A Train Across Canada

For the past six weeks I have been blogging on the songs of my album, one by one; their back stories, some inside info on their recording, lyrics, a link to the song and anything else I can think of to trick you into buying a copy.

This week, more than halfway through the album, we will be taking an intermission and discussing something else while we turn over the record.

You remember records?

When I was fifteen, my family went on the best vacation of my youth A cross-country rail journey from Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Vancouver BC.

It was my first trip to the West Coast, my first ride in a 747 and most importantly my first ride on a real train. 

There was adventure, wilderness, an entire day spent on my own, bad smells, extreme cold, extreme pain and, quite nearly, romance.

I have always loved travel, Canada and trains, so I was looking forward to our trip with triple threat anticipation.

I can remember the excitement I felt when I saw the shining train on the indoor platform at Toronto's Union Station. I knew this wasn't the Orient Express in the 1930s. There wasn't steam flowing on the platform from the cars and locomotive, there weren't servicemen kissing their girlfriends goodbye or rich ladies in large ornate hats boarding the train as porters toted carts laden with opulent looking trunks, but there might as well have been for all my romantic ideas about train travel and how I felt to be boarding the train myself.

Union Station Toronto

Our seats on the train had pairs of bench seats facing one another on either side of a center aisle. My brother and I sat on one set of seats, our parents and little sister sat in the seats across the aisle. Those two sections were walled-off from the next set of seats but not from the other or the aisle in between. Even though passengers and porters passed through the aisle between us our family had relative privacy most of the time. A section was converted to sleepers at night but I'll talk about that when night falls.

The train pulled out of Union Station around 1PM. I felt a euphoria as the train began slowly and silently gliding on the rails, out of the covered station platform, past the base of the CN Tower and clacking over switches. My brother and I wasted no time in exploring the train from front to back. Forward of the Sleeper cars was the dinning car and then the coach section with rows of seats. In front of those cars was what I would call the “ghetto coach”. The ghetto coach had the bare bones appearance of a city bus or a subway car. It occupied by Native Americans, backpackers and students. My father joined us as we went to the other end of the train and watched Toronto pass behind us from the outside rear vestibule of the last car like a politician on the campaign trail.

During our 'rounds' my brother and I noticed two cute girls on the train who were a bit younger than us. We did some casual but largely unsuccessful flirting.

Though the train was bound for the west coast of Canada we spent the rest of that first day going due North. By 10PM that night we were in Sudbury, Ontario, What looked like from the train to be an old, burned-out nickle mining town as far North from Toronto as Chicago is from St. Louis. We had the choice of staying on the train while they added cars from Ottawa and points East or getting off for about forty minutes. We were going to be on the train plenty so my father, my brother and I got off, while my mom and sister stayed on. The three of us wandered around the area surrounding the Station a bit but there wasn't much to see in Sudbury at 10PM. It didn't look like there was much to see at high noon either.

Sudbury, Ontario

Little did I know I was in the home town of a celebrity that I would one day work extensively with: Alex Trebek.

Something else I didn't know at the time was that, on one of the train cars being added to our train from Ottawa, was a lovely girl my age named Sue.

When we re-boarded the train our seats had been transformed. The porter had come through and made up the beds by lowering the upper berths hinged from the ceiling and running parallel to the aisle. For the lower berths they folded the opposite facing benches down and together so they met in the middle and formed one bed instead of two seats. Curtains had been hung along the aisle enclosing each berth into a little club house... at least that's how I saw it.

Think “Some Like it Hot” not “North by Northwest”
Small stairways hooked to the side of the berths to allow a full-bladdered person in the upper berth an
exit strategy in the middle of the night. Unlike ladders used in more modern trains, the stairways had steps that folded flat against the side of the aisle until the hand rail was pulled down. A spring creaked and several steps folded down. When one stepped off the stairs the spring pulled the steps back up and out of the way of passers-by in the aisle.

These spring loaded steps fold up when no weight is on them.

I was on the lower berth, my brother in the upper. I was happy about this because I had a window to look out of. My brother, who preferred total darkness to sleep, was happy too.

I didn't sleep at first. I was too fascinated looking out my window. The moonlight showed me just how far into the wilderness we had traveled. Unbroken forest was all I could see for mile after mile. Ten miles... twenty miles... not so much as a road crossing.

Every once is a while, the train would lurch a bit and I would hear the old spring for the folding stairway creak down a few inches then creak back up a moment later with a gentle 'smack' as the steps flattened to the side of the berth. When I finally gave in to the sandman, I slept easily. Though I awoke every once in a while to open my curtain and see that we were still deep in the forest, the train rocked me into what I regard to this day as the best night of sleep I have ever had.

When I awoke to the light of morning I checked out the window again. There were still no signs of civilization, but it was quite different than what I had seen during the night.

The train was on a ledge between a cliff face and an endless body of water. The cliff face obscured any view to the train's right and the narrowness of the ledge at times offered little more than a view of some rocks and the water twenty or thirty feet below. Occasionally the tracks would pass through an outcropping of rock into which short tunnels had been cut.

It was: a short cliff; a ledge with the train tracks; a small drop; rocks and water. It was like the train had gone to some other-wordly place while I slept.

 Between a rock and wet place, the North shores of Lake Superior.

A quick check of the map I had brought with me (bit of a map nerd I am) confirmed what I suspected; it was the shore of Lake Superior we were following so closely.

After breakfast in the dinning car, my brother and I made our daily patrol up and down the train. At the end of the train we discovered among the new cars added to the train was a lounge car. We were disappointed at first when we discovered that, instead of a nice outdoor vestibule we could hang out on, the new lounge car had a rounded end with no vestibule at all, just smoky lounge chairs and ashtrays and a few older folks smoking cigarettes.

 A Canadian Pacific Observation just like the one on our train.

Our disappointment was short lived; as we turned around to return we could see a flight of stairs going up and the blue sky beyond. We wasted no time in charging up the stairs. From a car in our own train set we knew what kind of car this was. The stairs led to an observation deck enclosed by a plexiglass bubble. Rows of forward facing seats two by two filled the compartment. We spent a few minutes looking at the landscape of Lake Superior's North shore which had by now given way to some trees and a view inland but still very little in the way of roads or man-made structures.

Even though there wasn't a whole lot to do, we were never bored. I adored being in motion while I could walk around, read, look at my maps, eat, sleep, go to the bathroom... No matter what I was doing I was on my way to somewhere else. My wanderlust was being fed constantly. 
 
The next day was my mother's birthday, August 11. We did a few things to celebrate but what I recall the most was that after dark, my father took us to the bubble car to watch the peak of the year's meteor activity, also on August 11^th. We didn't have much success watching meteors. Even the low level lighting in the bubble reflected off the rounded surface of the plexiglass dome from every angle with such a vengeance, it was a challenge to see anything at all, let alone meteors streaking across the sky. I also remember it being quite cold. The cars air conditioning operated day and night regardless of temperature fluctuations. 
 
We lasted for all of fifteen minutes before retreating to our berths.

By the next morning we were deep into the Canadian plains. I noticed that towering grain elevators, known as “Co-ops” in the US were called “Pools” in Canada. I wondered, though only for a moment, why anyone would put a swimming pool in a grain elevator.

Care for a swim? Or some wheat?

The flat landscape and our third day of train travel had my brother and I walking the length of the train more. We had stopped visiting the ghetto coach. We were starting to get some funny looks.

In our travels we met Sue who was also making their rounds up and down the train. She had long light brown hair, a cute face and a svelte figure.

We talked a bit and wound up hanging out in her father's compartment. She had a hard time convincing the the porter of this who eventually chased us out. After that, we hung out at my seat.

Her name was Sue, Sue Armstrong. 

I remembered that just now, just as I type the first “Sue”.

I was in love... or lust or maybe both... Whatever a fifteen year old guy is when he meets a beautiful girl that doesn't seem to be outright repelled. Not only was she beautiful, and pretty cool, she seemed to like me, or at least tolerate me; either was a novelty.

We laughed at some of the cowboy whistle stops along the way. Towns like Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw. We talked about school and the stuff that teenagers talk about. She talked about life in Canada, I talked about life in the US. We determined for a fifteen-year-old there wasn't much different.

She broke my heart not long after that when she announced that she was disembarking from the train in Calgary, our next stop. They were visiting her grandparents there.

I wanted to ask for her address so I could write her but I was suddenly stricken with chicken. I had only known for for part of a day. I couldn't manage to blurt it out.

“Um... um, kn'aye... kn'aye... um get... um maybe... getchur... um... like, address er something?”

No, I didn't talk like a Valley Dude, but it's the best I could do to portray the slur I was afraid would pour from my mouth like sludge.

If only I had met her two days ago when she joined the train in Sudbury?

When the train stopped in Calgary, the moment got the best of me and I got off onto the platform and managed to awkwardly ask for her address. She gave it freely but, like an idiot, I had not brought anything to write with or on. Not wanting to looking more like an idiot I didn't ask her for anything to write with either.

I repeated the address to myself as I said goodbye and made my way back on the train. By the time I could write anything down in my brain the address had devolved to a series of sounds I could quite turn back into words anymore. I jotted down what I thought I had heard but it wasn't anything close to an usable address.

She was gone forever. What a romantic fool I was... er am.

I was depressed. I slouched in my seat and looked out the window. Even the spectacular view of the plains dramatically giving way to the Canadian Rockies didn't penetrate my funk. I was looking back towards Calgary anyhow.

Later that day my family disembarked ourselves in the Alpine-looking Banff, Alberta.
While my dad worked out our rental car that we would drive north through the mountains to Jasper I watched a freight train approach from the station platform. It was on the closest track and going full bore! It didn't appear to be slowing down.

I deliberately stood about three feet from the edge of the platform. I was going to enjoy the rush of the train going by. I'm pretty sure my parents weren't watching.

When the first locomotive was about twenty yards away I realized I was too close for comfort. I told my feet to back away calmly so that we wouldn't look like the idiot we were. If my feet had eyes they would have been deer in headlights. They were scared into paralysis. Fortunately, so was my bladder.

It looks like we're riding this one out.

The first engine roared by me at incredible volume and the steepest Doppler shift I had ever heard. Three more engines followed in rapid-fire succession over two seconds. The cars roared past creating respectable noise on their own accompanied by a blast of air from between each set of cars.
Had the wind not blown my hair straight up I would not have looked any different for it was standing straight up on it's own.

Eventually I was able to gather myself enough to move away from the train and get to the bathroom in the station before a cleanup was necessary.

The whole town smelled a bit like a bathroom. That was due to the sulfur hot springs that the town had been built around as a spa resort. If there are enough pine trees and fancy chateaus and restaurants, a bad smell becomes merely 'charming'.

The next day we went for a dip in the hot springs. It was really just a big pool that happened to be really hot, which was crazy because it was August and rather warm to begin with, but It was fun anyhow.

Banff Hot Springs

Afterwords, my brother and I exited the men's changing room to be face-to-face with the two cute girls we had unsuccessfully flirted with some days earlier on the train. Without a word we both simply turned on our heels and went back into back into the changing room as if we'd seen a ghost. I have no idea why, probably immaturity but I'm going with: ' it was funny'.

After a day or so in Banff we headed North through Banff National Park. We saw lakes that were robins egg blue and an amazing looking resort called The Fairmont Chateau at Lake Louise. We didn't drove in for a quick look because my grandmother had often talked about it and my Mom wanted to see it.

The Fairmont Chateau at Lake Louise

The water of the lakes in this area is really this shade of blue

caused by minerals in the mountain runoff.

We visited the Athabaska Glacier or at least the very tip of it. It was bizarre to climb around ice in August. Where there wasn't ice there was this sticky silty mud. My mom and some stranger who looked like Santa Claus both ended up stepping in mud that went nearly to their knees. My dad took a picture of them together with their muddy pant legs. A bus full of tourists got stuck in it as well.

Ice in August.
The Athabasca Glacier in Banff National Park.

On the road to Jasper I saw cross-country skiers training on the road. They were skiing on wheeled skis that looked like elongated roller blades. I have seen them many times since but in 1980 it was a strange sight.

That evening we arrived in Jasper, Alberta. We checked into a cool suite that seemed more like an apartment than hotel room. I was fascinated by the large rail switch yard nearby. When the rest of my family planned to spend the next day at a park hiking and looking at waterfalls, I asked if I could stay behind and simply watch the trains. They asked me if I was sure and gave their blessing when I said I was.

I had a wonderful day of watching trains even though I felt odd being by myself and missed my folks and brother and sister from time to time. It all paid off when one of the engineers who had seen me watching the trains for most of the day allowed me to see the inside of one of the freight locomotives.

The next day we boarded the train that would take us the rest of the way to Vancouver. It was a beautiful train ride but I had grown a bit tired of the train and so much beautiful nature. I was ready for a city again.

Vancouver was the perfect city for my jones. We ate at an Indian restaurant where the waiters doubted I could handle the food when I asked for “extra spicy”. Another night we went to at a French restaurant where the stick-thin waitress doubted my brother and I could finish an adult portion.

Apparently, we were the first teenagers she had ever run across.

We took a ferry to Vancouver Island and drove to the seaward side. On the way we we stopped in a paper mill town called Port Alberni. It was covered with smoke and smelled horrible. Even though it was a beautiful place, I couldn't imagine living there because of the smell. My dad explained that there was a rare weather condition happening that day called an inversion, where descending cold air traps warm air close to the ground prevents things like smoke from the paper mill from escaping into the atmosphere. I'm sure Port Alberni doesn't always smell but I will always think of it as that stinky, smokey town on Vancouver Island.

We spent the night in a tiny coastal town called Uclet. My brother and I went swimming/ body surfing in forty-nine degree water. It was so cold it was painful until my whole body went numb. It was crazy, but when you are fifteen and meet the Pacific ocean for the first time, you swim!

We also hired a small boat that took us out into the ocean a ways for the sport of it and to see a rock island. It might not have been so remarkable had every inch not been covered with sea lions. The sea got a bit rough on our way back to shore. The twenty-four foot craft bobbed like a cork in the six to ten foot swells. My mom felt sick and had to go below. I was a bit queasy myself but I found that it was better to stay out in the fresh air where I could see the horizon and positioned near the back of the boat where it didn't pitch quite so much.

Back in Vancouver we visited the Pacific National Exhibition, the west coast version of a sort of national fair. At the PNE there was a guy who was selling this little thing that I just had to have. I saw a group of college age kids in a circle tossing this small object among themselves using only their feet. It was called a “hacky sack” I used most of what personal money I had left to buy one.

I wonder what ever happened to it?

 A CP Air 747 like the one we flew on.

The next leg of the journey was to fly back to Toronto. My swim in the icy Pacific had given me a sinus infection which was not problematic until the 747 began it's descent and the pressure began to push on my clogged sinuses.

The pain in my forehead was like an ice pick being driving into my skull. Juxtaposed to this pain was the amazing beauty of flying over Toronto at night, my first time flying after dark. The grid of lights was amazing to see but...

“OW, OW, OW! MY HEAD!”

Even after we landed and I was off the plane the pain did not go away. Would I be like this forever? On my way to the baggage claim, my ears and sinuses cleared all at once with a satisfying “ssschlooop!”

The pain free state afterwords read as euphoria. I had felt euphoria when the train pulled out of Union Station a week before. Book ends to my trip.

It was an unforgettable trip. It must have been because I wrote this blog from memory alone.
Months later after we went home and resumed our regular lives, I decided that, even though I had only part of an address for Sue, the girl on the train, I would try to get a letter to her anyway. I had to at least try. I wasn't even sure of the town let alone the street address. I wrote an approximation of the name of the town then in included in parenthesis (you know how I love those) “Somewhere near Ottawa.”

In my letter I said: “I wonder if you really exist or if you were just a dream.”

About two months later I actually received a reply from Sue. It started out...


         Dear Joel,
               I exist...

She went on to talk about skiing and trivial things. She said nothing of being glad to hear from me or how magic our time together on the train was... Probably because it was nothing of the sort really, just me over romanticizing once again.

I wrote her back but I never heard from her again.

I wonder if she'll ever see the show with the crazy ATM that I have been working on in Canada, or if she ever watches “Jeopardy”. She'll have no idea that guy operating that crazy ATM or the guy changing the scores on Jeopardy was the guy she hung out with for a day on the train, the guy who sent her a letter with practically no address.


A guy who loves trains.

The Barn

I'm from New York.

In LA, or really anywhere else in the world besides where I grew up, I have to be a bit more specific...

Upstate New York.

In most of those same places, specifying “Upstate” is not enough. Most people will still start talking about New York City and asking me if I know of some great pizza place or how often I get into the city, as if “upstate” means some neighborhood just north of The Bronx.

I find there's only one thing I can say to shut them up about NYC.

“Waaay upstate.” I say, “think cows, not sky scrapers.”

And yet sometimes, I still get a blank stare. So I explain to them that visiting New York City from where I grew up was much like driving from LA to San Francisco and that the big city closest to us was actually Toronto.

So, when I say I'm from New York: picture a dirt road, a dairy farm, a fifteen minute car ride to do almost anything and a beautiful view of a lake a mile down the hill.

I never minded living in the country. It was always a source of pride to me. The dairy farm was a neighbor's, not my familie's so I hung around and worked when I wanted to, but was never obligated to get up at Oh-dark-thirty every day of the week and help feed and milk the Holsteins. Never-the-less, I spent plenty of time helping; calling and herding the forty cows into the barn, locking them in their stanchions, placing feed in front of them and strapping on the milking machines and scraping up their poop up when they missed the trench behind them. It was something to do and my help was somewhat valueable to the farmer even though I'm sure I was essentially an annoying little kid.

The farmer, Stu, or 'Stooky' as he was known, was a quite a character. His CB handle was “The Barnes Road Cowboy” Gruff and earthy, his method of 'contenting' his cows was to play country music and swear at them whenever he got the chance.

Once, when my brother was walking up the road past the barn, Stu called out “Hey, it's Matthew piss-head Johnson”.

That was pretty mild. At a very young age there were very few new words a sailor could have taught us that we didn't already know.

During harvest time the neighborhood would come together and help bail and store hay and straw. While Stu drove a bailing machine in the fields, another neighbor would shuttle full wagons of hay back to the barn. I would hold up the trailer tongue of the wagon while the tractor backed up, then I would drop the pin in place, climb to the top of the mountain of bails in the wagon and enjoy my ride back to the barn. Once there, I would wield a bailing hook and help place bails on an elevator, a chain-driven conveyor of sorts, that would shuttle the bails up and into the barn. I liked bailing straw more than hay. The bails weighed about half as much and didn't leave a layer of alfalfa dust on one's sweaty skin.

An elevator somewhat similar to the one we used.

No one was paid, it's just what we all did at harvest time.

It was more than a fair trade. For the time we spend working in the barn we spent many times that playing. The barn itself was a child's paradise. The barn was, to us, a space ship, a fortress, a castle. He had ropes we could swing from. There were a thousand places to hide. We adored the place and so did our friends.

Was it dangerous? Sure it was.

Did I do stupid things that I shutter to think about now like go hand-over-hand in the rafters, twenty some feet off the floor from one end of the barn to the other? You bet I did.

Was I ever injured beyond a cut or a scrape? Never.

Over the years I have taken a number of hits from the electric fence that bordered two sides of our yard which felt just like being body punched with a dump truck (explains a thing or two eh?). I never had the misfortune of peeing on the fence, but a friend of mine did once in amongst some bushes where he could not see the wire. He said it felt like someone “took it and ran with it”.

My parents as well as Stu, the farmer, expressed concern about our playing in the barn. We were banned from time to time but they could never make it stick. We loved the place too much.

 The barn in the summer of 2003

For all the dangers we faced: sharp objects, hanging, swinging and jumping from great heights, climbing on all sorts of farm equipment, there was only one thing we were actually afraid of...

Rats.

We knew they were there but there was an unspoken agreement between the kids and the cat-sized rodents. They had the run of the place at night, and we got the day shift. No matter how much fun we were having, we headed home in the evening the moment we saw the odd rat running along a beam.

We kept our end of the bargain and they kept theirs.

When I was older the barn had other purposes. I took two or three girls to the barn for a 'roll in zee hay' on a number of occasions.

Stu died some time before I moved to LA. He had sold off his herd some time before that. Every time I visited home, the hundred year-old plus barn with its hand-hewn beams seemed to be sagging a little lower and have more wood shingles missing. By the time my wife had the opportunity to see my childhood paradise, parts of the hay loft floor had collapsed into the milking room. It would have been fool hearty to so much as set foot inside the place.

The last time I was at home for Christmas was in 2007. The barn was looking in particularly bad shape. It had drooped notably since the last time I had seen it and it made me sad to look at it. My wife and I both noted this when we arrived from the airport.

We had our own problems at the time too. I had been on the road with a band for about six months and the strain of my being away from home most of the time and my making less than half my normal salary was wearing on us both.

Having used all our money to fly home, we had nothing left for Christmas gifts. I had decided that I would record some songs for each member of the family.

In the weeks prior my lap top had died. It had been a long and frustrating process of getting the new one up to speed and working properly. Getting my music software installed and working with the, then brand new and buggy as hell, Windows Vista took years off my life, it felt like. 

I eventually got everything working but we had flown to New York the week before Christmas and I had not yet been able to record a single note of music that would be everyone's Christmas gift.

After I arrived, I borrowed a bass guitar--a "Rogue" bass, and a Tascam US-428 USB audio interface (for recording to a computer) from my good friend, Jim. 

I had no idea what I was going to write. The pressure of hacking through the swamp of computer problems and the time it took up left me feeling completely drained creatively. I wondered if playing the same twenty-or-so Eagles tunes night after night for months had taken its toll as well.

Once set up on my brother's old room—my Mother's current office—I messed around with a few bass lines and programmed a drum beat with the Cubase stock drum plugin. I knew I was going to need more and I wanted them to be real things. I looked around the house for instruments or anything interesting-sounding that my parents might have lying around. 

I collected the following: A brass meditation bell, A rain stick, a frame drum and a native Amercian flute which I had to teach my self to play... toot sweet!

After a day of recording I had a groove and some ideas for some other parts, enough for one song.

My original intent was to write a song for each member of the family. It was clear now with only days before Christmas that it wasn't going to happen unless I churned out four or five crappy tunes as fast as I could. It would have to be one song for everyone. I felt like a heel but I had no other choice.

Still I had no idea of what to write about. It had to be something that would be meaningful to everyone without being sappy. I was drawing a big blank.

I am not sure if I was thinking about the empty page of my unwritten song when I went to bed that night or if I was thinking about the strong winds roaring outside. Especially after moving to LA, I do appreciate some good old fashioned nasty weather on occasion.

That night Audra awoke to here inexplicable sounds. Sounds she had never heard before but that approximated thunder and a jet engine. The sound would come around every fifteen minutes and last for a few seconds. She thought perhaps it was a distant snow plow.

I slept, as I often do, soundly. I heard nothing.

The next morning I had agreed to go into town with my mother and work with a charity that gives toys and other things to unfortunate families. We had to leave rather early. As we started up the road I heard my Mother gasp. I turned to see nothing. 

The nothing I saw was in the location of what used to be the barn, the play ground I had grown up in and around. A structure that had been around since long before my parents were born, perhaps my grandparents. 

 

It was a heap of rubble. I couldn't believe it, something that had been around my whole life was now gone, never to return.

Ironically it had been gusts of wind from opposite the usual direction that had been slowly making the barn lean over the years.

I had lost my barn.

But I had my song.

The lyrics came quickly. Now, I had to sing and record them. Having no mic stand, I had to hang the mic cable from a nail in the rafters of my parents' basement. As I recorded numerous tracks of lead and backing vocals I could hear the floor creak from my parents walking around and their talking above me. I thought about going upstairs to remind them I was recording but I remembered my organic philosophy of recording and let it all into the mic.

Of course my wife Audra, who is a magnificent photographer who specializes in destruction among other things, shot some great pictures of the barn. She also, unwittingly, happened to take the last picture of the barn before it's demise days before. We were doing some work on my parents website quietmeadows.org and we needed a picture of their sign hanging by the road. The doomed barn happened to be in the background. 

 

I used both the picture before and after to create artwork for the CD I gave to everyone for Christmas. 

My parents later held a wake for the barn. I was unable to come from LA to attend. Most of the neighbors came, some new, others that hadn't lived there for decades. They played my song as part of the wake.

Click here to listen to the song as you read on.

The Barn

© Joel T Johnson 2007

Death defying monkey acrobatics

The hayloft of the barn

We weren't afraid of anything

Never broke a leg, never broke an arm

The rats came out at dust

But we ruled from the cock's first crow

Playing war, making forts

While the cows got milked below

It's been years since we were kids

Since the old farmer died

Leaving our barn to lean in the wind

Held together with luck and twine...

(chorus)

The old barn is coming down

Wind, water and time

Take dead trees to the ground

The old barn is coming down

Wind, water and time

Returns all to the ground

We were home for Christmas

Snow was everywhere

The Barn was sagging low

Like an old friend in despair

But no one could have guessed

It was waiting to say goodbye

For us to come and visit

On that cold December night

Some time in the dark

The wind vain it swung West

We thought we heard thunder roll

We thought we heard a jet...

(chorus)

The old barn is coming down

Wind, water and time

Take dead trees to the ground

The old barn is coming down

Wind, water and time returns all to the ground

Early the next morning

I took a look outside

That was quite a wind last night

And then, I nearly cried

Our old barn lay in ruin

It's true for us all

One day when the wind shifts West

I too will lean and fall...

(chorus)

The old barn is falling down

wind, water and time

Take dead trees to the ground

The old barn is falling down

Wind water and time returns all to the ground

This song and the whole album is available here.

I will never forget our barn. I can remember details of that place better than somewhere I was last week. Just a couple months ago I had my first visit since the barn fell. Everything has been cleared away. all that remains is the silo.

 

The barn before...

 

 And after.

So when I say I'm from New York, don't picture sky scrapers and subways. Picture cows, a dirt road and an old barn that was, but is no more.

I appreciate your support and sharing this with your friends.

Notes on the Recording:

Most of the original recording that I made in my parents' house both before and after the barn's collapse remained intact. I changed the drums and re-recorded new lead vocals and some backing vocals.

This tune was a favorite of my co-producer from the day I emailed him a copy only days after Christmas. For my CD I was advised... nay, warned not to change too much.

Once again, even though there are parts that sound like electric guitar, this song is a guitar-free zone, there is only bass. The bass tracks are all the original tracks I recorded with one of my friend Jim's basses.

One of the only changes to the bass from the original version was that I passed it through the “Guitar Rig” plug in and gave it a rather nasty distortion in a couple parts to better approximate destruction.

Actually That Is a Banana In My Pocket

(but I'm always happy to see you)

Back before I could drive I was in my first band. Everyone but the drummer was five to ten years older than I was. We had three guitarists. a lead guitarist, a rhythm guitarist and a guitarist that had a place to practice.

The lead guitarist was a guy name Dave Johnson (no relation). I'll never forget something he once told me: "Well you have to admit, playing bass is no big deal, it's pretty easy."


That really pissed me off.

What bothered me the most was that I knew, in a sense, he was right. Bass was easy playing the music we were playing in that band: AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Etc...

I loved bass. I didn't want to play guitar, but I didn't want to be playing endless quarter notes on open strings behind an endless heavy metal guitar solo either.

Frankly, I didn't particularly want to be playing under an endless jazz sax solo either.

There is an instrumental tune on the Rush, “Moving Pictures” album called “YYZ”. The name comes from the airport code for Toronto: YYZ, the home base of the band (that's pronounced “wy, wy, zed” here in Canada by-the-way).

Rush, "Moving Pictures"

Rush's drummer and lyricist, Neil Peart said that they were always happy to see “YYZ” tags on their luggage after many months on tour around the world. They were finally headed home, just as I am happy to see "LAX" on my bags today as I fly home from YYZ (Toronto).

 YY-Zed (Pearson International Airport, Toronto)

Rush was known for their instrumental prowess; asymmetric meters, fast scale runs on both guitar and bass and, perhaps most famously, intricate daring drum fills, beats and solos on Neil's mammoth drum kit. 

As a bass player, Geddy Lee's bass riffs were what I was interested in: tight, aggressive, melodic and wonderfully busy.

Side note: in the midst of writing this blog, I learned that the director of the show I am currently working on in Toronto knows Geddy Lee through his wife and has spent time with he and his family! -Yes the director has my CD -No, I have not instructed him to give a copy to Geddy.

Not all Americans 'get' Rush, but I sure did. To some folks, it was excessive and indulgent but it became a kind-of mecca for drummers and bass players, a mountain to climb just for that: the satisfaction of the challenge and the bragging rights among bass players that you could play their songs--especially "YYZ". I spent hours and hours myself trying to master the fast riffs and tight rhythms.

 Rush at Le Studio in Quebec, where they recorded the "Moving Pictures" Album

YYZ and other Rush tunes started me on a journey to find out what the bass could do to prove Dave Johnson, the guitarist in my first band, wrong. 

What were the bass guitar's hidden secrets? What had everyone missed while the bass was busy doing all the heavy lifting of rock and roll, and the cooking and ironing of jazz, albeit with the occasional night-out-on-the-town bass solo. 

What were the bass' other sides, its hidden talents? 

What were mine?

The journey that began with YYZ and other Rush tunes has brought me to my own creation, my own "YYZ". I wrote and developed it over many years utilizing not one but several unique playing methods I have developed or adopted and altered. 

I called my tune: “On Your Toes”, a play on both the physical difficulty in performing it at its break-neck pace and for my variation on the two-handed finger technique I used for the main section.

A still from the video showing the two-hand technique I adopted from artists 

like Stanley Jordan (guitar), Stu Hamm (bass) and Billy Sheehan (bass). 

I developed my own version of it based onTabla drumming.

 

No, I don't play with my toes.

"On Your Toes" stretched me as a player. I in turn moved the goal post of the limits of the song in both speed and intricacy as I improved and stretched the reach of the song as my abilities allowed and so on over twelve or thirteen years until I felt it had become a full and finished composition.

I also learned about my limits and some sensible practices in my playing. I actually put my wrist in a brace for a several weeks after I worked too hard and too fast to stretch my skills and speed. The painful condition put my bass back in its case for months and put my song away for several years.

As I worked on my album I occasionally toyed with the idea of including “On Your Toes”. Even though it didn't completely fit with the other songs, there were several other songs that resided on the outer edges of my central style—whatever the heck that is.

I wanted to show what the bass could do. I wanted to show what I could do. I had my "YYZ", I wanted to share it... 

You know: show off! 

Hey, you can't tell me that Franz Liszt, and Ludwig Von Beethoven didn't compose with the specific goal of being 'impressive'.

What if I only looked like a show-off? What if I injured myself again? There was too much else at stake to add months of of recovery to the production of my album. Finally I decided I had to at least try to record it. I wanted to use everything in my arsenal that would make me stand out from the gadzillions of self-produced music projects, and the thousands professional budgeted projects too for that matter.

I gingerly started work on “On Your Toes” again. I warmed up carefully, limited my practice to twenty minutes at a time and only three or four times a week. I started slow and gradually built it back to its full tempo.

Still, I couldn't seem to get it right. I could not manage to get through the entire piece without a notable mistake. Perhaps I had written beyond not just my current abilities but beyond my physical abilities no matter how hard and long I worked.

I could have lowered the mountain. I could have slowed it down simplified the scales and runs; played it safe. I could have used recording tricks and pieced the song together a section at a time using many takes for each to get it right, then edit them together. I couldn't do that though. Forget about the fact that that such things would decrease the impact and quality of the composition. I had to do it right or not at all. Maybe I could put it on a later album.

Finally, after putting it away and picking it up dozens of times, it started to come together. I decided that I had to play it as one take all the way through. Truthfully, it needs two takes since there's a point in the middle where I let a chord ring while the next sections begins over it.

There was one particular section that I was still having a hard time with. Just four notes, a descending scale that, because it's speed and the way my hand had to be positioned, the notes were simply not coming out clean. I could have rewritten it to something simpler but I refused to compromise on the composition. The scale was perfect, exactly what it needed it to be. Just because I couldn't actually play it was no excuse to change it.

Somewhere along the way I changed the name of the song from “On Your Toes” to the cheeky, “Actually, That Is a Banana In My Pocket (but I'm always glad to see you). You could call it marketing, but it was just that I thought up the title, thought it was hysterical, and wanted to use it somewhere.

Perhaps it was even the new title, but after months of more cautious rehearsals, the troublesome scale was working out one out of every four or five attempts. I wasn't sure it was going to get any better. 

Time to record.

If I was going to record this without cheating, as two unbroken takes (one for each section that overlap with the ringing chord), I had to be sure to document that I had achieved it. I also wanted to show the unusual technique I was using so I recorded my takes on video as well as on my recording software.

Here it is, the video in the form the tune was in right after I recorded the main bass tracks. In the background are drum and guitar tracks that I pre-recorded to play along with. Even though those tracks and the bass solo I laid down afterwords have been redone for the album, the main bass track you are seeing in the video is the same one on the album with no overdubs.

As the video begins I appear bit exasperated because I had already made several failed attempts to get it right. I was worried my hands would give out before I got a good take in the can.

I didn't realize until later that my cat Delilah had stolen the show.

I would love for this video to go viral. I would love to be recognized by other bass players and musicians.

I wouldn't mind selling a few (million) CDs and downloads too much either.

What this piece is really about though, is reaching some kid in Wisconsin or Yorkshire, or the Philippines. Some kid who will see this and be inspired to take the bass guitar to places I can't even dream of. The same way Rush, Geddy Lee and “YYZ” reached me.

Please help me reach him or her; repost this video or send it to anyone you know who might find it interesting.

...And someone please play it for Dave Johnson.

Easy huh?

Clay Jones is Dead

I am ended my second week in Toronto with a trip across the lake to my home land, Rochester, NY and more specifically Canandaigua. What started out as a simple direct flight to Rochester for the three-day weekend—which happens to be Canadian Thanksgiving—to visit my parents, turned into an out-of-the-way connection through JFK for a forty-eight hour pass to my parents' empty house.

Still totally worth it.

It was odd though to look out the window of the plane to see we were literally within a couple miles of my parents' place in Canandaigua, then shoot a couple hundred miles past it. I waited around in the bedlam of JFK for about an hour before boarding my flight to NY—which happened to be the same plane and crew I had flown with from Toronto.

We then flew directly over Canandaigua lake yet again to shoot some forty-five miles past it land in Rochester.

I had heard, a couple weeks ago that Jimi Heselden the owner of the Segue company (not the inventor Dean Kamen), apparently rode a Segue off a cliff in England and died.

I guess he 'Segued' into the next beyond.

That is all I have to segue into the blog about my next song on the CD. A song of death.

Did you see how I did that?

So far, four songs into my album, the body count is eighty-two and one close call in freezing waters.

We're about to add one more.

Is it the girl tied a chair in a burning house? Her husband bleeding and left for dead outside the local saloon? Is it the oversized over-emotional jilted bully that put them both there or the well-meaning but not very handy uncle?

Om... If you really want to be surprised, try to ignore the title of this song, of this week's blog and the first few miles of the song.

What do you mean “too late?”

I've always been fascinated by those morbid folk ballads that told tales of woe and often included heinous crimes of passion and based, at least initially on some actual occurrence that became a legend in some little community.

Such legends were both the horror movies and the six-O-clock news in such places before there were either.

I wanted to write one of my own legends. It was simply more fun to make up my own than to find a real one of my liking. I placed it in a setting and time that is implied by several things. The language, marriage before the age of sixteen, a back-woods sense of justice, where sometimes, it is in everyone's best interest to bypass the formal process and the presence of some dark-hearted villain that brings trouble to mix of an otherwise God-fearing community.

I also wanted it to be ironic and just a little bit humorous.

When I perform this song I always introduce it like this:

“When you pit a belligerent bully against bad carpentry, bad carpentry always prevails.”

Click to listen to the song as you read on

Clay Jones is Dead

© Joel T Johnson

Justice been done no need to wake the Sheriff

Justice been done no need to wake the Sheriff, no

Clay Jones is dead

Just let the tall grass grow

Jenny was married the day before her sweet sixteen

She never knew a man till the eve of her sweet sixteen

It wasn’t Clay Jones and that made Clay Jones

crazy mad and mighty mean so…

He came ‘round on the night of the first new moon

He crept round her window in the dark of the first new moon

She was waiting for her man, but her man

Was lying in blood

Outside the saloon

And big Clay Jones

Is in her room

Instrumental refrain/solo

The chair was a wedding gift from her uncle Stan

Like the house, a handmade gift from her Uncle Stan

Now she was tied well to it by a man

With a heavy heart and a heavy hand

(at that same hand)

Lit a match and set it to the kerosene

Jenny’s eyes cried in the fumes of the kerosene

The floor creaked and groaned under big Clay Jones

Stan built his floors

A bit too lean

A bit too lean

Instrumental refrain

Clay fell through the floor and stuck fast in the wood

Jenny broke the chair and ran fast as she could

Poor Uncle Stan, a real nice man

But with a hammer and nails,

He’s not much good

Justice been done no need to wake the Sheriff

Justice been done no need to wake the Sheriff, no

Bury him deep and let the tall grass grow

Clay Jones is dead just let the tall grass grow

The Recording.

I had originally written this song on electric bass. I used a playing style that mimicked the sound of an upright (acoustic) bass. The main riff of the song was inspired loosely by the upright bass riff prominent in the movie Guy Richie movie “Snatch”.

I had recorded several versions with the electric and even tracked a bass 'lead' part—that's right this tune is 100% guitar free.

Why not go for the real thing and play it on an upright for the recording?

For starters, I didn't have an upright bass.

On one summer day in the summer of 2007 I was setting up for a gig at a casino in Western Wisconsin. A girl walked up to me and started asking me about my gear.

Okay, that's never happened before.

Anna, as it turned out, was the bass player for the next band playing that night. She was from LA too and played upright bass as well as electric. Unlike myself, she actually owned one.

Cool!

I had fun talking 'shop' with her and left my card on the stage on my way out to the bus while her bands was playing.

When It was time to record Clay Jones I knew who to call. Anna graciously agreed to let me come and record on her upright bass. Armed with my mobile recording rig I went to her house and attempted to play “Clay Jones”.

It didn't work.

Hand positions on an upright bass are different due to the significantly longer string length. The hand covers four half-steps on an electric (one finger per note) but on acoustic the same fingerspan covers only three notes.

I thought perhaps I could stretch my large hand out and make it work but it just wasn't big and wide enough enough. Anna kindly gave me a pointer or two and with a little practice, I was getting the effect that I wanted with the standard acoustic bass hand position.

As with all my bass tracks, they are among the most important, so I used four tracks to record Anna's bass. Her bass had not one, but two pickups. One in the bridge which renders a more mid-rangy nasal sound often heard from amplified uprights, and one in the body which gave a deep bass tone. I also mic'd the F-hole... No, that's not dirty, it's the sound hole on either side of the bridge of any classical stringed instrument. It happens to be shaped like the lower cased “f”also used in music notation to mark forte or loud.

There is a philosophy I have tried to adapt with this recording. There is no way I can create a completely pristine recording with my modest gear, fair to mediocre recording skills and AD HOC recording environments. Many home recordists tackle this problem by close miking and controlling their environments in any way possible. But this can sometimes result in a recording that sounds like so many others: either closed and lifeless, or awash in too much artificial reverb.

I decided to try to use my weaknesses to my advantage. Instead of trying to make my recording sound like a controlled environment I would celebrate certain imperfections in the hopes that the resulting charm would rise higher in the mix the 'error'.

While working in film I heard a legend of an old-time cinematographer who would meticulously set up his lighting exactly as he wanted then he would go around and give each light stand a little kick.

I don't know if that's true but I like the idea; do your best to make it good, then turn your back long enough so that the Gods may add their sprinkle of spice.

I did this in many ways throughout the album, little things; some I did with intention and design, others by leaving certain things open to chance.

When I recorded upright bass at Anna's house—for three tunes in all—there were a set of wind chimes just outside her door. Instead of taking measures to silence the wind chimes and even the voices of her nieghbors walking back to the apartments behind her house or children playing across the street, we left the windows open and allowed everything into my microphones. Every one of these things is audibly present on my album. Even though I myself wondered one or twice if I should have been less carefree, now, I would miss any of them.

You don't even have to listen all that carefully to hear the wind chimes that occasionally show up during Clay Jones, Rice Crispies and Gin and The Cider Miller's Daughter.

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