…to reflect and share.

One day a couple of months ago, quite out of the blue, I started singing part of an old song of mine called “Pavement Ends.”

I located the complete lyrics of the song, undated, on page 170 in Volume 2 of my songwriting journals.

The first draft of the lyrics to “Pavement Ends” appeared on pages 5-7 in the same volume, sitting between one entry dated 9/7/93 and another marked 11/15/93.

Playing the song, however, proved to be a problem.

I (eventually) found my homemade demo recording of the song on the B-side of a 90-minute cassette tape labelled Recent Originals 1994. It was hiding in a very full storage box of cassettes marked “Work Tapes.”

Finally, after going through the odd process of listening to that recording and teaching myself the chords and fingerpicking to a song that I wrote, I’ve been playing and singing “Pavement Ends” quite a bit lately.

This past week, I had the good fortune to be invited to perform at a local art gallery. The “evening session” had been described as “an informal trade-off of talent” done in “round robin” or “songwriter circle” style. The folks who joined the circle that night included another singer/songwriter/guitarist, a trio of Celtic musicians, a poet, a short-story writer and a Jazz vibraphonist.

“Pavement Ends” was my first contribution.

A young man from the audience came up to me after and asked if the song was on my website. “It is not,” I answered.

Now it is.

I hope you enjoy it.

“Pavement Ends” – words & music, guitar & vocals by Eric Sinclair.