Here are links to a few original songs; only in the past few years have I actually written any songs that I'm willing to perform in public. Many of these were inspired, in one way or another, by services at the First Baptist Church in Ithaca, and all of those included below have been performed by David at First Baptist.

This is one of the first songs that was inspired, either by a sermon or by an education class at First Baptist. This one is based loosely on a sermon from the spring of 2011 in which the pastor described how, in his darkest hours, the Rev. Martin Luther King often turned to hymns for strength. In support of the sermon, the congregation sang the traditional hymn Never Alone (I've seen the lightning flashing), which inspired me to write the following, which also incorporates an allusion to one of Dr. King's well-known quotations (can you find it?):

During a recent service at First Baptist, I was leafing through the hymnal and came to the words of the 27th Psalm. A melody started playing in my head, and I heard the continued repetion of the line, ``Of whom shall I be afraid?" -- which became an important element in this song. This is probably one of the Psalms that is most frequently set to music; here is my humble attempt (that friends and I debuted at First Baptist on May 4, 2014).

The sermon at First Baptist one Sunday in late July 2014 was based on Romans 8, including verse 26, which refers to prayers of sighs too deep for words. Here's a song inspired by that verse and sermon:

At an Adult Education class at First Baptist on the subject of prayer, one of my friends described how prayer was made more meaningful to her by the fact that "God knows my name." I was so moved by the idea that I wrote the following song.

I've realized that (too?) many of my songs have a sadness in them that I don't think reflects my true outlook. So, I decided to write a more upbeat song -- something between a "Praise Song" and Gospel. It's called "Are You Ready (to Praise the Lord)?."

Here's another, more recent, praise-like song. It's built around a simple chorus, repeating the word "Praiseworthy!" in four-part harmony, with four additional syncopated patter-like layers built on top. Here is my song, "Praiseworthy!"

At the 2016 Christmas Eve at First Baptist I sang my arrangement of Dave Carter's American Noel; here's a link to a video I made of the song:

In 2015 I led the New Creation Singers in a performance of Cloverton's Christian version of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah! at First Baptist during Advent. I wanted to do it again this year (in 2018) and, near the end of our final rehearsal, I realized that the final two verses of Cloverton's words don't really fit the Advent season. So I removed them, keeping the first three of their verses, and wrote a new fourth verse to bookend the Advent story. Here's my version of Cloverton's words to Cohen's song:

All vocals, guitar, and keyboard parts are performed by the artist.