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This is the fifth website for Twelvemonth Music, the online music education enterprise I founded in 2004. The 18 songs referenced below, all of which have been released commercially on multiple digital platforms, were all written, performed (all instrumental and vocal tracks), and recorded by me. Each of these songs was previously included on one of my four Political Rock albums. The 50 songs on the four Political Rock albums are generally reflective of a center-left political perspective, although many are clearly politically neutral, and some take a light-hearted and nonpartisan view of politics. For the benefit of those who are not receptive to center-left views, songs that are politically neutral have been highlighted in bold in the list of song titles given below. Below the list of song titles are links to two mp3 players containing recordings of the 18 songs, in full versions or in excerpts. The excerpts are useful for getting a quick sense of the main musical and lyrical components of each song. Please note that you can click on a song title in either mp3 player to advance directly to that song, and that you can move and shape the mp3 players. Also given below the list of song titles is a link to a navigable PDF containing the lyrics for the 18 songs.

The Other’s Inside
The Distance Between Us
Trickle Down
Forsaking The Dark Road
Whose Country Is This Anyway
It’s My Country Too
We Remember
That Great Divide
Political Rock
The Country That I Knew
Succession
Which Way We Go
The New Children
Gerrymandering…
We Are The People
Give And Take
It’s Just A Matter Of Time
Bring It Home

My purpose in developing this website, and in writing and recording the songs on my Political Rock albums, is to try to effect positive change in American politics. It seems to me that this purpose would be well served by my encouraging and enabling others to learn to play and sing the songs. I have no doubt that all of these songs could be played more proficiently and more competently by guitarists whose skill and talent exceed my own. And I expect that most or maybe even all of them could be sung more effectively by others as well. I would obviously welcome cover versions of these songs by established artists, but my main focus is on assisting amateur musicians who want to learn to play the songs. To that end I am making available on this website, free of charge, song charts and chord docs for the 18 songs referenced above.

The song charts and chord docs employ a methodology I invented in 1981, and they make it possible to learn to play the songs in a fraction of the time it would take otherwise. The song charts, which can be used by anyone who plays an instrument that makes chords, show (on a single page) all the chords required to play along with the recording of a song from start to finish. More importantly, they show exactly when to change from each chord to the next. You can learn more about the song charts on the About Charts page of this website. The chord docs show, in table format, the exact guitar chord fingerings used to play the songs on the recordings. You can learn more about the chord docs on the About Chords page of this website. Guitarists who are further along than most in the development of an extensive guitar chord vocabulary may have little use for the chord docs, but may want to consider purchasing Acoustic Guitar Chords, my comprehensive manual on acoustic guitar chord fingerings.

The instrumental accompaniments for all but two of the 18 songs consist of guitar duets (“Succession” has a solo guitar accompaniment, and the accompaniment for “We Remember” is in effect a guitar trio, with all three guitars playing the same twenty-four measure round). The listing given below, which provides detailed information about the 34 guitar arrangements, employs the same format used for the catalog listings on the two other Twelvemonth Music websites that feature song charts and chord docs (chartsandchords.com) and dlstieg.com). You can click here to review definitions and brief descriptions of the various categories of information included in the listing. More importantly, you can click here to view and/or print charts or chord docs for any of the 18 songs.

ref. #	time	title (artist)	style of play	tuning	key of play	common chords	barre chords	vocals	meter
1	2:36	The Other’s Inside	Flat	STD	E	4of4	NO	1	3
		The Other’s Inside	FP	STD	E	4of5	NO
2	3:39	The Distance Between Us	Flat	Dpedal	G	0of5	NO	1,3	12
		The Distance Between Us	Fstyle	STD	G	1of4	NO
3	3:48	Trickle Down	Flat	STD	A	5of5	NO	1,3	4
		Trickle Down	FP	STD(V)	E	5of5	NO
4	3:07	Forsaking The Dark Road	Flat	Eb STD	b	2of3	YES	1,5	4
		Forsaking The Dark Road	Fstyle	STD(I)	a	3of4	NO
5	3:08	Whose Country Is This Anyway	FP	STD	E	2of6	NO	1,2	12
		Whose Country Is This Anyway	P+S	STD	E	2of6	NO
6	2:45	It’s My Country Too	Fstyle	STD	A	5of5	NO	2,4	4
		It’s My Country Too	Fstyle	STD(V)	E	5of5	NO
7	3:08	We Remember	Flat	Dpedal	d	0of7	NO	3	2
8	3:09	That Great Divide	P+S	STD	C	4of4	NO	1,2	18
		That Great Divide	P+S	STD	C	4of4	NO
9	2:54	Political Rock	Flat	STD	A	4of9	YES	1	2
		Political Rock	Fs	STD	A	4of10	NO
10	2:50	The Country That I Knew	Fstyle	STD(I)	d	3of6	NO	1,4	4
		The Country That I Knew	Flat	Eb STD	e	4of6	NO
11	3:33	Succession	Flat	STD	A	3of7	NO	1	12
12	3:21	Which Way We Go	FP	D	b	0of5	NO	1	12
		Which Way We Go	FP	STD	b	3of5	YES
13	4:34	The New Children	Fstyle	STD	f#,e	5of8	YES	1,3,4	6,4
		The New Children	Flat	STD(II)	e,d	6of8	NO
14	2:48	Gerrymandering…	P+S	openG	D	0of5	NO	1,2	5
		Gerrymandering…	Flat	STD(II)	C	4of5	NO
15	2:53	We Are The People	Flat	STD	a	4of6	YES	1,3	4
		We Are The People	P+S	STD	a	4of6	YES
16	3:06	Give And Take	Flat	EbSTD	e,G	5of8	NO	1,3	4
		Give And Take	Fstyle	STD(I)	d,F	4of7	YES
17	3:06	It’s Just A Matter Of Time	Flat	Dpedal	d	0of4	NO	2	2
		It’s Just A Matter Of Time	Flat	Dpedal	d	0of5	NO
18	3:04	Bring It Home	Flat	Eb STD	E	2of6	YES	1,4	12
		Bring It Home	FP	STD(III)	C	5of6	NO

Finally, I must confess that I had some difficulty in selecting for commercial release 18 of the 50 songs on the four Political Rock albums, especially the 12 songs on the Political Rock Anthology album, released April 23, 2020. Not long after having made those selections, I went back through the songlists for the four albums, and came up with a list of 16 other songs that I thought were also worthy of consideration. The inherent danger in this, of course, is that artists are usually not a very objective or reliable judge of their own work, so it wouldn’t surprise me if one or more of the songs I did not select for either list turns out to be more highly regarded and more popular than the songs I did select. In any event, you can listen to complete versions of these 16 songs, which makes I think for an interesting and enjoyable listening experience. Notice that the song titles in the mp3 player are followed by a reference to which Political Rock album the song was selected from. This information has been included for the benefit of those who want to find out more about a particular song on the Four Political Rock Albums page of this website.

Enjoy the music!

D.L. Stieg, Founder
Twelvemonth Music