Still Breathin’ Fine

Man, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here. A lot of time ticked by and a lot of songs under the bridge… ahem, little guitar joke there.

Anyway, I started this song a week and a half ago with a groove I had clamped down on the bench. I wrote it over a couple days when I had time. It’s been laying around here until I got a chance to slap down a dirt roads version of it.

I decided to write this one out loud, if anyone is interested. That means you’re witnessing my changes and etc. as I go along.

What to say about it?

As I got to messing with the groove, it just felt like a driving song about a young guy with the attitude, “no one is ever going to tie me down.”

While that may be the case for a few, it’s not for the rest of us, and somehow we’re all perfectly happy with it. This song actually went through 3 or 4 title changes. In fact, the song started out about a lady feeling bad about her sweetie’s old high-school jacket getting eaten up by moths. It was an interesting concept and I had a verse and chorus written. It wasn’t bad, but it just felt wrong for this song, so I scrapped it.

That’s the thing about songwriting. You got to be willing to slay those ideas. Oh, it’s there if I ever want to go back, but I like the direction I took once I stuffed the jacket idea in the glove box of the song’s journey.

The title came to me from a line in a John Legend song, All of Me.

“My head’s under water but I’m breathin’ fine.”

I thought, dang, I like that. So began to work around the idea of this kid feeling like getting tied down would suffocate him or stop his breathing, you know, kill him.

But as second verses would have it, you have to go someplace with it, so I turned verse one on it’s ear, then outward into the universe in the bridge. Does it work? You decide. Lyrics below player.

One note. There are changes in the works. Ditching the “slamming” bass. Also making it clearer who said what. No, the kid in the song did not say “screw that” to his mom. See what happens if you get too much in your own head when writing? A couple other changes too. Just hadn’t gotten to them yet. When I do, I’ll post them.

Still Breathing Fine

I remember it well
Eighteen and cocky as hell-yeah-yeah
When my old man
Turned down our showdown slamming bass
Well Mom’s got a couple of odd jobs for me out back
Th’ew the cooler in my truck looked up and said “screw that…”

Chorus:
Man that’s one cold day
When a woman tries to tame this stray, and I
Think I’d turn blue and die
Funny how choices change
When someone comes to shake that stage of life
Thank God I’d chosen right
And still breathing fine

He’s doing well
43 and cocky as hell yeah-yeah
My old man
Rolled in with a thing for those old Bass
Well dad my bad but I promised the day to Beth
He gave in to a crappy grin and faked a blue-faced breath

[Repeat chorus]

Yeah I’m thinkin’ some kid’s fishin’
Somewhere out on some lake
Hearin’ voices, feelin’ choices
To keep fishing or cut bait

[Repeat chorus]

Man, that’s one cool day
When we’re in that boat with a choice to make and I
Thank God I’d chosen right
And still breathin’ fine
And still breathin’ fine

Stagger Lee Feedback Experiment

See below the original note for the re-write I settled on.

Hey, thanks for stopping by. Can you help me with an experiment?

I’ll explain why I need help when I reach enough comments at the end of the experiment. I don’t need a ton of them. A dozen or so should do.

And I’m not trying to be mysterious here. It’s just if I tell you why I need your help now, it might affect the result.

Your participation here will directly help other songwriters in the end.

All I need you to do is read the below lyric, and give as much original detailed songwriting feedback as you can. If you can be specific, that’s a big help.

While I appreciate stuff like “This song is lame” or “This song is touching.” Whatever you have to say, give your reasons you feel a certain way at various points in the song.

The good, the bad, the ugly, the charming, the touching, the wretched.

Whatever you want to say. I’ve got gator skin. You aren’t going to hurt my feelings.

That’s it.

Here we go. Jusst e-mail them to me directly.

And thanks.

Stagger Lee

She scuffled down the sidewalk
With her shopping cart full of clothes
A Walmart bag shivered in the wind full of everything she owned
Labeled just a drunk
Cause she’d slip off on the grass
Rumor was, her morning started straight off the flask
Her weathered face looked kind a mean
So they called her Stagger Lee

I met her at the sidewalk
With a twenty in my hand
When her eyes met mine I’d knew I’d never understand
All the pain she’d been through
All the trouble all the loss
I could hear it in her voice, she paid some kind of cost
A neighbor yelled out, son you are naïve
Don’t you know that’s Stagger Lee

[Bridge]

Watching her walk down the street
I wonder who she really was
Was she someone’s grandma
Was she loved?

She got down to her corner
Turned to me and smiled
We stared at one another for a while
I wondered if this town would ever see
She was more than Stagger Lee

The gossip at the diner
Came with the morning news
The woman that they found face down was Linda McCloo
The photograph was blurry
The news print smeared from snow
Weren’t no one in that place who really didn’t know
Still they made a choice to see
It was just old Stagger Lee

At the end of my driveway
I found a shopping cart full of clothes
A Walmart bag blowing in the wind full of everything she owned.

Stagger Lee

Verse1:
She’d scuffle down the sidewalk
With her shopping cart full of clothes
A Walmart bag shivered in the wind full of everything she owned
Seen as just a drunk
Cause she’d stumble on the cracks
Rumor was her morning started straight from the flask
Her weathered skin made her look mean
So they called her Stagger Lee

Verse 2:
I met her at the sidewalk
With a twenty in my hand
When her eyes met mine I’d knew I’d never understand
The hollow in her eyes
The demons that she Faught
The hunch ridin’ on her back said she paid some kind of cost
A neighbor yelled out, son you are naïve
Don’t you know that’s Stagger Lee?

Bridge:
Watchin’ her walk down the street
I wondered who she really was
Was she someone’s grandma… was she loved?
She reached the corner
With a nod she almost smiled
We stared at one another for a while
I wondered if this town would ever see
She’s more than Stagger Lee

Verse 3:
The gossip at the diner
Came with the morning news
The woman that they found face down was Nancy Anne McClew
The headline print was blurry
And the photo smeared from snow
But there weren’t no one in that place who really didn’t know
Still they made a choice to see
Oh it was just old Stagger Lee

Outro:
At the end of my driveway
I found a shopping cart full of clothes
A Walmart bag shiverin’ in the wind full of everything she owned.

That’s it. Got comments? Jusst e-mail them to me directly.

Wings of a Mother

I won’t make claim my brand of loss is any worse than others. These past few years of the world surviving a global pandemic is proof of that, and yet we each grapple with our own sense of mortality in those around us.

We draw closer to our own each time the sun sets on the horizon.

All the more reason to make each day count going forward.

Sometimes, we look back at our life… the people in it… how things were. We have the gift of seeing how our daily life rolled along, ignorant of the mortality we’ll unknowingly face in days, weeks, months, or years ahead.

We can see how we’d do things differently if given the foreknowledge, and we also see the successes and right choices made, and why those choices were so intuitive or strong at the time.

I wrote the below poem for my mom in 2008.

It’s sometimes a challenge to find a card which says what you want to say in that time of life, so I wrote a poem for her.

A few years later, I found the poem framed and hanging on the wall in my parents home.

Today, is 7-years to the day I lost my mom.

I wonder how differently that relationship may have been had I known I’d only have another 7-years with her, and some of them a struggle for her.

This time of the evening 7-years ago, my dad and I were back at the house, red-rimmed eyes, trying to make sense of what life will be like without her in it.

I wrote Wings of a Mother in 2008 based on a story I’d heard about a fire in Yellowstone National Park.

Whether the story was somehow true, or more than likely one of those heart-grabbing fictional stories, I don’t know. Regardless, it left me with an image and a thought.

The story was about a forest fire where a mother bird and her chicks were found charred among the disaster. The mother’s wings were spread over her chicks in attempts to keep them safe.

The instincts and sacrifice of a mother was summed up in that image, and the basis of this poem.

In memory of my mom, Gloria Mae (Stulo) Dunse – August 30, 1937 to June 20, 2015

Wings of a Mother

Mother Eagle makes a home of her twig tangled nest
Shelters her baby’s and denies her own rest
Protects them from danger when it lurks in their midst
Risking her own life until the threat is dismissed
When danger has past, only then she’ll uncover
Her babies’ protection from the wings of a mother

She grooms their survival with maturing of feathers
Each day she’ll loosen the length of the tether
One day they’ll perch on the nest’s narrow rim
Spread out their wings as if a cherubim
She’ll teach them to fly, they’ll flit and they’ll flutter
‘Neath the guided direction of the wings of a Mother

One day she will see they are dressed in full plume
The next day the nest sports plenty of room
Across the tall forest some distance from home
She watches as twigs twist into a throne
With pride and raised feathers, she will discover
The tireless success of the wings of a Mother
With love and respect, and pride like no other
I still find comfort under the wings of you Mother

Why I Quit Listening to Oldies

Ooh. That headline puts a sad on me like taps in the air at a soldiers memorial.

But it’s a choice I’ve made.

Here’s why.

First, the oldies for me are what I listened to as a kid, teenager, and young man:

the late 60s, 70s, 80s, and some of the early 90s.

Everything from classic and hard rock to what has become known as yacht rock. I even got into the late 80s and 90s country for a time.

But I absolutely love the oldies.

Everything from bands like Rush, Black Sabbath, Kiss, Styx, REO Speedwagon, Aerosmith, Foreigner, Van Halen, April Wine, Boston, Kansas, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Pink Floyd and those bands…

To U2, Journey, Human League, George Michael, Elton John, Mike and the Mechanics, Heart, Paul McCartney, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, Doobbie Brothers, Kenny Loggins, Poco, Prince, John Denver, Olivia Newton-John, Michael Johnson, Michael McDonald…

To country artists like Lone Star, Confederate Railroad, Kentucky Headhunters, Clint Black, Joe Diffie, Suzy Bogguss, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Reba McEntire, Johnny Cash, Alabama, Restless Heart, The Judds, Vince Gill…

It goes on and on to blues and more obscure bands like Lake, Nazareth, Uriah Heep, Sweet, Ace Frehely and more.

I love the music. To me it’s like grabbing a bowl of comfort food and eating my fill. Or, like freezing cold on a snowy winter’s day, and someone throws a pre-heated blanket over you.

It puts me right back at my youthful days.

The days where there was so much road in the windshield you couldn’t see to the end, and the rearview still had mom and dad’s driveway in view.

So, why did I dig a shallow grave and bury them?

For the exact same reasons as above.

Music is a powerful emotional anchor.

When I listen to Jamie’s Crying or The Cradle Will Rock by Van Halen? I’m a 17-year old kid, munching a Whatchamacallit candy bar, looking out the window of a bus headed out to the woods for forestry class.

When I hear Is There Anybody Out There off of Pink Floyd’s The Wal album, I’m 16-years old, sitting on the edge of my waterbed, moving the needle on the turntable setting on top of my huge Ampex guitar amp sporting 4 fifteen-inch speakers, picking off the acoustic fingerstyle guitar part.

When I hear Talking Heads, Burning Down the House, I’m walking the cool damp air along the marina in Menominee Michigan, the smell of funnel cakes in the air, stepping over power cords, the sound of screams coming from carnival rides, and a nervous love sprouting off my left arm as we took it all in.

When I hear Nazareth’s, Love Hurts or Hair of the Dog, I’m with my older brother and his buddy Junior. I’m 15-years old, no license, already downed some suds, driving in a city I’d never driven before…

Of course I hadn’t, I didn’t have a driver’s license.

By night’s end I was yelling, “When’s the band going to play!”

I didn’t even know Nazareth was done with their gig.

Am I endorsing substance abuse recalling this?

No.

But all of the above are fingerprints of my youth, bookmarked by the music I listened to.

And for that it brings me fond memories of a life yet to be lived. Days where the biggest concern is getting your first car. Hoping she’ll say yes when you ask her out. What is happening on the weekend. And learning that cool riff on guitar.

And while those tunes are so comforting, bringing such a great feeling to me…

It also holds me there like a blind-folded hostage.

It keeps me emotionally anchored to a point in life I’m not anymore.

It seems like it should empower me. Wah me over with feel-good feelings. Everybody does better when they are high in emotion.

But, it brings me back to a reality I’m not sixteen anymore.

Each time I come back from those memories, I feel the shortness in the road ahead of me.

I’m reminded of my regrets. Things I should have done. Things I’d wanted to do but never took the risk.

Now, I’m a long way from being retired to the pasture.

I have a lot of living yet to do, and in many ways, my best days are yet ahead.

But music is such a powerful anchor for me, I don’t want it reaching in and pulling me back to the past, preventing me from emotionally moving forward.

Science knows, the maturity of unrecovered alcoholics is severely suppressed.

I honestly feel continually feeding your mind with emotional anchors, back to an earlier time of life, has the same affect.

At least for me. At least now.

But even more importantly, if I only listen to the oldies, two things happen.

First, I then have no musical fingerprint for the life I’m living today.

What songs will I hear then and fondly look back at today?

There is music out there which is different than I grew up on. I can hide from it, or embrace what I like, and use it as musical bread crumbs back to the life I’m making right now.

I can use it to influence my songwriting.

Secondly, if I only listen to the oldies, the life I’m living today is competing with the life I lived when those songs were new, fresh, and powerful.

By listening to them today on a regular basis, I’m only diluting old memories with new ones of today.

I’m only reducing the value they bring to me when I want them.

But, why would I even care if I buried them?

If you noticed, I buried them in a shallow grave.

I’m free to dig them up on occasion.

Maybe sitting out back with my sweetie ,chatting over a glass of red wine. The Kamado Joe smolders up a brisket, or sizzling up some rib eyes. The finches up in the willow are competing for air time with Steve Perry singing, Still They Ride, (one of my favorite Journey songs).

For now though, when I’m sitting at my desk writing for a living, it might be Native American flute music, meditation music, or a coffeehouse station.

But, it won’t be the oldies.

When I’m doing chores around the house, it’ll be what’s current in blues, pop, or maybe country.

That way, when I’m 85-years old I can pop up Gabby Barrett’s, I Hope, and think if my writing this blog.