When I am in DC, on weekdays I go to my office near the US Capitol. It is on the Senate side, so for those who know the city I take the train to Union Station and walk a few blocks. Like many train stations, Union Station attracts street musicians.
While we all have heard the stories of undiscovered diamonds busking in the streets, the truth is many of the musicians are just okay. A lot of it is singing performed over karaoke loops. But it’s all great — as someone who has tried it himself, I admire anyone who has the courage to get up in front of people and perform. And I love music.
The unwritten deal of street music is, if you stop and listen you are honor-bound to drop a dollar (or more) in the hat. Sometimes, to be honest, I just walk on by because even though I want to support, I am in a hurry, feel stressed, the music doesn’t grab me, or I don’t have any cash on me and don’t want to break the deal.
This morning, a clear, crisp, bright Fall day, I was stopped short by this:
That’s Brian Williams, playing the banjo. I was not only moved to stop and listen, but to talk to him a while. The figure he cut, and his sound, just entered my spirit. I asked if I could video him and he agreed.
Brian is a multi instrumentalist (guitar, cello, bass, banjo) who has been playing since 1968. Recently his guitar was stolen and he was without instrument. He says he met “an Irish man in Georgetown” who was having trouble finishing a song. Brian finished it for him, and in return the man gave him this banjo. He was going to sell it, but the music store told him it was a vintage 1930’s banjo, so he kept it.
Earlier today a friend of mine was talking about a difficult time in his life and it reminded me of a song I wrote some time ago that used his experience as a starting point. My friend spent time living under a bridge after going through some difficult times. Thing was, he didn’t see his situation as particularly bad — he had a roof, after all, and others he knew did not. It took him some time to change his life, but now that bridge is a distant memory.
That bridge and my friend’s attitude toward it stuck with me, and I eventually wrote a song. There’s a song by Nickel Creek that is from the standpoint of a lighthouse that I was into at the time, and I tried to imagine a relationship between my friend and the bridge — from the bridge’s point of view.
I never recorded this song with any of the bands I have been in, but I did create a demo of the song in 2012, as I was collecting songs for a project I have in the back of my mind called “Exile’s Hymnal.”
This song is called “Nowhere Else At All.” I hope you like it.
Nowhere Else At All
By Brad Rourke
They roll
Across my back
Soul after soul after soul
To work
Back again
It makes no sense or difference where they go
If I could choose my day
And only do what spoke to me
I would crumble into rubble
And I’d leave the road alone
To make its noise
Only thing
I got no choice
So here I’ll stand
Alone for one and all
The bridge from nowhere near
Crossing over into
Nowhere else at all
Above they drive
Below they walk
A backpack and a gun to call their home
No one sees
Beneath their feet
The city stretches out take its own
In the rain
That never stops
There’s shelter underneath my steady back
For a man
Who’s lost his luck
Who don’t suppose it’s ever coming back
I’ll be the walls and roof
All for this man to give him proof
That something he relied on
Listened to him when he thought
He’d lost his voice
Only thing
I got no choice
So here I’ll stand
And shelter one and all
The bridge from nowhere near
Crossing over into
Nowhere else at all
The bridge from nowhere near
Crossing over into
Nowhere else at all
Today I happened to play an old playlist while I took a run. In the mix, a song came on that took me back and sent me on a reverie. I thought I’d share it.
Some years ago I was in a band called The West End along with my good friends and neighbors Monique DeFrees (drums), Mike Shawn (keys and vox), and Matthew Taylor (bass). I played guitar and sang. Later, another good friend, Kate Gordon joined and improved our vocals immensely. We played about 2/3 covers and 1/3 originals — it was the originals that kept me in the game because I loved writing and performing new songs. I saw them as similar to blog posts or essays.
(Most people don’t go out to see original live music except by established bands so we had to also play covers that people recognized. We made them our own, but it still was never as fun as for me playing our own music.)
Eventually, we saved enough money by playing gigs to pay for recording studio time, a producer, and CD duplication — and we had ourselves an album! It was called This Ride Could Be My Last.
The song that came on my playlist was from that album. I hadn’t listened in a while. You know what? It holds up.
But I wanted to share a bit about where the song came from. There are two songs on the album that relate directly to a professional project I had been working on. The songs are “Father Lou” and “They Go.”
The Project: End of Life Decisions
At the time I wrote these songs, I was embroiled in research for an issue guide I was working on for a client, the Kettering Foundation. The topic of the issue guide (a report designed to support public deliberation on a difficult topics) was the end of life. Who decides what happens at the end of life? How do we as a society want to think about the notion of assisted suicide? Euthanasia? How do we balance personal freedom with sound and fair policy? More than perhaps many such pieces of work, the topic was quite wrenching.
The first song that comes out of this period is a quick little number called “Father Lou.” It started out (in my mind) as a very slow, dirge-like tune — but my bandmates wisely told me to speed it up. Click the player below to listen:
This song came to me sort of fully-formed, and it unfolded in my mind all while I was on a run (like today’s) through a sketchy area in Memphis, Tennessee.
Part of the work we do in developing issue guides like the one I was working on is hold focus groups with ordinary people to talk about the issue at hand. We want to see how real people talk about the issue, what their chief concerns are, and how they start out thinking about the issue. Focus group houses are in all kinds of neighborhoods, some fancy and some marginal. I find myself fairly often in marginal areas because we want to get “truly ordinary” folks in our groups, not the professional types that are more easily recruited to take part in focus groups in fancy facilities (these usually cater to corporate clients).
Anyway, there I was in Memphis, and the group was later that night but it was mid-day. So I went for a run through the neighborhood. I came upon a set of city blocks where it seemed like every other driveway had a car on blocks. The other driveways also had cars in them, and it took me a while to figure out why this might seem out of place to me: It was midday and in many other neighborhoods these cars would all be at work. But here they were.
So the lines that would become the third verse popped into my head. And then the song sort of built itself as I ran.
It’s not about end of life questions, it is actually about a character I had in my head at the time — a priest who goes to a Skid Row area thinking he is going to rescue everyone there. Little does he know that people see him as a figure of fun and ridicule, and eventually they turn on him.
(At the end of this post you can read the full lyrics.)
Song as Issue Guide: “They Go.”
Another song on the album is more directly related to this end of life issue guide. The stories I heard as I listened to focus groups while working on this guide got deep into my head and rattled around. One day, while taking a stroll outside a Dayton hotel, this scenario of someone stuck alone in a hospital with a terminal illness came into my head. Somehow this mixed with an image I had of a family member who had recently had heart surgery — he complained to me in a conversation about how the nurses come and go all through the night while he tried to rest and recuperate.
These two ideas mixed together and I wrote a song about this person alone in a hospital, with a terminal illness, writing a letter to a friend. The two friends had promised one another on some drunken night to “take care of it” if either was hospitalized and incapacitated, destined for a lingering death.
So this song popped out: The chorus is based on the “coming and going” all night, while the overall theme comes directly from the thoughts running through my head as I developed a framework for public deliberation on the topic of end of life decisions.
I hope you like them.
The Lyrics
In case you are interested (I usually want to know them), here are the lyrics for each song:
FATHER LOU
By Brad Rourke
There’s a certain part of town Where the fire trucks never run There’s nothing there to burn That would be missed by anyone There’s a sidewalk over there Behind the sheriff’s impound lot Where bedrooms are reserved By spreading cardboard out
Into this place comes a man Trying to do the best he can Sent there on a mission from the lord Save these lost sheep from the sword
He walks these crooked streets Spreading handouts all around Like everyone’s a mark And the carnival’s in town They all stick out their hands And gladly take his grace Some laugh behind his back And others in his face
How many times before he learns Watch your back or get your fingers burned Saving souls is no work for the weak You’ll catch your death just standing on the street
There’s a certain part of town Where cars stay home all day Some on blocks and others got no place To go to anyway Remember Father Lou He used to hang around down here Until we jacked him for his wallet And his body disappeared
Into this place came a man Trying to do the best he can Sent here on a mission from the lord Save us lost sheep from the sword Save us lost sheep from the sword Save us lost sheep from the sword
And, finally:
THEY GO By Brad Rourke
Come and see me where I’m at I wish I could pay for that You’ll have to make your own way I might not last another day
They come, they go Always at the same time They come, they go It’s how I know I’m alive
There’s nothing private in this room The lights always seem to go out too soon Right when I’m just settling down Nothing left for me but the night sounds
They come, they go Always at the same time They come, they go It’s how I know I’m alive
Hope this message reaches you And if it does you’ll know what to do Remember that night of promises Do what you said if it comes to this
They come, they go Always at the same time They come, they go It’s how I know I’m alive They come, they go I’m alone most of the time They come, they go If you hurry you’ll make it here in plenty of time
Here is a demo of a new song I have been working on. This video is just to document the tune. I plan to do a full recording of it sometime later this month:
And here are the lyrics:
It Is What It Is
By Brad Rourke
It is what it is they say
But it doesn’t have to be that way
You can still call me on the telephone
Go ahead and take the car
I’ll walk cause I don’t have far
Can’t promise I’ll wait cause you know I hate to be alone
You could never tell me tell me if it’s really something
Following the signal till it fades into nothing
We go our separate ways
Every other Saturday
Never asking why we’re crawling back
Meet me in the park
Some time before it’s dark
I can never say where I’m going to be at night
We’ll make the handoff there
At the statue by the stairs
I can’t say for sure but I’m sure you’re right
Keeping it together for the sake of keeping it together
Running out the clock on every time we said never never
Never get the lesson but by now you’d think we both know better
Contingencies in place but even so you can’t escape the weather
(Note in the video I do not play the last two lines of the bridge, my mistake.)
The other day my friend, Dennis Ellington, asked just out of curiosity how I string my guitar. It was hard to explain in writing, but when I was done he said my method is unusual. So I thought it would be easier to demonstrate on video:
Here is what I originally wrote:
If you are looking down at the head, I turn the tuning posts so the holes are all pointing up-and-down. I thread each string through the post, and give it a slight tug. Keeping tension on it, I wrap the string clockwise and down, and pass it under the string that is coming into the post. Again keeping tension, I then wrap the string up towards me and bend it over the string I just went under. So I have just gone 1/2 way around the post, and made a little hook around the string. I then tighten the strung using the tuner. The tension I was putting on the string by hand is negligible, so I usually turn the tuning post about 3/4 way around or a bit more. Then I cut off the end of the string.
I know that many say you need to wrap the string fully around the post multiple times, for a “better connection,” but I cannot see how this actually helps. It may even make the connection with headstock worse, as the wrapping multiple times can be uneven. My method the string is in direct contact with the post ONLY.
The partial wrap and hook around the string are enough to fully seat the string. No slippage. Stays in tune once strings are stretched through use. To see what this looks like (it is more complicated in writing than in reality), see 6:40 in the video.
This is just a demo so my bandmates can see what the song sounds like . . . which means it sounds quite lo-fi on purpose!
Tomorrow’s Gonna Come
By Brad Rourke
Who knows how I’ll feel when I wake up?
The way it looks now I won’t even nearly have enough
Tonight I’m going to try my best to fly
Rise or fall, no matter, but a man he’s got to try
Tomorrow’s gonna come
And kick in your front door
So stay awake tonight
We’ll get to run some more
Tomorrow’s gonna come
Hey I lost my car and need a ride
I’ll pay you back for gas if I can make my way inside
you know I’ve got some business yet to do
Careful, you don’t know who’d ever want to follow you
Tomorrow’s gonna come
But I can’t wait around
Don’t you follow me
I don’t want to be found
As many of my colleagues and friends know, I play in a band. One of the things I love about it is that I get the chance to write songs — something I have come to enjoy.
Here’s a new song I have been working on. I typically do a quick video demo of new songs, as that is the easiest way to audition them for the band.
Here you go:
Wouldn’t Have Let You Run
By Brad Rourke
If I were a different man
I would roll all my own smokes
I would only drink blue Johnny
You wouldn’t get the joke
I’d pine for No Depression
I’d love Fortunate Son
No need for the black Mariah
I wouldn’t have let you run
I wouldn’t have let you run
I wouldn’t have let you run
I’d tie you down and keep you here
I wouldn’t have let you run
I lay awake at night
Wonder what to do
How to let you know I’m here
Waiting here for you
Working day to day
I watch you in my mind
The nerve it always fails me
When it’s talking time
No I’ll never change
Or turn the other cheek
Won’t find no Rosetta Stone
For the language that you speak
But if I should find you
My heart will open wide
I’ll confess my darkest fantasies
To keep you at my side
I shouldn’t have let you run
No, I shouldn’t have let you run
I left you all alone one time
I shouldn’t have let you run
Earlier today a friend of mine was talking about a difficult time in his life and it reminded me of a song I wrote some time ago that used his experience as a starting point. My friend spent time living under a bridge after going through some difficult times. Thing was, he didn’t see his situation as particularly bad — he had a roof, after all, and others he knew did not. It took him some time to change his life, but now that bridge is a distant memory.
Some years ago I was in a band called The West End along with my good friends and neighbors Monique DeFrees (drums), Mike Shawn (keys and vox), and Matthew Taylor (bass). I played guitar and sang. Later, another good friend, Kate Gordon joined and improved our vocals immensely. We played about 2/3 covers and 1/3 originals — it was the originals that kept me in the game because I loved writing and performing new songs. I saw them as similar to blog posts or essays.
