Last night when I was in Half-Price Books I saw this magnificent thing:
Now, there was a time when I wouldn't have been able to resist purchasing a Farm Machinery Catalog from yesteryear (for a mere $8!)...but in my dotage I'm trying to get rid of stuff instead of acquire more stuff, so I contented myself with paging through it. It was absolutely superb. Manure separators. Iceless refrigerators. All kinds of things that I'd not only never heard of, but never even thought of. I took a picture of it and sent it to my friend George Nostrand (leading man of Miss Guided Angels, whose new CD is now available for purchase @ https://www.amazon.com/One-That-Got-Away/dp/B07JN1K1Y3/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1542211926&sr=8-1&keywords=miss+guided+angels+the+one+that+got+away or https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/missguidedangels2 or on iTunes (I don't know how to link up with that, but you can do the math). And okay, it's also available for free on SoundCloud, but Shakespeare got to get PAID, man, so don't do that unless you have no other choice)...because Bellows Falls, VT is his home town and I thought he'd get a kick out of seeing the catalog. I also sent him this picture go the first page of the catalog...
...with the suggestion that "When Farming Was a Way of Life and Horsepower Came in Horses" would be a good song title.
As the evening wore on, my mind kept coming back to that phrase, and I thought that maybe I might could have a go at writing that song.
So I sat down and started to sing--impromptu and a cappella. And what came out wasn't about farming or horses or horsepower (none of which I know even the slightest thing about), it was about Bellows Falls.
Growing up in Bellows Falls
In the shadow of a mountain
Blessings were from near and far
Mumble mumble but I wasn't counting.
I want to mumble mumble
Take me back mumble mumble mumble
Oh, mumble mumble
Oh mumble
Oh.
Obviously I didn't know a whole hell of a lot about Bellows Falls, either. I hypothesized that there would be a mountain (maybe a few) nearby since when I was in Vermont there were mountains everyfuckingwhere. And mountains always make me think of Wordsworth (the inverted W, see?), and he always makes me think of the line "...all which we behold / Is full of blessings" from "Tintern Abbey," 1 so that's where the blessings bit came in. And I just left it there.
This morning I got up and was working on a song for my Trumpet Opus--this part is called, "Who's a Black Halloween Cat?" I have five or six different versions of it down now. Decisions, decisions. And after a bit of that I started thinking about the "When Farming Was a Way of Life and Horsepower Came in Horses" / "Bellows Falls" song again, so I Googled Bellows Falls and found out a little bit about it. It has an Opera House which is kind of sort of famous. (In a Vermont-y kind of way.) It's smack on the border between Vermont and New Hampshire. The Connecticut River flows past it. And kind of through it, too. There's a bridge over the river. It's kind of pretty. And small. Like 3,000 people small. That's only three and a half times the number of people that live in my sub-division. Which is not a large place.
And I was still thinking about how to get to the line from the catalog, but I often songwrite by playing the guitar and just singing whatever comes into my head until I get some stuff I like, then I write it down and try to shape it up. As I was doodling around like that, I came up with the line,
"I guess that’s true of everyone, but it feels unique to me."
And I liked that. So I got down to business. I drank coffee. I sang. I wrote. I ended up with this:
Growing up in Bellows Falls in the shadow of the mountains
Guess I knew the blessings there but I never stopped to count them
But when I dream of yesterday it’s always there I go
To the bridge that’s down on Depot Street
And watch Cunny run below
I’m going home
To Bellows Falls
I want to hear my voice echo from the Opera House walls.
I’m going home
To Bellows Falls
So if I die bag up my bones and haul them off
to Bellows Falls
Walking through this great big world
Kind of scrapes away your knees
I guess that’s true of everyone
But it feels unique to me
I wish I’d done and seen a little
More but that’s just life
You think you’re heading straight true north but you’re
Just circling ‘round the night
Wordsworth had his abbey
And Ahab had his whale
Leopards cannot change their spots
And dogs still chase their tails
In my soul there’s a rumble of a river and
I know
That when the world’s too much with me
It’s there that I will go.
Which I kind of liked. No horses or horsepower or farming, but still...it had a little something something. A yearning. At the heart of every work of art is a yearning, I think.
I want to see if I can convince my #1Son to lay down some fiddle...and, in fact, I left a big space after the first chorus for him to fill in if he'll do it...but this is what it sounds like for now:
I'm probably going to have to rebuild it from the bottom up to get it where I want it to go, but since I don't write music and have a short memory, I had to get this thing down before it evaporated.
What d'ya think?
P.S. Still playing around with the song, and Googling about just to see what I see. One of the things I saw was this be-you-tea-full sign:
So now I'm really wanting to add in a few lines so that I can include "A friendly place to hang your hat" in the lyrics. Hmmm.
It's more than just a friendly place where you can hang your hat.
It's more than just a friendly place where you can hang your hat.
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