, everything. I lost my voice a few time leading up to our ill fated first gig and in fact, the last thing I remember thinking before I died was, ‘Well, this is OK. It’s not great, but I think I’m going to make it though the gig without losing my voice. I just hope I can do it again tomorrow. . .’ Of course, tomorrow never came (thank goodness — I don’t think I could have made it two nights in a row).
We revisited Waits later and thanks to the great and wonderful Canadian public health, I started seeing a vocal specialist who helped me prepare for the gig. Without his help, I wouldn’t have made it though the show. While I did make it without losing my voice, I struggled and frankly, I didn’t feel like I sang all that well. I can’t even bring myself to go back and listen to any of the recordings of the gig because I know how much better I should have done.
So, around Christmas of this year, my voice got really bad. I couldn’t speak above a whisper for several days. My neck hurt. My throat hurt. My voice was punny and sad and often cracked and broke in ways that not even puberty had produced. It sucked.
It all came to a head one night when the fella in charge of clearing the ice and snow from our walk failed to do so, which lead to a fairly heated argument. Somewhere in the middle of this argument, I lost the ability to make words happen. It was like running in a dream. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much force I used, the words simply would not come out of my mouth. What came out instead was an airy garbled mess of hard consonant and angry vowels. It sucked. Bad.
So, I returned to the voice specialist who stuck the scope thingy down my throat and looked all around and did all the things and everything. Long story short, I have Muscular Tension Dysphonia. Essentially, my muscles can get so tense that they can’t properly work my voice box. Basically: lot’s of things cause it, it comes and it goes, I don’t have very much control over pitch, my volume and general vocal “strength” is lessened (even on a good day) and there is no cure, only treatment. If I keep myself way down low in my vocal range, I can manage pretty good, but now my projection down there is pretty weak. If I push the range up where the projection is good, the pitch can go wild (like it’s plugged into vibrato pedal with extreme settings that cuts itself on and off randomly).
Right now (today), I’m in pretty good voice and could probably fair alright if I had to sing a little, but I’ll likely never have what I used to have and what I do have now is unreliable. This is a difficult for me. While I’m pretty much retired from the musical life, I still very much enjoy the process and would like to continue to be able to do what I do until I’m unable to do anything at all. And that means, doing something different.
There’s a new Monday Morning 3 AM round kicking off this week so I figured I’d jump back in, write some songs, and try a bunch of new vocal approaches. Hopefully, I’ll find one that works for me so I can continue to write songs, sing them, and post them on Bandcamp for three of my friends to listen to a quarter of.
I’ve written my song for this week and as soon as I get the chance, I’ll track it and upload it. As I said, I’ll be testing out a variety of different vocal approaches this round, so prepare to be surprised and confused. The good news is, if you didn’t like the way I used to sing, maybe you’ll like one of the new ones.