Song #93. In Between Kingfishers

Kingfisher's Sam M. Walton will ‘splain you from his grave
Just why he can’t be undersold
He's was where I bought this brand new tent
Run me less than one month's rent
Or a-tenth the mortgage I used to owe
‘Til that paper was worth more than the house and the bank said: “Go!"

Still, winter and Fresno won't meet up again until sometime late Halloween
But by then who knows just how bad things just might be
So for now, like the other families
In all those other tents
We’re just got caught up a little in between
A little in-between.

Folks say California’s a garden of Eden Abhez ‘Nature Boys’
Clever as their tans, and beach-stoned to a man
But here in this inland No-Town, lives remain
‘Bout as easy as fallin’ 'neath a train.
Gov’ner closed New Jack City, but said we can move on up to his state fair
Where his state cops can watch us closer there.

Summer and Sacramento bake you drier than a stone
200 miles north of all you had and all you’d known.
Strung out like a wire hung
From what your future was to where your future's gone,
And you’re left hanging in between and on your own
Forgotten and alone.

The Kingfish Huey P. Long sang there’s ‘nough for folks to share
And if you work hard ‘n play fair you can even be a millionaire
They called him a demagogue, communist, cracker and clown
He sang “Every man a king but no man wears a crown”
He built bridges and highways and the hospital at LSU
'Til a doctor shot him in 1935 and he bled to death at the age of 42.

Woody Guthrie and F.D.R.
Sit with Sam and Huey in an abandoned car
Behind a vacant Wal-Mart in a town like them that’s died.
Huey strums Woodrow’s guitar
And sings a song for working folks with kids who gotta live in their cars.
Franklin whispers sweetly, “In this light, Samuel, you look just like Eleanor.”
And Kingfisher’s Sam M. Walton can’t recall just what the hell his whole life was for,
Although he’s sure it was gold
Or maybe it was green
Or maybe something in between.

-April 2009

The notes were made on 3/11/2012.  I think there is a great deal here in this one.  I began thinking about this problem really once I became unemployed.  Like all doctors and a lot of other folks, I never thought I experience unemployment in my life.  While I was looking for a job in January of 2009, I thought I might be landing one in Fresno, California. I saw the pictures in the paper about the tent cities in Fresno, and in Sacramento behind the Blue Diamond Almond Factory (never knew almonds came from factories…go figure).  I heard about how Governor Schwarzenegger wanted to move all the tent cities from what the homeless had named “New Jack City” to the California State Fairgrounds. I thought about the old 1930's Hooverilles of sepia tone photographs, and about the New Hoovervilles, and where did those newish brightly colored tents came from.  I figured they came from Walmart, where they would have been cheap.  That led me to research on Sam M. Walton.  I learned he was born in Kingfisher, OK.  Then I thought about The Kingfish, Huey P. Long,  I don’t think one can come up with two more different views about Capitalism than these two men.  So all these ideas got rolled into this song.

There is an mp3 of the song here, and a video of the song I performed at The PaulHenry Gallery on 1/6/2011.

Also here a link to something I wrote I posted on facebook called “Folks Say California's a Garden of Eden (Abhez Nature Boys) - Loaves & Fishes”,  and an earlier essay I had originally posted on myspace  called “All The News That Gives Me Fits...”

"The lead article on the front page of The New York Times on Thursday March 26, 2009 was about the tent cities springing up in California and other places...The New Hoovervilles. Our national pride is soaring.

Sacramento California Tent City - The New Hooverville

I seem to remember that it was during the Reagan Administration that the homeless in this country unsubmerged from the netherworld of "stuff that we can safely ignore" to "a nuisance shame to reproach and annoy us". Folks stopped referring to those on the street as "bums", "winos", "beggars" or "hoboes", and began labeling them as "homeless" or "street people"...a Lamarckian approach to reclassifying these folks as a rather different sort of pest.

So this all brought up lots of thoughts:

Heading to work early one Sunday morning in 1986, driving past the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, and watching a guy wake up on a park bench."

Jack", an old song of mine which came from that observation.

Thinking about William Carlos Williams' poem "The Young Housewife" and its important idea that as writers we "use" our subjects...his comparing the woman to a falling leaf and then later his grinding up leaves under the tires of his passing car.

Tearing that poem out of my copy of the Abridged Norton Anthology of English Poetry and giving the pages to Hugh Blumenfeld in the field in Kerrville,Texas where I first met him. Living in a tent in those fields myself, albeit voluntarily, for a week or so at the end of each May for about ten years in a row while so many new friends lived around me in other tents. Playing "Jack" at the ballad tree at Kerrville...although it wasn't the on the hill but in their little theater because of an incoming rain storm, how a bunch of other performers came over to me after asking after the song. Debuting "Jack" at Earl's. Chris Farrell's telling me that it really was something'.

Volunteering at The St. Martin de Porres homeless shelter run by Sister Connie and Sister Theresa and really how very little I contributed. 

Living with my wife's terror about our losing our home if my own unemployment continues.

Hearing Phil Ochs' song "There but for Fortune". The first time I remember ever hearing a Phil Ochs' song, "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends", performed by Todd Kelly with his twelve string at Earl's Pub open mike. Thinking how great I thought that song was and how much I enjoyed his version. How incredibly annoying Todd Kelly really was, and all those crap quality cassette tapes he would fob off of him and Dwain Story. Later hearing about his last job delivering pizzas and that one day he just sat down on an apartment stoop after delivering a pie and dropping dead.

Dwain Story

Thinking about the day he and Dwain Story coming over to my house to sell me Dwain's Guild for 200 bucks so he could get his Martin. Learning about Dwain's years with the Knob Lick Upper 10,000 and those old LPs on Mercury and his being managed by The Albert Grossman!

The Knob Lick Upper 10,000 two album covers on Mercury

- Pete Childs, Erik Jacobsen, and Dwain Story.

The back covers with original signatures from

Pete Childs, Erik Jacobsen, and Dwain Story - Produced by Al Grossman!

I still remember Dwain's songs “Wendigo” and of course "Good Pussy 4 Sale", whose heroine's seven-inch clitoris that could ball the jack. Dwain played great even after having been institutionalized for years for schizophrenia which turned out to be bipolar disorder. He needed a different medication. First time I hung out with Dwain at a short-lived open mike in Wicker Park (pre-Liz Phair, pre Urbus Orbus). I have loads of memories of this…my buying him and me a pizza while this really really awful comedian-cum-lately did about forty minutes laughing at his own pathetic jokes all about his wife…Dwain telling me about the transient hotel he lived in…Dwain complaining about how Detroit Junior got the gig the previous weekend at Earl's earning himself fifty bucks…Dwain telling me that if he had that fifty how he could afford to take a prostitute. How wide my eyes got listening to him talk. I also recall how the kitchen staff came out to hear me play that night. Did I play "Jack" that night? Naw...I couldn't have. Hadn't even written "She's Crazy on You (Shiela)" about Dwain and that conversation.The Dysfunctionells were playing "Sheila" with the great Peter Stampfel in Philly after Vence's car nearly caught fire.  When I mentioned that the song was about a songwriter in Chicago, and that the Guild I was playing I had bought off him, Peter asked who I was talking about. I told him it was Dwain and he jumps up…”I KNOW DWAIN STORY!” Wow. Dwain came to hear us play with Pete at the Lunar... a bit of a reunion. I even once had " to repair" that old Guild using a stick I found on the campground at The Kerrville Folk Festival. In 1998 I saw Dwain sitting on a Lincoln Park Zoo park bench case open for tips. Not much in his case. Dropped a twenty in as I left.

And Dwain is still with us, too.  He used to hang at The Gallery Cabaret, but apparently he got band.  I hope he is still doing okay.  In 2010 I made about 25 copies of the CD with his two old Mercury LPs on them, with covers and all, so he could sell them as he busked.  I hope he is still doing okay.

Wendigo was his big song. Remember studying way early one morning during my pysch rotation in 1989 and finding out that wendigo is an American Indian form of psychosis.

So now I have been thinking about tents and rents and mortgages and park benches and the weather and capital punishment and raising your own chickens and as it turned out I was writing another song at Winning's last night...

Kingfisher's Samuel M. Walton shouts from his grave "Won't be undersold". Got me this big brand new tent
At only 'bout one month's rent
Way less than half the old mortgage if truth be told
Sure, we loved that house but the roof was too old
Winter and Fresno won't meet up again until late Halloween
Like the other families in all the other tents we're just a little in between
Times just caught some us up a little too in between
California Eden Abe's nature boy has grown up insane
Living here's just about as easy as fallin 'neath a train
This morning's cops spread the word
Quick as Hollywood polishes turd
"Take your tent down you're off to the fair"
The Austrian's muscle made room for us there
The water there's safer and clean
For those here who found themselves caught up and in between
Times just caught some of us up a little too in between

...more later"

This will take you back to the complete song list.

Song #94. All Our Tomorrows

Look
It’s a brand new me
Stoney broke 'n broken down
‘N so low down ‘n so let’s dive deep down in
Look, I took my wooden heart and carved me this gypsy violin
Listen while it laughs just like a mother's crying
Let its sorrow burrow into you
A brand new tattoo

We’re sailing cruelly random seas
The effluent of time and stupidity
On shore in rock crags pools evolve
Slippery as history
Here, the now and then squirm and throb and teem
Alive one ebbing tide
Just to drown again like stones
Like truths we’ve cast aside

Fallen seas always rise

So haul all your tomorrows along with you
Don’t ever let them go
Don’t let go

Look
What we are
Bodies strewn up in the crowns of trees
(No better place for hiding leaves),
Pause in awkward dangle awaiting autumn coloring
Look, I really loved you
But you just can’t take it in
I really loved you
It’s so hard to know the one’s who’s true
From those put here to fuck with you

So you’d best haul all your tomorrows along with you
Don’t let them go too far
Tomorrow’s what we are

Haul all your tomorrows along with you
Don’t ever let them go
Don’t let go

-July 2009

The notes were made on 3/5/2012.  I wish I knew where this song came from or where it was going.  I like some of the language in it but I am not sure it hangs together really.   I know I was near rock bottom when I wrote this and was wondering how I would ascend again, and if and when I did what I would take with me. Tomorrow was all I could come up with…which is interesting in that the words “squirm and throb” were nicked from the boys who sang “There is no future”.  The references to tide pools came from one of my most wonderful days ever, tide pooling in Laguna Beach with the Peter Stampfel family back in the summer of 2001. I need to bring this song back from the dead just to see if there as anything really there.  I recorded a backing track for this one in 2009.  Should listen to it again maybe.  Maybe relearn the song.

 

This will take you back to the complete song list.

Song #95. Ain’t It So Nice Outside Today?

"There but for fortune may go you or go I" - Phil Ochs

Ain’t it so nice outside today?
Ain’t it so nice outside today?
There’s so much you want to do.
Ain’t it so nice outside today?

Back's been broke a couple times.
Neck just won’t bend quite right.
Lost his left eye in some bar fight.
Her shoulder’s froze up tight.

They can’t mount a flight of stairs.
Can’t climb out of a chair.
He said, 'My head got busted with a 2 X 4,
And since that day doc, it’s like I got no soul no more.

And it hurts so bad,
And it’s hurt for so damn long now.
The pain won’t ever go away.
But I gotta live another day.'
We all wanna live another day.
'Cause there's just so much we gotta do
And it's so nice outside today'.

Sister been deaf since she was born.
Brother been blind since he was two
From something he got from momma when he got born.
Whatever it was carried momma off too.

The good hand keeps dropping things.
The foot feels like it’s made of wood.
Can’t walk. Can’t talk. Can’t stand. Can’t sit.
There’s blood everytime you take a shit.

And it hurts so bad,
And you ain’t worked for so damn long now.
Boss won't risk your coming back.
And if you don’t work, well you don’t get paid
So you can't live to work another day.
And there’s so much you still can do.
And ain’t it nice outside today?

The nurse, she said good luck
And give you these pills.
But you don't know what they do.
But these pills just don't see you through.
It's like helplessness is just another word for nothing left to lose.

There but for fortune

She said 'Doc, the meth ran out.,
And I crashed real hard
February. The cops found me down
Outside an E/R that'd been shut down.

Seems I’d slept too long
I slept too hard on my right arm.
Doctor said weren’t nothin’ he could do.
He told me he had to cut it off before time I’d come to.'

And the pain so bad sometimes.
And it’s hurt for too damn long now.
I can’t even feed myself.
Didn't Jesus even ask God himself?
Didn't Jesus ask
Why can’t I live another day?
You know that there’s so much I still have to do
And G-d ain't it so nice outside today.
Ain’t it so nice outside today?'

helpless
hopeless
aimless
homeless
pointless
toothless
limbless
useless
faceless
worthless
lifeless
yet it's
don't cry don't cry don't cry

‘Cause there’s still so much that you can do
And ain’t it so nice outside today?

-November 2009

The notes were made on 3/5/2012.  I think there is a great deal here in this one.  Everything in this song happened, again and again, to folks whose greatest aspirations were to be relieved of some of their suffering and to not feel like they were throw away people.  And many would never meet those basic aspirations.  Wrote about the origins of this one in“Charlie Holley and The Cripples” found here.  Definitely got somehelp with this one from my dear brothers Jack Hardy and Andrew Calhoun.  They both said, “It’s go to be IN the song man…”. 

There is a video of the song here recorded at The Paul Henry Gallery on 1/6/2011.

 

This will take you back to the complete song list.

I made a rough home recording of this song linked here (along with many others) needs to be properly recorded as soon as I can get 5K that doesn’t need to pay bills.  Dream on….

Song #96. Nine Is The Lucky Number (for Jeff and Emi on their wedding day)

Five hundred years after the war

(The one Thucydides retold)

Or about a hundred since

Julius C. had remade  

What Lucius M. had so well razed

A letter penned in Ephesus

Sailed across a wine-dark sea

180 miles west

To Corinth on the Peloponnese

It’s subject, immorality

And faith and hope and charity

The greatest being charity

But when we stow our children’s things

(Translations by an English King)

Charity is replaced by love

(Very much a marriage thing)

Horns of jealousy are veiled

Women’s teeth are painted black

One thousand and one paper cranes

Sail gold across pacific seas.

From another Island Nation-State

To an Eastern sea-board town

Two families fuse their two

Southwest mile high desert kin

Three times three (san-san-kudo)

Stand with your greatest human flaws

Hate and pride and ignorance

Behind a 14 welders lens

And you can look straight at the sun

And reread Paul’s 1C13

-June 2010

The notes were made on 3/4/2012.  Jeff asked me if I would like to write a song for their wedding.  I gathered ideas slowly and is often the case in these matters I didn’t complete the thing until the morning before the wedding.  In the research about weddings in Japan, I learned that certain traditions were incorporated from the west, particularly Paul’s First Corinthians 13, which is included in so many western weddings as well.  Since this wedding was also a melding of these traditions, Emi from Japan and Jeff from not Japan, this seemed worth exploring. And the references within 1C13 gave access to historical and image references to play on in the song...the reference to the welder's glass compared "through the glass, darkly".

In the photo above Jefff and Emi are perfroming the San-San-Kudo ceremony.  According to web, "Sansankudo no Sakazuki" generally called "sakazuki-goto," is the traditional custom at every wedding performed according to Shinto rites - Long ago in Japan, sake played an important role in tying together the gods and common people. Therefore, one would never drink alone, but always in groups. There are now many old customs which have lost their meaning or popularity, but the drinking of sake at wedding ceremonies, known as "Sansankudo no sakazuki", a major focus of the ceremony, continues to thrive even in modern culture. "Sansankudo no sakazuki" brings the gods in between humans to help them, through the sharing of sake, come closer together and create a bond of friendship.”  “San-san-kudo literally means "three, three, nine times." The cup used at san-san-kudo is a special one called "sakazuki," which is only used to drink sake and no other beverages. The bride and groom take turns taking three sips each of three different bowls of sake, each one larger than the next. One does not drink the sake like a 'shot' but rather tilting the cup up very gradually and sipping lightly. Three is an indivisible number, and it is considered a sacred number in Buddhism. Nine means triple happiness. But just as the san-san-kudo sake sips may not be altogether delicious, the couple's marriage life may not always be delightful, but they will have to overcome their hardships with the co-operative spirit of the san-san-kudo. By exchanging the nuptial sake sips—three times three—husband and wife are united.”  I liked the notion of three times three, and the three words in Paul 1C13, and the two different translations over time.

I have only played this song once at the wedding but hope to relearn it again, although the music will certainly be different than on that day.  I would also love to have this song translated properly into Japanese and then to try to learn it in.

This will take you back to the complete song list.

Song #97. Somewhere

Somewhere

It’s almost certain

Somewhere

Somewhere it's almost certain life has finally wrestled free from fear.

Somewhere it's almost certain there is a God who could love us,

But man, He ain't here.

But it’s almost certain somewhere

Somewhere it’s almost certain hope can’t hurt you.  Hope only makes you strong.

Somewhere it’s almost certain no one claims something’s right when it’s certainly wrong.

It's almost certain

We’re running somewhere in a coward’s parade.

From a world that is poisoned, broken and sick.

Go on.  Try to breathe freely.  You’ll drown in shit.

What dreams you've left obscure your view.

The stones on your chest ain't new.

It's almost certain

They were hewn somewhere.

Somewhere maybe men know just how hard it is to walk in another man’s shoes.

Somewhere all the so-called lovers of Jesus know

Lies are called lies, not "the news"

It’s almost certain

Is it true in their somewhere no one has ever died?

A somewhere where nature’s defied?

Where you can live unwounded and clean

With nothing to learn or to lose

‘Cause you’re sure?  Or a fool?

It’s almost certain

Somewhere*

You don’t need to die just to be reborn.

No man lives a life that’s untorn.

But you’re being cheated by powerful men

Who think they’ve nothing to learn or to lose

‘Cause they’re sure

You’re a fool.

They’re so certain

They’re somewhere

-October 2010     *Verse in Italics was in an earlier draft

The notes were made on 3/4/2012.  “Ever been lied to?.” –Paul Simon’s “Born At The Right Time”.   This is a piano song.  The song is about being lied to, especially lying to yourself. And about certainty.  And faith.  

There was a quote from “All In The Family” that always stuck with me.  Archie Bunker is talking about religion with his son-in-law and explains, “Faith is believing in stuff that no one in their right mind would believe.”   I think Archie was paraphrasing Karl Popper.  Studies have shown that humans thirst forcertainty as part of their survival mechanism.  And I ain't no different, but it is this thirst that leads us to be nothing more than pawns in others hands, especially when we are hurting and lost and lonely. There’s a sucker reborn every minute, eh?  How many times do we need to relearn this lesson?  The song owes an unpaid debt to Vernon Tonges’s brilliant phrase “almost certain” I blatantly stole from his masterful and magisterial song “Thunder Goose”.  And of course, another debt to Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg.

There is a homespun video of an earlier draft of this here.

This will take you back to the complete song list.

Song #100. Think What You Will

Portrait of Senator Rick Santorum made entirely of
male pornographic images

"The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American Left who hates Christendom. ... What I'm talking about is onward American soldiers. What we're talking about are core American values."  Rick Santorum at a South Carolina campaign stop on February 22, 2011. 

Think what you will.

You can say just what you think.

It’s a free country still.

Tell us what’s gone wrong.

Tell us just what’s at stake

If we deny

What we all know Jesus hates

About some of our so called "citizens".

 

Everything you think

You know you know is true

Don’t you?

And everywhere you go

You find those folks who

See things just like you do.

Which only goes to prove

That those who disagree

Well, they're just misinformed                              

Or more likely, what they are are liars

Intellectual provocateurs

Defilers

Heretics

And of course you think

That no real patriot could shrink

From the greater task at hand

 

To root out those who disagree, 

To punish those who’ve earned our calumny,

To sever the cancer that corrupts

Our Lord Jesus' country

Only then will men finally see

The wisdom to agree

With righteous men’s advice

Your righteous men’s advice

Or, put more clearly,

Rich white men's avarice.

 

 -September 2011

Here is a video of the song performed at the Gallery. 

The notes were made on 3/4/2012: The music for this one has a bit of Spanish feel…maybe ala Dylan/Levy’s “One More Cup of Coffee”.   Am I suggesting a connection with the themes in this song and the Inquisition?  Ask me later. So far I have only played this one once…and that was a previous draft at that. I have certainly been spending a lot of time lately dwelling on the noise spewing from the mouths of these republican corporate shills, not just Santorum.  Although Santorum is a perfect exemplar, who preach hate and intolerance, and who convey some kind of twisted sincerity, a poisonous earnestness, that not only are their views reasonable, but also that they reflect some silent majority of people.  However, I fear the truth is that these hate-mongers represent, speak for,  a larger than acceptable minority of scared ignorant hate-filled morons that populate the tea parties, evangelical unChrist-like hateful Christian shitheads,  the Republicans, the Klan, and the Survivalists and the Neo-Nazis, and whatever else inhumane human fecal matter that floats in that fetid pool of our citizenry.  If the Christians could try a little harder to read St. Paul’s Book of Romans and try to get it. 

There is only one fact that has been true, is true, and will always be true, about all human beings.  That fact is that some portion of what anyone person knows to be absolutely true, is not true at all.  Further, it is the heterogeneity of opinions about this fact has led to almost all of the inhumanity of man versus his fellow men from the beginning of time to now.

Which side are you on?