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Like most songwriters, I keep a fair amount of partial songs in my head.
Sometimes that amount becomes a critical mass...and I know
it's time to get down to the blue collar part of finishing. It's
not that I don't like that part of the job. It's more often that I'm
daunted by the work.
I tend to write the music...and often, a chorus...first.
That chorus usually has a lot of reverb to it, that I may not have any
understanding of, other than the fact that it rocks my socks in some
subterranean way. Usually, over the next couple months, or years, a few
experiences will shed some light on that chorus. But it is often daunting
to try and mess with that shining chorus. What if someone dropped off
the Venus de Milo at your front door and asked you to carve her some
new arms?
HILLS OF MORNING
I had the music and the chorus for
HILLS for about a year. I loved
the rhythm of the Strumstck…and the simplicity of the chorus. I
hadn’t had any luck with writing verses that stuck…and decided to give
myself a deadline for performing it at the first live, recorded concert
in Amherst (self-imposed deadlines, and the pressure they create, are
often the way… unfortunately…many of my songs get finished)
I got up early the morning on the
day of that concert and went for a run down along my road. I
wrote the verses (and the Wild Grapevine section) along that run, stopping
to jot them down on neighbor’s mailboxes.
Needless to say, we were all very
new to the song that evening……….and gave it the best we had. But
it was very evident to my ears that that song had a ways to go…….with
a few lyrical revisions, but mainly, the musical arrangement was going
to grow.
Six months later, when we set everybody
up in my house for the live take, HILLS had become the most challenging
piece we recorded…from an engineer’s standpoint. It was amazing
to hear how far that song had traveled and how each player’s part had
jelled into it’s own vital niche.
My hat is off to all the players who had the patience to see this one
through.
LIGHT OF THE PEARL
Thanks to my songwriting buddy, Dave
Cox, who supplied the catalyst for this song. I copied a line
out of one of his letters…”some of us never learn to open the oyster
shell until we see our mortality racing straight toward us, like a
flaming sports car”.
And like any good catalyst---it was necessary to get it started---and
it was (mostly) transparent when the work was done.
Thanks also to Glenn Runnels for his contribution to the arrangement.
PIPELINE
When I first went out to Wyoming
to work in the oilfield, my driller’s name was Roland Phillips. In
my short acquaintance with this wild, east Texas native, I accrued
more stories than one album would hold.
He got hit in the head with the blocks, back when he was a derrick hand…hard
enough to reset his eyes to unparallel tracks. Like Roland, there
were few “roughnecks” who made it through their time on rigs, unscathed.
This is a good place to insert the quote that I always had stapled to
the notes for this song…
“Here’s what I think the truth is. We are all addicts of fossil
fuels, in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to
face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get
what little is left of what we’re hooked on.”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
BEESWING
I was fortunate enough to see Richard
Thompson perform this song at the Barrymore Theater in Madison, probably
seven years ago. I’ll
never forget how the story unfolded that evening…and how he sang that
last chorus.
BOX ELDER
I wrote this song, isolated at a
friend’s cabin up north. I was
under the deadline of having to record it the next day in Madison, as
the last entry on THE OX THAT PULLS THE CART.
It was fun to take another pass at this song, after having more time
to understand her phrasing and cadence.
CUSTER PASS
One of the Midwest’s most consistently under-rated
geological formations.
THE SISKIYOU LINE
Train 13 had stopped at the Ashland, OR
train station on the morning of Oct. 11th, 1923, to change crew, before
winding up the steep ascent to Siskiyou Summit…and Tunnel 13.
In honor of:
Sidney Bates---Engineer
Marvin Seng---Fireman
Elvyn Dougherty---Mail Clerk
Coyle Johnson---Brakeman
THE TIE THAT STAYS
Whenever an interviewer asks
me what I consider to be my most challenging or
significant work, the answer is easy. Parenting.
IT’S YOU
I woke up one morning, with this
song all over me. The rhythm
was in my body, the melody was in my voicebox and the words were scrolling
though my brain. All I needed to do was find my some chords
on my guitar, to staple it to. The first, and only time a song
has “shown up” this way.
One of the “skills” of songwriting
is being ready. There
are as many different ways that songs show up…as there are songs.
THE ROAD THAT LEADS ME HOME
People familiar with my live
shows know that I’m fond of trying something brand new, every night. By brand new, I mean song-now. Every
once in a while a line comes out of that ticker-tape that astounds me
with how much it reverberates.
I’ll usually change the next couple
show’s song-of-the-night, to be verses that lead up to that line with
the reverb…to see what adds? what melds? what holds true?
It was at a house concert in Charlottesville,
where THE ROAD THAT LEADS ME HOME dropped off the ceiling, into my
mouth, late in the evening. It
had been one of those great intimate gatherings, where the music had
worked a little magic on us all. I remember when that line
dropped, being grateful, that the loving look on those people’s faces
would stay with me on my drive home.
BENDEMEER’S STREAM
One of the first singing voices I
heard, would sing me to sleep with old ballads like this one. My
favorite was TWO LITTLE CHILDREN.
Dad was 88 when he traveled up from Austin, to grace us with a song
at the Jensen Center shows, both nights.
MY FATHER’S SHOES
I wore a size eleven shoe during
my junior year of high school. To
my surprise, dad was a ten.
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