Al Evans | Songwriter and Singer

Looking For Al's Photo Site? CLICK HERE!!

Picture of me in September, 2000
Who Says Gettin' There Is Half The Fun -- Humorous song about air travel security: Who Says Gettin' There Is Half The Fun.

Livin' Free -- Wrote it in 1971, recorded it in 2000, finished it in 2015: Livin' Free.

Black Diamond's Song -- About an elephant executed in Corsicana, TX in 1930: Black Diamond's Song.

Giuliani Allegretto -- Played by my grandson, Alexander Bainter: Giuliani Allegretto.

The Riverside -- This is a tune written by Chris Newman, one of the best: The Riverside.

Song For The Future -- This is my tribute to all of the heros and prayers of 9/11/2001: Song For The Future.

I've been singing songs since I was a small child. I was probably the only five-year-old in town who walked around singing "Hang Down Your Head And Cry" and "The Ballad Of Rodger Young" from an old Burl Ives record.

During the "Folk Scare Of The Sixties" I picked up the Stella guitar my mom had given me for my birthday a few years before. Down to the corner drugstore for a new set of Black Diamond strings, and I was all set.

"For months and months I practiced hard, tryin' to learn those three main chords..."

But life had other plans for me, as it did for many of us. I was severely burned in a car wreck just after I got out of high school. Not long after that, I was married. Then my wife and I were in California, being hippies. Then we had a daughter.

Finally, the responsibilities overwhelmed the music, and I put my guitar down for almost twenty years.

Then one day, I realized that I was a grandfather! My daughter was grown, my career(s) had been successful, and I was finally free to do what I had always wanted to do.

I've been writing songs and singing them ever since....

New on 2/16/15

Who Says Gettin' There Is Half The Fun

Who Says Gettin' There Is Half The Fun MP3 -- A humorous song about air travel security, written a few years after the advent of TSA.

New on 1/29/15

Livin' Free

Livin' Free MP3 -- Phoot, phoot, is this thing still on? My first "real" song, written in 1971, recorded in 2000, and finally finished up in 2015.

New on 11/25/06

Black Diamond's Song'

Black Diamond's Song MP3 -- Black Diamond was a bull elephant who was executed in Corsicana, Texas in September, 1930. This song is his story.

New on 9/24/06

Giuliani Allegretto

Giuliani Allegretto MP3 -- This is my grandson Alexander Bainter, playing in his first classical recital on September 23, 2006. He is ten years old.

The Riverside MP3 -- This is a tune written by Chris Newman, one of the best guitarists and overall musicians I've ever met. I wrote the arrangement, copying liberally from Chris's recording. Performed by me, my wife Cea, and my grandson Alec Bainter (on classical guitar.)

New/Old on 9/11/06

Song For The Future

Song For The Future MP3 -- This is a song I wrote right after 9/11/2001 to honor "all of the heros and all of the prayers" that sprang up on that day, all over the world.

New on 2/7/06

Mailto Transmogrifier

This is a Mac OS X program that transmogrifies mailto: links so that spambots don't recognize them as harvestable email addresses. 56k disk image. You can get it HERE.

New on 9/17/05

Easy Walk

Easy Walk MP3 -- My first instrumental in about 25 years. Multitracked, bass and two guitars.

New on 2/20/05

What's this? A computer game??

Almost exactly twenty years ago, I released a Shareware game for the Macintosh called Cap'n Magneto. It was well received, and was named by MacUser magazine as one of the 200 best Macintosh products. Cap'n Magneto is back -- still Shareware, still only $20 -- and you don't need an old "toaster" Mac to play it! Check out Cap'n Magneto's Web Site.

New on 6/15/04

So Unexpected

So Unexpected MP3 -- It seemed like lightning was striking all around me. I got to thinking how nobody I knew, least of all myself, had really expected to live much past 30.

New on 5/13/04

Digital Photos

I finally bit the bullet, and switched to all-digital photography. I've put some of my recent work right here.

New on 3/15/03

MP3s from Tom Metcalf

My friend Tom Metcalf went into the studio a few weeks ago with Albert Besteiro of Del Castillo and recorded some of his unique and powerful songs. Tom's music is a blend of Tennessee backwoods, Texas border, and Austin poetry. He has kindly given me permission to put a couple of his songs here.

The Epiphany MP3
First Thing That I Knew MP3

New on 1/23/03

Magic Spell Weaver

Magic Spell Weaver MP3 -- This is actually an old song from around 1979-80 that I've been meaning to re-record for a long time. I finally got around to it. Just a love song, with a bit of a Mexican flavor.

New on 1/17/03

Wheel Of Life Goes Round

Wheel Of Life Goes Round MP3 -- Everything's related in the most inscrutable ways. It's a lucky day at the lost and found -- it ain't nothin' but the wheel of life, and the wheel of life goes 'round.

New on 9/19/02

Flappin' Too Hard (For A Genuine Angel)

Flappin' Too Hard (For A Genuine Angel) MP3 -- Unlike most of my songs, this is about a specific person, my daughter Robyn. It's a song about raising her, and about being there to see her start the journey of raising her own child. It's the first song I wrote with my new Kinscherff guitar. Warning: Highly sentimental!

New on 8/29/02

Fairy Lullaby

Fairy Lullaby MP3 -- I was reading Yeats' collection of Irish fairy tales. Somehow this song came out of it.

Same song, after treatment by Joe Clarke.

New on 8/5/02

To Touch The Sky

To Touch The Sky MP3 -- My wife claims this is my true reaction to having a rough time of it the first part of this year. I claim my true reaction is not so polite

New on 7/9/02

ThumbNails 3: Picture Site Maintenance Software

Version 3 of ThumbNails provides better control over site layout and better user navigation. ThumbNails can now create individual HTML pages for one or all levels of image directories, with improved control over the order of images and groups of images. User navigation is improved, too.

You can find out more on the ThumbNails web page.

New on 5/1/02

RMMGA UK5 Gathering Pictures

On April 12-15, Cea and I attended the fifth UK gathering of rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic (RMMGA) near Buxton, Derbyshire, England. Once again, forty or so people met up for the weekend in an old manor house in Wormhill, where we drank plenty of beer and played plenty of music.

You can see the pictures Cea and I took here *in a new window* or here *in this window*.

New on 2/28/02

Gotta Leave This Town

Gotta Leave This Town MP3 -- Never got found, in the burial mound. This one just fell out of the sky on my lap, on Christmas Eve, 2001.

New on 2/14/02

Storm The Gates Of Heaven

Storm The Gates Of Heaven MP3 -- I wrote this on the road, on my way home from an RMMGA gathering. Although this recording is on my "Some Folks" CD, it seemed appropriate to make it publicly available in memory of the recent passing on Will Borgeson, one of our RMMGA "regulars".

Ancient on 12/7/01

Cuts from "Cycle of Love", circa 1980

The other day, I ran across a CD made about five years ago from a cassette "master" made about 22 years ago of my first serious songwriting/recording project.

Ah, the good old days: A Teac 2340 4-channel recorder, a Model 2A mixer, a couple of Shure 516EQ mics and a cheap RatShack condensor mic, nothing but two-band channel EQ and tape echo.

Just for grins, I've put up a few songs from it. I chose the ones that seemed the most different from what I'm doing these days.

Our Love Is Like The Dawn MP3
Tell Me Was It Great MP3
The Longer I'll Be Here With You MP3

These are all copyright 1979-1980 by Al Evans, featuring me on acoustic, electric, bass, and vocals.

New on 11/14/01

Live Oak Coffehouse Concert

On November 9, I opened for Steve Gillette and Cindy Mangsen at the Live Oak Coffeehouse in Austin, TX. I've put up a picture and a couple of mp3s from my performance there.

New on 11/1/01

RMMGA TX-2 Pictures

Cea and I hosted the RMMGA (rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic) TX-2 Gathering in Wimberley, Texas from on October 19-21, 2001.About 45 guitar players got together, played music, and drank beer for three days in the beautiful Texas hill country. Noted Wimberley luthier Jamie Kinscherff co-sponsored the event. Our pictures, and those of a couple of other participants, are HERE.

New on 8/30/01

But Nobody Knows My Name

But Nobody Knows My Name MP3 -- You only pay what the body weighs -- the spirit rides for free.

New on 8/17/01

ThumbNails 2: Picture Site Maintenance Software

This new, improved version of ThumbNails adds an SQL database backend, using the MySQL server, for associating titles, captions, and other information with each picture. The software includes CGI scripts that allow this information to be edited from a remote location, via the web.

ThumbNails now has its own web page.

New on 7/10/01

ThumbNails: Picture Site Maintenance Software

ThumbNails is an automated system for creating and maintaining web sites containing large numbers of photographic images. It will go through a group of directories filled with pictures, make thumbnail images of each picture, make HTML pages for each directory showing clickable thumbnails for each picture, and make an overall index.html document for the HTML pages it creates.

For more information, or to download the software, see my Geekery Page.

New on 6/21/01

At My Door (You're Welcome In)

At My Door MP3 -- A real old-timey song, with plenty of good feelings, about leaving home and coming back.

New on 5/27/01

RMMGA EC4 Gathering Pictures

"RMMGA" is the USENET newsgroup rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic. Over the past few years, it's turned into a real international community, with several general gatherings in various places. Cea and I spent May 17-20 at the fourth East Coast Gathering, at Westmoreland State Park in Virginia, on the Potomac River. We practically took over the whole park, with somewhere near a hundred people in attendance. Great people, great music, great guitars, great food, and -- as always -- plenty of beer!

Hundreds of pictures were taken. Cea's and mine are here *in a new window* or here *in this window*.

New on 5/8/01

"Computer Geekery" Section Added

Over the past twenty years or so, I've mostly made my living as an independent software designer and developer. Like many other software developers, I caught a serious case of burnout. I must be getting over it, because I've been enjoying playing with computers again lately. In particular, I've been having fun doing web-based programming. I've been putting lots of pictures on the web, and am working on good ways to show them and keep track of all the data involved. Check my new Geekery page if you're interested in this kind of stuff.

New on 4/8/01

RMMGA UK4 Gathering Pictures

On March 23-25, Cea and I attended the fourth gathering in the UK, which was held in Buxton, Derbyshire, England. About forty people met in an old manor house, and spent the weekend playing music and drinking beer. It was a magical weekend, as are all these Gatherings.

Cea and I took lots of pictures, and you can see them here *in a new window* or here *in this window*.

New on 3/16/01

Home Free Demo

Home Free MP3 -- Sometimes there are magical moments when we are safe and happy, and everything is as it's supposed to be. How did we get there, and how can we get back?

Face Of The Storm Demo

Face Of The Storm MP3 -- Friends are brushed together, then blown apart like leaves in a gale. Can we make a connection that isn't at the mercy of the weather?

New on 1/24/01

Now For Something Completely Silly!

The Rampage Of Rad The Robot -- Rad, the remoter-controlled toy robot, wreaks havoc in the living room!

New on 1/18/01

My Guitar Demo

My Guitar MP3 -- This song is dedicated to all those who are discovering -- or rediscovering -- the magic of making music with their guitars.

Wonder Where I'll Be Demo

Wonder Where I'll Be MP3 -- Thoughts of cowboy buddhist poet meeting a sudden end in the waters of a flash flood.

New on 11/22/00

Petals In Her Hair MP3 -- A tribute to my friend Al Grierson, folksinger, hobo, Wobbly, and the Poet Laureate of Luckenbach, who was killed in a flash flood on November 2, 2000. Here is a CNN story about his death.

Extra! Extra! I just got word that Jack Hardy has posted an Al Grierson tribute song. Naturally, he has a completely different perspective. You can get it HERE.

New on 11/20/00

Thirty-Three Cent Song MP3 -- A demo version of one of my latest songs, started on the road in Virginia and finished in Austin.