A New Adventure/Current Song List

Lord, is it cold here. Well below freezing the last couple days and more to come. Snow and ice all over everything. But almost warm in the house. I started giving lessons this morning at 9am and just finished at 6:30p with a couple hours break and a nap mid-afternoon. I had my weekly co-writing session this morning from 10a-noon.

The songwriting thing is new for me. I never really felt like I was meant for songwriting, that there were enough songs out there to learn . Maybe I just wasn’t inspired to do it and that was my excuse for not doing it more than there being ample material. I don’t have the same attitude towards tunes although I know there are literally hundreds of thousands of instrumentals out there. But I was inspired to write my own and when they come to me I feel obliged to listen. Now I’m getting the bug to write words. “The Final Frontier” David Grier calls it.

I was approached back last year about writing songs by local songwriter/teacher/instrumentalist/ bourbon fan Thomm Jutz about doing some co-writing. I don’t remember now how the conversation got started but at the time I wasn’t in a place where I could give it a lot of thought or time. But last Fall it started in as a weekly appointment online to co-write songs and has been going on since. I had received a large packet of information from a distant cousin Tammy who works in a historical research capacity for the state of Texas. In the packet was information on mostly the Galyean family, my daddy’s mother’s side of the family, Scotch Irish folks. There were pictures and records that I had never seen, some that I had. I had mentioned some of it to Thomm and he said, “We need to write that song”.

I have come to know that Thomm is liable to say those words at anytime during a casual conversation if he hears something that stirs his imagination. I am not the only one he writes with. There are several others that he co-writes with during the week, Tim Stafford (Blue Highway)and Tammy Rogers King (Steeldrivers) among the others. Anyway, as the weeks have passed I am finding that the practice of sitting down and writing about the stories on hand has been a very grounding and cleansing practice. I have come to appreciate not only Thomm’s speed with a rhyme but the creative outlet it provides. Before now I never wrote any verse that was not demanding attention from me. I have grown to look forward to the practice every week and find myself writing things on my own more and more often. I have become more interested in the meter within writing styles and the way some things just roll off the tongue. I have also found out just how limited my vocabulary feels at times.

So now we are up to nearly 30 songs completed. There are some very nice efforts in the group. Most are about the place I grew up and the people I knew. I guess it’s best to write about things I know. We’ve gotten into other topics now but today’s effort was about Mississippi and the memories I cherish being mostly only in my mind, more of a white-washed dream of a childhood that doesn’t show the pain that existed right alongside the rest. It felt good to write the song. I told Thomm that I would send him a check for the therapy session. He just laughed and said something about the songs being about real stuff and those are the best. I’m a mind to agree.

Here’s a list of what is currently written, all with melodies…

A Century Come and Gone

All Just In My Mind

Clarke County Education

Death and Blues

Dixie Planing Mill

Fiddling Veteran

Harmony Hill

Hunch Back Dancer

It’s Just As Well

Lois and Lizzy

Long Time Ago

Miss Skinner at the Ball

Molly Dimple

Old Valley Road Blues

On a Lazy Southbound Train

Outside Views

Riley’s Down in the Georgia Clay

River or a Train

Robin in the Springtime

Soldier Boys

Steel Blade Singing

Stories Left Untold

Sure Ain’t Worth the Worry

The Fangs Found Their Mark

To Be the Judge

Tony

Walking Home From St. Louis

Whistle Blow on By

and more coming…

I heartily recommend this practice to anyone that ever feels the urge just to write things down, to take stock and seize the moments that are passing by instead of it all just washing over us and being left to be forgotten. I have been guilty of it for years but not so much anymore. As I said, it helps to cleanse the soul and to make order of things, to bring the past into focus and make sense of it all. At a time when not a lot is making sense I find it a refuge of calm, of peace, of order that I was sorely needing.

Life is good. MC