North to Alaska

I guess the Great White North has been on my mind lately and it reminded me of one of my favorite Johnny Horton songs. I was the marquee changer at the Allen Theater in Farmington NM when this song (and movie) came out. It may be the only John Wayne film I liked. I'm sorry, but I didn't like his acting. As for Johnny Horton, I liked everything he did.

NORTH TO ALASKA

 

Ma Belle from Quebec

There were still a few provinces of Canada left so Knees volunteered for Quebec. He did his usual "what rhymes with Quebec?" then went to Google Images and saw what the place looks like. Beautiful. So he dusted off his two years of French in high school and threw together the first chords that occurred to him. The song is based on a simple I - IV - I - I chord pattern and the melody is the obvious one to use for it. But it bounces along nicely and if the "avec" gag ever catches on, the song could be a hit. If you know anyone from Quebec ask them if there's any chance that they would say, "Do you wanna go avec?" or even "Voulez-vous allons avec?" without adding the "moi"?

MA BELLE FROM QUEBEC

MP3

MA BELLE FROM QUEBEC VIDEO

Youtube Video

Lemme tell you bout ma Belle from Quebec
She plays the blues like Mac Rebenneck

She ain’t as tall as Toulouse-Latrec
But when she goes out
I wanna go avec.
When Belle paints the town
We all wanna go avec.

I’m talking bout ma Belle from Quebec
She plays poker with Alex Trebek
In certain lights she looks like Max Shreck
But when she goes out
I wanna go avec.
When Belle paints the town
We all wanna go avec.

   Ma Belle from Quebec is a screamer
   You oughta hear her say “Voulez vous?”
   And when she lets me drive her Beemer
   We’re the biggest hippos in the zoo.

So if you’re thinking bout ma Belle from Quebec
She plays banjo like a drunk Bela Fleck
She might say Boo to Gregory Peck
But when she goes out
I wanna go avec.
When Belle paints the town
We all wanna go avec.

Knees Calhoon fan Max Schreck

BONUS COVER!

At the bars Knees used to do a lot of songs by the Eagles but not this song from the Desperado album. Good lyrics and melody.

SATURDAY NIGHT

Yellowknife

What do you know? Another original Knees Calhoon tune, written in 2015, when for most of the 90s and 00s Knees thought his creative days were long past. It appears he still has a few notes and words left in him and it's thanks to his Canadian friends in a group called The Cover Album Project Band that they have been pulled out. The song is amazingly simple but maybe that fits the stark, beautiful expanse that the Northwest Territories cover. With average temperatures in the summer barely reaching the freezing point, it's doubtful Knees will ever visit Yellowknife, but for about 2 and a half minutes we can dream. Gavin O'Keefe accompanies the Northern Lights with some haunting viola.

YELLOWKNIFE

MP3

YELLOWKNIFE VIDEO 
Youtube video

You can count all the trees in Ontario

Weigh the ice in the Arctic Dome

But if you’re miles away from Yellowknife
You’re not home.

You can walk from Vancouver to Labrador
And freeze in the Atlantic foam,
When you're a long way from Yellowknife
You’re not home.

In the Northwest Territories
Is where I wanna be
A place to find fortune
A place to be free
By the banks of the Great Slave Lake I wanna lie
When the last bus leaves town let me be
In Yellowknife
In Yellowknife

You can climb all the mountains of Canada
Sail the waters from St. John’s to Nome
But when you ride the bus back to Yellowknife
You’ll be home.

There’s a territory mind
That makes a man roam
Lookin for his fortune
Lookin for his home
But the Northwest Territories is where I wanna die
When the last bus leaves town let me be
In Yellowknife
In Yellowknife

BONUS COVER!

Ever since Knees first heard this song on an album by a bluegrass group called Country Gazette he's considered it to be one of the best anti-war songs ever. But which war? 

FORGET ME NOT

Someday

It was early 1967 and I was killing time before going in the army. I was at a party on Vine Street in Farmington NM and I heard a song on the hi-fi that I'd never heard before. It sounded like Buddy Holly and it had some very nifty chords. I looked at the 45 and sure enough it was by The Crickets, and called "Someday".

Years later in the 90s I was given a complete set of Buddy Holly records, which had numerous early rockabilly songs I'd never heard, but when I looked for the song I couldn't find it. I remained mystified until recently when I googled it and found that the song was indeed recorded by The Crickets, but the singer was Bobby Vee. It's still a damn good song for 1962.

SOMEDAY

Ladies and Gentlemen, Skip Batchelor!

I realize this blog is to chronicle the recordings of Knees Calhoon but Knees was so much influenced in the 60s and 70s by his old guitar buddy, Skip Batchelor, that I think it's entirely appropriate to feature Skip on a trio of tunes. These were recorded at a recent gig in Albuquerque where he does a one-man show in return for enchiladas, beer and antacids. The engineer was Travis Hill and he did a great job of capturing the solid sound of Skip's guitar and vocals. Who'da thought that one of the 1965 Torques could sing and play like that?

SKIP'S ROUTE 66

SKIP'S NORWEGIAN WOOD

SKIP'S TEACH YOUR CHILDREN

Can you imagine anything better than sitting down to a meal of red cheese enchiladas, machaca tacos, refried beans, rice with guacamole, a chile relleno and sopapillas, and listening to a 70-year-old guy with unnaturally thick gray hair singing the various Proud Marys of the past half century? If you live anywhere near Albuquerque or Chama, you need to see Skip do his thing. 

You know all those songs that Knees Calhoon has glommed together in the annals of this blog? Songs I fumbled through multiple takes to get a decent blend of tracks? Well, Skip does his music LIVE and can do it almost anywhere. I am really proud of my fellow Torque for keeping the music real, just as he's always done since I met him in 1964.

Lawyers Guns and Money

I'm trying to stay away from anthems here at the Midnight Ramble because who wants to hear yet another version of a song you've heard a thousand times? I'd rather do a song that is completely new for you, or at least makes you happy to hear it again after all these decades. This song by Warren Zevon is almost an anthem but at least it's not on every Walmart muzak playlist. It was quite popular in the 80s at the bars in Las Cruces.

LAWYERS GUNS AND MONEY

Never Make It Back

I needed a Christmas song for the holidays but of course my mind doesn't work that way. So I revived an old piano melody I made up decades back and added another verse to the dummy words I had used when playing the melody. I then changed the first line from "You came to me on a warm summer breeze" to "You came to me on a snowy Christmas eve." That's how Christmas songs are done at Ramble House. Then I asked Gavin O'Keefe to add some viola and I made a video of the song. But who could I get to sing this thing? I got it! Grogar!

NEVER MAKE IT BACK 

If you dare, here is the video with Grogar singing in swaddling clothes. Some have called it "creepy".

http://youtu.be/AWnqt1pOJUo

You came to me on a warm summer breeze

Then I watched you blow away

But now I’m lost without your guiding light

To help me through the night to the day

You said love was all we had

And that’s not enough to make you stay

But what if love is all there is

And you never make it back

You never make it back

You never make it back this way.

We tell ourselves there’ll always come a day

When things will work out just as planned

And so we wait and sacrifice the time

While all our dreams are built on sand

You said love was all we had

And that’s not enough to make you stay

But what if love is all there is

And you never make it back

You never make it back

You never make it back this way.

 Grogar Calhoon III

Sunshine Superman

I haven't recorded anything lately but I hope to get back into it soon. In the meantime here is one of my favorite Donovan songs, done up as an acoustic number, just guitar and vocals. A couple of years back when I was playing more acoustic guitar than electric I recorded this. I didn't have the harmonizer at the time so I did the harmony the old-fashioned way: I sang it on another track.

SUNSHINE SUPERMAN

The Old Country Waltz

Randy Miller was known as Ballz Calhoon and was the hippest of the Brothers, even though he grew up on a farm and was a rodeo cowboy before becoming a drummer. Most of the cool songs played by the Calhoon Brothers at the Las Cruces Inn back in 1976 - 1980 were suggested and sung by Randy, and The Old Country Waltz was one I remember him singing once or twice. Too bad we didn't record it. 

THE OLD COUNTRY WALTZ

It was a perfect song for a band like ours, since we often played "in this empty bar echoing off the walls." I have a feeling Neil Young wrote this very early in his career, since I don't see him playing to an empty house after 1965. The line that hits home even more is "out the window the moon shines on the roofs of the cars." If the damn bar is empty, how come the parking lot is full? It was a mystery back then and it remains so today.

Randy sang a lot of cool, sophisticated-in-their-own-way songs with us back in the day and I have recordings of dozens of them. I'm dedicating this song to Randy Miller.

Here's a song from April of 1977 at the LCI with Randy singing and playing drums, Mark Coker on bass and harmony and Knees on guitar.

HAVANA DAYDREAMIN'  

G Chug

I haven't recorded much lately but this song sounded pretty good in the car. I probably recorded this 5 or 6 years ago. "G Chug" is a setting on my Fender G-DEC amp and I like its crunchiness. The default rhythm that comes with it is relentless and it seems to dictate what the guitar is doing.

G CHUG

Boston Trilogy 2014

Jimmy Webb wrote a book about songwriting back in 1998 called TUNESMITH and thanks to Gavin O'Keefe's recommending it to me, I finally read it. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had taught myself many of the tricks he advocated. In fact, it reminded me that one of my old songs from the early 70s was written on the piano with Glen Campbell in mind, and it was Jimmy Webb songs that made Campbell into one of the biggest cross-over stars of that time. So I redid "Boston Trilogy" and asked Gavin to add some viola and voila! A Knees Calhoon Jimmy Webblike song.

BOSTON TRILOGY  2014

Back in the 90s when I recorded just about all of my original songs on a Yamaha 4-track cassette recorder, I did this song for the first time. Is the 2014 version better? That's the question I ask myself every time I redo a song.

BOSTON TRILOGY 1993

Maybe It's the Wind

In the future, which is now, when books are digitized and transmitted as a couple of million bytes of data, will there be any excuse for listing the words of a song in a book and NOT providing an mp3 (or whatever) so the reader can hear the song as he reads it?

Back in the mid-60s when Jim Thompson wrote SOUTH OF HEAVEN he may have had a melody and arrangement in mind for this song, but only the lyrics were included in the book. But in 2014 Knees Calhoon spied the lyrics, which conveniently rhymed and had rhythm, and decided to see how they sounded sung over the first chord pattern that occurred to him.

MAYBE IT'S THE WIND

Disclaimer: I moved some of the lines around to get the song to fit a three-verse pattern. I have a feeling that the song, as imagined and maybe produced by Jim Thompson, was more sophisticated than my version. It's doubtful that Jim would have opted for two vocal lines, an octave apart, each run through a harmonizer that raised the bass one an octave and lowered the high one an octave. It's reminiscent of one of my favorite scenes from Get Smart. Max is getting some spy equipment from Carlson for an assignment where he'll be undercover as a reporter. He gets a camera (which Carlson explains is actually a tape recorder) and a tape recorder (which is a camera). When Max asks Carlson why he didn't keep the camera a camera and the recorder a recorder, Carlson replies: "Because my mind doesn't work that way."

It's not easy to decipher my singing so here are the lyrics, copyright by Jim Thompson

A while ago as I sat there, counting the cracks in the floor,
Trying to blot out the future, to forget all that happened before,
I heard a baby crying, and I saw a face I’d known.
But the kid was dead and the face and head were crying there alone.
Wailing in infinite sorrow, sucking its finger tips
Till nothing was left but the marrow and the feebly gnawing lips,
But maybe it’s the wind, kid. Maybe it’s the wind.

The devil and a bearded saint peeked through the door at me.
The devil had a smoky taint, the saint a golden key.
The devil laughed, and he said to him, “I keep all whom I take.”
And he bound me there to that very chair with a ten-foot rattlesnake,
Then I heard the woman’s scream when the club came down on her back,
And the starving hounds on the grassy mounds where the dead fight off attack,
But maybe it’s the wind, kid. Maybe it’s the wind.

Maybe it’s the wind that aching hungry breeze
That blows all hell loose through the lid of one contagious sneeze?
Or the gasps for breath as the rope brings death while mob-fire turns bodies black,
Or the mad men, the bad men, and the sad and the glad men who rape and murder and sack,
Where the bombs explode and the shells erode where the sinned-against have sinned,
But maybe. Just Maybe. Maybe it’s the wind.
Maybe it's the wind.
Maybe it's the wind.

BONUS COVER!

After all that mayhem here's a tune by Warren Zevon that poses a possible solution.

LAWYERS, GUNS AND MONEY

Cherokee Fiddle

I like doing songs I have an attachment to, for one reason or another. Cherokee Fiddle was written by Michael Martin Murphy in the early 80s and was a big hit by Johnny Lee in the Midnight Cowboy movie. It's about a guy who played fiddle for tips in Durango CO when the train came in filled with tourists. His name was Scooter. I saw him play many times and a few times he played a song or two with my band at the Palace Cabaret or Francisco's in the early 70s.

CHEROKEE FIDDLE

From the first time I heard this song I knew it was about Scooter, but to be sure I asked Michael Murphy and he assured me it was, although he mainly remembered seeing Scooter in Silverton. I asked him in Las Cruces NM in the mid 80s when he was in town for a concert and judging a songwriting contest. I saw the concert -- fantastic -- and the song I played electric piano on won the contest.

 

Blackbird

In keeping with my tradition of doing songs I should not do, may I present a Paul McCartney song. I've always been fascinated by the chords he plays in this song and when I got the Beatle book with all of the scores written accurately, I finally had a chance to learn the song properly. Unfortunately, though I learned how to form the chords, I never have been able to play them rhythmically. Only three strings are played at a time -- the rest are muted -- and I never could get it right. So I used Band in a Box for the drums and bass, and played the rhythm using standard chords. Then I added the real chords as "stings". To make the stings more accurate, I actually recorded the drums, bass, rhythm and stings at about half speed, then sped the song up with Audacity's Tempo Change (which doesn't change the key of the song) to add the vocals.

BLACKBIRD

 

As you may or may not know, I've been on a Beatle kick since reading Volume One of Mark Lewisohn's trilogy of Beatle history, TUNE IN. Then I got the huge book he wrote in the 90s listing technical data on all of the Abbey Road sessions. I'm still mired in it. Fascinating!

My fantasy: What if Paul were to spend an hour speed-listening to my 60 original songs and picking out the 18 that he thinks we could do the best. Then we spend a week at Abbey Road with him producing the album, playing drums, bass and whatever else he might want, and maybe adding some harmonies. At the end of the week we'd have a super album of originals that otherwise would never be heard outside of a few people I know. Surely it would be better than what's played on the airwaves now.

I imagine every state has several old songwriters like me who scribbled some sketchy songs in the past 50 years that have gone relatively unheard and unrecorded. Instead of hunting for the next perky video star, maybe it might be more fruitful for music moguls to find a trove of almost-forgotten masterpieces? I bet there are thousands of them out there.

Finally, everything about this song is shoddy compared to the McCartney version. I should be shot. Gavin O'Keefe added a viola solo to the instrumental verse and I outscreeched it with my ES-335 set at Blues House distortion. Here's an earlier take of the song without the ill-advised guitar and viola.

BLACKBIRD (w/o Screech) 

Long Black Veil

One of my favorite songs with a plot, Long Black Veil is a lot more modern than you might think. It was written in 1959 by Danny Dill and Marijohn Wilkins and it's so well done that it sounds like a classic 19th century hillbilly anthem. Thanks to Gavin O'Keefe's haunting viola chops this version seems to have banshees flying through the trees above the lonely graveyard.

LONG BLACK VEIL

 

The Family Values Polka

I don't really know what to call this song. It might have been called "Hooray, My Father's Going to Be Hung". Back in the 70s when the Calhoon Brothers used to play it at the Las Cruces Inn we called it "The Perverse Polka". I found the song in a 25 cent paperback book back in the early 60s when I was just learning folk guitar and was always looking for chord books. I wish I still had the book, (something like "Fifty Famous Folk Songs") since it might have had more tunes with lyrics like these. It had simple piano notation and chords so I think the melody I'm using is close to what the actual folk song's was. 

THE FAMILY VALUES POLKA

There were only four verses in the book but felt I needed to flesh out the family a bit and added the ones for the sister and family. Then I apparently abducted the Chipmunks and forced them to sing it for me.

Hooray! Hooray! My father’s gonna be hung

Hooray! Hooray! The dirty lyin bum.

He was oh so mean to me when I was very young.

Hooray! Hooray! They’re gonna hang my father.

Hooray! Hooray! My mother’s gonna be shot.

Hooray! Hooray! The filthy drunken sot.

She was oh so mean to me when I was just a tot.

Hooray! Hooray! They’re gonna shoot my mother.

Hooray! Hooray! My brother’s gonna be destroyed.

Hooray! Hooray! That nasty little boy.

He always used to try on me the things he read in Freud

Hooray! Hooray! They’re gonna wreck my brother.

Hooray! Hooray! My sister’s gonna be maimed.

Hooray! Hooray! That stuck-up vicious dame.

She would torture all our pets and make me take the blame.

Hooray! Hooray! They’re gonna maim my sister.

Hooray! Hooray! My uncle’s gonna be hurt.

Hooray! Hooray! That creepy sex pervert.

He was oh so free with me when I was just a squirt.

Hooray! Hooray! They’re gonna hurt my uncle.

Hooray! Hooray! My family’s gonna be wiped out

Hooray! Hooray! We deserve it all, no doubt

It’s a wonder we didn’t kill each other when I was just a sprout

Hooray! Hooray! They’re gonna wipe out my family.

 

Talking All-Knowing Dude

At the same time Knees made Pomp and Circumflex he did another tune like it, but this time in a C&W mood. It's called "The All-knowing Dude" and it contains the obligatory guitars in the background with dialog over it that was captured from Dugym Qycfyl's trip to Utah or some other tedious state. The words made sense when he spoke them into a microphone as he drove, but by the time they had been transferred to a computer and analyzed and deciphered by software, they came out a little different. But maybe they still make sense to some of us?

As with Pomp and Circumflex last night, there are three versions for you to dislike.

THE TALKING ALL-KNOWING DUDE

 Words and Music

THE ALL-KNOWING DUDE

Just the Music

THE TALKING ALL-KNOWING DUDE

Just the Talk

BONUS COVER!

When I first heard this song in the 90s I had the "never get old and gray" hook in my head for many years until I found that the song was called "The Way" and that it was by a small band from Austin called Fastball. The plot of the song is based on a true story, supposedly.

THE WAY

Talking Pomp and Circumflex

Back in 1999 or so I wanted to play some over-the-top guitar on top of a slow, soulful background -- sort of like Roy Buchanan used to do -- so I laid down a dozen or more verses of the first "Hotel California"-like chord progression that occurred to me. Drums, bass and organ. Then I played over it twice with what I considered consenting guitars. To me it sounded like the perfect music for a porn film and I called the song "Pomp and Circumflex".

But I wasn't satisfied. I needed some lyrics -- 9 minutes' worth. Luckily, at that time my friend Dugym Qycfyl just returned from a solo road trip out Utah way and while driving in his Toyota Tacoma he recorded his impressions. And he probably added some homespun philosophy. It's hard to tell because he played the mini-cassette recording of his trip, which had plenty of truck noise behind his voice, on cheap speakers and used the prevailing voice recognition software of the time (not so hot) to come up with a transcription for me. 

I've gone overboard to make this song palatable. The first version is the complete song, words and music. If you can't stand the words but like the music, or loathe the music but don't mind the words, there are two more versions for you.

TALKING POMP AND CIRCUMFLEX

Words and Music

POMP AND CIRCUMFLEX

Just the Music

TALKING POMP AND CIRCUMFLEX

Just the Talk

BONUS COVER!

How about a Neil Young song? You probably haven't heard a Neil Young song in hours. One of my favorites.

WHEN YOU DANCE

(c) by Neil Young

Altar Boy Blues

For some reason back in 2014 Knees felt inspired and wrote the lyrics of a song, then recorded the song the next day. As is his habit, he picked the first melody that occurred to him and since it's a blues song, it's probably the first melody that would occur to anyone. The lyrics were easy to write since he was writing about something he used to know something about: being an altar boy and having to get up at 6 a.m. to serve 6:30 mass. He never had any problems with the priests back in the 50s -- the nuns were the ones he had to watch out for -- but the current zeitgeist dictates that he suggest a bit of debauchery in the priest/altar boy relationship, so he did.

ALTAR BOY BLUES

To provide a bit of 1950ish Catholic ambience I decided to add, as a roving chorus, a lone voice intoning the Latin responses that altar boys of the pre-1960s era had to say in response to the priest's ejaculations. After more than 60 years I still remember most of them by heart, sad to say. 

Okay, because of popular demand, here are two more versions of the song.

ALTAR BOY BLUES (Just the Latin)

ALTAR BOY BLUES (Just the Profane)

Written: Vancleave MS 2014

Well you wake up inna mornin

Gotta serve that early mass

If you don’t make it by 5:30,

Father Damien will have yo ass,

You got the altar boys blues

Ain’t no joy for you today

Till dat priest done said his piece

You his prisoner and his slave.

Well you put on a grimy cassock

And a surplice with big sleeves

Then you light up all the candles

And get down upon your knees,

You got the altar boys blues

Ain’t no joy for you today

Till dat priest done had his fill

You his prisoner and his slave.

Well you answerin all his questions

In some crazy ancient tongue

When all you wanna say is

“Lemme outta here while I’m young,”

You got the altar boys blues

Ain’t no joy for you today

Till dat priest has done his deed

You his prisoner and his slave.

The time rolls by so slow

And you keep watchin yo behind,

The priest’s got Latin on his lips

But Greek is on his mind.

You got the altar boys blues

Ain’t no joy for you today

Till that priest done seen his god

You his prisoner and his slave.

Well de mass is finally over

You stop feeling like a fool

You just got one more year of this

Den you can go to public school

You got the altar boys blues

Ain’t no joy for you today

Till that priest done say Amen

You his partner and his slave.

Let em get you when you young

You’ll be servin to your grave

If you let em have their way with you

You gonna serve your life away.

  

The LATIN LOW MASS — Altar Boy’s Responses

Ad Deum qui laetificat, juventutem meam.

Quia tu es, Deus, fortitudo mea: quare me repulisti, et quare tristis incedo, dum affligit me inimicus?

Et introibo ad altare Dei: Ad Deam qui laetificat juventutem meam.

Spera in Deos quoniam adhuc confetibor illi: salutare vultus mei, et Deus meus.

Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper: et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Ad Deum qui laetificat, juventutem meam.

Qui fecit caelum et terram.

Misereatur tui omnipotens Deus, et dimissis peccatis tuis, perducat te ad vitam aeternam. Amen.

Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beate Mariae semper Virgini, beato Michaeli Archangelo, beato Joanni Baptistae, sanctis Apostolis Petro et Paulo, omnibus Sanctis, et tibi, Pater: quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, et opera mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Ideo precor beatam Mariam semper Virginem, beatum Michaelem Archangelum, beatum Joannem Baptistam, sanctos Apostolos Petrum et Paulum, omnes Sanctos et te, Pater, orare pro me ad Dominum Deum nostrum.

Amen. Amen.

Et plebs tua laetabitur in te.

Et salutare tuum da nobis.

Et clamor meus ad te veniat.

Et cum spiritu tuo.

Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. Christe, eleison. Kyrie, eleison.

Suscipiat Dominus sacrificium de manibus tuis ad laudem et gloriam nominis sui, ad utilitatem quoque nostrum, totsiusque Ecclesiae suae sanctae.

Habemus ad Dominum.

Dignum et justum est.

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Dominus, Deus Sabbaoth. Pleni sunt caeli et terra Gloria tua. Hosanna in excelsis. Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domine. 

Hosanna in excelsis.

1955 - Father Theophil's School of Charm

Knees is directly in front of Theophil, Michael to Theophil's right and Bob is between the two tall girls on the far right. Where's Johnny?

BONUS COVER!

How about 90% of a great old Bob Dylan song? It's a long song about a guy getting stuck in a carnival sideshow and as Bob sang it, it had a short bridge about tax-deductible charity organizations. I didn't like the words (blasphemy!) so I left it out and just kept the nightmare plot going. Sorry, Bob.

BALLAD OF A THIN MAN

Standing

I've been concentrating on books lately and neglecting my music but I managed to squeeze out a song over the weekend before my computer started giving me fits. So this is the final version of this song written by Joss Whedon and sung by Anthony Head in "Once More with Feeling", the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I need to do every track over, but with my computer injecting audible glitches at random times I'm pretty sure I'm retiring this song and probably looking into getting another computer.

STANDING

As I approach my 70s I find that I have to lower every song a few keys because I can't sing as high as I used to. So even though I knew the song was in F (I have the chord book for the episode) I tried it in D and found that there are no high notes in the melody. The song sounded quite dull and lifeless with me singing so low. So I did it again in F and it has a bit more zest to it now. It made me feel young again, singing a song in its original key.

And the Firm Soil Win of the Wat'ry Main

This is the third song I wrote for the April project for the Cover Album Project Band, giving me a trio of tunes with strange titles: The Advantage on the Kingdom of the Shore, That Time Will Come and Take My Love Away, and now, And the Firm Soil Win of the Wat'ry Main. For this third song, I let myself be inspired by a particular "style" in Band in a Box called "Dr. John". The program plays the piano, drums and bass so well I kept them all for the audio, and only added guitars, organ and vocals.

AND THE FIRM SOIL WIN OF THE WAT'RY MAIN

MP3

AND THE FIRM SOIL WIN OF THE WAT'RY MAIN

Youtube Video

Oh de tide roll in

And de tide roll out

Like a kitchen door

In a crabshack down sout'

Dere ain’t no lotion

Like de ocean, when yo dry.

Oh de land grow slow

And de water flow fas’

Dey each one race

Don’ wanna come in las’

And dere ain’t no motion

Like de ocean, Ah tell you why.

And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main

What de hell kind of language is dat?

But you ask anyone and dey’ll all say

Dat Shakespeare was some groovy cat.

Oh you got ebb and flow

All night and day

You got to and fro

Every which a way

And dere ain’t no potion

Like de ocean, when yo high.

And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main

Shakespeare musta been quite a sight

Throwin’ out words jus’ like a man insane

Took him 64 tries to get it right.

So let’s say hello

To our frien’ de moon

It’s a summer night

He’ll be rising soon

And dere ain’t no notion

Like de ocean, when you die.

  

And the firm soil win of the wat’ry, wat'ry main

BONUS COVER!

Knees was feeling pretty good one day while recording and realized he knew two songs with the same name. One was a old standard Johnny Horton song and the other was a ethereal ballad by The Band. Both were great songs but were not much alike. But, Knees wondered, could they possibly be mashed, pureed and blended into a single recording? Yes they could, and here is how Knees did it.

WHISPERING PINES

Carmelita

My daughter Naomi and her family are in Vancleave visiting and the great duo of Fender and Naomi once again got together for a song. (See "Sometimes You Just Cain't Win" from the December 2012 blog.) This time it's a classic stoner song written by Warren Zevon. It turned out so well Naomi and I are planning another vacation for her that will result in a dozen or so of our quaint duets.

CARMELITA

 

If the Satellite Went Down Tonight

This is a song done for the Cover Album Project Band's latest monthly challenge, Songs by Someone You Know. I suggested the topic because I wanted to do a Knees Calhoon version of a song by Terry Törnblom called "If the Satellite Went Down Tonight". So I took Terry's clear, simple song and added tracks until it was properly overproduced, and voila!

IF THE SATELLITE WENT DOWN TONIGHT

 Here is a link to the video on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/Q0qP8t0KV6Q

BONUS COVER!

Back in the late 60s I had an album by a Canadian band called the Paupers and years later I only remembered one of the songs, a C&W pastiche called "Another Man's Hair on My Razor". The Mighty Calhoon Brothers used to do it at the Las Cruces Inn in the late 70s. It has a pretty good plot.

ANOTHER MAN'S HAIR ON MY RAZOR

2013 Version

ANOTHER MAN'S HAIR ON MY RAZOR

1978 Calhoon Brothers Version