Since I was a kid, I've had songs running through my head. Songs I'd never heard before. If you heard me play the guitar,... you'd know I was a cartoonist. Not a musician. Still, it seems that I have to write the songs down in order to stop them from being crazy-making earworms.

That has led me into some wacky adventures writing musicals. I could never chase that as a dream, though, because, well, cartooning calls me louder. But it was fun.

Here are some songs from projects that reached at least a modest stage of the production process. A couple were intended only as community productions (church plays), yet one of them attracted national press. A children's musical did actually get slated for a more serious launch—but then someone sold the theater out from under the producers. The fates had spoken. Luckily I had cartooning to fall back on (a line you don't hear very often). Here's a taste. Enjoy.