Everybody’s Going Away
There was a week back in June when I helped an old friend load out what was left of his furniture that was still sitting in his ex's place. They'd split, and my friend couldn't find a job in Austin, so he planned to move back to Kentucky where at least he had family. He'd rented a truck that morning and we moved out a sofa, artwork and other bits and pieces. I said goodbye to him and drove off as the day grew warmer. Later that night, Michelle called him to say her goodbye. She was sad, but then we figured we'd see him again in the future. Or we told ourselves this, though neither of us seriously believes we'll be going to Kentucky. Will he come back to visit Austin? I don't know. It seems unlikely.
That same week I helped an intrepid French family we know store their remaining possessions in a rental facility near our neighborhood before they took off in a used RV to tour the world for three years. Some things they gave to me to store at home while they were away: large dark boxes to tuck away in the closet not to see the light of day until their return years hence.
As I drove to work I thought, "Everybody's going away," and immediately the idea for a song started forming. Michelle and I talked later and we agreed that quite a number of our closest friends had upped and left town in recent years, with still more planning to go. Everybody was going away! I told her I already had the chorus to a new song.
It didn't take long to write the rest. The first two verses tell the brief stories above. The third is a litany of people we've known who've moved away from Austin, in all likelihood never to return (and that list doesn't cover even close to half of them!). The last person mentioned is our dear friend, Don, who, having fought off cancer seven times, opted to take a journey of a different kind. He succumbed to the disease on his own terms, peacefully in his bed. We miss him.
We miss all our friends who have left.
It's funny that while I can recall the moment the song began to come together in my head -- another one that formed as I drove along on Austin's highways in my red truck -- I cannot remember how I wrote the music. I can vaguely recall strumming my acoustic guitar and the chords appearing in an acceptable order; or, rather, my hands shifting to form a progression of chords that made sense and fit the words. The chorus came first, of course. Then I made a conscious decision to keep the verses simple, and I guess that was that. I wrote the song in a matter of days.
A couple of minor notes: I hadn't expected to keep the "oh-oh-oh" part between choruses and verses, which appeared out of the blue as I sang an early demo of the song, but once I did it, it stuck. And, slyly, I put in a little play on words for the part about Don. I thought he'd get a kick out of it.
Originally posted on The Late Joys (sadly neglected) blog, January 12, 2009. Read it here: latejoysblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/how-i-wrote-song-everybodys-going-away.html
Twisty System
Feeling particularly grim about the future of our planet, I wasn't finding any relief as I read Elizabeth Kolbert's three-part series on global warming in The New Yorker magazine ( www.wesjones.com/climate1.htm ). So I started to write this song. The melody for the chorus came first, rapidly, based on my mucking about with the line, "It's a twisty system, " which I misremembered from Kolbert's story. Some British scientist likened our atmosphere to a "twitchy system" but I thought I had read "Twisty System." It wasn't until the song was done and dusted that I started to wonder, dredged up the story and saw I'd got it wrong. Ah well. "Twisty" fit the spiraling, circular melody line better anyway. So there! Not too much later, a friend of mine thrust the demo version at poor Ms. Kolbert at a book signing; I don't know if she actually listened to the tune, but she did say that "twisty" is a better title than "twitchy." Indeed.
Honestly
This one I started years and years ago. It even had a jaunty, silly sort of melody line and started: "You say, 'You never turn and wave when you walk away.' I say, 'It's more a matter of not falling on my face. Honestly." I liked "on my face" and "honestly" together like that. But this version of the song stalled out after that opening. Shortly thereafter I swapped things around to fit the chord progression that makes up the bulk of what is the modern version of the song. "Honestly, honestly..." I wrote the first verse and a half fast; but subsequently everything else I wrote was dreck. The litmus test is always: Would I really want to sing this in front of an audience. The resounding "no" meant I kept shelving this number despite repeated attempts to get it finished. I reckon I first came up with the idea for the song in the late 1980s. Sigh. Last year, messing around again, I began to form the idea that this story concerned two lovers finding each other and escaping against all odds -- or trying to. I worked in the dance metaphor and tailored the boy-meets-girl story around it. I think it matured over the course of this latest rewrite: Musically I added the bridge, which may or may not be about the couple; story-wise, I removed other characters and put all the responsibility on the pair. I can't answer for her at the end of the song: Does she come along or do the two split up forever?
Recorded at Alta Vista Recording, Austin, TX. And it took bleeding FOREVER to finish!
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