Yesterday I was having coffee with a friend, and he happened to mention (apropos of the wet snow . . . except that it wasn't snowing . . . or wet, for that matter) that he got the chills when he listened to Gordon Lightfoot's song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." At first I had to catch myself, as my first thought was to interject that one of the worst lyrics I could think of was
"When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'
Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya
At seven pm a main hatchway caved in, he said
Fellas, it's been good t'know ya."
But good manners prevailed and I behaved like a good horse and held that bit in. I really try not to mock things that other people like, even if I think they're kind of stupid. Instead, I started thinking about the song as a whole. And I could see what Friend meant about it being a moving song.
After we'd parted, I kept on thinking about the song, and when I got home I looked it up to see what chords it used. I found a version tabbed for guitar which required a mere four chords: Asus2, Em, G, and D. All chords with which I am familiar. So I pulled out my guitar and gave it a whirl. And it actually sounded pretty good.
A plan began to form in my mind. I would record my own version of the song as a present for Friend. I don't know why that would be a particularly good present per se, but I thought that it would at least show my affection for him, and I liked that idea.
I started fiddling with it on GarageBand. It didn't take long before I decided that it was going to be really hard to find a drum track that suited me. (Why didn't I ever learn how to drum, for fuck's sake?) But that's just time and trial and error using the tracks available, so not a huge obstacle. I also decided that I wanted to use a 12-string guitar instead of my 6 string. And I actually even have a 12-string guitar . . . though I've never played it and it currently possesses only 2 strings. So a little barrier there, but not a big one. And I decided that I could hear a trumpet part, so I started working on that, and it came pretty easily. And then I decided that of course I would need some fiddle. A fair amount of fiddle.
And then the phone rang. It was my #1son, who is a fantastic fiddle player. So after we'd chatted a bit I asked him if he had ever heard of the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." He laughed, and I asked him why. He said, "That song just started popping up on my Spotify account."
What the fuckety fuck?
Fortunately this weird ass shit happens to me so frequently that I was only startled for a minute, then I moved on from "I saw the same cat twice" to "Would you play some fiddle for me?" And he acceded, so I think it's going to happen.
Ahem.
Now I'm going to go do a rough cut with my old reliable 6 string. And probably no trumpet. And maybe no drums. Then I'll get around to doing up the 12 string guitar and all of the rest of it.
I'll post the rough version right here when I get her done.
But hey . . . what a weird fuckin' coincidence, right?
Okay. This is quite rough, but we'll see how it goes from here.
Okay. This is quite rough, but we'll see how it goes from here.
More news as it happens.
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