Whispering Pines

I knew two songs that had the same title but were completely different. One was by Johnny Horton and the other was by The Band. But were they all that different? Could they be played in the same key and tempo and somehow glommed into one rather long song? Maybe.

WHISPERING PINES

Johnny Horton was one of my earliest influences mainly because his greatest hits album came out right when I was getting into music at 12 or so. We used to play a lot of Johnny Horton in the Calhoon Brothers.

If I had to pick any one singer I'd like to be able to sing like, it would be Richard Manuel of The Band. He sings this song in a falsetto that is the most mournful, poignant thing you've ever heard. I feel badly about my mid-range mouthing of the words but hey, it's the Knees Calhoon Midnight Ramble.  

The Doper's Dream

Tonight's song is the result of a challenge given me by Dugym Qycfyl. He wanted a song in which the guitar solos were made by scraping the pick along the strings. But before I added the guitar parts, I noticed that Band in a Box actually had "fret noise" as a MIDI-sound. So I picked a ragged waltz style and converted the piano parts into fret noise. Then I added to the chaos by scraping my pick along the strings as Dugym wanted.

The song is another one supplied by little Tommy Pynchon from his children's book, GRAVITY'S RAINBOW. A while back I collaborated with him for TOMMY'S TRAINS, also from the book. If you want to read along with this song, the lyrics are on page 369 of the Viking edition, right about the middle of the book.

THE DOPER'S DREAM 

The song is essentially a list of popular drugs loosely knitted together in a dream sequence. In 1967 I was a private in the US Army at Fort Bliss in a Nike Hercules guidance system school. Every day we would be given a huge notebook labeled "SECRET" to keep track of our electronics work. At the end of the day they'd gather them all up and lock them away for the next day. In my book I wrote the lyrics of a song about all of the drugs I knew about that was very similar to this one. Incredibly clever wordplay, as I remember. Then one day in the summer of 1967 I, and three of my buddies, were snatched from class and accused of "drug usage", which essentially trashed our SECRET security clearances. The story is told in detail in THE COMPLEAT CALHOON.
 

I never saw the notebook again and the song is irretrievably lost (unless they invent memory drugs during my lifetime). But Tommy's dope dream lives on. If I remember correctly, it's not quite as good as the dope song the army might still have stored under a mountain in Colorado.

BONUS COVER!

One of my favorite old songs with a plot, here's a tune covered by a lot of people since it was written in 1959 by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkins. 

LONG BLACK VEIL

I Feel Fine

This is a mistake. I should have known better than to tackle a Beatle song that everybody knows, but it has the essential Buckaroo lick that has propelled the last three songs. At least the way I play it is similar to the other song licks. George actually plays a better, more difficult lick.

I couldn't find a drum pattern anything like what Ringo plays. What I picked was called "Johnny Cash Style" if you can believe that. Undoubtedly if I knew Band in a Box better I could have manufactured a pattern that mimicked Ringo's playing, but for now I only use the styles supplied on the CD.

I FEEL FINE

Enough excuses. I need to stick to obscure songs. We played this in The Disciples, a band from 1966 that lasted about a year. It had no chance -- everybody in it was waiting for their draft notice. I don't remember it being so hard to sing.

Younger Girl

Okay, so the Buckaroo lick only shows up a couple of times in this song. It's still a memorable tune, if only for the fact that after about 40 years I still remember it. I always considered my song, Hi Hello Mary, as the foremost paean to paedophilia in the Calhoon necrology, but maybe this one challenges it.

YOUNGER GIRL

 Now I have to go work on the Beatles song, one I haven't played since 1965.

I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better

I imagine you saw this one coming when I said I was going to be featuring songs that have the ubiquitous "Buckaroo" lick in them. Or should I say, the "Needles and Pins" lick.

This has always been one of my favorite Byrds songs, mainly because we could play it pretty well even back in the Torques days. Two jangling guitars, exuberant shouting for singing, crashing drums. It was right down the Torques' alley.

I'LL FEEL A WHOLE LOT BETTER

I thought Tom Petty showed a lot of class and respect for this song and the Byrds when he recorded it as-is when he covered it. They mimicked the Byrds perfectly.

The upcoming Spoonful and Beatles' versions of the lick may not be as obvious as this one so I expect you all to be waiting on pins and needles for the next two songs.

Needles and Pins

Unless I hit a snag I plan to devote the next four songs to what I call the "Buckaroo Lick". It's a simple guitar lick that to me personified the sound of the sixties. As I remember it, the first I ever heard it was on "Buckaroo", a catchy instrumental (1965) by Buck Owens' guitar picker Don Rich, but a visit to the all-knowing internet shows that this song by the Searchers (1964) may be the first time it was played. The other songs are by the Byrds, the Lovin' Spoonful and the Beatles and there are probably dozens more that use the lick.

NEEDLES AND PINS

Sadly, I never learned to play Buckaroo and a bunch of practice would be necessary before I would attempt it.

Couple More Years

I couldn't remember who sang this song or who wrote it so I finally snapped and googled it. Shel Silverstein! I should have known. Out of the top ten cleverest C&W songs ever written, he probably wrote at least seven. The melody is standard and the backing minimal (at least the way I do it) so it's got to be the words and the singing that make this into an almost perfect song.

COUPLE MORE YEARS 

Nope, it's not the singing.

Someday Soon

One of my favorite songs from the 60s was Ian Tyson's "Someday Soon", but since it was written for a woman to sing I never had much opportunity to sing it. But then I figured that if it's time for women to be engaging in combat, maybe it's time for this song to be re-gendered.

Hmmm. It doesn't really work. I changed all the gendered words but now it sounds like some mama's boy pining away for some bull-dozing staff sergeant named Melba. But I recorded it anyway.

SOMEDAY SOON

I went way overboard on the guitars, laying down several tracks and not being satisfied with any one of them. So I blanked out all the parts I didn't like and left in the ones I sorta did.

FLASH! Dugym Qycfyl just e-mailed me and said that my regendering of this song doesn't work because all I did was change the pronouns. He said the whole plot of the song needs to be adjusted so that it's about a guy who's having trouble because his girlfriend is too feminine. Just as the original song is about a girl's boyfriend being too masculine.

Luckily, Dugym supplied revised lyrics for me and here's the new, re-sexed version.

SOMEDAY SOON 2013 

If you ask me, this new version could become a hit for some studly C&W crooner.

BONUS COVER!

I realize that the song of the night was mostly cover but Knees made so many decent covers (all of excellent songs) I like adding them here. This is one that has a completely different beat from the original version by Buffalo Springfield. It was sort of an experiment and it turned out quite well, I think.

I AM A CHILD

This Wheel's on Fire

As usual, I am of two minds about the way these songs are done. Should I dash out a perhaps divinely-inspired song in an hour or two and call it done? Or should I let the song simmer a day or two on my recording griddle, in case I get another bolt from above about how the song should end?

Today I have one of the slapdash songs. It started last night when I realized I might be able to do justice to one of my favorite diminished chord-containing gems by The Band, This Wheel's on Fire. I had forgotten that Rick Danko's voice ranged far, far beyond mine and I couldn't croak it in the same key. But maybe if I sang an octave lower and let the harmonizer do the work . . .

THIS WHEEL'S ON FIRE

 It doesn't sound at all like The Band. But neither did the version that was used as the theme song for Absolutely Fabulous. It's a strange tune and it makes the most out of that diminished chord.

I Am a Child

A couple of things occurred to me as I was playing with this song, one of my favorite Neil Young tunes. One, I need to experiment more with changing some of the old tunes. And two, the harmonizer also works on guitars.

Band in a Box has a few hundred different song "styles" and finding the best one can be a chore. The style I decided on is definitely not the one used by Buffalo Springfield, but I really like the way that the melody fits over it.

I AM A CHILD

I had no idea what to play for the guitar solo so I just picked out the melody, miking my Fender G-DEC amp and running the signal through the harmonizer. You can bet that I will be using that effect on something swampy soon. I'm thinking the 2013 remake of Nocturnal Mission. 

Tonight the Bartender

The Calhoon Brothers enjoyed playing self-aware barroom songs and this one by Asleep at the Wheel is one of the best, although it seems to have been missed by the younger barroom crowd. I tried to check the lyrics I had for it online and couldn't find them. Apparently no one has uploaded the lyrics yet.

TONIGHT THE BARTENDER

Since this blog is a sort of archive as much as anything else, I should mention the instruments I use on the recordings. The acoustic guitar is a J.W. Gallagher and Son, G70 model, #376, The electric guitar is a 1966 Gibson ES-335 TDC, #360350. The harmonizer is a Digitech Vocalist Live 3. The effects come from a Boss BR-600 digital recorder. The microphone is a Shure SM-58, probably over 40 years old. I use a Boss volume pedal. The bass, drums and keyboards come from Band in a Box and the recordings are done with Audacity.

Here's how the Mighty Calhoon Brothers played the song back on April 21, 1977 at the Las Cruces Inn.

TONIGHT THE BARTENDER (Calhoons)