There was a time when I measured my songs in the number of pages. I was so proud when I wrote my first three-page song. As a big Dylan fan, I felt that it was perfectly okay to have long songs. That just meant that you had something to say. I started writing shorter songs around the time of Love and War: Volume 1. Part of the reason was that I had so many song ideas at that time. Sometimes I would write two or more a day, but during this period of my life, songs got shorter, because I had less time. I often felt that I had to finish the song the same time I sat down to write it, or it would never get finished.
I know that this song began with the refrain, and it was just a matter of the verse getting to the refrain. Maybe I was in a real hurry, because the first verse pretty much summed up the song- or at least the initial for writing the song. Once upon a time I had something to offer the world, and then I pissed it all away. That’s how I felt for a long time. I’m not sure what I would have done differently. In hindsight, I see that I tried a lot of different things, and they just didn’t work. It’s not that my approach was inherently wrong. If there was any one thing I could blame for my lack of success, it might have been that I was too willing to try something new. If I had had my heart’s desire, it would have been to have a career like Neil Young. Sometimes a soft country-rock balladeer, and sometimes a hard-rocking grunge god. Sometimes a solo artist, and sometimes part of a group. That would have suited me just fine. But the music business doesn’t work that way. You pick a sound and run it into the ground.
It’s been said that in the Olympics, the silver medalist walks away wondering about all the things that they could have done differently, but the bronze medalist is just happy to get on the podium. Well, in the music business, only the gold medalist walks away with anything. I had gotten a record deal, I had gotten a booking agent, and gone on tour, but the end result was a silver at best.
The second verse is about a gambler, and I suppose anyone who goes down the road of trying to make a living off of their art fits that description, but I wasn’t consciously talking about me. I had already summed up what I wanted to say about me in the first verse. I was trying to broaden the scope in the second verse. But that description of the gambler who can’t tell if they are living out their purpose, or if they are a slave to their instincts, certainly rang true. Am I being bold by taking chances, or am I just an idiot? Only the results seem to have any answers.
The bridge would seem hackneyed were it not nestled in a song entitled “Pissed it All Away,” and let me tell you, it was a genuine sentiment. Just follow truth and it will set you free. Yes, it’s cliche, but sometimes it’s the only way forward.
By the end of the song, the song is no longer about me, but about all of us. It speaks to our tribal origins as a people and how we knew how to be people then, but somehow we lost our way, and it’s not entirely clear what we got out of the bargain. Civilization? Tall buildings? Are those any good if we lose our humanity? I wonder.
At any rate, I love this simple structure: AABA. This used to be a very common structure in popular music. Ditch the whole chorus altogether. Super quick and easy to write, which means the song always holds together. At the time, I didn’t see these songs as having much value. For me, they were just a hobby- just a way of building a ship inside a bottle- an interesting way to spend one’s time and nothing more.
I always thought that to be a great songwriter, I would need to work on my craft at every opportunity, and I suppose that’s how some folks do it. But while I used to write several songs in a day, I now found myself in a place where months would go by, and I had nothing to say. I thought the words that I wrote were just filler, but I have come to appreciate my muse. There’s no point in writing a song about toothpaste just to hone your craft. There are other ways to spend your time as an artist. I was living the material that would become my music, and I thought my life was kind of boring and uninteresting, but I have come to see that our lives are full of twists and turns, and while they might not make a movie about the story of my life, even when we feel like we’re going nowhere, there’s something to say.
This song came quickly, and I quickly recorded it. I wasn’t happy with the key, though. That was not something I thought about when I was younger. Then I began to see that some keys are easier to write in, but they may not be the best key for performing. Or sometimes the key that works late at night when you’re trying not to wake anybody up is not the best key if you want a song to really hit the heights.
This song was pure folk, with nothing buy percussion, acoustic guitars and upright bass provided by Tim Halcomb. That was the song for many years. Like so many songs on the album, I added other Navigators last fall. Glen Howerton on Drums, Mike Snowden on Electric guitar, and Woody on accordion, which he suggested for one song and ended up playing on about five.