Sugar on the Snow

Sugar on the Snow

It all started with my college girlfriend’s crappy car.

Just like every car she had ever owned, someone had given it to her, and it was worth every penny.

One evening I borrowed her car and a snow plow backed into me. No one had told me that the '78 Ford Fairmont's horn was sounded by pressing in of the turn signal.

I know, insane right?

So the plow back into me and took out part of the grill and bend the headlight in such a way that, afterwards when driving at night it shown up into the trees as we drove along.

The damage to my girlfriend's car annoyed her. I argued my innocence due to the faulty design of the horn and the careless plow driver but it fell on deaf ears.

I was banned.

Since no one had given me a crappy car I had to get a ride from her to go to work at the local hospital. We were fighting about the car the whole way in.

I didn’t say goodbye when I arrived, I just closed the door and walked inside. It was one of those fights where you leave mad and cling to it like it was something precious. I was mad and I wanted to stay mad. How else would she know that I was totally right.

At the end of the day I was still mad at my girlfriend. I'd rather walk home three miles in the freezing cold than ask her for a ride I knew she didn't want to give me. It was the perfect way to feel sorry for myself so I did it with relish.

My trek took me along the North shore of the long and narrow Canandaigua lake. I looked out across the frozen water to the spot where the lakeside home we rented. I didn't see ice, I didn't see potential danger. I saw a shortcut. It would shave a half mile off, easy.

I noted the thickness of the ice and tested it with a few good stomps.

Solid.

Not only was it a good shortcut, the unusual scenery from the frozen lake set my creative juices flowing. I imagined that I was somewhere in the far north all alone and trudging across the tundra. A trapper or a maybe a prospector. All sorts of stories filled my head.

As I got further from the shore, about 300 meters, there was a sound that instantly pulled me back to reality. It was a deep moaning sound akin to distant thunder except that it was coming from somewhere beneath me. Under the ice!

Uh oh!

I had walked several hundred yards from shore at a diagonal heading straight for the house on the other side. I looked down and noticed that the ice had gradually gone from a frosty white to a dark green. That was free flowing lake water I was looking at just a few inches beneath my feet. I looked forward and noticed there were cracks not far from me with puddles of water in some of them.

Yikes!

Semi-frozen Canandaigua lake 

where I took my little stroll

I very gently turned around and tip-toed straight towards the shore. I kept walking on the ice close to shore where it was thick.

Once safe, my imagination, with the boost of adrenaline, added to the story of the prospector in Alaska, or somewhere similar. Like my girlfriend and I, he had had a big fight with his wife before making the long trek to town for supplies. Probably dried meat, coffee, and if there was any money left over, a sack of sugar. He leaves angry and holds on to it all day long.

His wife, worried about his delay getting home ventures out to meet him. She saves him and their quarrel became insignificant by comparison.

When I arrived home I apologized for damaging my girlfriend's car. I was rather happy simply to be warm, dry and alive!

Three years and two girlfriends later, I started writing a song called Marine for the latest girlfriend, but she broke up with me before I could finish it.

Thank God. It could have been a good song wasted. That tune became the main motif for "Sugar on the Snow".

I have an acoustic nylon string guitar that belonged to my grandmother and then my mom. It was likely my great grandmother's first as it is made by the "Bay State parlor guitar, a small bodied nylon string guitar made for after dinner concerts and sing-alongs for those families who couldn’t afford pianos.

I had figured it was made in the 1920s until I researched the manufacturer and learned they stopped making guitars in 1898.

Harvey, by far the oldest thing I own

Holy smokes!

I have so few guitar songs or even ideas that “Marine,” I had written for my girlfriend while at ARC, was the first that came to mind.

But what would the song be about?

Like a flash, God zapped me with an idea: I thought of the story I made up while walking on the ice all those years ago. With a few alterations to the story and a additional part in the music, I had my song:

Click listen to the song as you read on.

Listen

Sugar on the Snow

©2008 Joel T Johnson

Walking across the frozen lake

Is two hours less to the company store

His harsh words echo as he trudges

And so the slamming of the cabin door

The cold it touches his toes like needles

Through his beaver skin shoes

And freezes an angry tear;

How could she force him

To choose

Halfway across the lake

He could hear that spring ice groan

“I best be taking the long and dry road

On my way back home”

The darkness it changes her spite to worry

And her heart begins to ache

She lights up a whale oil lantern

And sets out on foot

Across the lake

He’s fit to say a thing or two

When he returns home to their shack

Then he sees her footprints out on the lake

To meet him coming back

He runs towards what he hopes he sees

A distant lantern’s glow

His sack of sugar fell to the ground

And spilled out on the snow

Sugar on the snow

He cried her name when he saw shards

Of ice floating around his bride

She was pale she was blue

She was barely clinging

To the frozen side
Clinging to life

He crawled slowly on his belly

Till he could safely pull her clear

He carried her home whispering

Sweetly in her ear

Her teeth chattered from inside her quilt

Wet clothes hung on a wire

He held her close, their unkind words

burned with the wood

In the fire

Sugar on the snow

The title is an image that more or less popped in my head. I liked the visual of white sugar pouring out on the white snow. In all accuracy I realize that sugar would have actually been a golden brownish color in the late 1800's. More important is the concept that his sack of sugar, a very valuable commodity back then and something he had spent the whole day walking to town and back to get, became completely insignificant the moment he realized his wife could be in danger. He drops it to the ground as he also drops his anger about their fight.

Something I realized about these lyrics just during the writing of this blog is that they are written in present tense until the mention of the sugar. From that point on they are written in past tense. It’s not something that meant to do consciously, I just wrote what felt right and flowed as it needed to. The better things I’ve written have always been more my stepping out of the way than having my way with the pen.

Uh oh it’s the…

Tech Section

Techies read on, you normal folks can go off and support me by buying my album.

Recording the song

This song is one of three songs on my CD that contains any guitar at all and the only one that features guitar part as the core of the arrangement.

I started out with my grandmother’s guitar. I played it with only my fingers using two large diaphragm condenser mics: one close, one in the room. It was nearly impossible for this instrument not to sound good. Keeping the old girl in tune and playing in tune from one chord to the next was my biggest challenge

Bass

For this song the bass guitar was played recorded in a more typical fashion instead of the elaborate multi amp set up I use for some of my tunes: A mic in front of the bass amp and a second track recorded through a DI box. The direct box was more a safety track than a crucial component in the sound.

Rode condenser

Slide Guitar

‘Sugar’ is a ballad but I wanted to prevent it from sounding sappy. Electric guitar played with a slide with some ballsy distortion gave the song just the right amount of teeth.

I’m not a real guitar player by any means so it took a lot of work and a few takes to get any sounding guitar tracks. This went double for the slide.

For the slide guitar I used a Kramer Strat copy that sounds great but doesn’t play that well or that in-tune. Bottle neck slide playing originated from delta blues players who could only afford guitars so cheap that they could barely be played on the frets at all. They circumvented this by using a bottle neck for a slide.

I plugged the output of the Peavey tube amp into one of my bass cabinets, 

not for sound but to create a quasi dummy load so 

the amp would scream at a more manageable volume

That’s kinda how it worked with me too. I used a thick glass slide and put the guitar through my my ART distortion/effects unit and from there into the Peavey Delta Blues tube amp with a close Sure 57 mic on the amp and a Rode condenser in the room.

Steel string acoustic guitar

I actually purchased a steel string acoustic guitar for this song. I needed something to be able to perform it and Grandma's guitar ain't leaving the house. I didn't mean to use it on the recording originally. Eventually I found it handy to add depth to the nylon guitar part and help it cut through the mix as the song and the story behind it got more intense. Early in the song I used finger picking in unison with the nylon string then I used a relatively hard pick at pinnacle moments in the song.

Monica, a Breedlove AC25 I got for a ridiculous sale price

Strings

At first, I programmed sampled (fake) strings. Then I brought in a very small string section—that’s right, right in my living room—and recorded many takes over and over of them playing the same parts as the sampled strings. I mixed just enough of the fake strings in the background to make the real ones sound larger and more full.

I will go into this process in more detail in a later blog. <o I won't

Especially near the end, the arrangement gets quite full and I had to mix carefully to prevent a loss of clarity. Right before the end, between the guitars, real strings, fake strings, doubled vocals and many backing vocals, there are some forty tracks playing at once. I gradually lowered levels on existing tracks to make way for newer entrances and used light equalization to create spectral ‘slots’ for each part to occupy in the frequency spectrum.

There is also a stereo reverb trick that help maintain clarity and a full lush mix at the same time. This trick was imparted to me by an audio engineer friend of mine and I will cover that in a later blog as well. <<Never gonna happen

Rain Don’t Follow the Plow

During our recent trip East or more specifically, our trip back West, we encountered a severe thunderstorm in Kansas that was so intense all the traffic stopped and huddled under bridges for shelter from the gutter-spout down pour, the whipping winds that rocked our rental SUV like a toy, constant thunder and lightning and the forecast of quarter-sized hail (which never came).

Heading towards the storm

One hundred and thirty years earlier (the 1870s) and one hundred thirty miles to the North, (the plains of Nebraska) There was so much unseasonable rain that it fueled a fallacy in science and reasoning. This thinking had it’s origins in “Manifest Destiny”, the theories of Natural scientist Samuel Aughey and the writings of amateur scientist and land speculator Charles Dana Wilber.

Wilber wrote:

“God speed the plow.... By this wonderful provision, which is only man's mastery over nature, the clouds are dispensing copious rains... [the plow] is the instrument which separates civilization from savagery; and converts a desert into a farm or garden.... To be more concise, Rain follows the plow.”

It’s almost as if he said: “Silly Indians who have survived on these plains for thousands of years. Here now, move over… that’s right; step aside and let us show you how to win the battle over nature.”

There were a number of scientific theories as to how the presence of humans… of ‘civilized’ humans, was ‘changing’ the climate. The presence of crops, the turned soil, Smoke from coal-burning locomotives, even the presence of the steel rails of the rail road were thought by some to effect the climate.

“Rain follows the plow” might have been just an obscure passage buried deep in a dusty archive’s basement, but the railroads discovered it to their delight. The phrase that Wilber coined became a great slogan for them to convince people that the West was not as dry as the horror stories they had heard. There were fortunes to be made; by the rail road at least.

Wilbur, Aughey and the US railroads were not the only ones with man-over-nature delusions of grandeur. It was the prevailing attitude of the time among Euro-descendants the world over.

A similar situation was occurring in Southern Australia where an unusual period of rain gave false credence to “rain follows the plow”. Farmers attempted to cultivate grains and raise sheep North of Adelaide believing that crops would add moisture to the atmosphere turn the tables and change the climate permanently.

In both the American plains and in Southern Australia these plans met with disaster for many people. The cycle of rains gave way to years of drought. Many family fortunes, emptied in an aim to get rich off the land as the increasing rains made it more valuable, were lost.

An abandoned sheep farm in Australia
 

In Nebraska, hundreds perhaps thousands of homesteads were abandoned, their owners returning East or pushing on to California. Heartier folk stayed and built homemade windmills to scratch out an existence on this parched land and weather a drought that would last for twelve years and return roughly every other decade. There were people still clinging to “rain follows the plow” until the dust bowl of the thirties.

Back in Rochester New York in the nineties, I had been playing around with a different sort of bass riff. I used a quasi claw hammer technique often associated with the rolling picking of a banjo combined with the thumb ‘pop and snap’ style of modern bass guitar. My hybrid had a folksy a drone-like quality that reminded me of Americana that had a blues rock-like intensity. I haven’t heard or seen anyone use this technique on bass before or since.

Watch the video at the end of the blog to see this technique in action.

During this time I was also in the process of moving to LA. Even though I had written no words yet I had a notion that this song was going to be about settlers moving west, perhaps in the thirties.

After I had lived in LA for a while, I introduced my tune to the members of “Squeedle” a band I was in at the time. I told them about my ‘moving to California’ theme. They didn’t think too highly of my concept. Perhaps it was because the other two members of Squeedle were native Californians.

The guitarist offered to write some of his own lyrics. The resulting song was a ‘man leaving woman the morning after’, a sort of ramblin’ man, love ‘em and leave ‘em song. In the spirit of a democratic band I agreed to perform his words and melody. We performed the song I called “Grovelitude” at a few coffee house gigs to some enthusiastic reactions but we never recorded it beyond a practice tape.

Eventually the band broke up. Rather than deal with the split ownership of a song that didn’t match my personality anyway, or jettison my one-of-a-kind bass part, I dropped the old melody and words. I wanted to revisit my idea of an Americana tale of moving west. I wasn’t coming up with any winners though.

When I ran across the concept of “rain follows the plow” while surfing, I knew I had my song.

Rain Don’t Follow the Plow

© 2008 Joel T Johnson

Where’s the rain?

Where’s that rain?

If you work the dry land

Rain will follow the plow

Like Mr. Wilber said

Rain will follow the plow

Where’s that rain

Where’s that rain

The mortgage planted barley

Our savings planted rye

I looked out at the fields

And saw our future wither and die

Wither and die

Rain don’t follow the plow

Rain…

The wind has gone and carried off

Any reason to stay

The used to be Nebraska but

Nebraska blowed away

Done blowed away

Rain don’t follow the plow

Rain…

I gotta hock my Mama’s dishes

You gotta sell your wedding band

Make our way to California

Any way we can

Rain don’t follow the plow

Rain…

Hey yon rain cloud

Don’t blow away

Hey yon rain cloud

Turn this dust to hay

That last line is actually different than the recorded version which is “Stay and make some hay”. I had changed the lyrics to the above, but in a moment of lost concentration I sang the original line on the vocal take I ended up using. I will sing the proper version, God willing, in performance and on any other version of this song I record.

Where’s the rain?

Where’s that rain?

Here’s a bass-only version of the song. The full version on my album has drums and harmonica.

“Rain Don’t Follow the Plow” is the second track on my new CD “Eighty Two Feet of Water” which is available as a disk or download at: http://cdbaby.com/joeltjohnson

Future blogs will offer the tales behind the other songs on the album.

A Pretty Good Day

The other day I posted probably one of the most bland, generic posts I had ever posted. It was something to the effect that I had had the second nice day in a row.

A friend commented: “prove it”.

I posted: “~holds out a bear skin, seven crushed ping pong balls, an empty bottle of absinth, a policeman's cap and a fuzzy photo of what might or might not be Neil Patrick Harris crowd surfing at the Vatican~”

Another friend posted: “Will you include the story of a bear skin, seven crushed ping pong balls, an empty bottle of absinth, a policeman's cap and a fuzzy photo of what might or might not be Neil Patrick Harris crowd surfing at the Vatican in your next blog?”

How can I refuse:

The day before had been a hell-of-a good day. It was one of those days where everything went right. Everything we did proved to be more enjoyable than we could have hoped for. It was one of those days you realize is a great and memorable day while it’s still happening not later when things are not as pleasant.

At the end of the day I sighed and posted that it had been an excellent day. “Tomorrow can suck for all I care,” I added.

Watch what you wish for.

I awoke at 6:30 AM . I could hear the spa running beneath our balcony . I opened the sliding glass door to check it out. I’ve chased a number of people from the spa at odd hours, some who live in the building, some who jumped the fence, but I couldn’t have been more surprised when I peered over the railing on this particular morning. A full grown brown bear was in the spa, leaning upright against the corner. Large claws curled around a half filled bottle of Budweiser which answered the apposing thumb question. A small island of brown fur was floating and swirling among the bubbles and the smell of wet bear wafted up towards me. Though wet bear was something I’ve never smelled before, it was pretty much as I expected; a bouquet of garbage, wet dog and that unisex cologne that back-to-nature folks like to wear with a hint of fish market after a rainstorm.

“HEY,” I said. “do you have any idea what time it is?”

The bear bellowed loud enough to echo off the surrounding buildings. He lifted an arm to show me that he wore no watch and couldn’t tell time if he did, let alone respond with articulated speech.

I felt stupid.

I noticed a blond, bikini clad girl asleep on a lounge chair near the spa. I believe I had seen her in the parking garage from time-to-time. If I was remembering correctly, her name was Alison.

“YO, BRITNEY,” I said. “Get this stinking bear out of the spa.”

The girl merely rolled over on the lounge and groaned like a teenager being woken by a parent on a school day. The bear looked straight ahead at nothing in particular. He finished the Bud and casually tossed the bottle behind him over the fence with seven others where Russian preschoolers would discover them a few hours later.

I had to get rid this bear. Urinating on him from my balcony would not likely be as effective as it had been with all the other spa interlopers I had dispatched. I needed a plan.

I needed…

Confusion Man!

Of all the super heros, Confusion Man was the hardest to contact, but he owed me a favor on-account-of I had got him laid during an unfortunate dermatological period in his life. He was my best option I figured.

“Have you seen Confusion Man?” I asked Superman on the phone after having waited on hold for twenty minutes.

“Nah, I think he’s on vacation.”

“He tells everyone that. It’s part of the… you know.”

“Yeah, the confusion.”

“Say Super, um, maybe, if you’re not too busy…”

“Alright man, good luck. Tell that bastard he owes me some cash from that Redskins game. Ciao babe!”

Click

Four hours later after finding a secret contact page on Confusion Man’s website: blah-blah-blah.com, which took me a couple of hours to find itself, I walked into the restroom of a Mexican restaurant in Little Tokyo as the site had instructed. Behind the toilet tank I found a small red button that said “whatever you do, don’t push”.

I pushed it.

“Mushi mushi” someone said through a small speaker somewhere in the room in a suspiciously high pitched voice.

“Hey, um is this Confusion?”

“I don’t know, yes, maybe, no, no, definitely not,” said a relatively normal voice.

“Hey CM, it’s Jolty. I need some help.”

“Can’t do it man, can’t do it.”

“Damn! I’m really stuck and Superman, of course, is being a dick. Hey, you owe me ya know.”

“What’s your deal man, I said I’d help.”

“W-what? Oh yeah, right, right, right.”

I told him about the bear in my hot tub. He told me to step into his office. His ‘office’ turned out to be the broom closet in The Vatican, a nightclub across town in Santa Monica.

Confusion Man sat on an overturned mop bucket. He was wearing a Superman uniform but had a Star Wars storm trooper plating from the waist down and a Wonder Woman tiara on his head. He brandished a spatula like a scepter. His mascot dachshund, “Perplex Puppy” was chewing happily on a rag mop.

“As I see it, you’re screwed. It’s hopeless, I have no ideas” he said.

“That’s good,” I said, playing the game now.

“Go to the pier, under the pier and ask for a guy name Larry.” Confusion said. “He will have three things for you. Take them and slay your foe. Make sure not to close the door when you leave.”

I thanked CM and closed the door.

“Hey!” I heard him say.

I opened the door.

“Dude, I said not to close the door.”

“But I thought… you know…”

“If I did everything the same way all the time, that wouldn’t be too confusing, would it?” he said with a smile.

“Right.”

“One more thing,” he shouted after me. “On your way home; speed… like crazy.”

“Okay,” I said, appropriately confused.

Under the Santa Monica Pier I walked back and forth on the damp sand. The waves on the pillars echo’d in the strange shelter. I saw no one. A jogger passed through. She put a great deal of concentration into ignoring me.

“Larry?” I finally called out. Nothing. “LARRY!”

“I’m not Larry.” A voice behind me said.

I turned to see a heavily bearded man emerge from the dark pillars on the land side under the pier.

“Who are you?”

He shrugged. “Not Larry.”

I was confused… I must be on the right track!

“Confusion Man said you’d have some things for me,” I said.

“You got a blanket?”

“Um no. Was I supposed to?”

“No, I just need a one. How bout twenty bucks?”

“Um, Yeah sure.”

I went for my wallet.

“Keep it,” he laughed. “I’m just fuckin’ with ya, cept about the blanket,” he suddenly got serious again. “C’mon.”

The homeless man beckoned and returned from where he came.

I followed him into the dark forest of support columns I could feel the sand become drier and looser under my feet but I could see very little. As my eyes got used to the dark I could see the outline of him climbing down from one of the pillars on some unseen footholds. He approached me and handed me what appeared to be box of regulation ping pong balls and a small crystal vile of green liquid. He then took something large and heavy off his shoulders and threw it on mine.

“That is why I need the blanket.” He said before climbing back up the pillar into the dark.

“What’s in the bottle?”

“Hehe, that’s absinth, wood alcohol. Don’t drink it. Or… do, whatever.”

“Thanks Larry!” I said as I walked back towards the light.

“Not!” he shouted back.

The heavy thing, the light revealed, was a bear skin, complete with a stuffed head.

I had gotten nearly half way home before I remembered about speed. I gunned it right in front of a school zone. It was in front of an adult bookstore, however, where I was pulled over.

“License and registration please,” said the cop.

I noticed his name tag. “Nutt,” it said.

Officer Nutt went back to his car while I stewed at my super hero friend’s bad driving advice. He returned a few minutes later with his hat in his hand.

“Here, you’re going to need this.” He placed his cap on my head.

“Really? What for?”

“Mojo” he said with a perfectly timed thumbs up. “Taking on a bear… Man! You need the ‘MJ’!”

“Ah, Confusion?” I said.

“You and me both brother. Name’s Don.” He put out a hand I shook it.

“ ‘Don Nutt’? A cop named ‘Don Nutt’?” I said.

“Yeah, I don’t know which I like better the doughnut jokes or the Barney Fife jokes."

“How do I get this back to you?” I pointed at the cap.

“Keep it! Wind knocks ‘em off all the time. Hey, you tell the C-man I said ‘peace’ if you see him,” he said as he handed me back my ID and walked back to his car, “He saved my marriage with a pair of old socks and a Ponderosa pine you know—me and Hazel.”

Back at my apartment I pondered what Confusion Man intended I do with these objects to get rid of the bear I knew what the policeman’s cap was for, but the skin, the absinth… a box of ping pong balls?

Meanwhile down by the spa I could hear the bear snorting and growling in an effort to wake Alison.

“Whaaat,” she finally moaned. She cracked on eye half open.

The bear growled and flexed his empty claws on an imaginary spot where a beer, he felt, should be.

I knew my first move. I grabbed a beer from the fridge opened it and took a swig. I emptied the absinth into the beer. I raced downstairs to intercept Alison on her way to her own fridge or the store.

“Hey Alison,” I said cheerily.

She responded with a dumbfounded ‘who me?’ expression.

“Hey there… um, dude-who-drives-the-beat-up-little-white-car.”

“Wanna beer?” I said holding out the mickey’d Corona.

“It’s like… nine-O-clock on Sunday morning.”

It was around 3:00 PM on a Saturday.

“You sure you couldn’t use it? You could always give it to someone else…”

“Well… like… ack-shu-ally, m’friend, like, rully, rully needs a beer right now. So… um, I guess,  um, yea!”

“Here ya go.”

I handed her the beer with a smile so big she should have been suspicious.

She wasn’t.

“Thanks,” she tooted and headed back to the spa.

From my balcony I watched the bear for signs that the absinth was having some sort of effect. Eventually the bear started extending his claws in front of his face over and over. He made a noise that sounded like if he could speak he would be saying: “Dude, look at my claws, they’re, like, awesome man!”

I could only make my best guess as to what the ping pong balls and the bear skin was for.

I rolled the ping pong balls out on the floor. I leapt into the air and stomped right on top of one of the balls. The ‘popping’ sound it made was a good deal louder that I figured, almost like a gunshot. I tried it again.

BANG!

I peered over the edge. The bear was looking up with a concerned look on his snout. I smashed and smashed until all of the ball had been crushed except for one that had rolled under the desk.

I then threw the bear skin over the railing so that it hung half on one side half on another. The head was on the outside staring straight down at the bear. The bear was staring back, its fang studded jaw agape. I appeared on the rail, leaning my elbows on the ursine carcass.

“I take it all back,” I said—heavy on the syrup. You can stay, shed and piss in our spa all you want!”

The bear grumbled and lumbered out of the spa. The water level plummeted to half it’s normal sounding. Water rained from the creature like a two sided furry waterfall. He was about to shake like a dog which would have painted the entire side of the building with bear stink and rained the same upon the poor Russian preschoolers who were busy playing with their new bottles.

The bear seemed to feel my glare and paused looked up at me before did the hokey poeky dryer dance.

“I… don’t… think… so…” I sang.

He snorted and went on his way dripping a trail a shame.

I went back to ‘The Vatican’ to thank Confusion Man. He was behind the bar pouring drinks (his other gig).

“Do I thank you or curse you?” I yelled over the music.

“Confusion is my job, not yours. Besides, I’m off duty.”

Just then I hear the crowd in the club going crazy. Some familiar-looking dude stood on the railing of the overhead balcony. After letting out a war cry he did swan dive into the pulsing throngs below.

“Hey, isn’t that Neil Patrick Harris?” Confusion said.

“I dunno, maybe.”

I raised my camera over the crowd and snapped a picture.

Later, at home I wondered if it was really Neil Patrick Harris? I looked up the picture on my phone. The image was blurring and inconclusive.

Yes you have to watch out what you wish for, but now that I think about it, that day had been a pretty good day as well.

Eighty-two Feet of Water

Eighty-two Feet of Water

While I was on the road with a band a couple years back we found ourselves in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri playing a two-nighter at one of those lake side bars where three stories of verandas look down onto the stage and dance floor. On the second day before our show there was not a lot to do, so when one of our local contacts offered to have us come along on a boat delivery he was making I jumped at the chance.

 

Lake of the Ozarks is a resort town and lake in central Missouri that was created by a dam built by a depression era work project like so many in the Midwest. The lake is a long winding serpent with hundreds of tongues and coves in what were once hundreds of creeks and gulleys.

 Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri

The pontoon boat we were riding in slowly made its way through the curves while speed boats, including hydroplane race boats for a big boat race that was on the lake that weekend, passed us like we were standing still.

I was fine with the slow pace. We had a whole day to kill and I was deep in thought as I dragged my hand lazily in the water going by.

Since this was an artificial lake, I was thinking more about what was beneath the waves than buzzing along on top of them.

What did the bottom of this lake look like back then? And now? Were there still the ghosts of trees reaching skywards in vain? How many cabins and old farms were we passing over? What stories and memories had been buried by the relatively new lake? How many dead bodies were down there?

I would never know the answers to these questions, so like any good story teller, I made up my own.

I thought up a man in a cabin who refused to leave after the dam was built; someone who would rather drown than relocate. But why?

He was troubled, haunted. He had a destiny.

A story started to form in my head, both there in the boat and in the plentiful hours riding in the bus in the days and weeks afterwards. After a long evolution of story and song refinements, it became the title cut to my album.

“Eighty-two Feet of Water”

©2008 Joel T Johnson

After the Great War

They joined the merchant marines

Sailed around the Cape of Good Hope

In the worst storm they’d ever seen

The man on watch didn’t see the reef

That brought the good ship down

He alone watched from the rocks

As the other eighty-one drowned

(chorus)

In eighty-two feet of water

Eighty-one sailors lie

There’s one man left who’s haunted

Why he alone survived

He could feel that water pull him

When he was anywhere near the shore

The ocean had its eighty-one

It wanted just one more

He could hear their cries every day

And through each long, long night

Arizona might be dry enough

To feel alright

I moved him from Lake of the Ozarks to Arizona in the story both because of the irony of how dry it is and because I’m not sure many people know about Lake of the Ozarks, whereas everyone knows about the Hoover dam.

(chorus)

In eighty-two feet of water

Eighty-one sailors lie

There’s one man left who’s haunted

Why he alone survived

Eighty-two feet of water…

He lived for years in a canyon

Near the southeastern side

Of the Colorado River

He still couldn’t sleep at night

The dam was almost finished

It would stop the river’s flow

The Army Corps of Engineers

Said he would have to go

Here I prolong the verse to tease the chorus and transpose the piece up a half step in pitch as the story kicks into high gear.

But he would not be moved

He knew what had to be

And let that water take him

Like his brother’s in the sea

In his chair, in his small home

Silence fills the room

Eighty-two feet beneath the waves

A fitting peaceful tomb

(chorus)

In eighty-two feet of water

Eighty-two sailors lie

There’s no one left haunting

There’s no one that survived

Eighty-two feet of water…

Originally, it was “seventy-two feet of water” but that doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

I have been talking a lot about our recent trip and the shows I played while in Rochester but I have only mentioned in passing the album and its release.

My album "Eighty-two Feet of Water" is out!

I have had some really good feedback so far. I got an email confirming that a station I sent download links to in a DJ in Belgium is playing the song I just described and likes the whole album.

A guy that deals in CDs at a flea market had 10 copies of my CD and sold them out in one day. He wants twenty more ASAP. The way these things go, I'll really know I'm on my way when I get my first scathing review.

But I can wait.

The Album and/or the individual songs are currently available as a download on iTunes, Amazon.com and CDBaby.com

The physical disk will be available in about a week at CD Baby and Amazon.

Personally, I recommend the download if you listen to your music that way. You will save at least four bucks.

A great many of the 300 CDs I could afford to duplicate, I will be sending out as promotion so CD and download sales will help me pay for the next, larger duplication run.

I’d love to have your support by listening to the song samples by clicking on the above links for Amazon.com or CDBaby or using iTunes if you have it, choosing one song you like, and downloading it for a just a buck.

In the coming weeks I will be telling stories of the origins of some of the other songs on the album.