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.
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