TWO GOOD SONGS?

So… two good songs this month, “Spend the End of the World with Me” and “One Gas Station,” the former an end-of-the-world love song and the latter just a snapshot of life in a one-horse town where the horse died. Both “keepers”; audiences like them. And I’m back as of this morning to wrestling with the Gospel song, “Is There Room Up in Heaven for a Sinner Like Me?” which I was working on before “One Gas Station” happened. Stan Good’s “The Next One” to record, too. Yes, this is all good—but before I get all excited about my productivity, I need to remind myself that this is only one month into the year and all sorts of things can happen.

Begs once again the question, ”Where does inspiration come from?” And once again, the answer is, “Almost anywhere.” The “Spend the End” song is of course prompted by the Mayan prophecy lots of folks have heard about, and everybody laughs about, and no one appears to be taking seriously—prompting the question, “Why not?” I don’t know if there are any end-of-the-world love songs, but if there are, it seemed like it couldn’t hurt to have one more. (And we have to wait until December 22 to find out whether the Mayans were right.)

And for “One Gas Station,” I have to thank the Manzanita parody rap group, “Dr. Iced-T and the Lemon Tarts”; the line in their Hoffman Center routine, “one gas station and an old folks’ home,” was one of those lines that just had to have a song to go with it, so it got one. (I e-mailed it to them. Hope they like it.) Note that I’d never have heard them if I hadn’t been at the Hoffman, and the lesson there is “Get out more.” I was asked today when I’d last done something new, and it was actually this past month—I‘m playing marimba, and I’m taking square dance caller classes. Both are “get out more” things, that put me in touch with completely different groups of people.

Getting out more also reinforces the Bill Shakespeare mantra: “Keep your eyes and ears open—the world is a very strange place, and people are very weird critters.” (No, Shakespeare didn’t say it exactly like that.) It is too easy to go through life with “eyes wide shut,” tuning out things because they’re familiar—but if you’re constantly exposing yourself to things that are new and different, you may look at the old, familiar things with fresh eyes. At least I hope so.

As far as where the songs come from (I always have to ask that)… I do detect a common, if not necessarily pleasant, thread. In one song, we’re envisioning the end of the world (and spending it in bed). In the other, we’ve got a snapshot of a community in decline. And in that unfinished Gospel song, we’re deciding belatedly we want to go to Heaven. Sounds like an expectation that things are going to get worse, doesn’t it?

One thing I can do with the recording of “Rubber Dolly” Daryl sent me is to add a couple extra tracks; I could add a lead guitar (the recording is pretty banjo-heavy—“Rubber Dolly” was a bluegrass standard as well as a rock ‘n’ roll one), and maybe a marimba. I think both (at least the former) would make it sound better. I need to get better on the marimba; I’m told I have a tendency to syncopate (a habit I picked up on the guitar, following other people and coming in a beat late when I figured out what they were doing), and on the marimba that doesn’t work well.

Kathryn was at the Rapture Room session Sunday night, and I got back the old digital camera—hopefully with footage for the video of “Blue Krishna.” Yes, another project hanging fire that now I can maybe finish. Caller class tomorrow; music Thursday and Sunday.

Joe