Category Archives: acoustic

A thousand girls have told me so…

California eucalyptus

They used to call me the bard of bitterness, denial, and regret. Well… it was kind of a one-liner I made up to put on my show flyers. But… you know.

I think I mentioned sometime last year that a girl I’d once dated, early in our relationship, asked me to sing her a love song. “I don’t mean you have to sing it to me,” she said. “That would seem a bit presumptious, I think.” College girls…

“Just sing me something romantic and I’ll pretend it’s about me.” And she laughed.

I had my songbooks right there — I’m almost completely incapable of performing any of my songs from memory (crazy as that might seem considering most of them have no more than 3 or 4 chords spread over 3 or 4 quatrains) — so I started flipping through them, giving one line descriptions of each song as I flipped by…

“Drug overdose song. Betrayal song. Threw-it-all-away song. Another betrayal song. Fare-thee-well-and-flog-off song. Another threw-it-all-away song…

“Ah, here it is, my love song: ‘I Must Be F—— Nuts.’ I knew I had one.”

(It’s a good one but I’ve yet to figure out how to do it justice in this blog. It’s… well… it’s a bit vulgar. But it is a love song.)

Anyhow, those who’ve been following this blog will probably have already guessed that there were a lot of threw-it-all-away songs in those books. It’s like, oh, you know, a recurring theme, I guess. Though anyone with access to a DSM might come up with a less charitable characterization.

I’m not really sure why I like this one so much… except maybe that I crack myself up every time I sing the line quoted in the title of this post. I’m certainly not the libertine the line would suggest but there’s still some kind of poetic truth there, nonetheless.

Internet Archive page for this recording

AYoS version 19 November 2005
AYoS version 2 March 2006

She’d Be Mine

Last time I saw her a couple years ago
she was shovin a couple of kids in a white volvo
the sun came down through the eucalyptus trees
it made her hair just glow like it always used to be

just then I wish I could have said the words
that I could never say
cause if I’d told her baby I’ll be yours
she’d be mine today

the pool house the beach house the boat house by the lake
I’ll be damned if I can remember a thing
yet everytime I think about holding hands in school
my heart just pounds like it always used to do

right now I wish I could have said the words…

sometimes when I sleep I call her name
a thousand girls have told me so
I thre it all awaly and now I want it back
and I know it can never be so
[I know it can never be so]

and right now I wish I could have said the words
that I could never say
cause if I’d told her baby I’ll be yours
she’d be mine today

If I had time to count the lies…

Leave a reply

Not one of those dreams...

He lay on the bed, watching her.

He was never any good at reading her. He never felt like he knew what she was thinking.

He was drinking, once, with the guy she had gone out with before him.

“Most people,” that guy had said with drunken conviction, “have a mask they hide behind. And when you get to know them, they let it down a little and you start to see what’s there. With her,” and his eyes glinted a little in the dim bar as he paused, shot glass in hand, for effect, “with her, it’s just one mask after another. At first, you think, ah, a mystery. I love a mystery.”

The ex-boyfriend threw back the tequila and went on. “But the mystery becomes like a bad surrealism movie… there’s no…” His eyes seemed to unfocus for a moment. “There’s no coherency. A true sociopath would…” he stopped suddenly.

“I’m sorry, man. I must be drunk. I was just talkin’ shit. I mean, well, she is a piece of work, and we both know that… but she is a real double E-ticket ride. If you want the thrills, you gotta stand in line. Oh, wait. God, I’m drunk. Let’s have another round…”

Internet Archive page for this recording

AYoS October 09, 2005
AYoS January 28, 2006

Not One of Those Dreams

If I had time to count the lies
or that hours that you stole
but it ain’t like me to wonder why
all the same there’s some things one needn’t be told

I can see it in your smile
it’s there behind all your words
something dancing behind your eyes
I can tell that you think it’s
me that’s gonna get burned

It ain’t like you’re the only one
that ever threw away love
I’ve sinned your sins and some again
it’s all the same, it’s all been done

I can see it in your smile…

I’m not saying that I’m sorry
I won’t say I didn’t love you
I won’t say that I didn’t have some dreams
but not once did I dream they’d ever come true

I can see it in your smile
it’s there behind all your words
something dancing behind your eys
I can tell that you think it’s
gonna be me that’s gonna get burned

The view from the hayloft door

1 Reply

I just started to cry...

There’s a doomed beauty in knowing you’re about to make what you’ll probably look back on as the mistake of your life. Everything seems more real, more vivid, more 3D.

You look around as though it’s the last time you’re ever going to see familiar surroundings… and in a way, you’re right. Nothing will ever be the same, again.

And you know you have to do it, anyway.

I wrote this song as a kind of bluegrass thing but I turned it on its head, here, into a kind of swamp folk rock indulgence that I think exposes some other facets of the song, highlighting the youthful passion and lust for life and love. Which is not, actually, what I was thinking when I came up with the music for this version.

Instead, I’d been so annoyed with an attempt to do this song the previous night in a sensitive, finger-picked style that I decided, really, to just invert the style and approach. (The George Castanza Strategy. If everything you do turns out wrong, do the opposite.)

Internet Archive page for this recording
previous AYoS version

I Just Started to Cry

We ran through the summer night
it was hot and it was black
we ran until we were all alone
and didn’t even know the way back

We were young
we were in love
that summer we were one
when I look back I start to cry
to think of what is gone

A storm came up from the south real fast
and lightning lit the rain
I looked in her eyes for a moment
and then it was dark again

Our hands entwined and then our tongues
we were soaking wet
we made our way to the old Hansen barn
and there our souls met

I woke up the next morning
and she slept by my side
the sunlight poured through the hayloft door
and I just started to cry

I cried cause she looked so pretty lying there
I cried because I loved her so
I cried cause I knew she was the only one
and I cried cause I knew I was gonna go

Suddenly, the world’s just too damn old

Leave a reply

Mountains come, mountains go

As a wide-eyed youth, I was always a sucker for songs like “Teen Angel,” “Running Bear” or the Everly Brothers’ weeper, “Ebony Eyes.”

“Teen Angel” is pretty well known and its title is probably close enough to self-explanatory… “Running Bear” was about two young American Indians from different tribes, separated by their tribes’ mutual animosities — and a raging river — who fall in love from opposite riverbanks and finally, overcome by love, dive in from opposite sides and perish in the rapids just as they reach each other. Makes me misty just thinking about it. Loved that hokey “Native American” tom tom beat that underlay the song, too. Bum buh bum bum. Bum buh bum bum…

The Everly Brothers’ “Ebony Eyes” is more somber… but a mid-song monologue spoken in a shaky, post-juvenile voice by one of the brothers heads straight for the top of lugubriousness. Hearing it the third or fourth time as a callow youth may well have been my first turn toward cynicism. Even though I’d been a big Everlys fan as a youngster, I remember turning “Ebony Eyes” off more than a few times.

As I wrote in the post for the previous AYoS version of this song, the lyrics were originally written around ’99 to go with a fast (142 bpm, if I recall) techno track from Deakin Scott, a young producer in Britain, who came across me on the web and wanted to collaborate.

Deakin didn’t have any idea what kind of lyrics I should put to it.

I fooled around with a bunch of ideas and eventually pulled out my acoustic guitar (which was not first reach in those days), found myself playing a classic rock ‘n’ roll progression (I-vi-IV-V, for those who keep track of these things).

I came up with the first line (“Mountains come, mountains go…” — which was inspired by a song in my favotire musical, the 1955 Kismet… ” Princes come, princes go / An hour of pomp and show they know / Princes come / And over the sands, and over the sands of time they go…” [Forrest and Wright]) and it looked like it was going to be one of those “highest mountain/deepest ocean” things but then it veered off into tragic loss.

Now, I can’t tell you why, but I have to admit that, embarrassing as it is, I find these lyrics strangely moving. They’re far from an empty exercise in pop formalism to me. I guess you’re really not supposed to admit that you’re emotionally affected by your own lyrics but… well, there ya go. Call me a silly, sentimental sap.

Internet Archive page for this recording
previous AYoS version

[combo version | requires Flash]

Mountains Come, Mountains Go

Mountains come and mountains go
but a love like ours will surely show
the stars themselves to be a fling
I’ve seen the End of Time
It’s no big thing

The ocean deep is just a pond
I throw my coat for you to walk upon
The waves are tears that mist my eyes
The mighty wind is
just your sleepy sigh

When I sing to you the angels sing along
and yet I know there’s something wrong
The sky above is in your eyes
and I know that means
you’re lying on the ground

The sirens freeze my blood is cold
suddenly the world’s just too damn old
the future fading in your eyes
time and space collapse
in one last sigh

Mountains come and mountains go
but a love like ours will surely show
the stars themselves to be a fling
I’ve seen the End of Time
It’s no big thing

1999 08 01
(c)1999 TK Major