By Chris Moore:

Welcome to my all-new edition of Original Wednesday here at the Laptop Sessions. This week, I have chosen “Words,” a song I’ve recorded twice over the years — once for my album Looking For You (I recorded the title track for my last Original Wednesday video blog) and again on the Chris, Jim, & Becky debut album Live in the Studio. After recording a new cover song music video every three days, it’s always a lot of fun to turn to my own catalog of songs and revisit songs I haven’t played in years or ones I play all the time on my own. That’s the concept behind the Original Wednesday tradition — allow the members of Fusco-Moore Productions to showcase our pride and joy, our own music.

“Words” inspired the early sketches for a script and some unscripted scenes filmed while Jim and I were on vacation in Massachusetts. The basic premise of the movie was two characters on a journey who disagree on the essential question, what is a more important/effective form of communication — music and sound or words and written forms? For those who know me, it won’t come as a surprise that my character (the Eli mentioned in this song) believes in the power of words to express that which we as humans are simply unable to communicate to each other. Jim’s character (named Brian, if my memory serves me well…) believed less in the ability of mere words to convey the complex emotions we have. Nothing ever or probably ever will come of it, but it was great fun to revisit the song and the concepts.

I’ve written very little about Eli as a character — really only these lyrics — but I’ve always liked him. I hope you do too! As a songwriter, I always wished I could have written more into the song or additional songs, but I think this says enough on its own.

Well, I hope you enjoy this one. If it doesn’t whet your appetite, then don’t forget to rush back tomorrow for Jeff’s all-new Laptop Session as session-a-day rolls on for all 366 days of the year 2008…

See you next session!

By Jim Fusco:

Okay, really obscure territory here on the music blog.

When my family was getting into the music of the Byrds back in 2000, we really went head-first and listened to every album they made throughout the 60s. Some were better than others because you could tell they were doing a lot of growing up, musically. Plus, many of their later-60s songs were very drug-tinged.

After Gene Clark left the band in late ’65 or early ’66, the band came out with one of their worst efforts, “5D”. I still liked most of the songs, but the playing was sloppy and they were high as a kite.

When we got to the superb “Younger Than Yesterday” LP (on Jim Fusco’s list of “Albums You Should Listen To”), I instantly gravitated to the songs of young Chris Hillman, bassist for the band. He is an amazing bass player, mostly because he was an accomplished mandolin and guitar player, so he took his soloing skills over to the bass for the Byrds.

I love his voice- it’s just so natural. There’s no weird accent. He doesn’t say the words in an odd way. He just sounds good, you know?  His voice is nice and clear and I was happy that he was getting a chance to write more music for the Byrds.  And, like in most bands, the songwriter usually sings his own original songs, so I was happier the more we listened to Byrds songs.

He wrote some of my absolute favorites: “Thoughts and Words”, “Have You Seen Her Face”, and “Time Between”, just to name a few. I plan on doing all of them in the future.

But for now, I give you this song off of “Younger Than Yesterday”, “The Girl With No Name”. It was a lot of fun to play and is a very short song. It’s funny that such a sweet sounding song was probably still influenced by drugs.  I’m just guessing here, but “The girl who had no name” could mean a couple things: For starters, maybe this lady lived on one of those hippie communes where they said, “Hey man, why do I need to be labeled with a name?  Can’t I just BE?”  That’s a possibility.  The other possibility, to me, could be that Hillman just didn’t bother asking for a name.  Whether he was under the influence of something that impaired his judgement at the time is something only he can attest to.

I think the Byrds are a great band to do acoustic cover song versions of.  Their songs had an interesting style.  You could almost tell that they wrote their original songs on acoustic guitar and then found a way to translate them into the psychedelic sound of the time.  “The Girl With No Name” is pretty straight-forward, so my acoustic version here for the music blog stays true to the original.  That’s another reason why I love doing the Laptop Sessions video blog.  In addition to reimagining popular songs acoustically, I like taking obscure songs and playing them for the world.  They’re great songs and they deserve some fresh attention.

I’m gearing up for next week’s big “#1 Week”, in which (other than Original Wednesday) we’ll be playing only cover songs that hit Number One on the Billboard charts.  Stay tuned for other great specialty weeks of cover song music videos coming soon, too!

By Chris Moore:

All right, now I’m kicking into high gear. This is one of my favorite tracks from Matchbox Twenty. It’s an obscure one, but I’ve always loved it. I have to stretch my range on the middle, but I practiced so many times that not posting for lack of perfection just wasn’t an option!

By Jim Fusco:

Yes, that’s right- a world premiere tonight here on the Laptop Sessions music video blog!

In just a couple short months (or maybe sooner- who knows), I’ll be releasing my first solo album in four years.  I can’t believe it’s been that long.  And, with the production value and songwriting skills, you’ll realize that I’ve grown in many ways over that time.  I’ve seen a band come and (essentially) go in that time.  I’ve produced and written songs for two albums while in that band.  “Homestead’s Revenge” is truly a great album and I can only hope that “Halfway There” can top it.

I hope to create some sort of buzz for the new album.  I spent so long making it and I’m so proud of it that I wanted to wait until the Laptop Sessions got popular to release it.  Maybe now, my collegues here on the site will realize why I’ve been pushing them so hard to find better avenues for popularity here on the music video blog…

This song, “Halfway There”, is obviously the title track, but it doesn’t appear until track 10 on the 11 track album.  It’s funny- my last album was 13 tracks and this new album is longer with two less songs!  The songs on this album are well-thought-out and complete.  The songs on this album take their time and don’t sound too rushed.  The songs on this album are the songs I always knew I could make, but never really had the time or the resources to complete.  You can see why I’m so proud of it!

Of course, this album has a theme.  When you see the album cover, which is awesome, by the way, you’ll get more of the theme’s meaning.  I’m having a great painter named Ben Quesnel paint the cover.  In exchange, I’ll be making him a website for all of his artististic work.  It’s a great trade-off and I know we’ll both be very happy in the end.

Tonight’s song really sums-up the whole concept of feeling “Halfway There”, hence it’s place towards the end of the album.  I give examples of what I’m trying to say throughout the album and finally give it a nice summary towards the end.

The tune came to me while driving back home after our usual trip to my parents’ house on Thursday nights for TNA iMPACT! on Spike TV.  I knew the title of the album long before I wrote this song.  Thinking of the album and its title, I started to sing to myself in the car: “Halfway there…halfway there…halfway there…I’ll always be halfway there…”  I proceeded to drive home much faster than usual and fleshed-out the song a bit more.

Actually, I made a YouTube video of how I developed this song- here it is below.  Then, you can watch tonight’s Laptop Session Original Wednesday version and get a better feel for the finished product.

Of course, the REAL finished product has literally ten of my vocals on the chorus- it sounds so cool!  Again, I finally have the techniques and everything down to make productions like this possible…and sound good, too!  But, for now, I hope you’ll enjoy the first newly-released track off of my upcoming album, “Halfway There” on acoustic guitar for tonight’s Original Wednesday music video.  I’ll be back for my next Jim Fusco Tuesday installment next week and I hope you will be, too!