I feel strongly that each writer of any sort retells the same old stories over and over.  There really is nothing new under the sun.  We twist, we turn, we cloak, misdirect, and spin but when all is said and done you’ve the basics…and boy/girl meets girl/boy is part of the human narrative bedrock.

I started with “whiskey stained words” and tried to associate images.  Best I could come up with was a letter–for the words to be whiskey-stained they must be in physical presence somewhere, right?  They must exist.  A letter seemed best.

I got nothing from “liars, cheats, and thieves” that connected with a letter AND wasn’t absolutely maudlin and done to death by better songwriters.  I loved the rhythm of the phrase, of both phrases really, but could not for the life of me get them to play nice with one another to my own satisfaction.

Until I decided on the melody.

I write this little waltz some time ago heavily under the influence of Kenny Baker.  I had been transcribing some of Mr. Baker’s fiddle tunes and my head swam with bluesy-inflected old time, the best kind of bluegrass in my opinion.  I started playing the tune and looking for where the words fit.  And they did fit.

I started with the bar, the guy reading the letter, and the darkness, but I still groped to find motivation and story that wasn’t tried-and-true cliche.

Then I remembered a line from “Huck Finn.”  The reason why Huck Finn is hands-down Twain’s best novel comes when Huck Finn realizes just what has been at stake all along and what he is prepared to do about it.  Jim, the escaped slave, has been sold by nefarious characters and Huck debates with himself about his moral obligations.  He knows he’s wrong, that he might go to hell, for helping Jim escape this far but as he says:  “All right, then, I’ll go to hell!”  This is a far more complex ethical debate than my little song but the idea of someone “turning to the darkside” for love appealed to me.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.  I hope you enjoy this song.  I’ll wrap up the project with a post after Christmas.  Thanks so much to everyone for their support and suggestions.  I need to take some time to really learn these now, maybe perform them out, and eventually get them recorded.  Merry Christmas, Happy New Years, Happy Holidays to you all.  Lyrics are below the vid.

Liars, Cheats, and Thieves

copyright Fred Keller, 2010

It’s time to go the bar is closing
I wear the darkness like a shroud
I read the letter that you wrote me again

You stole my heart you lied and cheated
But there’s a secret you should know
Just like you, I can lie, and cheat and steal

I’ll tell you that you never hurt me
I’ll say I’m fine out on my own
I will confess I took the best and kept the rest all to myself
Give me a chance and I will show you
How awful I can be
Just you and me with all the liars, cheats and thieves
It’s time to go the bar is closing
I wear the darkness like a shroud
I read the whiskey soaked words that you wrote

You stole my heart you lied and cheated
But I belong with you my dear
Just you and me with all the liars, cheats and thieves.

Like many folks who write I’ve learned the benefit of keeping notes.  I think of an interesting line or notice something odd or striking and if I don’t have an immediate burst of inspiration I write it down and file it away.  I do the same thing with melody or tune ideas only with those I record to mp3.  Opening the second file I stumbled across the line “turkey in the treetops” and I took off.

For those of you who have never witnessed this phenomenon, you have missed out on one of nature’s finest gags.  A flock of wild turkeys lives in the area and wanders through our backyard from time to time.  There’s nothing funnier than seeing a dozen large dinners waddling and gobbling through the underbrush except for one thing:  scaring said dinners.  Spitze, our German Shepherd, enjoys chasing them around or I might accidentally come around a corner and stumble upon them scratching up the snow.  With a noise like a helicopter warming up these ungainly creatures all take off for the treetops and perch there in rather undignified high dudgeon.  Never fails to elicit a laugh and I’ve intended to write a song or tune about it for the last year.  Today was the day.

First thing I tried was to play around with the words and do some free association.  In short order I came upon most of the chorus:  fly up turkey fly up, etc.  I like the deceptive simplicity of old time music.  The songs often say very basic but evocative things and they do so more often than not with one syllable words.  So the “fly up” bit sounded right to me.  They are “power words,” words that transport and transform…in my opinion anyway.

After that I needed to say something.  The chorus words suggested a melody line to me that I expanded into the A and B parts but I wanted a simple story.  I found it by imagining what a turkey in the treetop might symbolize.

The first verse establishes the image and our character–nothing terribly deep there but we jump into the middle of the song right away and we start to consider what this all means.  The two images I thought to use were awkwardness and making the impossible possible.  And once I had that, I had the whole song.  Video is below and the lyrics are below that.

I like this song a bunch.  It resonates with me for some reason.  It feels solid, taut, and resonant.  Of course, only time and performance will tell.  What I think of it matters little in the grand scheme of things.  It’s what you all think that matters most so let me know.  Drop your comments down below and let’s talk about it

Turkey In The Treetops  copyright Fred Keller, 2010

Come around the corner and what should I see?
Just a big flock of turkeys flying up in a tree
Damnedest thing that I ever did see
Turkey in the treetop looking at me

CHORUS:
Fly up turkeys fly up, fly up to the sky up
Fly up turkeys fly up, turkey in the treetop

I meet a pretty gal and my tongue gets tied
My hands get clammy and my mouth goes dry
My heart starts to flutter and I feel so shy
I’m as awkward as a turkey in the treetops high

Mama said our love affair was doomed to die
Papa said her station was much too high
But my love and I don’t listen we just spit in their eye
Anything can happen if a turkey can fly

Last week’s song, “Snow Day,” came in a rush.  This week’s effort, which I’m tentatively calling “Riding On That Radio Wave,” proved much more difficult.

This past week I definitely had more commitments and less time for writing but the suggestions (see last post) for this song did not–as they did last week–immediately generate imagery and ideas.  I struggled mightily to find a way to tie together Mike B.’s suggestion of the road trip to Kentucky with Jeff D.’s notion of a person caught between worlds but everything I came up with was stiff and stilted.

The crux of the problem consisted of not having a personal connection.  I never found the germ of myself in this effort.  Now, part of that was the self-imposed time restriction.  Given more time, I believe I could find  the idea or experience or feeling from within me to use in this song.  That personal connection would add more spark, more heart to what otherwise I think a decent–if workmanlike–effort.

So what’s missing?  I don’t know precisely but I feel that there’s more cleverness than substance here.  I like some of the images–I like the idea of someone following a radio signal–and I enjoy the rhythms of a good many of the lines.  But to me this song needs a better reason to follow along.  The character and his motivation feel flat.  The story arc is a tried-and-true chestnut, nothing terribly original or personal there.  I do like the chorus a great deal and I did write that first, but the verses provide little if any illumination about the chorus.  Why did this not work?  I’m not sure.

I learned a bit about the writing process this week.  These challenges force me to spend a lot of time–in this case somewhere around 14-16 hours all told–in the trenches.  I do not seem to have a process but I do have goals in mind when I write.

First and foremost I like a good, “hooky” chorus, something you hum, an ear-worm; easy to sing and catchy.  The verses need to tell a little story and they need to stand on their own as well.  Each verse should, ideally, give one a new perspective or angle on the chorus.

I almost always try to write the chorus first though that’s not a hard and fast rule.  Sometimes I find a line to build around and then develop a melody.  Sometimes I hear a tune that suggests words.  I don’t feel any compunction to do one or the other exclusively.  I don’t need to turn myself into a machine for writing songs, I just need better work habits.

And it is work.  There is no mystery.  I sit down in front of a blank screen, get the mandolin, confront the idea, and start writing…and thinking…and experimenting.  I wrote a couple pages worth of lines I rejected for this song.  Trial and error works for me–plug away, refine, edit, try again.

So here it is.  This video comprises my first performance of the song so the usual caveats regarding quality apply.  The lyrics are under the video.  Let me know what YOU think of it.  Songs are nothing without audiences.

Lyrics:

Riding On That Radio Wave (c. Fred Keller 2010)

I am driving down to Owensboro ever since I heard about the
Gathering for Bill Monroe
I don’t know how to get there but my radio is on the air
And nothing’s gonna stop me now.

CHORUS
I am riding I am gliding on that radio wave
50,000 watts is calling me home
I got a clear channel signal locked and I’m on my way
To Kentucky, to my new mountain home

I’ve been up and down the dial I’ve been lost a long long while
Couldn’t separate the signal from the noise
But through the dead air and the static (just one thing) made me ecstatic
The music of the Bluegrass Boys

Once I cross the Ohio it doesn’t matter where I go
The faith that guided me will make me strong
It’s enough for me to know that this is where the radio
Decided where my heart belongs

1. My road trip this summer from Alberta to Kentucky to visit the ghost of Bill Monroe, on his 100th birthday (Mike B.).
2. I have always enjoyed songs and stories about people caught between two worlds, either between where they were and where they are going (Jeff D.)

I had others but these two seemed to pair themselves up and create a certain critical mass.  Unfortunately that promise has yet to pay off.  I’m cooking them down now.  I have an idea that the melody should be an old-school, hard-driving bluegrass feel, either a straight up breakdown like “Mighty Dark To Travel” or a bluesy ballsy thing like “Heavy Traffic Ahead.” That doesn’t get to the emotional content or the story yet so I’m still at the beginning.

I think my toughest challenge–admittedly self-imposed–is to find out where I relate to these topics.  Like everyone I experience alienation or marginalization from time to time but never to the extent of, say, a war vet returning to a home that no longer exists or homeless person.  So I need to channel what I have felt, find a vehicle for it–a character or metaphor or riff or image–and build it up.  I need to explore why an alienated person would go to Kentucky for a celebration.  I need to determine what he or she is running from and/or to.  There must be a story arc:  a beginning, middle, and end with some sense of change or resolution.  And I need to find out what it is in me that I can use–much the way my daughter has described acting and improv–to seed this song.

I don’t have a grasp on that yet.  I feel like the ideas I have so far are only scratching the surface so I’ll keep digging away and see what I can find.  I do enjoy this challenge though.  I believe that if I find something here that gels I’ll have a much deeper insight into the craft of songwriting.  That is to say, if I want to work at songwriting more I must accept that songs do not come fully formed from the inspiration fairy.  They must be built from raw materials, all of which reside inside me and my experiences.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to join me in critiquing this song.  I see two or three lines that strike me as rife for editing.  Sometimes I sit smugly and admire my work only to find that I drastically overestimate its effectiveness.  Then I strip it down to the foundations and start over or revise it so much there may only be one or two lines from the original.  Which will it be this time?  I have no clue.  Let me know what YOU think.  Here’s a chance to join me in what is normally a solo endeavor.

This song’s entitled “Snow Day.”  It falls in the key of D and may go a little faster when I really learn it.  I don’t know yet; that’s part of the arrangement and performance process and I’m not quite ready to begin that yet.  Oh, and please forgive the up-and-down vocals and the spotty picking.  I really did just print it off moments before I played it.  This take here is the first time I played it all the way through.

Snow Day:

There’s purple clouds in North Dakota
Bearing down on Minnesota
And the wind begins to howl.
Close the shutters, draw the blinds
And cook whatever you can find
Old Man Winter is on the prowl.

Chorus:
Now the wood smoke rises up
The window ices up
And the Stoli keeps us warm.
We’ll have a snow day maybe
‘Cause there’s no way baby
We are going out in this storm.

No ma’am you’ll never make it in to work
And don’t be calling me a jerk
It’s not my fault the snow’s begun to swirl.
Just get your butt beneath the blankies
No there Ain’t no need to thank me
I’d do anything for my best girl.

Come on and wrap yourself around me
You know that I’m your cup of tea
(No) I don’t believe it’s starting to slow.
We might be stuck in here forever
If I’m lucky we will never
See the end of all this wonderful snow.

I’ve never set myself this task before so I have no idea how this will go.  I’ve received a number of suggestions from a few of you.  I narrowed down the list a tad, to whit:

1. Brother-duet style format
2. Woodstove heat, sparkling ice, bright sunshine
3. Vodka

I definitely feel a winter song coming out of these but time will tell. 

Check back soon.  I’ll start this today and will post progress frequently.  I’ll put up a video by next Sunday, just in time to clear my plate for the second song.  If you want to post a suggestion for the next song or have a comment or question, please let me hear from you.  Click on the comment box!

Nevertheless, it’s looking like most of you want my next project to be writing a song a week for at least the next month (starting 11/29). Should this option ultimately prevail, I hereby invite you to chime in with suggestions. I think it might be fun to take, say, the first 3 write-in suggestions and attempt to weave them into the lyrics. Use the blog’s comment feature below to tell me what you’d like to see in a song: might be a place, a person, a thing, a mood, a feeling, anything at all. I have no idea how creative you or I can be at this so the sky’s the limit.

And don’t be daunted by the necessity of the comment approval process. That keeps spammers at bay and I’ll be sure to approve anything reasonable post haste.

Project 1:  A Tune A Day

I will write one new tune every day for a month.  By tune I mean a fiddle tune, an instrumental, being roughly one 8-measure “A” part and one 8-measure “B” part.  I’ve done this once before so I know that I’m capable of it.  Not all of them will be winners–be advised!–but I will conscientiously write the best tune I can each day.  If you write a topic suggestion as a comment on the blog I will write a tune around it.  I will post the results in audio or video format each day with a short note about the process.

Project 2:  A Song A Week.  You Get Me Started…

I will write one new song–lyrics and melody–per week for one month (to start!).  I’ve never done this so I have no idea how it will turn out.  Could be interesting.  I’m sure I can come up with something though and we can all enjoy–or laugh at–the results.  In the best improv tradition, one of you will need to post or comment with a suggestion each week:  a subject, theme, noun, idea, color, verb, what-have-you.  I will build the song around that.  Want me to write a song about you or someone (or something!)  you love?  Post it.  I can’t give you writer’s credit but I’ll be sure to immortalize you as my muse.

Project 3:  Book Me and I’ll Write The House A Song And A Tune

Sounds self serving doesn’t it?  Well, I admit that it gets me out of the house and playing but here’s what I’ll do.  If this option wins the poll, you have to contact me either by commenting here or through the email address on this site.  You get 10 or more friends together and throw a house concert party.  I’ll come and play 2 sets of music.  No, it won’t be free:  I’ll play for a suggested donation of $10 or a freewill donation.  But I will write a song and a fiddle tune dedicated to the house or hosts or whatever you choose.  I will honor as many bookings as I receive requests.  This could be a great gift for someone you know or a great way to immortalize your party.  It’ll be your call and I’ll work with you.  Upon request, I can even supply a recording of the song and tune as a gift.  If I have to travel outside of Minnesota, I will, but I’ll be looking for help with expenses then!

So here’s your voting mechanism.  I will begin this project, whatever it winds up being, after Thanksgiving.  I start working on Monday, November 29, 2010.

I met Lorri at the Forget Summer Arts Festival the first year the Whistlepigs traveled there.  That was…2005 I think.  I believed she performed that weekend and we jammed around the campfire.  One song she did–”My Flat Rock”–stuck with me:  catchy melody, bittersweet theme, well sung.  The next year I went up I requested it and that, I think, cemented the friendship.

Since then Lorri’s gotten serious about her playing and performing.  She’s much better than I about marketing, schmoozing, and using all her tools to her advantage but I’m improving.  The small series of concerts I’ve arranged proves that.

Lorri will play three house concerts, The Amazing Grace Bakery and Cafe, and a performance for the Pine Center for the Arts during her October tour.  You can find out more at this link or on Facebook here.

She brings her newest recording “Two Days In June” with her.  Some of the best musicians in Saskatchewan accompanied her including Juno-award-winner (think Grammy only colder) Ken Hamm, a man whose playing I greatly admire.  Read more about Ken here.  The CD is beautiful and I hope I can do it justice as I’ll be accompanying Lorri during her stay.

I encourage all of you to try and come to a show.  Not only will you hear great music (check out the Solomon Tour page for samples), you’ll get a chance to meet her, to hobnob with other music fans, and to really experience an intimate night of story and song.

And if it goes well, I’ll do it some more.  I’m excited at the prospect of being able to bring more wonderful musicians to Minnesota.  I’ve met some wonderful people with amazing talent in my days as a musician and I want to bring them here and show you.  So check out the Tour Page, make a little time in your schedule, bring a few bucks to throw into the hat, and help non-mainstream music stay alive.

The drive down requires little mention.  It’s flat.  It’s boring.  There are some trees in places and a few interesting features geographically.  But overall it’s flat.  It’s boring.

I pulled into the hotel about 1-2 p.m. on Thursday, checked in, and decided I had enough time to take a drive out to see Bill Monroe’s home place.  I had no time for this visit last year when I attended the camp so I decided I had to go.

The weather was fine:  a bit overcast and cool but otherwise a nice early fall day.  The western part of Kentucky stretches south of the Ohio River in swaths of flat farmland wrinkled by low ridges and hills.  I expected to drive through some seriously remote country having read a bit about the Monroes and Bill’s childhood but for the most part I followed major highways and busy roads.

I headed for Beaver Dam, the town west of the home in Ohio County, and missed a sign.  I wasted some fifteen minutes turning around, finding the sign and getting back on track but still had a good 90 minutes before I knew the place would close.  I enjoyed the small towns and developments, the churches and old brick buildings, but still felt a lingering sadness that civilization had mushroomed so much there would be little left to see.

Very little marks the entrance to the place.  There are a couple signs on the road and one larger one at the entrance but no grand marquees, no historical markers.  One drives to the sign of the Jerusalem Ridge Music Fest, assumes that it leads to the home, and turns off the road.  I crossed a set of railroad tracks–the track bed Bill mentions as the path down which the WWI Vets walked home calling and yodeling and inspiring Bill’s high pitched singing–and drove into another world.

The trees thickened, the dirt road twisted, turned, ducked and dove up and down the heavily forested Pigeon Ridge.  At least a half mile later at the top a clearing appeared with a couple cars and the house.  I pulled over, joined a fellow mando picker and took the tour.

From The Old Home Place

I enjoyed walking through the place.  The restoration seems to have been done as accurately as possible but there are inevitable flaws, all acknowledged by the amiable staff person.  You can see more pics in this album here.  The really interesting experience occurred after the tour.

I am a mandolin geek.  I admit that.  I don’t see it as a problem.  Therefore, I decided I needed to get my mandolin out of the case and pick on that big front porch.

From The Old Home Place

From the moment my pick hit the strings I noticed something special.  Either that old wood resonated or the space between the house and the forest and the sky created a natural amphitheater.  I don’t know.  But I have never experienced a more full, beautiful outdoor sound.  Usually when I play under the sky the tone goes out into the wind and dies.  Here something special happened.  I wish I had practiced up more but there simply was no time to do so.  I just had to let it fly and trust to the spirit of the place.

I don’t know how to describe the feeling of playing Jerusalem Ridge right across from the place Jerusalem Ridge.  I don’t know how to describe the nape-hair-raising feeling I had playing there.  I don’t know how to explain precisely what it was like to be there and feel the history and music all around me.  But I did and I’m glad I had that opportunity.