Song A week 2016 - New Blues #2 - Funeral Blues - Live with The Ape Shit Army - February 26, 2016

The last two weekends have been spent doing gigs with my current band, The Ape Shit Army.   It's been nourishing and stimulating to practice and play regularly with this group of musicians:  Dan Weisenberger on guitar, Jody Johnson on upright bass, and Rad Juli on drums.  Sometimes entertainment juggernaut Hank Pine joins us for some apocalyptic cello licks, as he does on this recording. We are supplemented vocally at times by Jeanne Tolmie, Ana Bon Bon, and Betty-Ann Lampman.  This shit is fun.

The skeleton of this song was born and documented on Song A Week 2012. I wrote it as an "introductory song" for a songwriting workshop I was attending as a lead up to Arts Wells.  At that time it was New Blues #3....somewhere along the road of rehearsing and recording it became #2 and #3 became #2.  Likely, you don't care about these trivial details.  But dammit that's the meaningless crap I obsess about.  

Since it debuted here as a little baby song in a shitty disposable diaper, it's grown some balls.
This version was recorded live at Solstice Cafe in Victoria, BC,  Friday night on my zoom mic. Tonight I messed around with random video clips I've accumulated on my phone and Frankensteined together a "video" to provide visual stimulus.

 

Funeral Blues

Words and music by David P. Smith

I emote with icons

stumbling down the passage of time

with two thin dimes on my feet

silver dollars in my sockets

draped in a cool white sheet

I could see the storm a-rising

as I rolled on round the bend

I was thinking about the funerals

I've been planning to attend

in my cum-stained pants

my curly hair shirt

in my wagon of woe

dragging a world of hurt

with a sack of blood

a bottle of dirt

Lightning struck the cruise ship

it shattered like a pomegranate

and I clung to two hearts that keep me anchored on this planet

Chorus

Sightless and speechless

a maggot wriggles in the muck

contemplates the vagaries of old Lady Luck

Is a bum hand better

than no hand at all?

It it best to grovel in shit

or to climb up and risk the fall

Sun pierced through the clouds

a heavenly sword of wrath

and I said to the maggot

Yo maggot do the math

Chorus

I could see the storm a-rising

as I rolled on round the bend

I was thinking about my funeral

and who might attend

the haters

the lovers

my sisters

and brothers

Stars rained from the sky

tiny daggers in the night

and I said to myself hey Davey boy

it's fight or flight

it's fight or flight

it's fight or flight

Chorus

Song A Week 2016 - Picture of Me with Aaron Ellingsen and Jeanne Tolmie

One of the best things about doing this blog is using it as a catalyst to get together with friends and see what happens. Aaron Ellingsen, Jeanne Tolmie and I are frequent collaborators and it was fun and interesting to get together and have a run at this song.

Picture of Me is a song I wrote a few years back that will be released on my upcoming album New Blues.  The studio version is a pretty cool stripped down arrangement - just accordion, Marek Tyler on drums, and my daughter Chloe Lampman singing backups.  This version - which we jammed out and recorded in about an hour or so - has a Cajun folkey feel thanks to Aaron Ellingsen's fiddle arrangement. 

 Picture of Me 

Do you remember that picture of me in a wheat field with that lean brown dog

his hound dog dink was lipstick pink and a red-tail hawk flew over and gave us a wink

And the Alberta sky was as blue as the Aegean Sea

do you remember 

remember that picture of me

And the Alberta sky was as blue as the Aegean Sea

will you remember

will you remember me

And a great long soft white cloud like a feather

stretched across the sky

And it was two hours and twenty-five minutes

before I said good-bye

Do you remember 

do you remember that picture of me

will you remember 

will you remember me

Do you remember 

do you remember that picture of me

will you remember 

will you remember me

Do you remember that picture of me in the bright white light with a galloping horse

my eyes were two black holes

portals to an underworld hotel

where the menacing ceilings hover over cold cold beds

like conquering aliens from the darkness over head

and dirty curtains guard the windows where we sleep

will you remember

will you remember me

And a thick soft swollen grey cloud like the belly of a whale 

filled the sky

And it was twenty-two years twenty two days

two hours and twenty-five minutes

after I said good-bye

Do you remember 

do you remember that picture of me

will you remember 

will you remember me

Do you remember 

do you remember that picture of me

will you remember 

will you remember me

Song A Week 2016 - #1! - Blues In The Bottle

In 2012 I attempted to do a song a week blogpost.  I didn't quite make it, weeks were missed as the year unfolded, especially towards the end.  Still, it was ultimately fruitful in that the construct spurred me to play more music and create a body of work.  I did a fair amount of research on the cover songs I did and found out some interesting stuff, I think some of the posts were a good read, some of the songs were good performances, and most importantly it was a catalyst for collaborating with other musicians and artists who I admire and love to play with - Rachelle Reath, Marek Tyler, Emily Goodenough, Eric Gallipo, David "The Great Giffoni" Gifford, Grayson Walker, Jeanne Tolmie, Troy "Big Bubba" Cook.   It was very cool to track the hits on the blog, where they came from in the world, which posts were most popular, and I cultivated a YouTube presence which was turning out to be the legacy of the blog after it ended.  

Then the weird Google shit hit the fan.  My account was screwed around with and the videos, though they were still on YouTube, would not come up in a search. It was pretty much impossible to get them to come up, even with very specific searches.....and it still is.  This year my wife Betty-Ann has endeavoured to re-post the blogs, an attempt to fan the dying embers, an act I am grateful for.  At the same time it begs the question....why not get off your ass and do it again.   
                      

 Dum-Dum.             Dingaling.             Ding Dong. 

I'm running late!  It's goddam January 12th!  What the fuck.  Here's the first one.  When I first picked up the accordion one of my prime influences was the Holy Modal Rounders. Their irreverent, humourous, raw approach to old folk and hillbilly music gave me the license to have a go.  Here's a song I've known for years but never played until a couple of weeks ago. Blues In The Bottle.

Here's the whole Holy Modal Rounders album that I was listening to at the time on a worn out cassette....first song is Blues In The Bottle

I haven't done exhaustive research, but I believe this is the original version of the song, recorded by Prince Albert Hunt's Texas Ramblers  in 1928.  It was also recorded, and is perhaps better known, by the great Lightnin' Hopkins.  I would venture a guess that The Rounders were listening to this version.

Here's me doing the Holy Modal Rounders' Same Old Man last time I did this song a week biz.

And this is The Dogbreath Brothers channeling the Holy Modal Rounders Black-Eyed Suzy.....beer-fuelled and live to 4-track cassette yo. (Click link below the pic)

click here: BLACK-EYED SUZY - THE DOGBREATH BROTHERS

On Top Of Old Smokey - October 27, 2012

If you're like me, the On Top Of Old Smokey you grew up with was a goofy bastardized campfire song.  Maybe in the back of my mind I knew there was a real song, maybe saw it in the track listing on a Burl Ives album or something, maybe the plaintive folk melody was lodged in my consciousness like a fish hook....but what I knew was this:

On top of spaghetti all covered with cheese

I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed

It rolled off the table and onto the floor

then my poor meatball rolled out of the door

It rolled through the garden and under a bush

then my poor meatball was covered with mush

Early next summer that very same bush

was covered in meatballs, meatballs and mush

Yah I know.....pretty profound shit.  Hilarious. A real side-splitter.  A few years ago I received as a gift from my wife and daughter some previously unreleased Hank Williams radio recordings - The Mother`s Best Sessions.  More about the Mother`s Best story later.  There is a complete 15 CD box set of this material, while the release I have is 3 CD`s that distills the seventy-two 15 minute shows into an excellent overview.  There are the hits, sometimes just written or recently recorded, unexpected covers like Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain and Cherokee Boogie, a whole load of gospel with lots of harmonies from The Drifting Cowboys, and a version of On Top of Old Smokey that was a revelation to me.  I never knew what a heartbreaking lament it was - but I guess Hank did. Check it out

In the intro, Hank refers to a it being one of the "top pop tunes in the nation."  This is likely a reference to the version by The Weavers, an abysmal piece of shit I couldn't bring myself to post here even in the interests of history.

A couple of weeks ago I stayed up too late drinking beer, playing piano and singing with Jeanne Tolmie, and On Top Of Old Smokey was one of the songs we played.  It got me all fired up about the song (again) and Saturday afternoon, Rachelle Reath and Jeanne came over and we worked out a version of it....here it is.  

The lyrics we sang are Hank's version (which differs to many versions in the second verse) with a few of our own extras and twists.

On Top Of Old Smokey - Traditional

On top of Old Smokey

all covered with snow

I lost my true lover

from courtin' too slow

On top of Old Smokey

I went there to weep

for a false-hearted lover

is worse than a thief

A thief he will rob you

and take what you've saved

But a false-hearted lover

will lay you in the grave

The grave will decay you 

and turn you to dust

The price you will always pay

when you misplace your trust

They'll hug you and kiss you

and tell you more lies 

than crossties on a railroad

or stars in the sky

On top of Old Smokey

Old Smokey so high

where the birds up in heaven

can hear my sad cries

On top of Old Smokey

all covered with snow

I lost my true lover

from courtin' too slow

Mothers Best Sessions

The Mother's Best shows were broadcast live between 7:15 and 7:30 a.m. on WSM out of Nashville, Tennessee and Hank was paid $100 a week for recording the shows that usually consisted of one country song, one instrumental and a gospel song to close the show. During the 15 minute show Hank and the announcer Louie Buck would pitch the flour in between Hank's songs and Hank even wrote a theme song for the show.

"I love to have that gal around
Her biscuits are so nice and brown
Her pies and cakes beat all the rest
Cause she makes them all with Mother's Best"

Back in those days if a radio show wasn't actually live, it was recorded live onto a 16 inch acetate and that's what the Mother's Best sessions are.  Hank and the Drifting Cowboys had a grueling touring schedule.  All the travel was by car and adding to the grind was the obligation of Opry regulars to return to Nashville most weekends, no matter where they were, to perform. The transcriptions gave WSM and its listeners a daily dose of the Lovesick Blues Boy, just as though he was there right in studio.  These recordings have a compelling immediacy and show off the relaxed musicianship and professionalism of a seasoned touring band and their dynamic leader.

At some point in history, WSM was purging its vaults and the Mother's Best acetates were destined to be dumped.  WSM employee and huge Hank fan Les Leverett recognized their value and saved them from oblivion.  What followed was years of legal battles between the estate of Hank Williams in the persons of Jett Williams and Hank Jr and "other parties"...yeah, I can't seem to find out on the internet exactly who.  While Leverett had given the acetates to Jett Williams (who had gone through a long legal battle to prove she was Hank's daughter)  a copy had also gone to someone else, possibly Drifting Cowboys bass player Hilious Butrum.  

Whatever the murky details are, the end result is an amazing musical document.  A relaxed Hank, joking  and talking, a band on top of its game, a group of musicians delving into their extensive catalogue.  A real piece of country music history.  After researching this blog, I'm feeling like I'm going to have to get the 15 CD set, if only to hear Hank's venereal disease PSA.  "Stars In Her Eyes" is a 14 minute soap opera than Hank sings and recites, interspersed with running remarks from woman who portrays an unfaithful wife who contracts syphilis.