I am far from a professional musician, let alone recording engineer, but this song came to me yesterday after learning of more layoffs at my former place of employment, USA Today, and thinking about my year of unemployment. I won't bore you with the technical challenges of how I put this together on a simple laptop computer. Obviously, I wrote the lyrics first, then the music. I recorded the main guitar and vocals together, then played the bass and lead guitar parts later. Finally, I added a computerized drum track (since I don't play the drums) and created an MP3. After the song was recorded, I found some photographs online to accompany the music and merged everything in a video-editing application. I was tempted to turn this into a standard blues song, but decided on a different approach. Because I mumble a lot, I am providing the lyrics below.

LAID OFF
Lyrics and Music by Mick Calvacca

Went to the boss yesterday
got three months severance
that's all I'm going to pay.

I said what am I going to do
with all that money
I got bills to pay, it ain't funny.

When you're 50 years old and
feeling weary about the days
gone by and all that spirit.

Well times are hard and
I'm not believin' all I'm told
and all that I'm leaving.

You got to know someone.

You got to have some luck.

Note: Video slides compiled by Mick Calvacca with apologies to photographers and cartoonists who I was not able to credit