Listening to alt country on Spotify I begin to wonder….
who are all these country boys
with their cowboy hats, pickup trucks and beards
staring clint-eyed into the mythical distance
listening for the call of who knows what
a phantom cattle drive, perhaps,
anything at all to git them
back on the road again;
and who are all these country girls
left behind or waiting
and why the hell do they care
about these feckless drifters
who love their whiskey
as much as they dread commitment
and why does all this happen in Texas?
rhymes and tropes, folks
rhymes and tropes
and slowly through
a Spotify fog
a Spotify trance
in the distance
a song emerges…..
Five Miles Outside of Austin
I’m five miles outside of Austin
with a pounding in my head
full of yesterday’s whiskey
and wishing I was dead
I left a girl back there sleeping
as dawn began to break
I gave her all that I could give
and I took all I could take
and I wish I had done better
that I hadn’t stayed so long
now I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
II
Down the road, a girl is waiting,
drinking beer and playing pool
waiting for deliverance
waiting for another fool
and I’ll dust the road off of my coat
and walk through that door
she’ll say “howdy stranger,
I ain’t seen you before”
but now my head is beating like a bass drum
there’s stubble on my tongue
I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song
Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
Photo (by Marie Feeney) of Lukas Nelson and Neil Young at Desert Trip
Listening to alt country on Spotify I begin to wonder….
who are all these country boys
with their cowboy hats, pickup trucks and beards
staring clint-eyed into the mythical distance
listening for the call of who knows what
a phantom cattle drive, perhaps,
anything at all to git them
back on the road again;
and who are all these country girls
left behind or waiting
and why the hell do they care
about these feckless drifters
who love their whiskey
as much as they dread commitment
and why does all this happen in Texas?
rhymes and tropes, folks
rhymes and tropes
and slowly through
a Spotify fog
a Spotify trance
in the distance
a song emerges…..
Five Miles Outside of Austin
I’m five miles outside of Austin
with a pounding in my head
full of yesterday’s whiskey
and wishing I was dead
I left a girl back there sleeping
as dawn began to break
I gave her all that I could give
and I took all I could take
and I wish I had done better
that I hadn’t stayed so long
now I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
II
Down the road, a girl is waiting,
drinking beer and playing pool
waiting for deliverance
waiting for another fool
and I’ll dust the road off of my coat
and walk through that door
she’ll say “howdy stranger,
I ain’t seen you before”
but now my head is beating like a bass drum
there’s stubble on my tongue
I’m five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song
Five miles outside of Austin
and I’m stuck inside this song.
Photo (by Marie Feeney) of Lukas Nelson and Neil Young at Desert Trip
This lyric started with a poem I had published in The Shop literary magazine (called Down and Out in Idabel), then took off in a different direction. When writing the lyric, I was thinking of the feel of Kris Kristofferson’s, “Sunday Morning Coming Down” and the structure of songs like John Mellencamp’s “Pink Houses” in which the verses are a series of snapshots that connect back to the chorus. Play it in your car and sing along with the chorus when no one is listening! That’s what I do!
Here’s John to tell his side!
When I saw that Idabel, Oklahoma was in this little bitty, piece of land between the states of Texas, Arkansas and Oklahoma I jumped right off the front porch, because now I could REALLY do a country song. I’ve always loved the pedal steel guitar but you have to have it in the right song, and “Saturday Morning in Idabel” is just the song.
The chord progression is pretty much true country. I found a lovely little rhythm track with some nice tight fills, added the bass and then I used my Larrivee D-50 to lay down the acoustic track. I added some Fender strat. with heavy Duane Eddy tremolo for flavour. I called up John McArthur Ellis, a wonderful pedal steel player, and asked him to just play whatever he felt fit the song, and he was fantastic. Again the tracks were exchanged by e-mail. I think the best way to be a producer, is to let players play the way they feel, with only a soucent of direction. If you don’t trust them, don’t hire them. After I did the lead vocal, I called on the John Mitchell choir to do a little back-up singing, and there ya go. A swell little country song thanks to the inspiration of Jim Feeney.
Click here to preview/ buy the whole album or individual tracks! Also available on iTunes (search for “The Mitchell Feeney Project”, no hyphen)
To buy the song, album, click on link above, the album is also available on iTunes (search for “The Mitchell Feeney Project”, no hyphen).
Notes..
In this lyric, I wanted to imply a story through a series of images. This proved to be harder than I thought! This is one of those songs that John and I kicked back and forward a bit, tweaking the lyric. The chorus was always there, though!
Now, John will tell you how he took the words on paper and worked his magic……. (by the way one of my favourite moments in this song is when the guitar solo kicks in after the second chorus)….here’s John:
When I read Jim’s poem, “The Road” I could see myself looking through the cracked and dusty windshield of a ’81 Pontiac Catalina, on that real, dry stretch of highway between Santa Rosa and Albuquerque, New Mexico, that seems to go on forever. The song obviously needed a rolling tempo to match the movement of the car, and I thought that the jangle sound of my Rickenbacker electric 12 string guitar and a solid drum track would add to the constant moving effect. I use the key of G, because that open G chord with an added D on the B string really has an open ringing sound, Lots of fifths. I also felt that the song needed a bridge, but felt that it didn’t need a bridge with a lyric, so just added some different chords and put in a guitar solo using a Standard Strat. on the middle pick-up. Jim’s poems always feel like they have a country twang to them, so an all guitar background was the right thing and some nice tight 2 part harmony seemed to work, thanks to singer, Nikki MN, who just happened to be here from London.
I was sitting down one night over a few drinks with my good friend, John Mitchell, talking about music, poetry and soccer when the subject of song lyrics and song writing came up. At that point in the evening where the power of drink makes every idea seem like a good one, John suggested that we should write a song together. John is a successful professional musician and I am a chemical engineer and occasionally published poet, so I have to admit I felt a bit out of my league, but I agreed anyway!
Over the next few days, I pulled out some poems I had hanging around but none of them really fitted the bill given that they were basically non rhyming free verse. I had a phrase, though, – “sitting in this motel room/ I could be sitting anywhere”- and I started to develop a character and story around that phrase. The final lyric eventually became the song, “Emma Jean”, which you can take a listen to below. It’s a long way from words on paper to a finished song, and that’s where John’s talent as a singer, song writer, composer, musician and arranger took over (in other words, John did the heavy lifting!). Here’s the song, please, please use headphones to listen rather than just your computer’s speakers, the song is mixed with headphones in mind.
In the end John and I collaborated on 5 songs which, together with 2 songs written by John alone, we have put together on an album.
Click here to preview the whole album, and if you like the songs, buy one, buy them all!! Also available on iTunes (search for “The Mitchell Feeney Project”, no hyphen)
A few notes about the song “Emma Jean”, it was obvious from the start that this would be a country song, it’s about divorce, separation, there’s a child involved, and what could be more country than that? But I wanted to avoid formula, so the story took a twist, at the end, that perhaps disqualifies it as a mainstream modern country song, but hey, never pander! Initially, the song didn’t have the middle two verses, being more accustomed to writing poetry where my rule is “say what you have to say with as few words as possible”, I thought I had said enough. But songs need verses and John told me to flesh it out a bit, so I came up with the lines “Who know why love goes wrong/ It’s not written anywhere” and took it from there. John was right of course, the extra verses created context. Now…over to John!
Writing lyrics for me, is about as easy as giving birth, not that I have experience of both. My lyrics are either incredibly self indulgent or incredibly preachy, or a bit of both. The ability to paint pictures with words is truly an amazing gift and I appreciate that gift in others. My favourite lyricists tell stories and take us to another place and time or share experiences through someone else’s eyes. When I first read Jim’s poem, Emma Jean, I could see that motel room and I could smell the mixture of stale beer and carpet cleaner that is the telltale odour of cheap motels. I recognise it from years on the road with bands.
In the case of “Emma Jean”, the music came quickly. First, it had to be in a minor key, as the story was fairly dark and the background music needed to be sparse with minimal instruments so as not to interfere with the lyrics – just guitar, a little bass, and a touch of southern slide. The vocal tries to express how Emma Jean’s dad would feel in that hotel room – loneliness with a good helping of bitterness. I then wanted to use different instruments to accent the chorus, so I added accordion and trombone and orchestral cymbals. The acoustic guitar( a Larrivee D-50) and vocal are all real, but all the other sounds are digital samples. I recorded it all on my laptop using the program, Logic, and mixed the tunes for headphones to hear the full spectrum of instruments.
As Jim noted above, please use headphones to listen to the sample track above or plug into a good set of speakers.
In our next post, John and I will discuss another track on the album.
Stopdraggingthepanda 