Album Notes

The Music Cafe is a body of work that you typically would find or hear in a Poetic setting. The subject matter of each song provokes thoughts of everyday life, bringing to mind the challenges we face and how they pull at our heart strings. When the lyrics are isolated and examined you can't help but get caught away in the moment as the music soothes and sometimes stirs your soul.

Welcome to the Cafe


More to the Music



I remember as a child walking around with a James Brown album cover. It was a colorful cover and what I remember most about it was the feeling that I needed to carry it around. I guess it was my security blanket. A hair brush was my microphone. The living room was my stage and all I wanted to do was sing. Like most people who would grab the nearest serving spoon to substitute for a microphone or a broom in place of a guitar I often found myself in front of the mirror imitating the moves I’d seen on T.V. and the most electrifying singer to me at that time was Michael Jackson of the Jackson 5. If you were a kid who really loved music you had to love J5.



My mother was working nights at a printing company on the North side of Chicago. She would come home from work at 8am every morning just in time to get me ready for school which was at our back door. I still remember how she use to make those grilled cheese sandwiches, they were so good. I now make them for my son and daughter. Sometimes she would come home with the latest edition of Ebony Jr. which was a colorful magazine for children. If I remember correctly it was inside the Ebony Jr. magazine where the Jackson 5 had their own comic strip and every time they went into print I got mine hand delivered. The Jackson 5 had everything you could think of from lunch boxes to cartoons, to cut out records on the back of the cereal box (bet you forgot about that one) you name it, they had it and I didn’t get any of it because I was the last of seven children. By the time things got handed down to me it was either an antique or on it’s way to becoming one. So I walked around with a James Brown album cover and started teaching myself to sing because it didn’t cost anything and I had to get on the good foot. That’s when I started to developed my love for music.



I was raised in a house that always had Motown playing and there were other artist as well such as Al Green, Teddy Pendergrass, Parliament, and all those Soul singers like James Ingram, Pebo Bryson and Jeffrey Osborne. I’m not sure if my brothers and sisters were paying attention but I was eating that up. Now, Smokey Robinson in my opinion is a musical genius. Smokey said that a song should tell a story, and when you listen to his music or any of the hundreds of hits that he has written you will always hear a story. It’s a simple thing. Tell a story. That’s what he’s done throughout his music career. His music tells a story. Lionel Richie, Kenneth ‘Babyface’ Edmonds, R. Kelly and a host of other talented artists do just that. So that’s what I try to do. Tell a story, a good story, but sometimes I have more to say and that’s what this book is about. There’s just more to the story. Now you don’t have to like everything an artist do you don’t even have to like their style of music but if they’re telling a real good story it will always capture your attention.



Perhaps you’ve seen an interview where someone was asked, “what were you thinking when you sat down to write this song? Or, what was your motivation for this particular project?” Well in this book you will see that my motivation was to tell a good story. The problem I sometimes have is trying to condense that story into a song people would want to listen to. When your minds eye creates a picture then forms an attachment to either a person, place or thing and a song can consistently deliver that moment for you either good or bad it then becomes a lasting memory that’s now apart of us in a sense. If the attachment is remarkable enough in that it captures the imagination of a massive audience you got a hit song.



The way I usually start is I hear a rhythm or melody .Sometimes I wake up with it or it can come to me at the most inopportune time, usually when I don’t have my hand held recorder or when I’m in a room full of people. When a song is on my mind I have to express it, I have to put the melody on tape or a good song could be lost. Not long ago I called my house number and left a melody on voice mail. Sometimes it can get that serious. But during the process I create characters and storylines with plots, then the song begins to take on a different life and sometimes the creative process can become a little overwhelming. I then focus on my objective of writing a short story and not complicate the matter I keep it simple and when I do, I finish up with extra notes filed away for another time. Well that time is now.

You can read about the inspiration of each song at my website http://www.timsykes.webs.com/